Gripping. Brutal. Depressing. Beautiful. These are the first words that come to mind, grasping for a way to describe this game. I feel like gameplay is the best place to start in describing a game, so consider the combat. Turn-based and simple seeming at first glance (with each unit having one active, skill which automatically levels up, and one passive skill, which doesn't), the "health is damage" element makes every hit hurt. You hear the sound and see the little animated guy stagger and think, "we're all gonna die," and you're sometimes right, and then Egil dies. I can only name one game to have had this feature in the past, an old Gameboy Color title named Legend of the River King...

So anyways, grim terror all around, right? You're in charge of two different massive groups of people from opposite ends of the world whose storylines intertwine as they flee an endless invading army of tree-sized replicas of Disney's Iron Giant (tm) - which are similar to humans except for having really thick armor, which you usually have to hurl your puny humans and awesome giants (did I mention you control massive horned nordic giants created when a god crossed humans with some kind of magic Ox?) against repeatedly before damaging their health, and then Egil dies.

The music is nice, and they put a little bit of voice acting into some random scenes narration as your little grimdark 80s Disney army slowly walks across doomed countrysides, constantly interjected by storyline pop-ups wherein mostly bad things happen, or you get something good but it causes a tragedy later, or Egil dies, or all of the above. I would describe the game's feel overall as Last Unicorn meets Gears of War/Dark Souls, except maybe don't praise the Sun here, because did I mention the Sun just stopped in the sky for no reason? Hail to the Great Serpent.

Spoiler Tips: Try not to starve to death, fight whenever possible to afford rations, don't level up or put gear on the people who are going to be randomly killed off (and their gear vanishes when they do so), rest maybe, and don't level like any of the varl but Hakon and Gunnulf (Gunnulf can also die unless you shout at him a lot). Don't level Egil, he's going to die. I know, he's useful, but he's also not going to make it. Not your first time through. It's like surviving your first run in Sunless Sea, just get over it.

10/10