Like an aggressively competitive thane at a reindeer-piss guzzling contest, 2D tac-and-slash roguelite Sons Of Valhalla never lets up the pace for even a moment. Whether you’re charging across its pixel-art battlefields slashing and burning increasingly tough-to-crack strongholds, or making quick decisions to get the upper hand in its tug-of-war tactics, the only times Thorald is not doing cool violence, commanding others to do cool violence, or upgrading his camps so that he may act in cooler and more violent ways, is when he’s restoring stamina with a cool slug of mead or violently gnawing at health-boosting meat.
Viking Thorald Olavson is a man possessed. A rival Jarl burnt his village and nicked his wife Raya. In his quest to find her, he’s prepared to do anything – even visit England. As Thorald, you’ll butcher your way up a chain of command in your search for Raya across six stages, each of which sits somewhere between the side-scrolling tactics of Kingdom Two Crowns , the lane strategy of a Warpips , and the slashy/blocky/shooty/dodgy of any 2D ARPG you care to name.
There’s even a sprinkling of roguelite. You’ll have to sacrifice an upgrade rune, collected from certain foes, each time you die.” this sounds like a bit of an overwhelming mish-mash, but Sov nibbles with reserve at each of these concepts, hamster-cheeking only the bits relevant to its astoundingly potent momentum and ‘cult flash game you all bunked off sociology to play and when the teacher came to tell you off they forgot and just watched it for a bit’ charm. I mean this entirely in terms of moreishness and focus. “you’d be as hard-pressed as a burnt waffle to find an old flash game with pixel art this good.” on the arpg level, thorald is a force of nature after a mere handful of upgrades, either runic or bought from your mead hall bases with a resource so rare that i only learned what it was during the final stage. He’s capable of slashing through foes three at a time, and quick enough on the quiver to send his quitting foes quivering in their nesquik-coloured underoos. later, you’ll unlock a tar pot/flame combo so disgustingly broken that I’d moan about it if it wasn’t so much fun, if the exquisitely grizzly foe-frying animation that I imagine took someone weeks of work wasn’t so brilliant. by the final stages, you’ll be taking entire camps down solo.
Not at the beginning, mind you! This is where getting your warbands together comes in. One of the first things the game teaches you is the ‘shield wall’ command – shields to the front, archers to the back. Very effective. Then, you go and get all your shield lads killed in the first charge and can’t build anymore until you get the upgrade. Nevermind! You can put down a barracks and a couple loot farms, and you’ll soon have a fine company of raiders at your command. Later, you’ll be able to recruit anything from shieldmaidens to siege engines, but for now babies are fine. Dead enemies yield hacksilver, hacksilver upgrades the mead hall, and the mead hall unlocks new building slots. Your unit cap grows with every capture and construction. It’s always small enough to be a consideration, but large enough to field a varied force. Some units are incredibly specialized, so only when you have the entire roster unlocked does the cap become something you need to consider, particularly since enemy strongholds are fortified beyond measure from just a few levels in.
With these being set in stone immediately, variety is what Sons Of Valhalla absolutely excels in, leaving all the old stuff a going concern while consistently moving on top of its foundation on either side, twiddling the same tug of war up in both intensity and complexity. I see over 40 enemies have been included according to the press kit, and I can believe it. Each stage concludes with a cartoonishly evil boss fight, separated by a couple of lovable headshot banters brandishing shades of classic brawler nostalgia. It’s very breezy stuff, as I may have mentioned. Violent, and possibly even somewhat traumatic for many of the characters, but I don’t suppose the story was ever meant to be taken seriously as much as provide a goofy, high adventure framing device for all the pillaging and vengeance swearing. It’s the former’s far more Asterix and Obelix than The Norseman. Oh, also, the music is excellent. Very swashbuckling. Directing your troops themselves can often be a bit of pain in the neck, mind. Lads love to throw a shield wall in the opposite direction when they know full well there’s one to two units of your friends taking a leisurely stroll behind them. Sometimes you will just run about spamming ‘follow me’ to cancel the ‘attack’ instruction and get them to ‘hold position’ whilst you rebuild up proper force, although in general, weapons ducks a very neat, four entry long drop down menu, and so do your troops.
Remember when I said that the game never lets up right at the start? Well, the game pulled a fast one on me, but I want to pull a fast one on you as well: like the game did to me, I will insert a significant amount of ‘What? Why, would you do this to me?’ into your play. Guess what? This Is A Textual Interpretation Of A Pacing Roadblock . Why, oh, why would you do that to me, game developers? I can barely contain my excitement now, can’t I? Not only have you ransacked the people of poop and straw when I thought you’d leave them intact; you also robbed their children of their mothers and pillaged the pride of their lands, their cattle! Of course, it wouldn’t be complete if you didn’t vandalize their gods with the worst and puniest mustaches the village has ever seen! Why don’t you just kill them all and have done with it? Let the stealth experience of the Vikings commence! Let us sneak past them in the cover of the night, hide their soundproof dreams, and disorient the sleepless bunch with the thrown pots others have clearly kept in store for this one day. Do the Vikings sneak? I doubt it, but what can be more distracting from a thief at the door than a pot sailed into your head accompanied by a satisfied smirk of your buddy Ozzy, who has yet mastered the art of missing? No. Why would you do that to me, game? Why would you do that to me?
Yes, it is situated dead in the middle of the game, a precisely timed respite from the constant action. Yes, it does give the game a sense of grandeur. Yes, it does actually allow Raya to be something more than “Thorald’s Wife” and be a character in her own right for a decent chunk of the game. It is not the mere existence of this section I take issue with, merely how it is done. Give the poor woman an axe! Give her a boltgun! I’ll get over it, I swear! Maybe a bite-sized version of the main loop where Raya leads an army of sewer rats, which she befriended, in the prisons to take down their guards? That would have made Sons Of Valhalla be considered ‘that great game with the really bad stealth section in the middle’ into ‘that great game with the rat tactics’. You could have called it ‘rat-tics’! I’ll have clapped if you did that!
Oh, but it is over! Raya crawled out of the sewers, kicked a guard in the teeth and, oh my, the game is great again. Sure, by now Thorold is probably getting so overpowered the bosses are more about novelty than difficulty – and sure, you have probably worked out how the game loop functions, which means the final few levels are actually easier than the first. There are more than a few choices of difficulty – I imagine the one above ‘normal’ would hit the spot spottingly if you wanted some challenge – and, honestly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a victory lap.
There are a bunch more intricacies you’ll discover as you play. Every second outpost you take down, for example, provides a forest camp rather than standard base, letting you recruit mercenaries and trade resources; adding yet another layer of tactical book balancing to consider. The real tug-of-war is actually in your mind! A good chunk of the runes you’ll get aren’t just for Thorald, either, adding buffs or new tricks to specific unit roles. There’s also a horde mode that gives you a massive unit cap to begin with, and tinkers with the rhythms of the campaign by giving you a set preparation cooldown – time you’d usually have to quite literally carve out yourself by finding sensible lulls in the action to return and upgrade.
I was very close to sticking a Bestest Best on this one, but that awful stealth chunk, combined with how the game failed to put up a real fight just when it needed to most, held me back. Up until the halfway point, though, and for a good while after it, I was having a ball with Sons Of Valhalla. It keeps its ARPGing within the relevant confines of its tactics, and keeps its tactics paced to match to its intense and immediate combat. It’s wonderfully scored and animated. It doesn’t overstay its welcome but then gives you an extra mode and thoughtfully tuned difficulty settings if you want to dive back in. And even with my complaints, I’m eager to do just that. Barkeep, more reindeer piss.