Valnir Rok

Review

(Early Access Review. As an early access release, you may experience bugs, content, interface and optimization changes. If you are not excited to play the title in its current state & help to support the title to full release by reporting bugs and requesting additional content, you may want to wait for further development)

The sun is shining in the early morning as you wake on the beach; the wreckage of your vessel scattered up and down the coast. The bodies of friends and the rest of the crew members lay lifeless along the beach, not lucky enough to survive the raging sea and reefs that destroyed your ship. Gathering what supplies you can from what is scattered at the wreckage site, you venture forward to meet the people of this land. The game's setting is in the Viking age with influences of Norse mythology, such as ancient gods and monsters that were prevalent in the era. As a survival crafting RPG, there are a lot of quests all over the land of Valnir. With PVE as well as PVP gameplay, you can play it the way you want.

Gathering resources to craft what you need to survive is a necessity if you don’t want to starve or freeze to death, or be lunch for a wandering wolf, bear or enemy. As you progress you will need to build a shelter for yourself as a base camp to store and make everything you need. Roaming the lands, you can choose to accept quests from occupants, earning rewards for your deeds. Battle the fierce creatures of mythology and pray to the Gods to make you stronger. Upgrade your stats with XP that you earn as you play, unlocking advanced crafting and weapons, among other things.

Released in Early Access on Sept 26, 2017, by the developer Encurio & released by Encurio, Rok Entertainment, it is tagged as Indie, Open World. Survival, RPG, Early Access; I have added no additional tags for the release. It features a large open world to explore as you see fit, with small and large points of interest that have very nice period-based architecture.  A wide variety of animals to hunt for food and crafting material. A myriad number of quests that have tons of different parameters to keep things interesting. PVE & PVP gameplay, to play it your way.

The title has a great concept, yet there is still a lot of room for improvement. The POI's are well-designed (I do love the beauty of them); it’s the areas outside of them that still need work. Optimization is also needed, as after a couple of hours of play, the game will start to slow down, and restarting the game seems to be the only way to fix it. This was my worst annoyance as my game would start to lag out, and often I was in combat when it happened, and my life ended. I felt there were too many animals for being a survival title; hunting was way too simple. Figuring out the crafting requires a slight learning curve as you have to experiment to find recipes. The interface is a bit large and takes up too much of your screen, especially when you get a lot of quest lines.

Although I have had a decent amount of fun during my game time, there is still so much discover that I feel I have barely touched the surface of what it has to offer; even in the Early Access state there are countless hours of gameplay. I will be waiting for some more patches before I continue my play of the title. In its current state, I cannot give it as high a score as I would like to. It's had fairly regular updates the last year; after it has more updates, I will see about adjusting my score. I look forward to what the title becomes at final release.

Review written by DamageInc.for Zeepond.com!