NORSE: Oath of Blood

Can't even make it to gameplay, get a fatal error while watching the first intro video.... disappointing.

First things first: there are a few things I genuinely liked about this game. Turn-based medieval games are certainly nothing new, but this one approaches the genre from a slightly different angle, and the initial concept is quite interesting. The atmosphere is one of its strongest points, and the overall presentation does a good job of establishing the setting. The voice acting is also surprisingly solid, and the cutscenes are well produced, especially considering that this is an indie title. These elements make a very good first impression and suggest that there was a strong idea behind the game. Unfortunately, that is more or less where the positives end. In its current state, the game feels much closer to an Early Access title—or even an extended demo—than a complete, fully developed game. There simply isn't enough content or depth to sustain the experience for very long. The first few hours can be enjoyable while you are discovering the mechanics, but once you have seen most of what the game has to offer, it becomes repetitive surprisingly quickly. One thing that should also be made clear is that this is not really an RPG, despite the way the game presents itself. You are supposedly taking the role of a Jarl, which naturally creates the expectation that you will actually rule, make decisions, shape your settlement, or influence the direction of the story. In practice, however, you have almost no meaningful choices to make. There are no significant dialogue decisions, political choices, moral dilemmas, branching paths, or real opportunities to define what kind of leader you want to be. You are essentially following a predetermined sequence of events. Combat is one of the clearest examples. The execution and kill animations initially look impressive, but there are far too few of them, so you end up seeing the same sequences again and again. What initially feels cinematic eventually becomes repetitive and predictable. The base-building system is another major disappointment. It gives the impression that it will become an important part of the game, but in reality it is extremely limited. The layout is largely predetermined, with very little opportunity for customization or personalization. You are not really building 'your' settlement; you are simply progressing through a predefined structure. Even more disappointing is how little the population of your settlement seems to matter. You can recruit followers and have more people living at your base, but their numbers do not create the sense of managing or developing a living community. There is very little meaningful difference between having a small number of followers and a large one. This feels like a major missed opportunity, because a deeper population, resource, or settlement-management system could have added a huge amount of replayability and strategic depth. Overall, the entire production feels rushed. There are various bugs and rough edges throughout the game. None of the issues I encountered were serious enough to completely break the game, but they are frequent enough to become annoying—particularly for a game released in 2026, when a certain level of polish should reasonably be expected from a full release. Performance is also disappointing. The game does not seem particularly well optimized. Even at medium graphical settings, I experienced noticeable lag and performance issues on a medium-to-high-end PC. Considering what the game is visually doing, the performance simply does not feel justified. And that is probably the most frustrating part of the whole experience: there is clearly a lot of potential here. The setting, atmosphere, concept, and presentation provide a very good foundation. With deeper settlement mechanics, more meaningful followers, greater customization, more combat variety, additional content, and another layer of polish, this could have been a genuinely memorable game. Instead, most of that potential feels either unexplored or left unfinished. For context, my entire playthrough lasted around 20 hours, which is also quite short considering the asking price of many modern games. There is not enough variety or replayability here to justify paying full price in my opinion. At around €10–20, I think it can be worth picking up. There is enough here to have some fun, enjoy the atmosphere, and appreciate the ideas behind it. But at anything significantly above that price, it becomes very difficult for me to recommend. Good concept, good atmosphere, and some impressive presentation—but ultimately it feels like the foundation of a much better game rather than the finished product itself.

If you liked Rome expeditions, or viking expeditions - feel free to join Gunnar on his journey!

