Experience is more balanced in this game
as well. In the previous version, killing weak enemies yielded just as
much, and sometimes more, XP than killing monsters that can devastate
your party. XP gained is more proportional to enemy strength now, but
it should also be noted that leveling up doesn't matter as much. It
affects HP, MP, and teaches you new skills, but equipment you find,
steal, or buy makes a far greater difference. I appreciate this, since
it encourages exploration and experimentation over level grinding.
Likewise, level grinding isn't the only way to gain skills; several
come from scripted battles with mini-boss enemies, or from completing
side quests. These too made exploration feel worthwhile in a way almost
no other OHR games do.
While it has improved dramatically, and is most certainly one of the best games made with the OHR engine,
Vikings
still has its problems. The only one that really hurt the gameplay was
the often, enemies would use skills that either healed them or
increased/decreased some stat, but I couldn't tell what these skills
did. You eventually figure out, "Hey, this guy's stronger now," but
there's really no reason not to use captions to say, "DISGUSTING
MONSTER has increased its DEFENSE!"
Another problem I have is that characters still don't come with any
items equipped, so you still have to go to a shop and guess at what
type of weapon and armors they can use, which wouldn't be as big a deal
if there wasn't such an enormous number of items in the game.
That's a shot from roughly half way
through the game. Note that nearly every item is a piece of equipment.
While I do appreciate a variety of items, this is just way too
cumbersome. There are also odd technical problems, such as NPCs and
locations that do literally nothing. I understand they will be
implemented in a later version, but it feels sloppy to walk through a
large, empty house with nothing to interact with. No battles, no
dialogue, no items. There's a joke near the end of this version where a
servant of evil says, "You can't come in here! This is a demo!" I would
have liked the other unimplemented areas to have bits like this, or
else simply be locked off.
Other issues include missing animations. For example, Kitt's elemental
attacks could really use a dash-in animation associated with them. Or
anything at all, really. He just stands there, completely still, while
his attacks go off. This wouldn't be as noticeable if the rest of the
game didn't include such nice animation.
There's also the issue with the way the Vikings sleep in their beds, which really doesn't look comfortable at all.
I would also like to note that while the new version of the game is
longer and features more content, it's not complete like the older
version. You can't fight the final boss, and you can't see the end of
the story. This version cuts off at a point that leaves the player with
a cliff-hanger ending to be resolved in a future update. I can't
complain, since there is so much new to the game now, but I was a bit
startled when it suddenly booted me back to the title screen.
These issues aside, the 2008 version of
Vikings of Midgard
is one of the finest OHR games I've seen. If this much can improve
between versions, I can't wait to see where Fenrir takes this game next.