Most of my friends and associates know I am a Viking enthusiast. For that very reason I was very excited to get my hands on Viking Conquest when I found out about its eminent release. Long had I tried other vices to quench my Dark Age thirst, but no video game ever came close to capturing what it must have felt like to be a true Viking warrior. Games such as War of the Vikings came close, but nothing was ever truly authentic.
That would change, I knew, when I started up this game. I had played and truly enjoyed the original Mount and Blade, so coming into Warband wasn’t too hard. I knew the basics, and after refreshing my knowledge of the gameplay in Calradia, I decided to start up Viking Conquest, and see how I’d go. The graphics were improved. Anyone not sure of Viking Conquest’s release date may still place it in 2010, but it was clear that this game was newer than Warband when I got into it. The only thing that really bothered me was the fact that there were strange light-flashes between textures, and off in the distance. They got annoying very fast, and distracted from being immersed in the world. Light sources also shone quite brightly. Too brightly. Candles turned into balls of light, and any warrior wearing chainmail or a helmet also shone, as if someone had turned their whole body into a mini sun. I hope this will be fixed, as I fear my Norse warlord will develop serious eye problems if his whole host shines like this.
In terms of gameplay, the game was a lot harder than native Warband. This was a welcome change, as I felt native was very easy at the start, especially when recruiting warriors. In Viking Conquest, the player must first get permission from his lord to recruit men from the villages. To get permission, the player needs 150 renown, which is quite a bit if one doesn’t have an army to kill stuff with. This is only really difficult in free-play, which is similar to native in play style. You start without anything, and need to make a name for yourself amongst the warring factions. Story mode is easier. You follow a preset story, which leads you to be able to recruit warriors more or less off the bat. Buying weapons and armour is also tougher, because everything costs a ton. Swords cost so much that the player won’t have one until much later. Same goes for chainmail. This is, of course, completely historically accurate, as most warriors would never own a sword, let alone chainmail, as they did take a lot of skill and time to manufacture. Thus I completely support this choice in design, though it may turn off quite a few people, who may be used to swinging swords from the get-go in native Warband.
Mostly everyone who has been following this DLC for Warband since release will know it has a lot of bugs and crashes. Unfortunately, I too ran into these, and they haven’t been fixed for all the time I played. I did talk about the weird lighting before, but these were not the only bugs I found. Upon being taken down in a contest, my character’s hands and head would disappear. It’s not game-breaking, but quite weird. I also couldn’t change some settings when starting a new game, and details about my character wouldn’t appear during character creation, so I pretty much had to guess what every choice I made in creation meant. This also isn’t game breaking, but definitely way more disrupting than the light and my headless downed character. Then there were a variety of other hiccups with the game, where frame-rate dropped or NPC’s decided to walk into walls forever. I can survive those, but it would be much better if these things were fixed. I did experience crashes, which once cost me two hours’ worth of gameplay. This wasn’t completely my own fault, as I had saved but the game decided to delete the save, or rather, restore it to an older one. Highly irritating.
Nonetheless, I can recommend this game to all who are interested in Vikings and the Dark Ages, and are willing to face bugs and crashes. Those who can’t stand having to go back to a previous save because the game decided to not save properly, perhaps this won’t be your cup of tea until the creators decide to fix it. I can’t complain about the gameplay, rather I praise it for adding new features that make it feel very historical and real. Definitely worth the money when the bugs are gone, and perhaps even worth it while they are still not fixed.
Score: 72/100
+ New mechanics
+ Updated graphics
+Historically accurate
- Light and texture flashes
- Bugs and crashes