Recent reviews by Frenchy

basically a big, well performing mod. nobody asked for this and this isn't what the game needed. if you want to use the cool stuff this mod adds your run has to centre around the anomalies. my pawns were manufacturing ghouls before they knew what microelectronics were. good luck using any of the other DLC while your run centres around this mod. however, everything added is awesome and works really well but just doesn't fit into the overall game, especially if you have other DLCs or overhaul mods.

i've nearly completed the tutorial

Although marketed as a story driven game, what first excited me about Gunnhildr was when I read it was a first-person shooter rogue-lite, something I’d never seen executed well but certainly something I’d love to see executed well. Unfortunately, Gunnhildr doesn’t quite deliver… yet.

Story

Where Gunnhildr does deliver is the story, which is no surprise when the game is marketed as a “narrative shooter”. The story is arguable the most polished part of the game, there is a lot of interesting lore to unravel about Norse gods and the world of Gunnhildr. However, it’s how the game tells the story that is an issue. It is a complete overload of information. The number one rule of story telling is “show don’t tell”, Gunnhildr shows nothing and tells a lot.

Upon first finishing a level you are immediately confronted with an ear-wigging info dump of lore that bores the player. I found myself rushing from level to level just so I didn’t have to listen to Wikipedia entries be dictated to me. You could stand still after finishing a level, wait around doing nothing but listening to the narrator, but that seriously slows down the pace of what is a very intense game. It’s a shame because the narrator is fantastic, he’s funny and a perfect fit for the game, nevertheless, nobody plays games to stand around and listen to amateur stories – there’s audiobooks for that.

Most games avoid creating boredom like this by compartmentalizing the lore into data entries like books, notes or audio files. Gunnhildr would certainly improve if it changed the medium the story is relayed, as I think at this point in development creating cutscenes is not an option.

Gameplay

On a more positive note, the gun play of the game is solid. Each gun has a distinct feel and shooting enemies is a blast. There are a handful of weapon types that all play the same so you can always play the way you want to while only focusing on stat changes when comparing loot. This keeps the intense pace of the game going.

It’s the other parts of the gameplay that need drastic improvement. The grapple hook is scarcely used in the level design, thank god, because it just gets you stuck spamming spacebar as you try to release yourself. In addition, its only other use is to pull enemies closer, which is also pointless because the only time you would do this is to bring a stunned enemy towards you so you can perform a finisher. Grappling an enemy cancels their stun so you just bring them closer and watch as they shoot you in the face! On top of that, when you try to perform a finisher you often accidentally melee the enemy, waking them up to blast you right between the eyes before you can even dash away.

Speaking of the dash, it has potential but most levels don’t allow for big movements with it so you generally just spam it in a panicked frenzy when it’s time to cool your weapon.

Mechanics

Gunnhildr gives me such mixed feelings because the gameplay loop makes you want to keep playing but there seems no way to progress due to poor design choices. The rooms pace well, after defeating all the enemies of a level all you want to do is jump straight back into the action, but then you eventually get to the boss room. The boss room is just a complete spam of enemies most players stand no chance of defeating. Difficulty should never come from adding countless enemies to a room, that’s the whole reason why bosses exist. Boss fights should have bosses. The enemies in Gunnhildr are clearly designed for the smaller rooms and should be kept there.

Moreover, various other mechanics show the game is not designed for huge fights with dozens of enemies. Like for some reason the shield is nye on impossible to recharge whilst in a level, and once it runs out it may as well be game over. So, when in a boss room for a while it’s only inevitable that you’re shot down to no shield and thus become a one-hit-kill in a room rammed with enemies.

There are perks you can buy with “Halite” earned from your runs which may improve some of the flaws, however once you play the game for a few hours you realise the odds unfairly tower against you. This killed any more motivation for me to keep playing. I’m not alone in this either, most reviews on steam only have around 0.4-4 hours.

Also, the currency is shared, in-dungeon and out-of-dungeon, meaning the player is heavily discouraged from spending Halite while on their run.

In Conclusion

Ultimately, I feel Gunnhildr has released too early. The flaws in the currently game show real a lack of testing, it honestly feels like the developers haven’t even played their own game. I want to like this game, FPS rogue-lites are something rarely seen and Gunnhildr has the potential to become an incredible one. But releasing early like this may ruin any hope of that happening. In its current state the game will likely not draw in players and revenue.

Gunnhildr has focused on the wrong things, the story is incredibly polished but the gameplay is not. I hope to check it out again in a year or so and see an actual game as oppose to a prototype.

Value: £0.00 – right now Gunnhildr is a demo – a prototype not worth anyone’s time or money. Hopefully that can change.

If you would like to see more of my reviews, check me out on PowerSpike Games.

Probably the funniest community I've seen in a game

The game is great:
-Nice graphics
-Good shooting mechanics (although difficult as you are a one hit kill)
-Fun to squad up with friends
-Shows a realistic representation of what WW1 was like

However it suffers from two faults:
-The progession system, really useless and annoying with no real purpose other than
to make you worse than everyone else and make you keep playing the game
-The biggest fault: the community, it's dead hardly anyone actually plays this game
which makes having a fun large scale battle impossible, the games I was in had about
four people either side making it very boring and not very fun in any which is why I
have to down vote this game.

"Mods are illegal" go fun yourself

Can't even find a game - IGN 10/10
There's no actually way of queueing for a game you have to press ready every time, after pressing it for like 30 minutes straight never managed to get into a game - awful developer choice

Awful optimisation, gameplay is generic and boring and you pay money to get advantages in game

Awful game with awful devs, don't buy

Would be good as a free2play but the fact that you have to pay for it and there is an overwhelming amount of DLC that locks away a lot of the game makes this game bad