Frozenheim - strategy for several evenings
Hello, Scandinavian Warriors!
Tonight, our drakkar will sail to the shores of a game called Frozenheim, a strategy title created by Paranoid Interactive in 2022. Grab your warm cloaks, a pint of ale, and your battle axes—we’re diving into this Viking saga!
Good, But Not Enough
I spent a few evenings playing Frozenheim while searching for a good strategy game to replace Stronghold and Heroes on my PC. I came across Frozenheim in a Steam bundle, so I figured, why not? After all, it was a free addition to my library. Once installed, I was ready to plunge into the Viking world, expecting to slay Christians, raid cities, and drink firewater with beautiful women in the Konung's hall. But instead, this game is focused on civil wars within Viking kingdoms.
Frozenheim - Long Yarl's house.
You essentially play as one faction, with slight variations based on which "Way" you choose—magic, aggression, resource gathering, or defensive play. Each way gives you a unique hero, one type of special warrior, and a couple of specific buildings, like a barn. That’s about the extent of your customization, and for those expecting diverse Viking societies, the game feels a bit… sparse.
Classic Gameplay with Some Twists
Gameplay is quite standard: you start with your main building, construct production facilities to gather resources like wood, stone, iron, skins, food, and the special Viking resource—beer. To keep everything running, you'll need free workers. You increase your population by building housing and boosting happiness, which helps them breed faster. You can also build social structures to keep your community content and reduce discontent. At the training camp, you recruit units, and at the hero's hall, you can hire unique commanders. If there’s water on the map, you can build a harbor and create your own fleet.
It sounds familiar, but there are some interesting mechanics here. Almost every production building requires an area where resources can be harvested. For example, lumberjacks need forests, and hunters need deer or boars for food. Resources are limited, so you can’t stay in one spot forever. Additionally, your town hall requires workers to transport resources from the gathering points to your main building. In my first game, I forgot this detail and lost simply because no one was delivering resources!
Frozenheim - Upgrade your warriors with help of your blacksmith.
The game also features seasonal changes. Winters can be brutal, slowing your units as they trudge through the snow, and many food production buildings stop working entirely. So, it's crucial to stockpile food during the spring and autumn. The seasons are animated well and come with various weather effects that can either help or hinder your progress. This settlement management system is interesting and, in some ways, innovative. For this, I’d give the game a thumbs-up.
Combat: Disappointing
However, the combat is where the game falls flat. On the one hand, you can strengthen your troops through armories and blacksmiths, which offer passive bonuses like improved melee and ranged combat, defense, and movement speed. These upgrades cost resources but provide decent benefits. You can also use the research center to unlock buffs like fire arrows for archers and towers.
As your troops fight, they gain experience and level up, with a maximum level of five for regular units and 15 for heroes. Heroes can earn skill points to boost passive stats like damage, health, and movement speed, or to unlock active skills. But even at higher levels, heroes don’t feel particularly overpowered. Two packs of archers and one pack of axemen can easily take down a hero. Heroes are useful alongside other troops, but overall, battles feel strange, dull, and sometimes illogical—like when two packs of tier-five axemen lose to three packs of tier-one axemen. The leveling system doesn’t seem to impact gameplay much. The lack of variety in unit types is another weak point, as you’ll encounter the same units in almost every battle.
Deathmatch: The Only Interesting Mode
The main goal of the deathmatch mode, the only game mode that really stands out, is to destroy all opponents' main buildings. I played on medium and hard difficulties, and while I experimented with different strategies, the AI felt weak. I could win 3v3 tag team matches in about an hour, even with my allies getting wiped out within the first 20 minutes. The AI is slow to relocate, gather resources, and produce more powerful units. It’s just a matter of time before you deplete the enemy’s resources and crush them with a counterstrike. War machines are expensive, and I didn’t feel they had much impact on the battlefield. Overall, matches can last from one to two hours, but honestly, I doubt many will have the patience to sit through the entire game.
Overall Feelings
Frozenheim is a classic strategy game with pretty graphics and interactive environments, but it struggles with keeping the player engaged. The zoom feature, which is necessary to manage your settlement, and the need to increase game speed to avoid falling asleep while gathering resources, are issues. The game offers a few interesting mechanics that I hadn’t seen before, or at least wasn't used to, but they only stay interesting for a few games before turning into a repetitive routine.
A short demonstration of the gameplay shows that Frozenheim is missing something—something charming like Stronghold, Warcraft, or the Guild series. It feels like this project lacks soul. It's hard to explain, but that’s how I feel about Frozenheim.
My biggest issue is the lack of different ways to for developing your city, create a unique strategy for every match and the constant resource shortages. Personally, I love gathering massive resources and building impregnable fortresses in these types of games. In Frozenheim, that’s almost impossible. Your fortress won’t look impressive, nor will it provide much protection.
In the end, if you manage to snag this game as part of a bundle or during a sale on Steam, it’s worth a few good evenings of play. But at full price, I wouldn’t recommend it—it’s simply not worth the 20 euros.
That’s all for today! Good evening, and I’ll see you next time with another game review! Skål!
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