Woah… A 2D side scrolling beat ’em up based on a mashup of Lovecraftian lore and Norse mythology, casting players as a valkyrie with the ability to reanimate corpses and possess their bodies! Sounds fun, right?
Four valkyries are available, each serving as an individual character that can be independently levelled up either by a single player during multiple playthroughs or by a co-op team of up to four players. The valkyrie is very weak though, and if she dies it’s game over, although you retain your progress for the next adventure. Your power mainly comes from possessing fallen vikings, summoned from one of the many graves throughout each level. Initially, players have access to one single “clan” of vikings, including a dual-wielding axeman, an archer, or a sword and shield… er… wielder. Ten additional clans can be unlocked by meeting objectives within the game’s main adventure mode, eventually giving players a huge choice of classes, each with their own unique attacks and abilities. It’s great to have such a wide choice, but it’s quite likely that most people will settle on their preferred warrior quite quickly, and will choose to stick with similar vikings as often as possible.
Vikings and valkyries can be levelled up by collecting shining orbs called “glory”, which is the game’s version of experience points. This can be spent on upgrading your viking’s health and strength, as well as learning additional attacks. Your current viking continues to level up until he dies, at which point you return to valkyrie form until you resurrect another hero who starts over from scratch. It’s possible that a skilled player could keep a viking alive for many levels, ending up with a ridiculously powerful character, although this is easier said than done. After the first few levels, enemies start to get tougher and health-replenishing items become quite scarce, so you need to have your wits about you if you want to keep the same guy alive for more than a couple of levels.
There’s a nice range of enemies, many requiring slightly different tactics to defeat, but the backgrounds – as nice as they look – will quickly start to feel quite samey, leading to the game seeming overly repetitive long before the end of the 60-something levels. Some of the grind can be alleviated by playing co-op, but we found progressing through the neverending stream of levels to be a little laborious at times.
With the regular game, a hardcore mode featuring permadeath and a shorter but more challenging set of levels, and a multiplayer deathmatch option, there’s certainly plenty of content to work through. While it’s all perfectly competent, the game still somehow feels unremarkable despite the fairly unique possession mechanic. As far as side-scrollers go, Die For Valhalla might not be up there with the best, but it’s far from one of the worst.
DIE FOR VALHALLA! / DEVELOPER: MONSTER COUCH / PUBLISHER: MONSTER COUCH / PLATFORM: PC, PLAYSTATION 4, SWITCH (REVIEWED), XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
