It has been a loooonnnngggg time since I sat down and played an in-depth real-time strategy game on a PC. The last time I was remotely interested in getting back to this genre, I had found a copy of Dune (RTS) on a for-sale rack at Waldensoftware back in the mid-90s. I thought I had struck gold back then with Dune, and I wasn’t wrong. Fast-forward a hundred years or so, and here I am returning to the genre I left on a high note with Frozenheim, a Viking-led RTS that has you juggling quite a bit while balancing out quite a bit more.
Let’s get right into it.
What it’s all about
Frozenheim is a game that puts you right into the thick of it. At its core, it’s what you would be familiar with when it comes to the RTS genre. You build supplies, accumulate an army with various warriors/styles, accomplish set goals to win rounds, and you keep going and going until the day is won. On that level, Frozenheim nails it. It’s an addictive structure that for any completionist means that you’re pleasantly grinding until your heart is content, or until you’ve depleted so many resources that you can’t grind any longer nor build anything else new. For me, it does harken back to that addictive wash-rinse-repeat-RTS style that makes me happy to play almost any game in the genre. It doesn’t take much to impress me, but it also doesn’t take a lot to lose me. Thankfully, Frozenheim is in the latter category.
Now, the story might be where the crossroads lie for my entertainment tastes. While the good folks at Paranoid Interactive wanted to make this more than just another RTS, the story they give you here is built in moments rather than one continuous story that engages as much as it cognitively pleases. What I mean by moments is what happens when a movie like Zach Snyder’s Batman v. Superman takes badass segments, such as the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents, or the destruction of Metropolis caused by Superman, and makes them into small doses of entertainment instead of a giant batch of perfection. Snyder always nails smaller moments of a larger piece, but rarely puts together one great film. It happens and quite frankly sometimes that is all we need to enjoy films. Heck, 80s action films unforgivingly lived on that structure.
Frozenheim’s story falls into that same structure, where you’re living a tense, sometimes Ragnarök moment without much of a connection between them. That isn’t to say that you’re going to be shortchanged with the game because of this story structure, rather it means just don’t go into it expecting some memorial story that you’ll be reminiscing about years down the road. For me, this part of the game fell quite flat. I’m okay with this in the long run because I love the gameplay and how well it was done. That said, I wish there was a bit more cohesiveness to the story. There is plenty of Viking history to play off to make the story far more meaningful. Frozenheim felt like it never trod that path.
Getting back to Frozenheim’s gameplay, I appreciated what Paranoid Interactive did to make this an easy game to understand. First and foremost, go through the game’s tutorial, even if you’re a veteran of the RTS genre. I thought I could just breeze by it without wasting time with it, but I’m glad I changed my mind after the first go around. The tutorial of the game shows you the front-facing and backend elements. The front-facing parts of the game (HUD, movement, etc.) are well done. It’s easy to figure out what you want to do, incredibly simple to move around troops and see the map as it is uncovered, and the building/upgrading of items/construction of buildings/troops is straightforward. You must build houses to accumulate villagers. Once you accumulate them, you can construct buildings and put said villagers in charge of the buildings. Those buildings range from supplies (meat, fruits, etc.), wood (be careful how much you gather – finite resource), and minerals. Once you get those going, you then build up troops from said supplies by creating a barracks of sorts. The more you build, the more troops you get, and the more bandits and bad guys you can conquer. Again, it’s straightforward.
On the backend, and once you build a temple, you can start worshipping a particular god. For me, I was all in on a Bear God. Once I committed to the god, I could start building up a skills tree related to the god. For example, the Bear God allowed me to become a master builder, which meant building structures was easier. The higher level I achieved meant new things could unlock, and the game would expand quite a bit. It’s a simple backend, but the RPG essence of it made me want to continue to unlock the Bear God and replay the game to see what the other gods were about. You always want an RTS to motivate you to keep playing in some way. For Frozenheim, it motivates you well.
In addition to the motivation, the game also creates a wonderfully fast pace for an RTS. While I’m sure this is typical of the genre nowadays, the game allows you to speed up the process by simply clicking a fast-forward button. It makes gameplay smooth, simple, and sometimes chaotic. Just because you speed up your gameplay doesn’t mean the enemies slow theirs. They go just as fast as you, which is funny to watch, but also terrible when they burn down your entire village in the blink of an eye. Or destroy your entire army. Whichever comes first. Anyway, the option to pick up the pace in the Frozenheim is nice and a welcomed addition to the gameplay design.
As for other cool things about the game, it also comes in more balanced than not. You have almost complete control over every aspect of your gameplay. From choosing army troops to assigning a certain amount of people to jobs, you get the full compass of the RTS experience through Frozenheim’s design. It also doesn’t overwhelm you in the long term, as the challenges do get harder, the game does its best to make sure you have every tool available to succeed in it. It works well and puts the responsibility of success/failure squarely on you. That’s what you want out of an RTS, as you can learn and improve rather than be constrained by what the game ‘allows’ you to do. This is an aspect of the game that I think Paranoid Interactive knocked out of the ballpark.
Some odds and ends about being a Viking
Other than the story, the only big complaint that I have about the game is the occasional occurrence of control issues. Let me stress very much that this was ‘occasional’ and not at all close to being all the time. Trust me, this review would go very differently if it were all the time. I might have been cursing at some point and flipping a table. The table is still intact and my children’s ears are safe for the moment. I have another review coming.
Anyway, the issues I ran into were mostly related to the warships in the game. Yes, there are warships you can build and control, then invade other villages. Like real Vikings! *Ahem* Occasionally, the game would allow me to build and board a boat, land on the shores of whatever place I’m invading, then have issues where I couldn’t get the boat back in the water. I was grounded on land. Most of the time, I would just abandon the boat and create a new one if I needed it. There were two times when this occurred, and I couldn’t get my men out of the boat. They were essentially land sharks that I could do nothing with, which sucked when enemies showed up on the same shores and were trying to kill me (and doing a great job of it). For some reason, working with boats in the game was tedious sometimes and made me not want to get a boat in the water for fear of losing the boat or my warriors (or both).
Other than this annoying occurrence, the only other minor complaint that I have with the game is how it turns up the difficulty in the first fight. For a seasoned veteran that was used to getting his ass kicked in RTS titles quickly, then learning from them, this was no biggie. I knew the sun would shine eventually on me. For those getting into the RTS genre for the first time and are interested in Viking lore and/or controlling a Viking army, this could be a turnoff. The one thing you don’t want to do is ratchet up the difficulty from the get-go. Ease your players into it and then start cranking it up once they learn everything and get into the RTS flow. This might piss off veterans of the genre, but at some point, everyone ends up happy. And you always want to make new players feel welcomed to your game. Everyone wins at that point.
What about those visuals?
The visuals are gorgeous, but nothing beyond what you would expect from a standard RTS game. You get a lot of nice textures, some rough and tough visuals when it comes to lighting and weather/season change, and tiny people you can’t see very well. You don’t need to turn the RTX ray tracing on for this game, but it is visually pleasing as well as visually informative on where you are and what your enemies are doing in an expansive and pleasant set of environments.
On the audio side of the tracks, you get some amazing music that fits the Viking mold. There was some good money/effort spent on creating an audibly pleasing experience that just builds on the atmosphere created in the game. It works and it sounds wonderful, and it’s certainly a strength of the overall presentation.
On that note, let’s get this wrapped.
Conclusion
Frozenheim meets the status quo for what you would expect from an RTS game. Where it excels is in its gameplay balance and how much control it gives you to create your gameplay path. It falls short in story cohesiveness and the occasional buggy controls.
