Valhalla Hills will remind many older gamers of titles like The Settlers and Culture, which is the normal given that the development team that creates the new Viking driven experience had a hand in the creation of both those already classic titles.The entire game is built around optimization, with gamers asked to carefully control the movement of their characters and the location of their buildings to create communities that can thrive and exploit the environment around them. Valhalla Hills manages to walk a fine line between excessive complexity, which is always a temptation for the city-building genre, and a lack of variety and is suited both for long-term fans of the main mechanics and for those who discover them for the first time. Valhalla Hills is a strong little RTS, with enough going on under the surface to satisfy most fans of the genre. Its style is fitting enough and the game endears itself to you and keeps you immersed. Valhalla Hills is a solid game that anyone who has ever played The Settlers will enjoy.

I really wanted to like this game, and unlike a lot of people who start their reviews like this and then give a game a negative review I am going to do the opposite and give it a positive review. Why? Because the spirit and intention of the game was really good and I feel that two little things really betrayed the game and had the developers gotten those two things right, the reviews would not be mixed but positive instead. But before I get to the bit where I talk about those two things I would like to explain what I did like about this game: This game tried to encompass that good old citybuilder feel that was so popular about 10-15 years ago but is a lot less so today. I'm talking about games like ?Settlers? where there is a nice mix between economic factors and a little bit of warrior management, but not too much. God knows there are already enough military games out there! So when I saw this game I honestly really wanted it to be like ?Settlers? especially given that the people that made Settlers apparently don?t want to make that game anymore and it?s getting harder and harder to find a fun non-modern citybuilder (of course we have Tropico and Cities Skylines to scratch that itch). But I longed for one set in history hence I really wanted this to work. Now from an artistic perspective they actually get a lot right. I like the art style and interface a lot and the music is very fitting and adds to the ambience. The first thing that really betrays this game is the camera. It is awful and is something the devs should have really prioritized. When you?re playing a city-builder you want to seamlessly switch between an overview of your civilization and a screen that shows a smaller area where you want to do your work. It was such a little thing but I?m sure had they got that right this game would have another 5 points up on it?s score. The second thing that really bothered me was the level system. Often they would have us build a whole town on a tiny island just to find out that the creeps at the end were quite easy and that we didn?t need to build quite so much. Then we have to start again in the next island. No, they should have just put various objectives on a single map. That would have been more fun. Look it?s a good game and had potential to be up there but sadly those two things make the game a bit annoying to play. Perhaps I may give it more of an effort in the future but for now I will give it a positive review as I believe these devs are going the right direction.

Valhalla Hills is from the best early access games I have played, it's amazing and there is still more to come, this game is so much fun, creative, simple, and gorgeous, though I didn't see in Settlers franchise a lot of potentials but when I played Valhalla Hills I have totally changed my mind, I am even going to hunt down Settlers just to see what it has to hide. Valhalla Hills is giving you a traditional gameplay with a very popular faction ( the Vikings ) with the latest graphics technology, as this game is using Unreal Engine 4, it also reminds me with Age of Empires Online and that I assure you is a very pleasant thing. Beware though that this game is so addictive :)

I LOVE Norse culture and this game makes learning about it really fun! Its such a cute little world and I love playing with it. I was a huge fan of The Settlers 2 and this game is great because it is fresh but still has the clear style of the developers. If you ever wished you could combine city/economic management with Norse gods this game is for you.