Valheim -
It runs poorly on my system, hence I requested a refund. Since I have 4.3 hours of play time on it, not sure if I will get it or not. Since it was only $20, I'm not too butthurt if I don't.
It's an "OK but nothing special, not sure why Odin was 'pleased' game." Might be worth re-visiting in a year.
Note that nobody else had problems running it but for me it would often stutter if I swung the camera around too fast - even though my specs exceed recommended, drivers totally updated and all graphics turned off or to minimum.
I don't recommend it at this time.
Citadel Forged In Fire -
Not to be confused with 'Citadel' (which I may have done) here are some thoughts as I went through the game. These are thoughts after about an hour and a half of playing it. More will come as I am making notes as I go rather than trying for a shorter, more cohesive review.
The game is currently (at the time of writing) on sale for 16 USD. Neat. I'm guessing it might even be cheaper from other places than Steam but I've decided to only buy from steam, set an alarm for an hour and a half and if it rings and the game sucks, stop playing and request a refund immediately.
The download and installation are fast and smooth.
When I first spawned, it was in some sort of weird caldron thing. When I suddenly moved my POV it got 'stuttery'. After setting all the graphics down to minimum and making some adjustments on the NVIDIA control panel, it got rid of that. The graphics on this I'd rate as 'pretty cartoony' so if you're wanting GTA5 on up type graphics, this is not the game for you.
At first, I just ran out of the spawning area and started to pick shit (rocks, branches, everything) up. Later I discovered that I'd passed an area where a quest giver was. I've no idea if I missed him before, he spawned later or if he wasn't drawn in. I also did a very small amount of exploring and found some other guy who wanted me to kill boars on something labeled 'side quest'. Cool.
The crafting system is fairly messy as you have to scroll down through menus looking for shit. No 'search' function. It is pretty simple - click the button and it does stuff. Perhaps even in the background while you run around gathering more shit unless it's something that requires a work station. It's OK but feels a tad bit clunky. I'll probably eventually get use to it.
Lots of stuff to gather. The combat (at the 'I use a hatchet I made to beat them up' level) is simplistic and fairly crappy. Don't know if it gets better in the future but even naked aside from a hat I was wearing, the boars didn't do much damage to me.
Map is fairly simplistic and you can set one waypoint and get rid of it without trouble.
Map isn't very good as you can't scroll in more.
The quest giver is annoying as they like the 1980's 'slow scroll' of text.
Resources seem to respawn.
You CAN swim underwater (games that can't are shitty programming and lack of imagination in my opinion) though if you are holding a weapon the animation for swimming isn't good as you hold it still in front of you.
Death - you keep equipped stuff, drop everything in inventory though getting it back is not a problem. I have no idea if there is any other penalty.
There is an XP slider. I nudged mine up to x2 and levels seem to come frequently. The main purpose seems to be unlocking stuff you can spend points on to learn to build - floors, walls, cooking, etc. I may nudge it up again (it can go much, much higher) - not sure.
There is no 'pause' button in the game. Hitting ESC only brings up a menu - you can still be attacked, even if you're the only one playing.
They don't have any mods for it on steam, which I found rather depressing. If you're going to make a game, always give people the ability to mod it!
After talking to some other people in the group, I was a bit surprised how many people already owned this. They'd bought it when it first came out and played it for 50+ hours. Good sign there.
And yes - unlike many AAA gaming studios, they not only have fully remappable keys but have remembered to include 'autorun'. Which should be standard EVERYWHERE.
Verdict: Buy it - especially if it's on sale.
