I touched upon the fact that I'm pretty bad at War of the Vikings in my review. Honestly, it's no secret. I'm not even close to considering myself a veteran of the close-quarter combat genre; I'm a noob and it shows in my microsopic K/D/A ratio. For every five minutes of glory, there was forty minutes of misery.
That being said, I found that my lack of skill wasn't negatively affecting my enjoyment of the game. Though I could easily see why it would for others. Still, it doesn't make War of the Vikings a bad game; some of its design issues do.
This wouldn't be the first case of a video game's difficultly possibly effecting how "good" or "bad a game is. The Souls franchise has made a living off of its perceived difficulty and the sense of accomplishment one achieves when defeating bosses and completing the game. Sure, it helps that the game is technically sound, though I did have some personal issues on how the game portrays itself and how unforgiving the camera can be. Regardless, there's no denying the wonderfully crafted world of Dark Souls.
In the same vein, there's a well-crafted world within War of the Vikings, but you just have to walk through layer after mind-numbingly awful layer of frustration to get there. Should developer Fatshark address some of my chief concerns within the game, then I'd be more apt to go back to it from time to time. To be honest, I I dove in for a few rounds after writing my review. Sadly, most of the servers werre barren. I'm hoping that was due to the incredibly late hour which I logged in (2:00 AM), but part of me worries that many people couldn't get past the admittedly high barrier of entry.
Seriously; War of the Vikings makes most MOBAs look like a Barney game my sister owned on the Sega Genesis where you couldn't die. At times, it's THAT hard. Things get worse when all you seemingly do is hurt your teammates when you thought you had the perfect attack lined up.
Here's the thing, though: back in the day of melee warfare, how many times were allies accidentaly struck with a sword or axe? Probably much, much more than we realize. There's a certain frenzy that happened in these battles that comes across in War of the Vikings. Does it suck that I lose XP every time someone jumps in front of my arrow? Absolutely. Am I having fun trying to pick off enemy invaders charging at me? You bet. Granted, I might not pick many off, but it still proved to be a good time to the point where my launching of the game to grab a screenshot turned into a few "quick" matches.
Also I seem to be getting better at the game. Hrmm….
