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.
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.
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.
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.
If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back.
Arcadian Atlas was provided by Serenity Forge for review. Thank you!
Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, these games have brought me deeper into the love for tactical RPGs and, after playing Arcadian Atlas at PAX East, I was really excited about what we could be seeing. Now that I have played it, I feel there is a lot of charm in the world that Twin Otter Studios created, even if there are some polish and quality-of-life improvements that could have been integrated to elevate the experience further.
There are a couple of very key elements that I wanted to see Arcadian Atlas hit and they made sure to do a great job with that. The story is dramatic and engaging, almost immediately hooking me. Star-crossed lovers, Vashti and Desmond, are caught in the middle of a brewing civil war that will ultimately bring the continent of Arcadia down in flames. The stakes are set high and it feels well thought-out in this wonderfully dramatic setting with a unique artstyle I can't say I often see.
Also Poncho is the best.
The gameplay is quite similar to other tactical RPGs like the ones mentioned above. You place down your units, each with their own specialties, weapons, and armor, and move them across a tile-system to wipe out the enemy team. Each unit has their own skill tree that you can invest points into, which leads to filling skill-slots that give some passive bonuses to help define the play style of my choosing.
Unfortunately, there are some knocks against it that could have really been fixed with some QoL changes. Being able to rotate the map would help those levels that have tiles blocked by vertical terrain (there is transparency, but I would have loved to see multiple angles), health bars above enemies would have made it easier to plan instead of looking at each enemy's status screen, being able to move a cursor around multiple titles instead of 1 tile at a time when looking around the map or moving, and showing what ability enemies are using on their turn would have helped a lot.
While I did enjoy the combat, it did feel a bit slow and clunky at times. Animations were not super intricate, which is totally fine, but I didn't feel like there was enough weight in the moves I was making. I was hoping things like attacking an enemy from behind or flanking would have given me some bonus damage or a critical hit, but it did the same damage as a regular hit. There are also some aspects of the game that aren't explained as much, like the Command Point system, which gives you permanent upgrades or the ability to respec characters. Also, renaming characters costs in-game currency, which I wasn't a fan of.
I did like the game and the story kept me going until the end, and I can see the passion that was put in, but some of these quality-of-life features would have really made gameplay feel a lot smoother and more interesting. I went in hoping for a more refined tactics experience, and while there is something good buried deep down, it can feel muddled when these issues crop up.
And then we come to performance on the Steam Deck. I ran into a couple issues with playing the game on the Deck myself. First, my pre-release copy of the game didn't have a working Linux version with it, so the only way I could boot it was forcing Proton 8.0-3 and downloading the Windows version of the game. Even now, I have tried multiple times but it will only download 0 bytes and say it is missing an executable, which isn't right since the game is supposed to be 6gb.
As I was about to post this review, it appeared that the Linux version of the game finally downloaded. But when I tried to play, it wouldn't launch, so I will take it as this version still isn't working and will update the review once it does.
Everything else on the works well on the Deck and performance was in-line with a game that looks like this one, but as I kept playing, I ran into a different issue. On the fourth mission, you are battling enemies in a town and there are some serious drops here. Upon further testing, it seemed that the game itself was throttling as without any caps, the battery would drain at 16W max and hover around 52 - 54 FPS. But for the most part, the game runs at around 8W - 11W.
I did notice that when looking at your skills or equipment, it appears that some of the menu is cut off as well.
Other than this, the game looks and performs well. There aren't any graphics settings to change, other than resolution, so we just have to go with what we get here. For the most part, the game will run around
Arcadian Atlas has 16:10 resolution support, so you won't have any black bars, and it has controller support. There is no cloud save support, but they have plans to implement cloud saves in the future (as answered in our interview).
Arcadian Atlas is an interesting tactical RPG game. The story, artstyle, and soundtrack are top notch, but the combat feels a bit on the bland side at times. And some missing quality-of-life features would have really made up for some of the faults, which makes it harder to enjoy overall. The narrative does make up for some of this though and I enjoyed seeing what happens and how the story elevates to the scenarios it ends up at. I do wish it ran a bit better on the Steam Deck, but for the most part, it will run well.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back.
