This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. It is currently available on PS4, XBO, WiiU. Rating: 5 out of 10ĭisclosures: This game is developed and published by Thunder Lotus Games. The team at Thunder Lotus is on the right track, but I hope their next effort focuses on adding more depth and intricacy to their work. I like the concept of Jotun very much - a female Norse warrior, gigantic bosses, and a not-often-seen flavor of fantasy are all great elements, but there’s not enough to the experience and what is here isn’t very good. It’s a shame because I would’ve enjoyed going through all the bosses at least once, but getting through the core content was not desirable.
Unfortunately, it’s not available from the start and (I assume?) is only accessed after beating the game. Unfortunately, around the campaign’s halfway point I became too bored to continue and I wanted to jump over to the boss rush mode – according to the press release, it’s the new add enhancing the Valhalla Edition. At one point I met some mean-looking giants throwing rocks and I braced for a scrap, but rather than being challenged, I simply walked around them and moved on – they looked foreboding, but they might as well have been cardboard standees. There’s also precious little combat, and what’s there is can be easily avoided. She’s just hoofing it from point A to point B to collect a few things that open the path to the next boss.Īpart from being boring, these levels are annoying because the map doesn’t show the player’s position, and it’s easy to lose track of Thora’s current location. The levels in Jotun are a little convoluted so getting to the end isn’t as simple as walking in a straight line - one has Thora sliding on tree roots, another has her pushing from island to island on a raft, and so on - but they’re essentially empty. I get that the intended effect is to feel awed, but it just makes things hard to see.Īpart from the boss battles, Jotun doesn’t have much to offer because the other half of the experience is traversal, and traversal as a mechanic is not generally interesting. The game’s hand-drawn art style makes it tough to tell where hitboxes are, and worse, the camera zooms waaaaaay out at times to accentuate the size difference between Thora and her enemy. There’s also not much to the melee since she only has a weak hit, a strong hit (with an extremely long wind-up time) a dodge roll, and a handful of magic spells she picks up along the way.īesides feeling shallow, the encounters also suffer from poor readability.
Thora’s attack speed is painfully slow, but it’s not the kind of slow that feels careful and deliberate, it’s just clunky. That said, actually fighting them isn’t good. Each one is much, much larger than she is, and taking down something on that scale is neat. Whenever Thora confronts one of the giants, it’s a spectacle. The first (and most impressive) are the boss battles. Unfortunately, it fares little better than the dry storytelling. While the developers found a wonderful voice actress to read the lines of their script (and I’m guessing it has some historical basis) I didn’t find it to be interesting or involving, so my focus fell to the gameplay.
As to what the ultimate goal of these trials is, I’m not sure. I’m not familiar with Norse mythology so my grasp on the events here is a little shaky, but apparently these titans are being hunted down to impress the gods.
#Jotun valhalla edition differences series#
In Jotun, the player takes the role of Thora, a female warrior chosen by the gods to kill a series of giants. As one might guess, this brings me to the subject of review, Jotun: Valhalla Edition, by Thunder Lotus Games. There are few things I enjoy less than giving a negative review to a small indie, but a not-good game is not-good game. WTF Why can’t I jump straight to the boss rush?
LOW Traversal isn’t nearly as entertaining as the devs think it is.
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