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5/10
Decent graphics and atmosphere – the grimdark, gore, and bleakness fit the Scandinavian lore. The initial feeling from the combat is good – the hits “feel” impactful.
What I didn’t like: the incredibly stupid “puzzles” involving finding letters from surrounding objects what? (perhaps this is explained by the fact that the heroine is a touched-by-autism individual?), the plot – a touched-by-autism individual is looking for a bunny, the combat – button-mashing and circling around groups of slow, dumb enemies. And when I realized that there was nothing new and wouldn’t be anything new, and since I’m not interested in Scandinavian lore and cool stories from it, I dropped it. It’s just not my kind of project. I read the plot “twist” online later.
And one thing really annoyed me – at the beginning of the game, they say that if you die several times, it’s game over. On the internet at the time of release, they also warned – game over, save deletion, be careful, guys! And only a few months later did I accidentally find out that this was a lie and that there was no game over, and it’s impossible to die at all. The developers should be given a good beating for such jokes.




I’m not a fan of the Lord of the Rings and Assassin’s Creed-style gameplay, but the first part unexpectedly appealed to me and I gave it an 8 – the gameplay was very pleasant and engaging.
Here, at first, I didn’t see anything new, although cutting down orcs was still just as easy and fun. Then they added some more interesting elements, then about 15-20 hours passed, and I already thought it was the end, but I was moved to the third map and it turned out that the game had just begun)) Here, finally, they allowed me to recruit orcs into my army again, as in the first part, to pit them against other orcs, and so on. It was fun at first, but it started to feel monotonous. When I completed everything on the third map, two more new ones opened up and the two previous ones were unlocked))))) They, by the way, are no different except for the “climate” – the color of the ground texture. On each of them, you have to monotonously recruit orcs, upgrade orcs, kill orcs, capture orc fortresses, and for those who want even more activities with orcs, the developers offer to capture orc fortresses from other players online. And suddenly it turned out that the fantasy for the main quest also ran out, and the quests began to repeat one-to-one with the quests from the main quest on the previous locations, only with a slightly different narrative.
In the end, I couldn’t stand this monotony and dropped it again. The first part took about 15-20 hours, which felt a little short, but in reality, it was perfect – it ended before it could get completely boring. Well, this part is, perhaps, the quintessence of Ubisoft’s “towers” – endless grinding of orcs, collectibles, levels, fortresses. Then I read online that there is also a next act, where you have to defend fortresses or something like that, and there is even more grinding)))
There is also a point about the controls. Sometimes I had some problems with climbing onto a wall or jumping off it – either the character doesn’t stick to where it should, or, on the contrary, it sticks and starts circling around the ledges. These are problems with the Assassin’s Creed-style parkour and poorly placed “hitboxes” of walls and rocks, which I simply labeled “console crap” in my head. At first, on the first city map, this happened rarely, but over time, such things started to happen more and more often, and they were especially annoying in moments when a couple of dozen enemies were shouting at you and rushing at you. Again, I don’t remember anything like this in the first part; it is remembered for its perfectly balanced, smooth gameplay, where you jump on a horse, jump off it in a few moves without any effort, cut down a pack of enemies, jump back on, and almost don’t lose speed.
In general, the first 10-20 hours – 7.5/10, everything that follows – a stretched-out, somehow stupid, autism created by some debauched Ubisoft marketer, a 2/10.




Another sequel, the first part of which I generally liked and gave it a 7 plus, but it had many technical problems, a not very well-balanced balance for a survival horror, and an overall feeling of mediocrity, a lack of novelty.
I didn’t expect that the second one would be a solid 9/10 for me.
The plot itself is quite simple and fits into one or two sentences, but it is presented very well, there are about ten characters, they are well-written – you believe them, you feel sorry for some. I really liked the villain you meet at the beginning of the game; the best content is probably with him. I liked the development and the character of the protagonist in general – in the first part, he was some kind of random nobody.
Extensive open city locations, where it is interesting and useful to explore every corner, are replaced by smaller “story” locations, and always at the right time – not a single moment in the game bored me; overall, it is played in one breath.
I played on the hardest difficulty and it turned out that I chose correctly – the balance of weapons, ammunition, enemies, and stealth is close to ideal in a survival game. This means that all types of weapons and methods of killing are used throughout the game, you almost never have a maximum amount of ammunition and supplies, and you save every bullet, and when you gather more ammunition, you get a boss fight or something similar, lol. At the same time, there are almost never situations where you have nothing left and you can’t cope with the enemies, and you sneak around like a bum for three hours, trying to loot something from the garbage. And there are no inflated health bars for enemies. The only thing is that there are a lot of first aid kits, but this doesn’t really matter when you are killed in a couple of hits in melee combat and when success is directly proportional to the skillful use of ammunition, so the ability to “tank” will not help you anywhere if you can’t kill the monster.
At some point, I separately noticed that I really like the animations of the protagonist – they are super well done, as is the way his appearance changes during the game, becoming covered in scratches, dirt, and bruises, etc. This is not a new feature in 2017, but I haven’t noticed such detailed development anywhere before, although it is essentially a small detail that is not even emphasized. However, the animations of the enemies are also good, and in general, the graphics are very pleasant and well optimized.

One of the best games of 2017 and a solid recommendation for everyone who loves survival horror. Not a 10 only because there is nothing fundamentally new or surprising, everything else is close to ideal in the genre.