Nordic Ashes: Survivors of Ragnarok

Nordic Ashes is one of the most addictive survivor-like games I’ve played. I’ve put over 100 hours into it, and it still manages to keep me coming back for “just one more run.” The game has a great mix of fast-paced combat, character progression, unlockable abilities, and challenging stages. Each character feels different to play, and experimenting with builds makes every run enjoyable. There’s a satisfying sense of progression as you unlock new skills, upgrades, and content. The Norse mythology theme gives the game its own identity, and the art style, music, and enemy design all fit together very well. It can get chaotic on screen, but the combat remains responsive and fun. The difficulty is challenging without feeling unfair, although some runs can definitely be frustrating when the right upgrades don’t appear. After 100+ hours, I still enjoy trying new builds and improving my runs. If you enjoy games like Vampire Survivors, Halls of Torment, or other roguelite survival games, Nordic Ashes is absolutely worth checking out. A very fun and replayable game with plenty of content. Highly recommended.

Worth it?: Only for less than $5. Rating: 6/10 Pro's: Nice Visuals. Thematic Nordic Vibe. Wonderful Soundtrack. Con's: The worst grind of any "Survivors" game. Poor design makes the game lose steam after level 2. RNG isn't good. Constantly offered items impossible to afford. Awful HP system. TLDR: Great ideas implemented poorly. It would be a 9/10 if it was a polished & balanced final product.

Nordic Ashes simply understands what it wants to be. It’s easy to pick up, satisfying to play, has a great soundtrack and a really nice atmosphere. Most importantly, the runs are short and fast enough that you can jump in during a small break, play for a while, and then go straight back to whatever you were doing — without feeling like you’ve just committed your entire evening to a game. There’s so much to unlock and experiment with, and the progression gives you a reason to keep coming back. I can understand why some people can find the later progression grindy or the builds somewhat predictable, and If you are a completionist be prepared for lots of runs with the same enemies and stages, using different characters to tick off unlocks or challenges. But honestly, that simplicity is also part of what makes the game work so well for me. It doesn't try to demand all of your attention. It’s just a genuinely fun, relaxing, “one more run” kind of game. 46 hours in, and I’m still coming back to it. Easy recommendation.

If you want a survivorlike with true longevity, here it is. You have a reason to play every character, they all give the metacurrency on wins, and there's now infinite upgrades, and the metatree doesn't get done in seconds- at time of writing I still only have about a third or half the tree. What the game really needed was the speed-up, and now that we have it, it's servicable. There's no real evolutions here, it's more specialized upgrades, one per non-character-specific weapon and two for the ones specifically in character trees. The one problem is the sameiness of having to run the same base build over and over again with only the random-chosen level pickuppables (the ones on the various altars), once per character, sure, but you have to play them through like 16 realms at this point, and that's best done over months or years with how boring it gets once you get a run going/do several in a row. This doesn't apply to the "true" VS character, KAOS, but you're not really gonna unlock or see him until you can do a level without buying from the shop with someone like Lorcan multiple times, and even then, there's achievements/unlocks for the OTHER characters, so you can't JUST play hi…

I am slightly obsessed with this game. The Corruption DLC adds a new way to play that I REALLY enjoy. Each realm and survivor have a gimmick that you can feel a difference in play with. Yes, like many of these games, you can get absurdly powerful so a run can get boring. But that's what the challenges are for!

bad game design, badvisuals, things spawn on you thats hard to see. really unfun mechanic