You can attune to a Bifrost gate to respawn near where you want, making it a temporary respawn beacon until you choose another. I’m playing on the Normal difficulty, which is the second of four difficulties. Once I got back to there, I found my body, but all of the items I had on me were already there. Upon my resurrection, I was far away from where I last was. I first found this out when I cut down a tree, and it proceeded to fall onto me and kill me. The modes of traversal certainly ease any friction there would be about getting around.ĭeath seems somewhat inconsequential. The game does offer fast travel by Bifrost, which uses travel runes to specific points on the map. Aside from being on-foot, you can craft rafts (slow) or Viking boats (fast) to get around to the secluded islands or far away places. Truthfully, there’s nothing to see or do except fight or come across a treasure. You can walk or swim across all of it, and you get the feeling that’s what the designers want you to do. This also extends to the radial menu where you can configure it however you like, I found a nice balance of weapons and healing items to have at the ready. You can configure your skill bar to include active and passive skills based on what you invest into. Every area of the game has a level range, and is a good indicator of difficulty in comparison to your own. You’ll use weapons like swords, axes, spears, and even draugr arms. You have high mobility, so you can dodge or roll out of the way from most attacks you’re not able to defend against. There’s light and heavy attacks, a block, or parry. There’s nuance to the combat, but it’s a rather basic system. This is an RPG that doesn’t get in the way of letting you play the way you want. As you invest in skill points, you’ll never be committed in a way you can’t come back from, as the game allows you to respec anytime you want. But the rewards for aligning are great, and should definitely be considered. You can actually decline to align with anyone, and forge your own path. At a certain point, you’ll be asked to align with a God: Thor, Hel, or Odin. With each new level, you’ll be given skill and attribute points to be spent any way you like. Since this is an RPG, combat and quests begets experience that feeds into levels. Food is important, dropped by animals and enemies, can be cooked to slowly replenish health and keep stamina up. You’ll need to gather resources like wood, stone, iron, and more to not only craft weapons and armor, but help build up settlements that have been ravaged by bandits, trolls, and other Norse creatures. In terms of gameplay, this is an RPG mixed with some light survival elements. With nearly 100 hours of gameplay, there’s no shortage of things to do here. The developers say that some of the quests were inspired by the community during the rescue efforts of Studio 369. I’m not upset with that, because all of the quests are voiced, and the NPCs all have something interesting to say. But they mostly involve going to a location to kill someone or collect something, then going back to talk to the quest giver.
The side quests are rather straightforward, and open-ended in how you complete them. Stopping Loki is no easy feat, as you work through the different Ages in undoing Ragnarök, it’s an epic adventure not seen before. It’ll take you around 50 hours to see the main quests through. You can follow the main thread, or find the side quests to help those in need. The game then lets you loose to play the game as you see fit. Steeped in Norse mythology, you are guided by other Gods to reverse Loki’s damage to Midgard before it’s too late. Not just any apocalypse mind you, but Ragnarök, unleashed by the trickster Loki. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: you are a chosen warrior that’s been tasked with the overwhelming duty to stop an apocalypse from occurring. The result of this work is an experience that’s a flawed, yet highly engrossing game that I keep coming back to play.
In under a year, RUNE II has seen a massive overhaul and tons of improvements with a new vision and direction. RUNE II: Decapitation Edition serves as a “Definitive Edition” of RUNE II, and the tail end of a redemption arc for the developers at Studio 369 and publisher Ragnarok Game, who inherited a mess. Most games don’t get to make a second first impression, but RUNE II has such an opening. Everyone deserves a second chance, an opportunity to make things right.
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