BEWARE: This game is approximately 70% farming and crafting, and 30% PVE combat. If you are in the mood for constant slaughter and instant gratification, Niffelheim is probably not going to scratch your itch. On the other hand, if you enjoy grindy games and can deal with delayed gratification -- spending a lot of time gathering materials and crafting to eventually dominate strong enemies -- then this game can be very rewarding. This has been my experience with the game, which is the main reason why I’m rating it positively. Here’s some quick pros/cons:

Biggest PRO: This game is incredibly addictive. I forgot my problems for hours.

Biggest CON: This game is incredibly addictive. Where did my sleep hours go?

Other PROS: Easy quick controls, generous fast travel options, forgivable death penalties, reasonable loot economy relative to labor/crafting level, cool armor set bonuses, excellent aesthetics/atmosphere, good inventory management system

Other CONS: Some loot is visually very small and can be difficult to identify and collect, poor map viewing controls, absence of a recipe quick reference guide to use while traveling, somewhat boring combat system, slightly small carried inventory space

Some additional (maybe TL/DR) tips that will spare you some stress if you care to read:

- Prioritize cooking at the start of the game! These Vikings are VERY hungry and will consume a lot of food quickly. It will be important to maintain a constant supply of food for recovering your satiety points. Items used to recover HP are mostly important during combat, in my opinion, since your castle includes a throne where you can recover HP at any time, and there are other locations throughout the world where you can replenish HP during your travels.
- DO NOT HESITATE to use HP recovery items during combat. You will receive a moderate stat penalty for dying that can only be removed by a special recovery item, which is difficult to come by at the beginning of the game. If you die too much, you’ll get caught in a downward spiral and it will not be fun.
- All the chests are linked together – opening one chest means opening all chests. You can access materials stored in your chests automatically when you use crafting stations, so go ahead and deposit all your crafting materials in chests to free up carried inventory space – you can still craft with these items even though they are not in your carried inventory at the time. This makes inventory management easy, compared to other games that do not have this feature.
- Use portal scrolls to create shortcuts when you’re exploring dungeons and mines. It will save you a lot of time getting to where you want to be. Be careful, though – you can only have ONE active portal at a time, so you’ll have to commit to either mining for a while, or dungeon crawling for a while. After that, you’re starting back at the top again, for better or worse.