Einar

When you take a look at triple-A productions like The Witcher , Mass Effect or Dark Souls, it becomes obvious that a huge team and a generous budget are needed to create such immersive worlds. Not only that, but the gameplay mechanics take a lot of work to be polished to a shine, especially in genres that encourage strategy and fast reflexes.

Einar is a third-person hack & slash that aims to provide players with a triple-A feel in terms of gameplay and graphics, while also providing them with a new setting. However, you don’t need much game time to notice how sketchy everything is, especially in terms of combat, animations and controls. Hence, even if the game sort of looks like a triple-A production, it needs a lot more work until it can also play like one.

The whole thing takes place in a tiny village inspired by the Norse mythology, and your character appears to be a stereotypical Viking with red hair and the usual axe and shield. Your goal is to explore the village in question and purge the infected villagers, which is achieved through brute force. Hence, the story is definitely not very memorable, but then again this is rarely important in a hack & slash.

Even if this is a PC title, you are urged to use a controller in order to have a pleasant experience. The combo-based combat system requires you to mix fast and strong attacks, as well as block incoming blows and even perform ranged attacks using some sort of magic bow. Unfortunately, the enemy hitboxes are very strange, so your character often makes killing blows while swinging his axe one foot behind the enemy. You can also get stuck if more than one enemy attacks you for some reason, and the blocking rarely works as intended as well.

The animations make this problem even more obvious, especially since the character has only a handful of moves that are set in stone, regardless of what happens on the screen. The controls are not helping either, although they are pretty responsive if you use a controller. Lastly, the game’s graphics are not bad, but the frame rate is terrible most of the time, even if the map is quite small.

In spite of all the problems, Einar is still a decent game, but it’s not even early access worthy at this point, gameplay-wise. Thus, it needs a lot more work and refining before players can have a good time with it, especially in the combat department and the gameplay mechanics in general.