Northgard

This Week I Have Been Mostly Playing…

Northgard on PC

One of my greatest loves? RTS (Real Time Strategy) games and it seems like the stars aligned. Northgard added to this month’s Humble Monthly Bundle AND receives a major update? Got to be done! As usual I read a couple of reviews before taking the plunge and was completely sold on one comparison. Settlers. This series dates back to 1993 and is meant as a slower paced and slightly limited version of the genre. Think the first ‘Americans’ reaching the continent and colonising. Northgard takes this and Vikings it up.

The basics are the map is divided up into regions and you only have one with your Town Hall. This produces settlers who must be assigned to create building and then take up specialised roles. Resource management is as always a huge part with Food, Wood, Stone and Iron but a new take is happiness. This dictates how fast you produce new settlers so best to try and keep this up. Most of the resources have a building that you can assign two villagers to make more of it, keeping things nice and simple.

Now to the hard part, the limitations. Most RTS’ have a total unit limit alongside finite resources to keep you penned in. Nothgard not only limits those but also has a maximum number of buildings per region. This is very fucking annoying as you can be completely locked in with the need to get new regions but no army to conquer them. A restart and better planning is required. This game is more about managing your people and resources rather than creating huge armies to overwhelm the enemy though this still plays a small part.

First each region must be ‘discovered’ by a scout before you can send in your troops to fight the monsters in there. Then it must be bought with food, the price of which gradually goes up as you get more and more regions. Each region will have something unique like a pond for fishing or a bit of farmland to grow crops.

One take I have not seen before is the seasonal changes, whereby in winter food production goes down while consumption goes up alongside that of firewood. Though the same every year it does make you think twice before charging out against a bunch of wolves at the end of October. Once a region is clear of enemies it will eventually respawn them unless you claim it for your own. On top of this you cannot attack an enemy without a clear line of land to their base, you need a scout to discover the whole way otherwise you are stood waiting until that’s happened. A little frustrating.

The single player campaign has been good so far though the objectives can change at any moment which can throw you. Different clans enter the story each with their own unique buildings and buffs. Though the small skill tree the game has means each level you basically can unlock every single item. Would have preferred either some changes or gradually more being added each level. Feels like I’ve already tried everything in this game.

Don’t get me wrong, Shiro games have done a great job on this title. I will continue playing just to see how it ends (avenging your fathers death) but, for a genre that’s not for everyone, I don’t see this title bringing in too many new fans. Sure it is good but It’s just a little too claustrophobic on the limitations, particularly being more geared to the resource side of things than the army. Still at least it’s something new and keeping that RTS flame alive. Settlers 7 seems to have been distinctly average so this is a much better punt. Now where are those giant summoning relics?