Valheim

There’s a whole life to be lived in Valheim, with a variety of jobs that can satisfy combatants and cozy gamers alike. My friends have flocked into a Discord call every night the past week or so, all of us with our own goals but banding together to take on a poisonous goop monster in the swamp or a half-dead goblin god dragging itself across the plains. Valheim has quietly become one of the most successful and beloved games in its genre, and it deserves every flower for how it developed during early access and now finally into its 1.0 release.

After more than 300 hours, I know Valheim well. Though somehow, it can still surprise me. That is why I suspect I will keep playing it for years. Version 1.0 may mark the end of its journey into Early Access, but for me, it doesn’t feel like an ending. Valheim has given me hundreds of hours of stories and discoveries, and, after all this time, I’m still not ready to leave.

Valheim 1.0 is an exceptionally cosy survival game that rewards patience, curiosity and good company. A slow-burning, atmospheric Viking adventure that is at its very best when shared with others.

Valheim is probably the most polished survival game I've ever played, with a ridiculously satisfying upgrade loop that kept me hooked.

With its 1.0 release, Valheim brings a five-year Early Access journey to a fitting conclusion. While the survival game still isn’t groundbreaking in terms of graphics or technology, it treats fans of the genre to entertaining gameplay as well as experiences full of personality and memorable moments.

While Valheim hasn't quite solved the problems of Mistlands and Ashlands, the 1.0 release still manages to be the best version of the survival crafting game with an engaging core gameplay loop, dense atmosphere, and a beautiful and unique visual style.

Valheim is launching with one of the single greatest areas I've experienced in gaming. The Deep North is everything that a Viking adventure should be, and it’s an experience that everybody should have. Unfortunately, getting here is a road that will take days and frustrate players to no end. I just hope you stick it out; it's worth it.

The best hardcore survival game out there. I **** love wasting 4 hours sailing to the swamps to ship back my iron ores and can't fast travel. But honestly add an easy mode where I can travel with ores please.

The low-poly aesthetic blended with gorgeous lighting and moody weather creates an intoxicating survival atmosphere, especially when braving stormy seas alongside friends. The early base-building and progression loop is genuinely addictive, but the mid-to-late game gets weighed down by exhausting logistical chores and restrictive metal hauling that bring the pacing to an absolute crawl. Clunky combat hitboxes on uneven terrain and overly punishing stamina management also take a toll, turning what could have been a legendary Viking adventure into a tedious grind, particularly if you are tackling it solo.

Disclaimer: my vote is based on the current state of the game at release, because it's plagued by horrible map-resetting bugs that the developers are yet to iron out completely. Otherwise it would have been an 8. So, the game is good. Or I should say, the game does some important things right and has an unique approach that makes it refreshing. While a little clunky, the fighting, survival, building and exploring is pretty good, sometimes genius, like treating food as progressively better boosts instead of the usual boring implementations, or survival being limited to cold/wet debuffs with the chance of building your base so you can fight better for longer. With an engaging loop of getting better stuff to craft better gear to beat a biome and then move to the next one, it's guaranteed to be fun for a hundred hours at least, which can easily go in the thousands if you like building. It's rest that doesn't work. There's plenty of side activities that are not challenging nor fun to do, and even when they kind of are, the rewards range from disappointing to useless. Just an example: a NPC will ask you to recover three pieces of something. It's a long quest that requires lot of utterly uninteresting sailing true empty oceans, so you can risk your life with big baddies. Finally you move these cumbersome goods back to the NPC by boat, because they can't even be teleported, and the reward is her charging you money for a bunch of crappy items you'll never use. Multiply this x30 and you might see how a big chunk of the game consists on regretting the time wasted in futile endeavours, only to find more exercises of futility in the next biome. The risk/reward ratios is often nonsensical, so if you have limited time to play, be warned. It's a fun game that will keep you engaged for a long time if you don't mind how useless many things are, though.

Hate the art style and interface. A lot of people love it but it fails on the basic points of drawing me in. So it's a hard pass for me. I regret buying it.

Starting with the Mistlands, the game becomes simply unbearably difficult and tedious.