About This Game After years of tireless explorations, brave Vikings have discovered a new land filled with mystery, danger and riches: Northgard. The boldest Northmen have set sail to explore and conquer these new shores, bring fame to their Clan and write history through conquest, trading, or devotion to the Gods. That is, if they can survive the dire Wolves and Undead Warriors roaming the land, befriend or defeat the giants, and survive the harshest winters ever witnessed in the North. Build your settlement on the newly discovered continent of Northgard Assign your vikings to various jobs (Farmer, Warrior, Sailor, Loremaster...) Manage your resources carefully and survive harsh winters and vicious foes Expand and discover new territory with unique strategic opportunities Achieve different victory conditions (Conquest, Fame, Lore, Trading...) Play against your friends or against an AI with different difficulty levels and personalities Enjoy dedicated servers and grind the ranks to reach the final Norse God rank! The Viking High King is murdered and his Regal Horn is stolen by a man named Hagen. This event kickstarts a saga that will take Rig, his son and heir accompanied by his right-hand man Brand through the new continent of Northgard. The continent where he will make new friends and foes and discover a much greater threat than Hagen, and the reasons behind his father’s assassination.In order to complete the 11 campaign chapters, the player will have to master the specificities of the 6 first clans and tame the unforgiving wilderness of Northgard.Since the beginning of Northgard's colonization, 3 new clans have joined the battle, introducing new ways of playing and battling. 1075eedd30 Title: NorthgardGenre: Indie, Simulation, StrategyDeveloper:Shiro GamesPublisher:Shiro GamesRelease Date: 7 Mar, 2018 Northgard Download Requirements Well, its a pretty cool game, if you ask me. But, being the Norse theme fanboy that I am, and the fact that I like managing settlements and stuff in games, this game pretty much hits two of my biggest interest points. There are a few bugs, at least right now, but none that I have seen that're game breaking. As much as it has a strategy game design in places, its one of the few that also allows you to set it so maps have no enemy AI players, so you can just freebuild, which is a cool feature I wish more of these kind of games did. I love a good war with an enemy as much as the next person, but sometimes a guy just wants to kinda chill, and build a town and manage an economy without much else going on to distract you from it. If youlike strategy games that aren't underdeveloped, but aren't also overly complicated, or you like to build a town and manage your economies and stuff, and you norse themes, I'd definately recommend this game. I bought it quite a while back, and have been more than pleased with it.. This game is great for the price. It has nice artwork and the main campaign is okay. But after all that it gets really boring, really quickly. The problem is there is no strategy in building your towns. Buildings can only be placed in certain areas and there is absolutely no strategy to how towns are constructed. You just do what the game tells you and it plays itself. This leads to very unsatisfying games after you've played it for a few days. If you could have more control over the structure of your town and that affected how the game played it would allow for multiple combinations and strategies in repeated playthroughs. It's worth buying, but falls just a bit short of its potential.. A poor man's settlers. Repetitive and slow gameplay with frequent crashes. Looks pretty.. Good game! Part of the fun is learning the best strategies for winning with each clan. I also enjoy that the world is different every time you play as well - it keeps things from getting repetitive. Also, I think the story mode was really well done!. You will enjoy playing it for the first few hours as you're getting to know the game. Then, after the 2 hour return time has passed, you'll begin to realise how deeply flawed the game is. I will explain certain aspects of this in a moment. But first I want to share: You can be like me, and ignore the "negative" reviews, spend 30 euro\/dollars on it, and then come to regret your decision. If you're going to make a game, or anything really, why not make it the best game you can make? I'm not talking about perfectionism, I'm talking about offering something to others that you have tested and tried out yourself, especially if you're asking money for it. It's clear the creators of this game have not really tried playing the game themselves, or thoroughly tested it, for it would become clear to them that there are some huge design flaws in the game that make it (in my honest experience) unplayable after a short while. In my case with only 11 hours of game time.The "negatives":1. You can only build a limited number of buildings per area, usually around 3. This could potentially work if it were better designed, but in this case, it turns the game into a grinding experience. There will be minutes at a time where the entire gameplay comes to a halt because you lack the resources to grow, whether that be growing your army, or simply your overall economy. Perhaps you need more food for example. Well, you also use food to claim new territories. If you need to expand to that new area where there are deer or fish for example, but don't have the food necessary yet, you might literally have to wait 5 to 10 minutes until you're able to claim the new area. And, if you're already at your building max for the areas you have, you will not have space for other buildings you might need for further income (such as coins which are important and which require either a market\/trading place or a shipyard). However, it is possible