GamerEscape

I have to admit to no small amount of surprise that I’m penning a review for Volgarr the Viking II, the source of which is twofold. Firstly, because its predecessor was a highly punishing, highly niche indie title that hooked its claws into me personally for its particular brand of arcade-style gameplay and required precision for progression. More than that, it’s a sequel that’s following nearly eleven years after the release of the 2013 original.

And now Volgarr is headed our way again in Volgarr the Viking II, an action platformer from Crazy Viking Studios and Digital Eclipse on August 6th, 2024 for PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Switch. Much like the first game, it’s an experience similar to the days of wasting your parents’ money at the arcade, bettering your understanding of every level and improving with each attempt. It even comes complete with radical heavy metal artwork, but is it still able to provide the same appeal in 2024?

The PC version was played for the purposes of this review.

Vying Volgarr

Volgarr the Viking II is a direct sequel to the 2013 original, and thus begins with an opening text crawl recapping the events of the previous game while building up to the plot of its own. After defeating Fafnir, Volgarr was granted the ability to return to Midgard to continue out his days, which seems to be going just fine until a reanimated skeleton bursts into a tavern and attacks the closest individual. After three other patrons take up their arms and leave to fight off the threat, Volgarr grabs his shield and sword to join in the fray once again.

Being frank, the story is a means to an end. It serves its purpose of giving the player a reason for what’s happening on the screen and there are developments that happen along the way, but it never quite reaches the point of being enough to motivate the player to press on in and of itself. Thankfully the gameplay picks up the slack there, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

There are multiple endings and they’re specifically tied to the number of continues a player has to use in a given playthrough, the best of which is only available to players who can best the entire game within one continue or less underneath their belt. This adds more variety to each playthrough, and it’s neat to be rewarded with different endings as you get better and better at clearing the game.

At the Arcade

Countless games have been made for the purpose of letting players indulge in power fantasies, allowing them to like a force of nature that can lay waste to anything and everything in their path. This is no less true for Volgarr the Viking II, but with one key difference: It isn’t even remotely willing to give you that feeling for free. Volgarr is strong, sure, but so are the hordes of enemies blocking his path, and it’s up to you to figure out how to best contend with them.

It’s a very punishing side scrolling platformer highly evocative of older arcade titles of yore. Think of Ghosts ‘n Goblins and Rastan—two games that the original Volgarr the Viking was compared to around its release—and you’ll have a good idea of what you’re in for. Deadly situations, unpredictable enemy behavior, precise platforming, and well-hidden secrets abound. Every obstacle feels intentionally placed in a way to cause friction with your decision making, and this design focus is the most interesting aspect of the game’s difficulty.

There’s a decent variety of enemies and different attack behaviors between them, with very little warning as to what kind of attack it’s going to be. You can probably assume that a stationary bird in the air will swoop down in an arc at you or drop directly downward, but you probably wouldn’t guess that same bird would explode on contact, and after the game over screen you know how to deal with it on your next go round. It isn’t always just dealing with enemies, though that is a large part of it. Traversing the stage itself, finding hidden paths, and figuring out how to reach them to earn a power up or treasure is always satisfying, especially when you had to pull off some tricky inputs and timing to get there safely.

Another prong of the difficulty is found in the controls, or more specifically, their heaviness. There’s a certain level of rigidity to most everything you can do in Volgarr the Viking II, and the weightiness of the animations means that once you decide to do something there’s very little you can do to stop it from playing out to completion; you’ll have to fully commit to find success. The double jump (which also serves as an attack around Volgarr) offers one of the biggest learning curves because of the commitment it requires not just via timing the attack and activating it at the right time to reach your destination, but also to use it as an offensive tool against fast-approaching enemies.

All this is to say trial and error is the meat and potatoes of the experience, but it’s fair enough, and the player is given freedom enough, to reward cautious play. You’ll still be dying over and over again regardless until you start to know each stage forwards and backwards, but with every minute you spend playing you can also feel yourself chipping away toward a higher level of proficiency, one death at a time.

A rather large deviation from the first game’s formula this time around is also the inclusion of optional actions the player can take to lessen certain elements of the default difficulty. Checkpoints are perhaps the biggest addition to the individual stages themselves, but the inclusion of “Undead Volgarr” offers the biggest ramifications to Volgarr the Viking II as a whole. After using a certain amount of continues, Volgarr will respawn with zombified flesh and can only be defeated by pitfalls. It locks you into the worst ending by default when you get to that point, but it’s great to have the option to progress if you’re wanting to carry on rather than start over from square one.

On the whole, these options take nothing away from the challenge of the game for those that want it while still opening things up to be more accessible for those who aren’t interested in the most intense challenges the game has to offer. If you aren’t interested in taking advantage of them, you can simply destroy the checkpoints for extra treasure, or back out and start a brand new playthrough to avoid Undead Volgarr in a similar fashion to the previous game. There’s also a practice mode, which is a very welcome addition for particularly tricky segments.

Sharper Norseman

I’ve mentioned the arcade-style appeal of Volgarr the Viking II several times so far, but it’s just as true for the game’s visuals as well. The overall aesthetic is more or less identical to the first title, but the pixel artwork is much crisper, with more fine details coming to the fore as a result. The animations are similarly improved, emphasizing the heaviness of the controls while playing out much more fluidly, and it’s always satisfying to reduce an enemy into a cartoonish mist of red and bones after dealing enough damage.

The levels themselves readily walk the line between having a lot of entertaining details to take in without distracting from the information the player needs to keep an eye on to survive. Backgrounds in particular have been significantly improved from Volgarr the Viking, with more styles of locales in general to stomp your way through.

Sonically, the sound effects are as chunky as the weighty animations they’re tied to, from the whooshing of the sword through the air during a double jump to the blocking of an attack off of Volgarr’s shield. Unfortunately, the backing soundtrack is only what I would describe as serviceable. It checks all the boxes of a fantasy action game and there are some neat decisions regarding instrumentation, but it tends to recede more into the background than I would have liked for a game that’s all about replayability.

Back to Valhalla

Volgarr the Viking II is straightforward, challenging, and addictive. Its levels and mechanics are sharply honed to allow players to perfect their usage of Volgarr’s limited toolkit while traversing stages that ask them to utilize it in a myriad of different ways. There’s more variety, more for the player to earn and discover, and perhaps most importantly, more options than ever for players to tailor the experience to a level of difficulty they’re more comfortable with.

Even with those concessions, however, Volgarr the Viking II’s appeal is still just as bespoke and specialized as it was in the 2013 original. It has a very particular audience in mind, and if you’re a part of said audience, you’ll have a great time improving through every death. And if you’re looking to lessen that challenge a smidge in order to see a decent chunk of the content without investing dozens of hours? The game is more than happy to provide you with options to do just that, making it more approachable than ever without sacrificing the challenge intrinsic to its success.

And the flaming sword power up is just as cool as ever.

~ Final Score: 8/10 ~

Review code provided by Digital Eclipse for PC. All images courtesy of Digital Eclipse.