Game: Jotun : Valhalla Edition
Developer: Thunder Lotus Games
Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinions of my employer Blizzard Entertainment. These are my rambling notes to myself as I play the game. I respect and appreciate the hard work of all game developers.
Notes:
I really love the narration being in Icelandic with English subtitles. It feels so great.
I love the music.
I love the background art.
I like how the camera sometimes zooms out to show you more of it or to make a point of a certain area. Feels very cinematic.
I’m glad they made the main character female. It would have been so easy and typical to just make it a viking dude.
I’m somewhat torn on the character art. It feels a little out of place to me I think?
The exploration areas are really cool – I like the level design a lot. Each area feels significantly different from the others, with different challenges.
I also really like the larger than life bosses and how fighting them really feels like fighting the gods. You feel like you’re at a real disadvantage.
The controls feel a little sluggish to me, like they’re just not as responsive as what I want. Some of the combat and avoiding obstacles feels frustration because I can’t move the way I want.
I appreciate that it’s easy to get back to the nexus area.
I like the way they handle the map, where it’s slightly abstract and doesn’t contain a lot of specific information. And how after you get the key to an area the hidden items show up, I think?
The area with turning on the electricity to match the constellations was a bit tedious. Felt cool at first once I understood it, but after the first one I kind of dreaded seeing more.
Not surprising, but the game was overall too difficult for me. The length of the boss fights just mean that I have too much time to make too many errors and will eventually get sloppy or lose focus and take a really bad hit.