![]() The focus on looting and recycling weapons could be good if the inventory wasn’t constantly fucking up. The core gameplay loop could be compelling if it wasn’t so repetitive. The fluid combat could be guaranteed laughs if enemies had any kind of complexity. Where do I even start? The faster crafting could be good if it didn’t feel so vestigial. Everything is a buggy, broken, unfinished mess. Very little of the game actually works as intended. If all of this sounds fun, I need to make something clear. There are no crafting times, so as long as you have an anvil and the materials your new broadsword is just a click away. If you want to build a house, you find one of the places where a house has been burned down and spam the use button. If you need wood or minerals, just punch trees and rocks. Though technically a survival/crafting game, the actual survival/crafting has been stripped down and streamlined. There’s a lot of lovable goofiness to it, like the ability to sever arms and then use them as weapons. If you need to heal, take a bite of a lizard and your health will spring back up. You’ll swing your mighty axe, and limbs will be launched to and fro. To Rune II’s credit, the game does a lot to focus on the fantasy Viking elements. ![]() ![]() Wielding one of those will allow you to finally kill Loki and end the game. These Paths generally lead to some reward that will help you craft a god slaying weapon. Kill X number of dwarves, craft X bows, etc. Aside from this main quest, there are various “Paths” that serve as side objectives. As the game goes on and you get stronger, the natural progression of cycles will spawn correspondingly tougher enemies. In Rune II, there’s no super hard island of dragons you have to be level 40 to reach. ![]() The most common method is creating zones of various power levels, à la World of Warcraft. Most open-world games struggle with proper difficulty scaling. This loop is a pretty novel way to gate difficulty in an RPG, so Rune II gets credit for that. You’ll do this over and over again until you’re strong enough to kill Loki. You’re given the rough locations of the artifacts, a 90 minute time limit, and off you go. He kicks you back out into Midgard, where you have to hunt for even more artifacts to fight him again. You actually face Loki for your first time about an hour into the game, and quickly find that even defeating him doesn’t actually kill him. This quest to hunt for artifacts and fight Loki is Rune II’s core gameplay loop. So you sail from island to island, beating down monsters on a hunt for magical artifacts to beat Loki. Midgard has been fractured into a series of islands divided by a great roiling sea. The world is fucked, and there are monsters everywhere. Not exactly accurate to actual Norse mythology, but whatever. ![]() This will reverse time and set things to as they were before the apocalypse. Given a second chance by Heimdall, you’re tasked with killing Loki. You play as a Viking, risen from his grave after Ragnarok has killed most things. I do my best to give studios the benefit of the doubt and to not let one misbehaving ghost or crash to desktop get in the way of me appreciating the rest of the game. Developers cut corners, content, and features to reach the finish line. I do my best to stay positive, to find the good in every game that I play, and to give the developers the credit they deserve for seeing their vision come to life. I pride myself on not being one of those hyperbolic gaming personalities. Available on PC (Epic Games Store exclusive) ![]()
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