Tribes of Midgard is one of the fist games that I have played in a while that really captured my attention and I ended up devoting a reasonable amount of time towards progressing in it. I think it is a wonderful and innovative take on gaming as it is kind of mashup of a lot of different styles of games. While I am not really a huge fan of anything rogue-like I have to admit that the genre is growing on me, especially once you understand that each new run isn't a "start from zero" situation because of the upgrades that you obtain along the way that can be applied to future runs. This first became evident to me in Hades which I originally hated but since it was simplistic enough, I stuck with it and now it is one of my favorite games in recent years.
Tribes of Midgard isn't like Hades in very many ways but it is in a couple that I detailed in my last post about the positives of Tribes.
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I had previously detailed what I consider to be the big positives of this game but indicated that it was by no means a perfect game. The game is addictive and you genuinely feel like getting better and exploring more of the world. It's just fun and it is easy enough that almost anyone can pick it up. However it has some very big flaws that make me throw up my hands after a 2 hours session and make me wonder "why the hell am i still playing this?" and I will try to detail those points here.
It's all about time management
A central factor in your runs on TOM is that you need to defend your keep or village. It is invaded every night by Helthings that come at all 3 of the doors that you have installed on it. For the first few nights you don't really need to worry about this because the NPC's are more than capable of doing this on their own with little or no damage done to the seed of Yggdrasil, which is a glowing magic tree in the center of your village that gives everyone life. If this tree/ seed is reduced to zero souls, the game is over.
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This is all fine and dandy and I like the concept but the problem is that if you want to progress in the game you have to explore further and further away from your village and you don't get a lot of warning about when you need to get back to town to help defend the seed. In the later parts of the game your NPC's are quite useless at defending the village on their own and you really need to get back there to help out or they will lose. It's frustrating that you have to stall your progress further in the map every single night to go back and defend. Many times I actually will forget what I was even doing on the outskirts of the map when I do finally make my way back there.
You MUST go back and fight after a certain amount of time passes. No matter how much you upgrade your defenses they will fall to the enemy if you are not there to help out with combat. This brings me to my next point.
Combat is a mad-button-mashing fest
There isn't a great deal of strategy when fighting in this game. Mostly you just stand somewhere and keep hitting the attack button and just accept the fact that you are going to get hit as well. If you kept up with your armor there isn't much chance of getting killed unless you stand inside of one of the larger enemy's area of effect spells and these are telegraphed and very easy to avoid.
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Here they come! now just stand in the middle of them and swing with reckless abandon
The combat is probably simplistic by design and I am actually one of those guys that doesn't like difficult fighting mechanics but this is just silly. Ranged attacks are really slow, so getting in there on the action is really the only choice that you have.
The Jotun battles are kind of stupid
Yeah yeah, if I was playing this the way it was meant to be played this would likely be different because there could be up to 10 of us bashing on this thing. I tend to play solo so that is not an option for me.
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Every now and then you will get a warning that a Jötunn is heading for your village. On a side note the tutorial doesn't even tell you what this means so you don't know what to make of it and it will probably destroy your village by the time you even realize it is there.
The idea is that once you are warned that this giant is heading towards your city, you run out to meet it before it can get that far and wear it down to almost no HP, then finish it off once it gets close to your gates. There isn't any incentive to defeat it as quickly as you possibly can because it takes it several days to arrive. When you do decide to go out there and find and kill it, this is where the really stupid and tedious part of the game begins.
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Especially early in the game, these guys pose VERY LITTLE threat as far as killing you is concerned because their attacks - and each of them have 3 or 4 - are extremely easy to avoid and the fact that an attempt at striking you is coming is telegraphed a long time before they do it. Even if they do hit you it doesn't do much damage.
So what is the problem? Well the problem is they have a massive HP pool and it takes ages to defeat them. Until you get enchanted weapons later on the game, you can expect to do 100-300 points of damage per swing. Do some quick math there and see that this guy has 44,000 HP.... and this is one of the earlier ones. They will have many many more HP later on.
So basically you are swinging away at this thing for 20 minutes with no real variety in your tactics. It's just swing swing swing, special attack 2-3 times, then he is casting and you dodge. Then you repeat this over and over again until you have it down to 3,000 HP or so. Then you just let your NPC's finish it off, which they will do easily.
Once again these battles take away from your ability to explore the world, and since the only way to finish the game is to explore the world, this senselessly time-consuming battle is just stupid. There was one time that I actually wore down both of my main melee weapons and now had to strike it with my bare fists. My thumb hurt by the end of the battle because I was simply hitting the attack button over, and over, and over, and over.
The game never ends
Just like in all Rogue-like games, there is no definitive ending. You just get tired of playing the game and then move on to something else.
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As you progress and gain levels you will gain access to starter kits and runes that make the start of your run easier and more productive, thereby allowing you the ability to start stockpiling your resources earlier and therefore being able to upgrade your two defense towers on each door to your keep. The game by it's very nature is going to eventually win though since the invaders become increasingly powerful as the days go by. There is a "main boss" of sorts that you is meant to be your ultimate objective, just just like killing your dad in Hades the game isn't over at that point, it simply gives you more XP and you start over and do it again.
This is where the "WTF am I playing this for" comes into play in my world. I'm doing the same thing over and over again and just like in other rogue-like games, you ability to have a good run likely depends a great deal of whether or not you just happen to come by items that you actually need in the procedurally generated maps and whether or not the RNG is working in your favor on that particular run.
Overall opinion
This game was quite fun for about 20 hours or so but then the pointlessness of it all kind of kicks in and I think most people will move on to something else once this happens. Once you have seen all the world has to offer it becomes a question of dumb luck as to whether or not you are going to find the pieces necessary to defeat the world. No amount of experience can help you in this endeavor since the world changes every playthrough.
I think it is fun for a little while but the tedium of certain aspects of the game are simply NOT FUN and that part of the game becomes an annoyance more than anything else. If you enjoy multiplayer games your experience is bound to be better than my own because as a co-op game there isn't going to be a lot of toxic "git gud" people out there since the game itself is rather simplistic.
Overall I think this game is not worth paying full price for but if you can get it at a discount it will be a decent time-sink for 20-30 hours. If that seems worth it to you, then I say go for it. I do hope that other devs will look at this game model, which is rather unique and build upon it for future titles that don't focus so much on time-limits.