Volgarr the Viking II review

It’s fair to say that video games were more difficult thirty years ago than they are now. Whether it was to steal more of your hard-earned cash at an arcade or to artificially pad out the length of a shorter game, in those earlier years of gaming it was rarely easy to complete a game. Nowadays thanks to lovely accessibility and difficulty options, as well as the general taste for difficulty changing overall, games can be beaten by anyone or might not even have a failure state at all. Well if you miss the days of being punished for your mistakes and repeatedly dying then you’re in luck, Volgarr the Viking II is here to hurt your pride.

They don’t really make games more decidedly retro than Volgarr the Viking II, whether you’re looking at the shallow details like the lovely pixely visuals or the game’s whole philosophy. Inspired by games like Ghosts’ n Goblins, Volgarr the Viking is an action platformer where any even slightly wrong move will lead to your doom. It’ll take a whole lot of skill and repetition to beat even a single level of this game, and mastering your moveset is the first step on this journey.

Volgarr can jump and slash with his sword as you might expect, but that’s only part of his arsenal. His most important other attack is throwing a javelin, which not only has the ability to skewer zombies and skeletons but can be thrown into a wall to use as a platform. Volgarr can also double jump with an added spin to damage fools who get in his way, and has a handy but really tricky-to-use dodge roll to avoid nasties. It’ll take a long time for you to use all these helpful abilities in any sort of useful way, but eventually, it’ll happen.

Perhaps the most retro aspect of Volgarr the Viking is the platforming, which is fixed with no ability to move in midair once you’ve jumped. You likely already know if this is something you’ll enjoy or not, but it does mean you really have to both think and look before you leap.

Although your basic arsenal of moves is all you’ll need to succeed in Volgarr the Viking II with a bit of patience and repetition, you’ll manage better with a few power-ups. Each of these you collect gives you an additional power (like a shockwave when you stab your sword into the ground or a double damage flaming weapon) but they also give you an extra hit before you die. Taking damage makes you lose your most recent power-up, so if you’re able to gather enough of them you’ll essentially have a whole load of excess health to keep you going.

Each stage of Volgarr the Viking II adds a whole host of new traps and demons for you to learn how to survive. This may sound daunting, but there’s little more exhilarating than that moment when you realise you can make it to the goal with your incredible jumping and slashing skills and a bit of knowledge.

Now for the right sort of gamer, Volgarr the Viking II will be a new obsession, but I have to admit I had quite a few problems with it. The game explains very little, which is I believe a rather deliberate choice as a retro-style game but it’s a bit disappointing nonetheless. It took me ages to figure out what the power-ups were even doing to improve my abilities, and there’s a new adaptive difficulty feature called zombie mode which I thought was a bug and led me to restart my save file entirely. Not explaining these things to the player is frankly unacceptable, and made me enjoy the game much less.

The zombie mode is an interesting idea in theory, but in practice, I didn’t appreciate it even once I understood it. After using enough continues Volgarr becomes a zombie, which makes him immune to damage. He’s still able to die if he falls down a pit, but otherwise, you’ll never lose a power-up or die in combat. There’s no way to turn this off if you want to play the game as intended that I found, you just have to do better next playthrough. If this was an optional feature it’d be a great way to experience the game if you were struggling, but when you actually enjoy the combat and replaying boss fights only to have them be made trivial it’s just irritating.

Volgarr the Viking II is a throwback to the days when gaming was tougher, but thanks to a distinct lack of explanation of key mechanics my time playing it was as irritating as it was fun. The actual combat and platforming are wonderful for the most part (as is the feeling you get from mastering a level) but a few too many frustrating features meant that wasn’t enough.