Jotun: Valhalla Edition

Genre: Top-Down Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Jotun is a Top-Down Action-RPG where you play as a Norse warrior who dies and goes to the Norse version of purgatory to prove herself worthy of entering Valhalla by fighting multiple gigantic beasts, the titular Jotun.

What stands out about this game right off the bat is its beautiful hand-drawn animation. All of the game’s characters look amazing and move expressively. There are also some beautiful large vistas where you can marvel at the detail of the artwork of a large area. Much of the joy of progressing through the game is seeing new characters just to see how they’ve been animated, or coming to some new area and looking over its beauty. Add to this some nice narration (apparently in Icelandic, no less), and the game really does a great job of carving out its own unique identity.

The gameplay itself has you moving through multiple mazelike areas, completing minor tasks like flicking switches, and then fighting a massive boss. It’s all a bit mundane and unenganging, to be honest, and it’s made worse by the game’s main character, who simply isn’t all that fun to play as.

Thora, the Norse warrior in question, embodies the word “slow”. She walks slowly, she attacks slowly, and if you want to do a hard attack, she does that very slowly. A part of the challenge of the game’s big set piece battles is simply moving out of the way of broadcasted attacks, which you see coming a mile away, yet need to respond to immediately simply because it takes Thora so damn long to actually get out of the area they’re going to hit. And man, it sucks getting a third of your life bar taken off by an attack you’ve seen coming for a while but just can’t get out of the way of in time, or getting picked apart by enemies while you’re still preoccupied with the slow axe swings you’re making to take out other enemies.

I should mention that, this being the Valhalla Edition, this version of the game has an added boss rush mode which… I honestly wasn’t all that interested in. And since we’re talking about the differences in this version from others, the Switch version of the game is notoriously saddled with long load times.

It’s a shame Jotun: Valhalla Edition is such a slog to play through, because it looks and sounds so wonderful. For those who don’t mind some frustrating, slow-paced gameplay, seeing how beautiful this game is might be worth your while, but for everyone else, it’s probably best to look elsewhere.

tl;dr – Jotun: Valhalla Edition has you on a quest through the Norse purgatory, fighting massive beasts to prove your worth. The game is absolutely gorgeous to look at and listen to, but the gameplay is a slog that makes it a chore to see the game’s wonders.

Grade: C

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