Survival Games aren’t anything new. The idea of foraging for supplies to remain alive so long as possible continues to be a part of many games at this point. Although the new release from Norsfell, Tribes of Midgard, is a refreshing spin on things that adds a great deal to the traditional formula. The bottom line is, Tribes of Midgard is really a cooperative focused (if you can play solo if you want) game where you band together with a group of Vikings to protect your village against an ongoing onslaught. Played on the timer, throughout the day you’ll search the randomly generated world for crafting materials, while completing different tasks.
At night, you’ll have to defend yourself in the Helthings that will attempt to overthrow your village by looking into making it to the center to destroy the Seed of Yggdrasil. In the meantime, giants known as Jotnar will also be working their way towards your base as you’re basically in a constant loop of finding stuff, by using their stuff to change your weapons, equipment, and village, after which doing that again and again and keep the enemies away. Tribes of Midgard is a component survival game and part action role playing game, layered with content on the periphery to help keep you playing.
Part action RPG part survival
While it is made to have fun with friends, Tribes of Midgard has multiple modes to experience, including one skewed towards solo players. These modes all consume a familiar pattern in the aforementioned loop of scouring the map for materials, upgrading, fighting and surviving. There’s enough systems involved here to help you dizzy. Norsfell has truly crammed lot of different gameplay ideas into Tribes, the end result is a mixed bag. Some things feel half-baked while others could keep you coming back for more.
If the Seed of Yggdrasil Falls the sport is over
Combat is at the core of Tribes of Midgard, but it’s probably the weakest area of the game. While there are various weapons and items to outfit your warrior with, there’s just not enough variety in the combat to make it feel satisfying. There’s deficiencies in skills together with your character that other Action RPGs deliver on. Consider the variety in builds that you’ll see in something like a Diablo for example, and that’s really what you’re left desiring in Tribes of Midgard. Whether cleaning an enemy encampment or taking on the mighty Jotnar, the combat is repetitive with very little need to do anything further than mash the attack button. This is certainly the situation when playing solo, fighting a huge by yourself is wholly underwhelming. Even taking on the spongey enemies gives you that very same feeling. Yet, this can be a core pillar from the game and it’s unavoidable. Combat is among the most rewarding activities to reap souls, find unique items hidden in enemy encampments, and clearly you’ll have to do this frequently the times turn into nights and also the helthings attack.
Protect your village against Jotnar
Upgrading your character and also the weapons you’re using does make things better as does finding runes in the world as well. The problem is that each run in Tribes of Midgard is going to be pretty different. So, a dependable build isn’t something which you’re going to find here. Instead you’re likely to focus on a personality archetype on each run, this will allow you to focus on certain weapons or traits. After that you can earn points as you level up in the world that will go towards unlocking different bonuses for your character. They are world specific, so anything earned in the game in this regard is only for this single run. If your village falls to the Helthings or even the Jotnar reach the village you’ll start the whole process over again. That process is a loop that feels familiar to many survival games… grab items, make weapons and equipment, grab more items, level up that equipment. There's a persistent element too. You are able to unlock classes, runes, in addition to a bevy of cosmetic items which will continue from playthrough to playthrough.
Tribes of Midgard Let’s You Produce a Viking
As games of this type can be Tribes of Midgard could be a tad unforgiving. While you don’t need to manage things like hunger or thirst in this survival game, it can really feel like you’re making limited progress on a day to day (in-game) basis. You’re constantly concerned about returning to the village prior to the Helthings can overthrow you. Death absolutely decimates your progress if you have a variety of souls on you. The primary currency is souls, which are lost forever if you die hanging around. Which actually isn’t very difficult to do. It’s quite easy in the future upon an enemy that is over-powered, particularly if you start venturing too much from camp too early on. Items that you've you own when dying will be left out too, but can be recovered should you venture to the places you fell. So Tribes of Midgard can seem to be a bit unforgiving. Though on the other hand of this, when playing with friends it can feel lacking in difficulty. Due to the capability to be revived from your teammates in early goings of the instance. Strength in numbers they say, and that’s certainly the situation with this particular game.
Treasure chests Viking comradery are abundant
On the presentation front, Norsfell has absolutely nailed it with Tribes of Midgard. The Viking aesthetic, and also the bright colorful world display from that isometic viewpoint is very good. The art style is absolutely inviting and it’s coupled with a fairly innocuous soundtrack of ambient music. That said style is cell-shaded style. The game’s color scheme and appear remind of something like a TLOZ: Wind Waker. When they ended up getting dialed in on the presentation front, not everything reached launch effortlessly. There’s some stuff in here that feels half baked. Traversal is among those activities. You’ll find some oddities every so often in Tribes of Midgard. From getting stuck on the planet to falling through objects, I'd my fair share of issues. Clearly they're known, because the solution is to reset in the pause menu. It’s not the elegant solution, but at least it’s something. It can be frustrating though. Whenever you handful of these difficulty and crippling loss with something that isn’t brought on by the gamer it's really a tough pill to swallow if any progress gets lost. Especially since losing the souls is such a problem.
The Verdict
Tribes of Midgard does some things perfectly yet others less. The overall presentation and also the systems all around the experience go a long way for making you forget that the game is made around a rather mundane combat system. While that can be excusable, some of the half baked ideas, bugs, and overall unbalanced experience keep excitement to keep playing in check.
