Valheim 1.0 Review: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:01] In the calming meadows where my journey in Valheim began almost six years ago, at the start of an early access expedition that has now finally come to an end, I came across a runestone in a lonely field bearing words I've been thinking about ever since.

[00:18] A full belly, a full sail, the weight of a spear to your hand, and a song on your lips. Let all the mountains crumble and the seas boil to salt.

[00:31] One day in the sun is a life well lived. This is the essence of Valheim, the grim-eyed but warm-hearted Norse king of survival crafting games.

[00:43] For as harrowing as its dark dungeons and challenging bosses may be, and unforgiving as its extreme environments of fire and ice may seem, it's a saga about returning home with chips in your shield and blood on your face

[00:58] to sit around a roaring hearth fire in contemplative solitude or with friends and feel a bright stirring in your heart knowing that you have conquered great foes and may now rest and revel.

[01:12] And in those slower moments, I came to realize that this was truly the best the genre has ever been. Valheim's art direction and world design give it a distinct identity from moment one.

[01:34] It has a deliberately lo-fi look with pixelated textures and not a lot of polygons to go around, but even so, it's truly a beautiful game. Every creature, sunbeam, and forested hillside is filled with a sort of fairy tale ambiance

[01:51] that made me want to go get lost in its procedurally generated regions. And there's a lot to get lost in, from peaceful meadows to dreary swamps to snowy mountains.

[02:05] Every time I generated a new map, it impressed me with its scale and how it looked like it could have been handmade. Because of the naturalistic Northern European feel, it comes across as very cohesive and authentic.

[02:19] The first time Valheim really made me go, wow, was when, after about 15 hours of preparing, I set sail on my own hand-built ship. Like a proper Viking, your main method of long-distance travel

[02:32] is to take to the seas and riverways. The controls for steering are kind of clunky, and I love them for that very reason. Mastering the art of making tight turns and managing my speed

[02:45] was a satisfying skill-building exercise. Realistic waves can bounce you up and down, and a sudden storm can even damage your vessel and force you to make for safe harbor. The ever-changing direction of the wind is a constant consideration

[03:00] that may encourage you to go out of your way to discover something new, rather than simply sail in a straight line. Having a slip makes it feel like a whole new world opening up,

[03:12] and then it tries to eat you. The improvements to Valheim since its early access launch are really too many to list,

[03:29] even if you gloss over the obvious stuff like nearly doubling the number of binomes and bosses. Perfect dodges, trinkets, and even a magic system have made combat so much deeper and richer.

[03:42] One of my biggest complaints back in 2021 was that certain elements of progression could feel a bit grindy, but even that's adjustable now with fine-tuned difficulty settings.

[03:54] I found that a 3x resource drop rate made the pacing incredibly smooth for me as a solo player, especially while I was retreading early areas I had already seen on an entirely

[04:07] fresh one-pointer world, though it might be a bit too much for a big group. Each of the eight biomes is extremely distinct in terms of vibes, enemies, and geography.

[04:26] The bug-infected mist lambs have taken the place of the swamp as my least favorite, with obnoxious terrain made even harder to navigate by dense fog, but they are beautiful to look

[04:38] at when you're not being swarmed. The Ashlands represent a dramatic escalation that really sells the thrill of entering the endgame with a jump in difficulty and foreboding volcanic landscapes As for the Deep North I don want to spoil too much of what secrets lie beyond its icy shores

[05:05] but it really puts the ambition of all the other biomes to shame and leads into a conclusion worthy of a Viking hero. I already loved Valheim's Norse aesthetics, and the Deep North is the most Norse it ever gets.

[05:21] so it really leans into its strongest visual and mythological themes right there at the end.

[05:33] For a game that already felt fairly complete in terms of both size and polish half a decade ago, Valheim 1.0 seems more like an instant classic from years back that's gotten three big expansions already,

[05:48] not a saggy skeleton of something that had the potential to be great and is now finally fleshed out. I feel completely spoiled by its finished scope.

[06:00] They even added some really well-animated 2D cutscenes that play after each boss and announce the biome you're about to explore which definitely helps flesh out and keep up the momentum of the unfolding story.

