FYI: Valve censored the word "sticks & 5k1nz" in my review below. If you're offended by the word for the "thing which lives under your clothing" then you've got issues son...

tl;dr This mess of a game is one to avoid. I played 78 hours, hated 74 of them...


I bought Valheim in 2021 after falling for the hype - "everybody seems to be playing this, it must be great!". Sadly it's not. I mean, it's probably great in multiplayer, but I don't have the time or the motivation to do that so I'm reviewing it from the single player perspective.

There are 3 major gripes I have with Valheim. The first is the incredibly tedious grind to get literally anything done. Everything up to and including the first boss is a cakewalk and quite enjoyable if I'm honest. Any progression post first boss isn't fun in any sense of the word. The difficulty ramps up at an alarming rate, which I don't have a problem with, but getting sufficiently geared up to deal with that difficulty and progress through the game is slow, tedious and totally unnecessary. Want to get the first metal tier (bronze) weapons & armour? Well you'll need to (very slowly) mine 2 types of resources first and probably in several trips because you won't be able to carry everything you need. Also, the very act of mining alerts every enemy in the forest to your location, so you'll have to fight multiple enemies with your starter items, sorry.

Say you eventually snag yourself some of the required metal ores. Do you want to build a smelter out of stone & coal? No chance mate, you need 5 of a particular item to smelt metal, which may or may not spawn in burial chambers, which may or may not have been generated near by. No burial chambers near by? Well, sucks to play on that map I guess - generate another one or build a raft to sail away to a different part of the map where you'll most likely get caught in a storm & die.

Why is it such a chore to make the first level of trash-tier weapons & armour? Having those makes your life a little bit easier post first boss, so why put so many obstacles in the way? You can't even find resources on the other side of the map and build a portal to your base, because metal won't transport through the portals for...reasons. The only sense of achievement I got from equipping myself in bronze armour was "Great, maybe I won't die as much now". It genuinely didn't feel like a tech progression from stone-tier to metal-tier - aside from now being able to cut down birch trees, that is, which was a bizarre design decision. Oak trees I could understand, because they're massive, but surely chopping down trees is a fundamental part of any crafting game? Nothing should be handed to you on a silver platter from the get go, but equipping yourself beyond the base sticks & skins shouldn't involve this much work. You can spend an entire evening just collecting items which you may or may not be able to smelt because of the random chance aspect of how burial chambers and their contents work.

The other aspect of the game which irks me is the tiny inventory space in chests. Valheim offers materials a plenty, but storing them is infuriating. You don't have much carrying capacity to spare once you have a top row of tools & weapons and some food, so you'll be making trip after trip after trip in order to build up a useful stockpile to build a base which you'll need to abandon anyway because the rest of the game is miles away, so what's the point? Individual chests only store 10 items and individual items have a small stack size, so you'll soon find that you need multiple chests cluttering up your base, which is a drag as you also need floor space (under cover) to upgrade your workbench. Rather than adding next-tier resources to your workbench to make a better workbench, you have to surround it with useless items you can't even interact with and just take up floor space. Again - a bizarre design decision.

And the final and possibly the most problematic part of Valheim, at least for me - the death loops. In my most recent playthrough, I had just beaten the first boss and spent about 3 in-game days building a large enough wooden structure to house all my junk and crafting stations in. I was outside felling a tree for some basic wood and out of nowhere YOU DIED. Troll...

No problem, I stupidly thought, I'll spawn in my bed and walk 5 seconds to my grave. Nope. I awoke from my bed after respawning and....YOU DIED. Same troll, who was now attacking my base. Respawned again, as the bed survived. YOU DIED. At this point, I turn off and uninstall the game. WHY IS THIS A THING?? WHAT DOES THIS ACCOMPLISH? It's bad enough if you die in a burial chamber, then get yourself into a death loop trying to retrieve your possessions. But to be 1-shot over and over and over at your spawn point? What a stroke of genius game design that is...

Valheim was a game that looked insanely cool before I bought it - and it does look beautiful with a really nice aesthetic, but ultimately it failed to to be an enjoyable experience - even after sticking with it through all the updates. For the amount of grind you put into it, you get very little back in reward. This could have been so much better. I've played it on and off since 2021, accumulating 75 hours and I'd estimate 60+ hours has just been grinding rather than fighting bosses, building, exploring & learning the game. I'm done with this steaming pile of crap now, this isn't for me, I 100% regret my purchase and if I never play Valheim again it will be too soon. An enormous disappointment...