to do a one time "upgrade" of an area for 100 coins, which will allow you to place 1 additional building. But if you're already low on coins you cannot upgrade the area...but you also need to upgrade it so you can place that coin generating building such as the market place (huh?). What ends up happening is, again, that you will literally be staring at your screen for minutes at a time as the gameplay comes to a standstill, as you wait for the required resource for you to make the upgrade. It feels similar to those 'free-to-play' games that have timers on everything, except in that case if you buy the full version the timers may go away...with this game you'll pay the full price and experience the same game-halting design flaw in place.2. Your entire game's process can be wiped out literally within (around) 3 minutes. After a few hours of gameplay you'll begin to get a feel for how to start the game for a slightly better result. You might have more food and wood than in earlier games, your coins will be looking somewhat good. But you'll soon run into the same problems as mentioned earlier, where the game grinds to a halt. The game features "natural disasters" such as mice plagues, volcanic debris, earthquakes, etc. Perhaps this sounds fun or interesting in concept, but when the game is already a true grinding experience, with minutes at a time where you're just waiting for the right amount of resources, these disasters turn the game into a disaster from a design standpoint, because you'll then need to use the resources you've patiently been harvesting to repair buildings that have caught fire due to the earthquakes and volcanic debris for example. This simply adds to the wait time for you to progress. Perhaps this sounds fun to some people, it seemed interesting and entertaining to me at first, but unfortunately it simply adds to the grind and adds little to no fun. Now here comes the most frustrating part, which actually prompted me to quit the game and write this review immediately. I was already disappointed with the game, but decided to give it another shot (I had tried to request a refund after around 5 hours of gameplay, but unfortunately was denied it). So I wanted to try and make the most of the money I spent on it. I played another vs. AI single player game (not campaign which has the exact same issues). I was "getting underway", had around 12 areas claimed and with buildings on them. I had a strong sized army of around 10 or 11 units, and I was busy conquering one of the AI's territories. Suddenly an earthquake hit causing numerous buildings to catch fire. The buildings were my food generating buildings (and during winter when food production is already lower). To repair buildings you need wood, during winter there is less. It's possible to stock up on wood a little, but I had used the wood (which is your main resource for making buildings) to build additional breweries. Without breweries, your population will be deeply unhappy, which will simply stop new villagers (which are builders\/workers\/gatherers) from being produced. Even if you have lots of food, wood, and coins banked, along with a strong army, without breweries your population will still be deeply unhappy. This is in and of itself such a lack of gameplay depth. But anyway... so in order to get out of that halt of growth, you're pretty much forced to place breweries and use villagers to fill them up. This costs wood to build. So after doing my best to really take care of all the needs, investing for greater happiness and thus using wood, a random earthquake suddenly causes my main food production buildings to catch fire. This was random as any building can catch fire, but listen. I had just used wood to attempt to upgrade my village's happiness, in order to increase\/resume production of villagers\/workers. And so I had to use the remaining wood to repair these buildings, meaning I had no firewood anymore to keep warm during the winter. And so the happiness levels plummeted even more. I did not have the wood to repair the buildings, and as food was already low (due to the lack of workers in general because of the superficial and flawed happiness system in the game), my villagers then started starving. And within around 2-3 minutes, most of my army units and workers began dying of starvation. So I spent around 50 minutes finally getting underway, finally having a somewhat decent army and economy, and due to the flawed happiness system in the game, lost it all within a few minutes, making all the patience endured, and the grinding, a waste of time. I've tried playing multiple games, with the intention to understand the mechanics, so to speak, and get good at it. But as an experienced RTS player and gamer in general, I can honestly say that this was not a lack of skill or due to poor decisions on my part, but simply that the game's mechanics and design are flawed and don't work well together. Which creates a very frustrating experience. 