A few years ago I picked up this game to play with some friends I'd had a bit less contact with for a while. We had such a wonderful time that I started playing it with other friends too! At one time I had 3 separate 'worlds' going with different groups. It really rekindled a certain kind of co-op game joy that I had only had briefly in Minecraft, and not in most games since. I've spent a lot of time chasing that kind of feeling with the same and other friends, but Valheim just does it very well. What if you were just a bunch of people in purgatory and you had to prove you could survive and defeat gods?
You start off with absolutely nothing, pick up sticks and rocks to get your first tools almost like Minecraft. But quite soon you'll find yourself building log cabins, arguing about door placement, and sending one of the party off to chop down trees endlessly. (There's usually one who likes it more than the others.) This aspect of the game feels truly community-like, when you're all doing different jobs for relatively long periods (10-20 minutes) and bringing back a bunch of resources for everyone to share. Nobody needs all the meat, or all the wood, but when you come back from getting meat you can grab some wood to do whatever your project was and everyone can grab some of the meat you gathered to eat.
The combat is more deep than you would expect when looking at the game first, I think. There's a lot to learn but when you start to get your head around it I find it's very fun, far more so than Minecraft's combat, to me. Most skills go up as you use them (similar to Elder Scrolls), and there are enough weapon archetypes with their own skill stat that you may really benefit from sticking to one each. This makes it feel really cool going into battle with your friends (or alone) because you have all gotten to make some cool decisions about how you'll fight.
The game is absolutely gorgeous, and although it will be a while before you're meaningfully travelling (probably), when you start sailing on the sea or rivers, you will see the true beauty and serenity of it. I think about it still, those first times me and my friends took to the waves in search of new biomes to hunt gods in.
The real thing about Valheim that makes it a bit hard to recommend (for me specifically) is how relatively harsh dying is. When you die you drop all your stuff in a gravestone and go back to whatever bed you set as your spawn. To get your stuff back, you'd better be able to reach that place you died again! Obviously this is fine at first but as the game gets tougher it can be a desperate grind that ramps up the stress of an otherwise really fun game, in a way I'm not sure is really worth it. In fairness, those gravestones never go away, and never get overwritten if you die again, so if you can't get back there now there's no time limit on getting back there later. This is kinder than Minecraft in a couple of ways, and that is the natural comparison to make, but for me, it's still a bit exhausting at times. Most people will probably find it grand.
If you've been curious, and especially if you have even one friend to play with, please give this a try. It's great.
(Technically I'm still playing this, we're just waiting through some updates as we'd beaten the last boss available at the time we last played it.)
You start off with absolutely nothing, pick up sticks and rocks to get your first tools almost like Minecraft. But quite soon you'll find yourself building log cabins, arguing about door placement, and sending one of the party off to chop down trees endlessly. (There's usually one who likes it more than the others.) This aspect of the game feels truly community-like, when you're all doing different jobs for relatively long periods (10-20 minutes) and bringing back a bunch of resources for everyone to share. Nobody needs all the meat, or all the wood, but when you come back from getting meat you can grab some wood to do whatever your project was and everyone can grab some of the meat you gathered to eat.
The combat is more deep than you would expect when looking at the game first, I think. There's a lot to learn but when you start to get your head around it I find it's very fun, far more so than Minecraft's combat, to me. Most skills go up as you use them (similar to Elder Scrolls), and there are enough weapon archetypes with their own skill stat that you may really benefit from sticking to one each. This makes it feel really cool going into battle with your friends (or alone) because you have all gotten to make some cool decisions about how you'll fight.
The game is absolutely gorgeous, and although it will be a while before you're meaningfully travelling (probably), when you start sailing on the sea or rivers, you will see the true beauty and serenity of it. I think about it still, those first times me and my friends took to the waves in search of new biomes to hunt gods in.
The real thing about Valheim that makes it a bit hard to recommend (for me specifically) is how relatively harsh dying is. When you die you drop all your stuff in a gravestone and go back to whatever bed you set as your spawn. To get your stuff back, you'd better be able to reach that place you died again! Obviously this is fine at first but as the game gets tougher it can be a desperate grind that ramps up the stress of an otherwise really fun game, in a way I'm not sure is really worth it. In fairness, those gravestones never go away, and never get overwritten if you die again, so if you can't get back there now there's no time limit on getting back there later. This is kinder than Minecraft in a couple of ways, and that is the natural comparison to make, but for me, it's still a bit exhausting at times. Most people will probably find it grand.
If you've been curious, and especially if you have even one friend to play with, please give this a try. It's great.
(Technically I'm still playing this, we're just waiting through some updates as we'd beaten the last boss available at the time we last played it.)