FYI: Valve censored the word "sticks & 5k1nz" in my review below. If you're offended by the word for the "thing which lives under your clothing" then you've got issues son... tl;dr This mess of a game is one to avoid. I played 78 hours, hated 74 of them... I bought Valheim in 2021 after falling for the hype - "everybody seems to be playing this, it must be great!". Sadly it's not. I mean, it's probably great in multiplayer, but I don't have the time or the motivation to do that so I'm reviewing it from the single player perspective. There are 3 major gripes I have with Valheim. The first is the incredibly tedious grind to get literally anything done. Everything up to and including the first boss is a cakewalk and quite enjoyable if I'm honest. Any progression post first boss isn't fun in any sense of the word. The difficulty ramps up at an alarming rate, which I don't have a problem with, but getting sufficiently geared up to deal with that difficulty and progress through the game is slow, tedious and totally unnecessary. Want to get the first metal tier (bronze) weapons & armour? Well you'll need to (very slowly) mine 2 types of resources first and probably in several trips because you won't be able to carry everything you need. Also, the very act of mining alerts every enemy in the forest to your location, so you'll have to fight multiple enemies with your starter items, sorry. Say you eventually snag yourself some of the required metal ores. Do you want to build a smelter out of stone & coal? No chance mate, you need 5 of a particular item to smelt metal, which may or may not spawn in burial chambers, which may or may not have been generated near by. No burial chambers near by? Well, sucks to play on that map I guess - generate another one or build a raft to sail away to a different part of the map where you'll most likely get caught in a storm & die. Why is it such a chore to make the first level of trash-tier weapons & armour? Having those makes your life a little bit easier post first boss, so why put so many obstacles in the way? You can't even find resources on the other side of the map and build a portal to your base, because metal won't transport through the portals for...reasons. The only sense of achievement I got from equipping myself in bronze armour was "Great, maybe I won't die as much now". It genuinely didn't feel like a tech progression from stone-tier to metal-tier - aside from now being able to cut down birch trees, that is, which was a bizarre design decision. Oak trees I could understand, because they're massive, but surely chopping down trees is a fundamental part of any crafting game? Nothing should be handed to you on a silver platter from the get go, but equipping yourself beyond the base sticks & skins shouldn't involve this much work. You can spend an entire evening just collecting items which you may or may not be able to smelt because of the random chance aspect of how burial chambers and their contents work. The other aspect of the game which irks me is the tiny inventory space in chests. Valheim offers materials a plenty, but storing them is infuriating. You don't have much carrying capacity to spare once you have a top row of tools & weapons and some food, so you'll be making trip after trip after trip in order to build up a useful stockpile to build a base which you'll need to abandon anyway because the rest of the game is miles away, so what's the point? Individual chests only store 10 items and individual items have a small stack size, so you'll soon find that you need multiple chests cluttering up your base, which is a drag as you also need floor space (under cover) to upgrade your workbench. Rather than adding next-tier resources to your workbench to make a better workbench, you have to surround it with useless items you can't even interact with and just take up floor space. Again - a bizarre design decision. And the final and possibly the most problematic part of Valheim, at least for me - the death loops. In my most recent playthrough, I had just beaten the first boss and spent about 3 in-game days building a large enough wooden structure to house all my junk and crafting stations in. I was outside felling a tree for some basic wood and out of nowhere YOU DIED. Troll... No problem, I stupidly thought, I'll spawn in my bed and walk 5 seconds to my grave. Nope. I awoke from my bed after respawning and....YOU DIED. Same troll, who was now attacking my base. Respawned again, as the bed survived. YOU DIED. At this point, I turn off and uninstall the game. WHY IS THIS A THING?? WHAT DOES THIS ACCOMPLISH? It's bad enough if you die in a burial chamber, then get yourself into a death loop trying to retrieve your possessions. But to be 1-shot over and over and over at your spawn point? What a stroke of genius game design that is... Valheim was a game that looked insanely cool before I bought it - and it does look beautiful with a really nice aesthetic, but ultimately it failed to to be an enjoyable experience - even after sticking with it through all the updates. For the amount of grind you put into it, you get very little back in reward. This could have been so much better. I've played it on and off since 2021, accumulating 75 hours and I'd estimate 60+ hours has just been grinding rather than fighting bosses, building, exploring & learning the game. I'm done with this steaming pile of crap now, this isn't for me, I 100% regret my purchase and if I never play Valheim again it will be too soon. An enormous disappointment...