Don’t you ever want to just cast off the bonds of this boring life in a world that sucks, hit the longships, and go raiding? Don’t you ever yearn to go to sleep and become a Viking? Aren’t you tired of being nice? Don’t you just want to go apeshit?
Norse: Oath of Blood is meant to appeal to that instinct by casting us back into the Viking age, letting us lead a party of Vikings, build a settlement, swing an axe, murder raiders, loot, pillage, and otherwise do more than an unfulfilling email job that our overlords are desperate to replace with a glorified spellcheck they call “artificial intelligence.”
Gunnar Gripsson and his small crew of Vikings arrive on land gifted to them by Jaril Egil to build a settlement, but the problem is…someone already lives there. Ain’t that always the way with colonization? But the family they meet is afflicted with raiders and slavers, so the very horny wife makes them an offer: Kill the brigands harassing their little family, and they, in turn, will help them farm, grow food, make things, and build the settlement. Sounds like a plan.
Proceeding to hunt the brigands reveals that part of the game is a real-time party-based RPG of wandering around an overworld map, exploring, finding loot (which usually winds up being useful gear for your party or useful supplies for building up your village), and, eventually, getting into fights.
Norse: Oath of Blood’s Combat System
The second big chunk of the game is, of course, the combat. These are classic turn-based tactical battles with deployment areas, breaking enemy lines, terrain, flanking attacks, initiative, and everything you’d expect. But, of course, you’re commanding a band of Vikings rather than wizards and chocobos or whatever, so it’s a lot of melee and arrows. That said, there’s a lot to consider: terrain, obstacles, whether natural or manmade (the bandits have built obstacles to defend their camp), the enemy formation, flanking attacks, and unit types.
Some of the units I encountered were:
- The Huntress, who can shoot arrows and specialize in Sharp-eyed (gets better at shooting arrows) or Trickster (does sneaky-breeky things like stealth).
- The Spear Breaker, who has a big ol’ axe which he swings around to smash lots of people at once, and can specialize into Oath-Sworn and clobber a lot of people, or Veteran, which is tankier and more defensive.
- The Drenger is your basic fighter type with an axe and shield. They can focus more on the offensive side of fighting or more on the defensive side. Do they get more axe-y or more shield-y?
- The Bersrkr sacrifices defense for offense and dual-wields weapons and can specialize more into Bear for more damage done, but also more damage received, or Wolf which does more damage and inflicts Bleed.
- The Hersir wields a spear and can specialize into a War-Chief that’s focused on damage or a Skald, who can do some healing.
- The Bogmathr, who can become a Huntress or Marksman.
Combat involves default attacks but also special abilities that can cripple foes, knock them down, push them back, motivate your troops, buff, and heal. The usual RPG-style abilities, and it’s very satisfying to send your Bersrkr barreling across the map to clobber a guy or for your Huntress to pick off dudes with arrows as they rush your position.
Building a Viking Settlement Worthy of the Gods
Completing the mission usually gives you resources and rewards, and sends you back to camp, and building out and managing the village is the next major chunk of the gameplay. From a humble temporary dwelling, you’re trying to build a Viking settlement, which involves work sites, permanent buildings, and these all require resources to build, but then produce useful things like weapons and armor for your crew, and as equipment gets better, it influences stats and skills, and abilities. The Village also has a morale and mood system so basically, people get cranky if you’re not regularly going out and driving off raiders and coming back to improve their hovels regularly or build that cool new structure everyone wants.
It’s a neat twist on the party-based RPG and village/colony management game, and the Viking flavor and excellent music do a lot to give it some atmosphere. Definitely one to keep an eye on, especially if you, like Odin, only have a single eye.