[h1][b][i] UN TÁCTICO CON MUCHO POTENCIAL, PERO ARRUINADO POR SU APARTADO TÉCNICO [/i][/b][/h1] NORSE: Oath of Blood nos presenta una propuesta táctica bastante buena en principio, sin llegar a ser como la mayoría de juegos del genero, esta es mas compacta y un poco más centrado en la historia, y con una muy buena ambientación nórdica. Con un combate y gestión de base bastante simples, pero que son entretenidos, hace pensar al principio que será una aventura disfrutable, pero que no hace falta jugar tantas horas para darse cuenta del lamentable estado técnico que presenta el juego. Presentando una desastrosa optimización, una gran cantidad de bugs molestos y lo mal equilibradas que están ciertas clases, haciendo de esta una experiencia irritante y aburrida, que afortunadamente se completa fácilmente en pocas horas. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3778989477 Casi toda la estructura del juego esta hecha de forma bastante simplificada, para empezar tendremos una base la cual gestionar desde el principio, e ir avanzando poco a poco, pero la misma es bastante pobre. No hay casi nada relevante mas que solo mejorar un poco el edificio y otras cosas para tener mas puntos de acción sobre un edificio, no hay algo especial a desarrollar y la variedad de equipo, y herramientas para fabricar también se queda muy corta. Así también esta lo relacionado a lo rodea su combate. En cada misión nos desplegaremos en un mini mapa donde podremos ir explorando como en Wartales o Mutant Year Zero, para encontrar recursos o curar a nuestras unidades, pero poco más, al ser tan pequeños los mapas que algunas veces son solo un camino recto. Después obviamente tenemos su sistema de combate, que pese a ser bastante simple y sin innovar mucho al ser un combate con puntos de acciones y sin coberturas, me termino gastando gracias a la buena variedad de habilidades únicas de los personajes, pero que también traen sus cosas negativas. Hay habilidades que están demasiado desbalanceadas, pero principalmente la clase berserk esta muy rota, haciendo que combinando con estas habilidades, en un turno se pueda eliminar a la mayoría de enemigos del mapa. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3779233577 Algo a destacar sin dudas es su muy bien lograda ambientación nórdica, es realmente muy buena como esta construida a cerca de toda la mitología y creencias de ese lugar, pero también todo lo de su civilización. Esto a su vez esta acompañado de una historia de venganza con gran carga narrativa y desarrollo de sus protagonistas, que se puede apreciar en cada una de sus misiones, y aunque tenga altibajos, sobre todo después de la mitad, pero que todavía me había parecido bastante buena. En este punto si eso fuera todo, pese a todo lo que dije, aun así recomendaría este juego, pero desgraciadamente es un juego que sufre de una horrible optimización. Gráficamente es un juego bastante agradable a la vista, pero este también es de sus mayores problemas, ya que por mas ajustes que se le haga, el juego en cada transición le cuesta machismo cargar las texturas, junto con horribles bajones de fps, y para rematar después de cada enfrentamiento o cinemática, extrañamente me desactivaba las opciones para generar fotogramas, y sin contar con la enorme cantidad de bugs que tiene, tanto visuales como los que te obligan a volver a repetir los combates. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3781471250 [h1][b] [u] PROS: [/u] [/b][/h1] [list] [*]Pese a tener un sistema de combate táctico bastante simple, pero resulto entretenido. [*]Su ambientación nórdica esta excelentemente realizada. [/list] [h1][b] [u] CONTRAS:[/u] [/b][/h1] [list] [*]La gestión de la base es bastante pobre y sin muchas opciones. [*]Hay habilidades que se sienten desbalanceadas y la clase berserk esta totalmente rota. [*]Su optimización es desastrosa, con caídas de fps constantes y que para rematar en cada transición te desactiva las opciones de generación de fps. [*]Hay una gran cantidad de bugs en todo el juego, desde lo visual, hasta los que obligan a repetir combates. [/list] Realmente me ha parecido muy decepcionante el resultado final de este juego de estrategia, siendo que podría haber disfrutado con su humilde propuesta, sus problemas técnicos me han terminado de convencer de no recomendarlo. No se si los devs terminar por arreglarlo en un futuro, siendo que ya han pasado varios meses desde su lanzamiento y que no me quiero imaginar de como salió, pero en su estado actual es mejor evitarlo.

У игры есть только один для меня минус, это оптимизация и визуальные баги! Всё остальное на хорошем уровне.

good game but bad optimization

Its a good game. Cutscenes, voice acting, storyline, all big plus points. I liked the management aspects and combat. If I had a complaint, its that its way too short. Not enough content.

I recommend this game to tactics RPG fans. It doesn't suffer from an overly complex UI like a lot of these, it isn't overly complicated to play, but it does have enough depth to keep the combat engaging and strategic. The real strength is the storytelling and voice acting, though. Very good for a "AA". What this game does well: Voice Acting Storytelling No frills, but surprisingly deep strategy Simple and intuitive UI What the game doesn't do well: Graphical jank, pop in, and physics glitches Some simple QoL measures skipped Overly simple over-world traversal, with little much to engage with All in all, this is a simple (but deep enough for sure) tactics RPG, where it's strengths certainly lie in the storytelling, and the ease, simplicity, and fun of it's combat. It's worth playing for fans of the genre.