NORSE: Oath of Blood

Norse: Oath of Blood was provided by Tripwire Presents for review. Thank you!

The turn-based tactical RPG genre seems to be enjoying a bit of a boon lately, probably partly thanks to Baldur's Gate 3. Enter NORSE: Oath of Blood, a Viking-themed tactical RPG where you are a young warrior tasked with rebuilding your father's tribe after it was decimated by a rival Jarl.

My first introduction to NORSE, sadly, wasn't a great one. I seemed to encounter several bugs in quick succession, one of which caused the tutorial to fail to start, so I left the tutorial area to begin the storyline, where I ran into a second issue. In the first battle, my second party member was hostile to everyone, including me.

So after we killed all the enemies in the tutorial, I then had to kill my fellow party member to end the tutorial, which makes no sense, as we were happily chatting in the cutscene after I killed her, complete with my arrows sticking out of her chest. Not a great introduction to the game when you have 2 critical bugs in the first 5 minutes of play.

The combat itself in NORSE is fine; it's your standard turn-based tactical combat affair. You have action points that you can spend on your turn, either doing a basic attack, movement, or one of your abilities. With the right positioning and skills, you can pull off some great and satisfying moves, such as shield ramming an enemy into an ally and dealing extra damage with a combo attack.

Combat, sadly, is also plagued with bugs. A few that I encountered were missing attacks even with a 100% hit chance, which is a problem in a game where action points are often crucial, and the stats you are given help you to make informed decisions. There were also points where multiple characters occupied the same tile on the battlefield, which made things a bit awkward, and also physics issues causing characters to visually move tiles even when they physically did not, as dead ragdolls can push alive characters around the map.

Occasionally, you have the option to walk around outside of combat, and movement here feels a bit... janky. Much like the rest of the game, it works, but it's not polished. You'll find yourself hitting up against invisible walls and strange collision issues, causing your character to stop and get stuck on objects frequently, which can be frustrating.

But most of the time you're out of combat, you'll be on the overworld, as it were, managing your settlement, expanding it with new buildings, and dealing with requests from your villagers. It's a fun and unexpected part of the game, and there's some satisfaction to be had from expanding your settlement with new and improved buildings, as well as managing your resources and getting to know your fellow villagers.

I think the part of NORSE that stands out strongest in a positive sense is the visual and audio design. The game does look nice; there's dense foliage, the characters are rendered well in cutscenes with detailed facial expressions, coupled with some good voice acting. It makes the overall presentation of the game come off well, and also helps to liven up the storyline. I think the developers knew this was their strong suit, as the game features many cutscenes with voice-acted dialogue, and I never felt the desire to skip them.

Speaking of the storyline, it's another standout point for NORSE. While not entirely original in its premise, it's a story about betrayal and revenge, the presentation helps to make you feel immersed in the world. You want these characters to succeed in their mission, you're invested in their welfare, and despite all the bugs I was encountering, this fact made me want to carry on and see how their story unfolds.

NORSE: Oath of Blood - Steam Deck Performance

Performance-wise, while the game does run at an acceptable level (30 FPS) on the Low preset with the Upscaler set to FSR on the Quality setting, NORSE uses a lot of VRAM, and that resulted in a number of crashes for me while attempting to play on the Steam Deck. Even with an app like Cryoutilities to expand the swap file, it wasn't enough, sometimes crashing before even getting into the game.

Because of this, I don't recommend you try playing NORSE: Oath of Blood on the Steam Deck.

There is also a lack of controller support, so if you did attempt to play, you would need to configure a custom controller layout.

Accessibility:

NORSE: Oath of Blood offers subtitles for all its dialogue, including voiced lines. You can also increase (or decrease) the scale of the UI as well as adjust the difficulty level so it's not quite as challenging.

Conclusion:

NORSE: Oath of Blood has a good game underneath all the bugs. The combat works, the storyline is good, and the presentation is excellent. These things combined helped me power through the many bugs (and sometimes crashes) that I experienced. Hopefully, a few patches down the line, we will have a very solid tactical RPG on our hands.

Sadly, I wouldn't recommend that you try this one on the Steam Deck, disregarding all the bugs I encountered even on PC, the game just uses too much VRAM to run stably, not to mention the game can crash for other reasons right now too, and it can be a pain losing progress to a crash when NORSE is already a challenging game.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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