Viking: Battle for Coherency

Viking is separated into three sequential island maps, each of which must be gradually liberated. The story sequence after the first island was more interesting, more informative, and more understandable, than the game's opening scene. Despite including some in-game dialog that was cut off mid-sentence. It's a good thing that the game's storytelling is so scant, because otherwise there would just be more opportunities to see how terrible the writing and voice acting are.

The task of island liberation basically consists of a few phases: several instances of killing demon dudes to free a few vikings, a few instances of killing a bunch of demon dudes to free a camp, a couple instances of sieging a base, and a final siege to take the island boss. There are a handful of extra steps mixed in there, like collecting quest items to summon a dragon - which can then be used in the final siege, by picking something out of a menu for it to attack - but overall the routine is pretty rote. I got tired of it by the end of the first island, so, I'm not exactly looking forward to doing it twice more.

To its credit, the combat does get a bit more nuanced as you learn new moves, with e.g. combo points and shieldbreaker attacks. And the final siege on the first island, a multi-step affair with massive armies on either side, was pretty exciting -- though, still, too crowded with junk to really feel effective. On the one hand, I admire the technical implementation that puts so many actors on the screen at once, but on the other hand, who thought it would be a good idea to have the screen so dense that you can't even find yourself in it?

Viking is a somewhat cool idea propped up on a pile of half-baked execution. It's not the worst character-action game out there, but there are plenty better.

Better than: Golden Axe: Beast Rider (though not as hilarious)
Not as good as: Conan (2007)
Another cool quirk: Every time I exited the game, I had like a half-dozen Steam prompts (for launching Viking or its config app) waiting for me. I can only assume that the game executable failed to take window focus, and occasionally sent an Enter or Space or something through as input. Another victory for Sega's PC porting team.

Progress: Gave up -- Freed Niflberg