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Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Like I said, Valheim is certainly a good game and definitely worth $20. I've just been trying to figure out what is "hooking" people to a game that has already been done 100 times prior, especially when some of those games handle these systems even better(and some worse, obviously). To make an analogy, imagine WoW has been released, it's during TBC, DAoC is just past its peak perhaps, Warhammer Online is out, Ultima has seen its heyday already, FFXIV has just come out, and EQ finally releases - that's what Valheim feels like to me. Certainly a good game, certainly something that people can find fun in, but at the end of the day, it just feels like I've already done this game 1000x and I'm kind of left wondering why I'm not just playing WoW.
The progression system is probably the main reason. It's a fresh take on risk vs reward. It's got elements of base building, exploration, combat, masculinity and fantasy.
I think they designed it so you largely feel rewarded just leaving your base. Foraging and wood cutting and exploring all tickle those dopamine receptors in a unique way. Enemies tend to have more bark than bite and the game has a great dynamic where it leads you into wanting to take something new down, makes it seem just difficult enough and just rewarding enough to keep things interesting. The boats are pretty well done, they do require a little patience but only a surprisingly little. The gear progression is deceptively simple, but every ore has a relatively unique way of acquiring it rather than just spreading the same vein model around with slightly different colors like most games are doing. This means each tier is essentially a new game, a new puzzle to solve. The tiers really don't seem punitive either. After acquiring enough Bronze, i was a little dismayed imagining what I would have to do to get Iron but it was surprisingly fun in how they mixed things up.
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