Nordic Warriors

Review

After a group of warriors failed to return to the village, Frejas The Shaman and a small group of soldiers decided to search the forest nearby to hopefully find and bring back their lost companions. A fierce winter has emerged, and they might freeze to death without proper shelter. However, on the third day of the expedition, Frejas made the call to return to the village as she and her group hadn’t been able to find their lost friends. As they approached the village, cold and exhausted, Frejas felt uneasy. This feeling kept growing with every step they made towards the village gates. Her apprehension was confirmed when she saw villagers’ bodies lying on the ground in pools of blood! And then she saw them; an army of undead coming straight towards them. That was the start of the long fight of Nordic Warriors.

Nordic Warriors is a challenging old-school real-time tactic/strategy game developed by Liron Peer, Roman Levin and published by Mashmashu Studio 20 of June 2020 on the Steam platform.

At this stage, the game consists of a single-player campaign and a tutorial. However, today, 14th of July 2020, the developers announced that a multiplayer mode will soon be available - fabulous news!

After selecting one of the four available difficulty levels - Peasant (perfect level for my friend, PistonSmashed), Warrior, Hero and Ragnarok - you’ll see an open book with blank pages on the table. Shortly after, the left page will populate with words, and the narration will start. (I personally like this style of storytelling; it adds a certain charm.)  As the narrator comes to the end of the page, the mission starts.

There are two heroes in the campaign: the main heroine, Frejas The Shaman, and the Prince Jarn. Depending on the mission, they will be accompanied by a certain number of soldiers. There are seven different types of units without including Frejas and Jarn. The Alchemists and Archers are the long-range units. The Alchemist can drop mines on the floor, and then light the mines by launching a bomb onto them (the primary alchemist weapon), thereby inflicting massive damage to the incoming enemies. But the Alchemist will only have a few mines on hand per mission. The other units are mostly melee-driven, with some stronger than others. Frejas is the most powerful character in the game as she can heal (a certain number of times per mission), convert Werewolves to your army and draw a powerful spell which will blow your enemies to pieces. Frejas’ downside is that she is extremely fragile and can be killed quite quickly if you send her as part of your front line. Prince Jarn, in the other hand, is pretty tough and can kill a few enemies with one hit, but he also takes severe damage quickly. Bear in mind that if one of these two heroes dies during the mission, it will be game over. Another thing to be careful of is that Frejas’ powerful spell blast can also gravely damage your own units if they are to close to the explosion—same thing with the alchemist bombs and mines.

As you don’t have any reinforcements (at least in the first six missions that I played), you really need to be extra careful how you use your units and where you place them within the group of soldiers. You’ll have plenty of formations to choose from, and you can select one, several or all your units at once. You can pause the gameplay, select one or more units and give them orders to attack or to move to a new position on the map before pressing the play button again, and you can certainly accelerate the gameplay if you wish.

In terms of the missions, well, I only see two types at this stage. In the first type of mission, you have to reach a specific location, represented by a red flag on the map, and you might also need to destroy a structure or two (bridges, and some sort of structure made of large rocks). The other is to stop the undead army from breaching your defences and make sure they don’t reach a particular destination on the map.

I’ve really enjoyed the game so far; it’s quite challenging, as you have to get by with whatever units you have at your disposal. Be prepared to restart the same mission a few times over.

As the developer mentioned on their website and the game Steam store page, Nordic Warriors was inspired by the classic Myth series which bring some nostalgia while playing it. Still, it stands as its own game, different to the Myth series.

The graphics are pretty good, and the cameras are very easy to use and work very well. One thing bugs me a little . . . a few units are very slow to move around, and none of the units can run, with the exception of the werewolves.  It would be nice to have a few other types of units that can do so. In terms of the story, the narrative is good.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com!