[06:18] Valheim's action, hacking and slashing and shooting was familiar and invigorating to me as a modern action RPG player. It's not just good enough for a survival crafter either, with the same care and attention

[06:34] paid to it as any other system. With a wide variety of weapons of enemy types, elemental damage and resistances, and timing based dodges and carries, it kept challenging me to sharpen my skills and learn new enemy

[06:50] patterns right to the end. The satisfying, hectic, dramatic boss fights really demonstrate the strengths of this combat,

[07:02] even though it's occasionally obvious that their AI can't quite cope with the varied arenas you fight them in. You doing okay there, girl?

[07:16] Not only do they serve as climactic capstones to each area and tier of technology, they have highly distinct mechanics and gradually raise the skill ceiling needed to progress, which I found very rewarding.

[07:30] I do wish fully half of them were not resistant to pierce damage, though, since it feels a like saying no archery allowed past this point, especially with how long it takes

[07:44] for bow wielders like me to get any significant upgrades to elemental damage in the mid to late game. The randomized dungeons are also a treat, from werewolf

[07:57] infested frozen cave systems to gooey insect eyes, with each featuring a unique layout, loot, and challenges to navigate.

[08:09] The plains and the ashlands replace underground lairs with large, complex outdoor structures, which even further helps to keep things feeling unique. Laying siege to a charred fortress made the whole exploring and looting routine feel brand

[08:25] new again, even 80 hours in. Among Valheim's most clever tricks is how your hearty feasts tie directly into progression.

[08:41] While you can skill up in different weapons and abilities, like running and swimming, your health and stamina meters are completely tied to what's in your belly. This means that leveling up mostly involves finding new ingredients and learning new recipes

[08:56] to ensure you're always as well fed as you can be. Valheim also wants you to eat a balanced diet. You can benefit from up to three types of food at any time,

[09:10] but stacking more than one of the same thing gives you no benefit. All of this also made my character feel more alive and connected to the world, and it set Valheim apart from the rote, old-fashioned RPG progression routine

[09:25] where experience translates to levels, which then translate into more hit points and energy. There's something deliciously thematic about heading out to battle evil with a full stomach,

[09:37] a good night's rest, and a flagon of invigorating need to cloth. It's a truly cozy warrior's paradise. Of course a cozy warrior needs a cozy hall to settle down in

[09:59] Valheim is voxel-based, but it's also much more limited in how you can alter the terrain than something like Minecraft. It took me a while to master the little trick needed to make a structure that doesn't clip into the ground or look like it's slightly floating,

[10:14] but once you do, you can construct some very impressive looking stuff, and the in-depth system for weight and support beams means your buildings generally end up looking and feeling realistic and in keeping with the world around them.

[10:29] Far from a restrictive annoyance, I loved how this became like a puzzle that made me think the way an actual medieval Norseman might when figuring out how to hold up a towering roof. There are plenty of different styles of building pieces as well, but I still wish we could

[10:46] get triangular or rounded floor tiles so it isn't so hard to build something with anything but a perfectly rectangular footprint.

[10:59] Whether I'm fighting for my life plundering forgotten barrows, or just watching the sun play across the water in a calm moment of respite, Valheim has created a world I'm consistently joyful to live in and discover.

[11:15] Its gorgeous art style, deadly bosses and dungeons, charming homesteading mechanics, and breathtaking scope each play a few notes of a melody that gets my blood pumping to explore the raging sea, defeat the greatest beasts,

[11:30] and share a piping hot meal with my sisters and brothers in the shield wall. The journey Minecraft started me on back in 2010 culminated in Valheim. This is the oath of the ultimate survival crafting adventure,

[11:46] fulfilled and carved into the very bones of the earth. Valhalla calls. And even after more than a hundred hours just on this fresh playthrough, I feel so sad it's over that I'm eager to answer that call again.

[12:02] One day in the sun is a life well lived.

[12:32] full initial early access review where I said even at early access launch it was already a 9 so it kind of unless they had totally fumbled it it kind of had nowhere to go

[12:44] but and then I also did a review or review update last year for the Call to Arms which was the big big combat overhaul yeah which you know

[12:56] was four and a half years after the game had launched early access so it had a lot of updates by that point, and now we're a year past that, so this game has been a long time coming, but before we talk a little bit more about Valheim specifically, you know, we talked

[13:13] about, you also get Hades 2 at 10, and a few other things over the years, Persona 5 Royal, Baldur's Gate 3, some really incredible games, and we talked a little bit just about it in our chat at the end of Hades 2, but for folk who didn't watch that, what really pushes

