Jotun: Valhalla Edition

Beautiful art sitting on tedious gameplay. Jotun: Valhalla Edition is drawn beautifully, and the atmosphere that it's able to produce is extremely well done. Pan-out shots serve their purpose really well, as they make you realise every time the sheer absurdity of the enemies that you are facing and the environments that you are exploring. Voice acting pairs really well and adds to the experience. The UI and controls are also clean. And that's about all that's enjoyable in this game. I wasn't able to finish it due to how boring moving through levels was and due to how bad and frustrating the combat and movement are. Levels are huge and have great panels in them but are a chore to navigate. They are mostly empty, and there's no sprint button, so you are stuck wearing yourself out exploring them just to find the progression part in them. And good luck with that, since the map they give you does not help at all in locating yourself. Movement is as clunky as it gets. After dodging, you fully stop, making you vulnerable in that instant. But the combat isn't better. Attacking forces you to stay in place, and heavy attacks are unusable since they take forever to charge. The game mos…

Combat and movement is junky The story seems nice and the art is good Not recommended.

Jotun is one of the games where I wish I had a "maybe" option for my review. It does near everything right, but the one thing it doesn't do made it really hard for me to keep playing, as the difficulty of the game never felt quite right. And that is the character's speed of pretty much everything. Mind you, everything else is pretty solid. The art is beautiful, the very unique hand drawn artstyle of the studio's other games is just as good on their first game. The story was fun to follow and gave some interesting insights on Norse mythology and gods, and I did enjoy the main character's occasional insights/monologues about her life. And even mechanically, I liked exploring the game's world, solving the puzzles, and in theory I also loved the bosses, who have unique gimmicks and mechanics I'd normally love in most games. Except even though they looked like they'd be fun to play, I ended up less than happy to actually fight them, because both the attack speed and the movement speed of the player character are too low, and ultimately made for some truly frustrating combat. In an otherwise really fun combat environment, even after I learned the attack patterns of each boss, I st…

Combat and movement sucks.

very simplistic game in both gameplay and art direction, yes still fun. Difficult to 100%, a fair challenge if you want it. The humble beginnings of an amazing game studio which ended up being one of my favourite studios ever.

One of the most finely tuned experiences in quite a while. The visuals are ABSOLUTELY beautiful, The audio perfectly support the themeing and story, while pacing the gameplay and The gameplay, while having a weighty feeling, is perfect for the tempo of the bosses. The general premise is really nice, and I always enjoy a simple, straight forward exploration of the Scandic mythology, with a unique take on the enemies and a generally easy to follow structure. Particulary I enjoyed how the areas and bosses, while having a recommended order of play, were all playable in any order. The most unique compliments I can give, the length of the game. While I was left wanting more, I really think the game is a PERFECT length. It is JUST long enough to have a good amount of variances and areas, with bosses that incrimentally Introduce more difficult mechanics, all culminating in an excellent final boss, but without any wasted time Or having any areas that drag for too long. Overall, there is nothing to complain about and every aspect of the game is either excellent or very good.