3. Shallow combat, poor worker map coverage (you don't get a worker to build something, you simply place a building somewhere and if you have a worker nearby they will automatically construct it. But if you place the building in an area without workers you will have to manually find a worker which will drag your camera to the worker's location, then you actually have to scroll around the map again looking for that building and then click it, and your worker will run all the way over to that area. Becomes frustrating in late game when the map is larger)Positives: Beautiful atmosphere and artwork (which makes it such a shame that the gameplay is so poor, as the foundation is quite beautiful), music. Had they taken the time to truly create deep qualitative gameplay, then combined with the beautiful artwork\/atmosphere, it could have been quite a gem of a game. If you must try it, wait for a sale, but trust me that it's not worth its current full price of 30 euro\/dollars. Perhaps alright for a very casual gamer, but will frustrate experienced players. Cute graphics, music, and narrationBut its a very shallow game,. Super short campaign then you do single player that's pretty much it.Absurd pricing for DLC which only adds playable tribe and not the story.If you want CIV for preschooler level then it's for you. Greetings,I never done a steam review before but mmm i think this game deserves it. I haven't played the single player but I have played the multiplayer so my review will be based on gameplay and multiplayer experience. General:This game blends city builders(resource management, survival) and RTS genre really well. Even though military plays a huge part you can achieve victory by other means like Fame, Lore, Trade victories. In other RTS's winning any victory other than conquest feels a bit underwhelming but here it is satisfying and makes the game more interesting presenting you more choices! The Game's pace is casual and you can play it in a relaxed state you don't need micro as much but good decision making will help you a lot. There are two main map types Ragnarok\/Northgard Ragnarok is much harder (Ragnarok Extreme Hostility settings) and really gives the city builder challange if you are lookings for it and also pvp! Northgard version is a bit too easy for my taste but ofcourse other players will always challange you. I feel like ragnarok extreme reaches the games true potential it can even be made a bit harder but it seems in a good spot atm :) Every game resources map are panned out uniquely so every game can really feel unique in that sense! Every year there is winter which really pushes to survival aspect of city builders your production is lowered your troops are weaker so a bad winter RNG like wolves attack 2 areas in winter can basically end the game for you if you are not prepared :) RNG plays a part in this game but it can be outplayed usually. ClansThere are not so much ways to help your teammates like you can't send out a bunch of resources at once you can send it partially like +3 food with trade routes(which is actually a huge deal in this game) You can attack together defend together. Other clans benefit from the utilities of some clans have which gives a lot of room for experimentation finding the right combo. Thats why i like playing with friend a lot! Each clan has its unique Lore tree with upgrades which you can upgrade in response to how the game is goingSome clans have unique BuildingsThere are 3 military paths to choose from which are the same for every clan but some clans utilize certain paths better!There are relics to build every game some of the relics give value over time some relics are tempo and some relics one time ffects! and each clan has its own unique relicSo all of these gives a lot of possibilities to your gameplay style you can try new stuff push for a new strategy every game that being that said I am relatively new so in higher levels maybe there are clear cut dominant strategies but now I am having a blast experiementing trying different clans, every clan makes the game feel different!DLC PolicyIt is kind of dissapointing that new clans are behind a paywall but the game is in constant development so far it seems. AOE 2 also uses this model new nations (with a lot fewer features than nortgard clans) for money, but they release a couple clans as an expansion pack which makes it feel a little better for some reason. I know northgard clans might take a lot of time to make but still blending couple clans with an expansion style thing could be more satisfying to the user other than paying for every new clan individually which i plan to buy on sale but only on sale :) Balance wise the paid clans doesn't really matter and if it proves to be op they usually balance it out. Multiplayer:Multiplayer is really fun to play, even thou at lower ranks ragnarok you see a lot of leavers since people dont have to experience to survive in ragnarok but apart from that a finished game almost always feels very good! It takes long which I love you can have a chat with your friends prepare your cup of tea sit back and expand your borders feels like spending a board game night which is what I really love about this game. IT has this weird board game feelings like your dream board game :) Multiplayer is challenging, there are some weird things tho like you can explore your enemies whole area and have vision of them all game long which feels a bit weird for rts but suprise attack in this game is really punishing because of desing like you cant make an army of 20 people and just hold them usually (they eat food, they are villagers who can gather resources, there is winter who deplete those resources) so a main strat is to boom make 20 insant attack finish so without the scout could really be unbalanced. Should I buy this game?If you like City Builders, RTS, Survival City Builders, Base expanding board games. It is definately worth a try and since steam has 3hour refund policy you can try it out yourself! Another thing is Ragnarok expansion Relic expansion these two expansions made the game much better so there is A LOT! of potential to improve in this game thats why i hope so much that they keep developing and tinkering ideas for the game <3 :) See you in the Frozen Lands I guess? Also all in all I just liked the game it clicked with me you know all games need that magic for you only you can find out so this review doesnt really mattter :D. Fun game, but paid DLC for new clans? wish i could get my $30 back for the game. Never would have purchased if i knew i would have to put even more money into it for the newer clans.
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