[13:29] the game from a 9 to a 10 for you? What is that bar? Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of it is, I think a lot of people think, oh, if you have any complaints, which obviously I have some complaints about Valheim 1.0 that aren't completely ephemeral, but one of the things is, like, is it good enough

[13:46] that those feel like they kind of melt into the background in spite of what it does well? that's one thing that takes a 9 to a 10 very notably 10 is not

[13:58] perfect on our scale we use the word masterpiece for a reason you know a masterpiece game can have plenty of things that are wrong with it it's just how those things impact the overall experience is what's important

[14:11] but I mean with Valheim specifically it really is like it's a generational example of its genre to the point that if you had to name two

[14:24] survival crafting games that are the most historically important. Obviously, Minecraft Has to be number one. I think Valheim would be number two. It's the second one I would put

[14:36] in the history book if I was only allowed to mention two games in this genre. Which is impressive because it been out for five and a half years but it didn pioneer the survival game genre It came in the middle of that genre popularity

[14:55] Right. Yeah, even maybe kind of when it was starting to tail off a little bit. Right. We had a renaissance there, but it's a very well-refined version of a lot of the things that work about the genre that doesn't ask you to spend too much time doing a lot of

[15:10] the things that I don't really prefer. so yeah and it's notable too because one of our if you look at our score policy page on IGN.com we have these descriptions for each number and one of

[15:22] the things about a 10 is you know you can never tell the future but we say that a 10 prop we expect will influence future designs future games and this is a situation where we can say

[15:34] oh we know that happened because we have seen other games emulating Valheim in the last over the last few years. Absolutely. And I hope it will continue to do so.

[15:46] So going back to the game itself and your experience over this last five and a half year early access period, were you keeping up with updates? Did you, were you coming back for each big one? Were you playing constantly? Did you just sort of stop and say, I'm going to wait for 1.0?

[15:59] What was your experience with it over the years? Yeah, so I have three different single player worlds, including the one I did for the original review that I've invested more than 40 hours into, and then I have a multiplayer world

[16:13] that's got to be getting close to like 200 at this point. I did come back for Mistlands. Interestingly enough, I had never been to the Ashlands, which was the biome added in

[16:27] the biggest update before 1.0, prior to doing this final 1.0 review. So that Ashlands biome was also completely new to me in addition to the Deep North, which is the brand, brand new one.

[16:41] Just because it takes a long time to get there, and I had never come back and put in the time it takes to actually get there. Yeah, and of note, this 1.0 review is a review of the game as a whole.

[16:55] We are not just reviewing the 1.0 update. Right. It's good to take all that. Completely fresh character going from zero to the end, yeah. So across a large early access period and so many updates,

[17:09] I guess the question is, if somebody has only played the original early access launch and was waiting for 1.0 and maybe didn't expect it to take quite this long, is this going to be transformational for somebody?

[17:22] Has Gotham really, really changed over that period? or has this been an early access where it's sort of just gotten more content and they've made tweaks, of course,

[17:34] but the game got bigger rather than really changing from what you saw at the early access launch? I kind of have two answers to that. The first one is that when Valheim adds new content,

[17:48] it really does change the fundamentals of the game because every new biome has some kind of new thing you have to deal with that's like qualitatively different than like an additive game mechanic

[18:03] versus where you came from, you know, with like the Mistslam introduces magic. And you might have already played this game for like 50 hours. You've been through like four bosses and now there's magic suddenly.

[18:17] So as it has expanded, those expansions of content have also transformed the gameplay at every step. But even on top of that, I would say starting as a level one character in the meadows,

[18:32] particularly after the Call to Arms update last year, combat has just become so much different and better that you'll notice significant changes even from the very beginning.

[18:48] If the last time you played was early access launch. Yeah, if you are one of those people who played this and expected it to be done in a couple years, then definitely leave a comment. I want to know about it.

[19:01] People joke about it, but at this point I'm like, hey, if they got this good of a game out of it, I'm glad they were able to spend that amount of time you know, dialing it in exactly how they want it. Sure, definitely.

[19:14] Well, Len, thank you so much for chatting with us a little bit more about this experience. It's a funny one. You don't get to do 1.0 early access reviews this far out very often. So I appreciate that you were able to come back for it.

[19:28] It's great that that happened. If you want more from Liana, you can check out her review of Distincting City 2 from just a couple weeks ago. And if you want our most recent 10, Anonymous Your Way of the Sword, you can check that one out as well. And for everything else,

[19:40] stick with IGN.