Sons of Valhalla Review | Immortal Viking General Simulator

Sons of Valhalla is a 2D action strategy game that combines base building elements developed by Pixel Chest. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.

Sons of Valhalla Review Overview

What is Sons of Valhalla?

Sons of Valhalla is a side-scrolling and base-building strategy game combined. You play as Thorald Olavson, a Viking warrior who’s determined to take his revenge on the people who burned down his home, took his beloved, and escaped to England. Build an army of strong warriors, and with the aid of Odin himself, vanquish your enemies and conquer the lands of England.

Sons of Valhalla features:
 ⚫︎  2D side scrolling action combat with roguelike elements
 ⚫︎  Base-building and real-time strategy to control your army
 ⚫︎  Good unit variety, ranging from melee warriors, ranged archers, and siege machines
 ⚫︎  Fully voice acted dialogue in cutscenes
 ⚫︎  Climactic one-on-one boss battles

For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Sons of Valhalla's gameplay and story.

Sons of Valhalla
Steam	Epic	GoG

Sons of Valhalla Pros & Cons

Pros	Cons
Interesting 2D RTS Integration Good Unit Variety Simple to Understand Combat	Roguelike Elements Seem Forced Sword Sponge Enemies Clunky Army Control Big Army Frame Drops

Sons of Valhalla Overall

Sons of Valhalla is an ode to older 2D strategy games by combines it with quick side-scrolling combat and base-building strategy. It has a decent premise, a unique gameplay loop, and a visually pleasing look, but lacks more on the execution of its roguelike elements and pacing. It's a great game to explore the strategy genre, despite not being the most thought-provoking game out there.

Sons of Valhalla Story

Simply put, the game’s story is simply a rescue mission. The protagonist, Thorald Olavson, leads his Viking army to the lands of England to search for his abducted wife, Raya. What sets it apart is Odin’s involvement as Thorald was given part-immortality to fulfill his destiny as he died during his voyage in the stormy seas. While the motive of the main character is simple, why did an actual god get involved in the mix? This question kept me going for the rest of the game, and safe to say, I was not disappointed.

Sons of Valhalla Gameplay

The game combines 2D action side-scrolling combat with base-building elements to help you in your mission to conquer the lands of England. It’s not complicated to get started in the game, but it does take a while to finish a single level. Recruit troops, fight enemies, plunder resources, upgrade your army, then rinse and repeat. It’s a simple strategy game that is made interesting because you have direct involvement with your army as well as how you target the enemies through its combat. My biggest complaint would be that some buildings and bosses take a little too long to kill despite being on Normal difficulty.

Sons of Valhalla Visuals

The visuals are top-notch, and I would be hard-pressed to find someone who would dislike it even if they aren’t fans of pixel art. The animations flow well with the colorful tones of distinct backgrounds and models that make the Viking Age come to life. My only complaint is that I would much rather have the game’s UI be customizable or at least have the option to be enlarged as I find the text and icons a bit too small for my liking.

Sons of Valhalla Audio

The music in the game is serviceable, but where the audio truly shines, is the voice acting of the characters. All of the characters in the game are fully voice-acted in cutscenes, and the voice actors did a really good job of getting into their characters.

Sons of Valhalla Value for Money

For the price of $20, you’ll be getting a pretty lengthy campaign with interesting gameplay, great-looking visuals, and good music. To top it off, the game even has a horde mode after finishing the campaign, just so you can enjoy the gameplay to the fullest after experiencing the long ride.

Sons of Valhalla Review: Immortal Viking General Simulator

This game heavily reminded me of side-scrolling strategy games back when it was the craze in the browser flash game era. The biggest difference is that you’re personally involved in the fighting instead and letting your army follow your every order. It’s an interesting game that becomes more interactive when you get farther into the campaign as it starts to introduce more and more units for better army variety.

To start, the game’s story is pretty basic, it’s Mario-esque where you have to rescue your beloved in your rival’s castle. But, this changes with the direct involvement of the gods, with Odin himself, giving you his blessing to fulfill your destiny. It’s simple, straightforward, and even has you falling from Valhalla just to go back to reality when you end up dying in combat.

Other than the visuals being great and the audio being serviceable, there’s not much to say about these aspects as these are subjective to your own taste. Personally, I like the visuals a lot since the pixel art makes the background distinct, especially with how they colored the different models and environments. The audio is enhanced by the game’s voice acting, and I actually liked a lot of the performances by the different characters in the game, starting from the main character, all the way to the bosses that you’ll encounter.

The gameplay is the game’s main focus, as it’s a combination of a side-scroller action game and a base-building strategy game where you lead your Viking army by giving them orders and taking down the opposition by martial force. While the game is pretty tame at the start with a simple variety of melee and ranged soldiers with siege weaponry, it escalates when you start getting farther with the introduction of Shamans, Berserkers, and more.

The loop consists of you leading your group and plundering resources from the blood of your enemies, then upgrading your base and army through the collected resources. Sometimes, you’ll also be upgrading your own stats through the use of gold, but mostly you’ll be upgrading the army to better support your conquering practices.

In the unfortunate event that you run out of soldiers to help you in the level, then you’ll have to either wait for more supplies from the automatic resources that they give you per day, or take matters into your own hands and defeat enemies on your own. It’s not too difficult to handle things on your own, as I definitely took my time just collecting resources to upgrade before launching a full-scale invasion on an enemy town or camp.

The main problem I have with the loop is that it may take too long for you to actually get some ground, especially at the start. Siege weapons are very important to get early camps and have more buildings as the basic swordsmen and archers deal very little damage to watchtowers that will just house enemy archers and thin your army. Alongside this, the control scheme of ordering your army is kind of clunky and could definitely need some improvement.

An example of this is the healer unit, shamans, which are melee fighters as well. Ordering the melee units to attack would mean that shamans would also go into the front line and attempt to rout the enemy units, but they’ll only end up dying fast because they were made to be fragile as they can heal your army. To combat this, I opted to not get shamans at all and just strengthen my frontline with more soldiers. Of course, this may just be me not understanding the game’s inner workings of the command function, but I believe this could be done more easily and with way fewer inputs.

Lastly, the boss fights in the game also take a little too long. The game turns into a full-on side-scroll action RPG, where you’ll focus on dodging and learning enemy patterns and hitting them when you have the opportunity to do so. It feels like you deal little damage to them even when you hit critical parts with your own arrows, javelins, and such. Granted, the game doesn’t really penalize you that much for dying except for the fee of paying one measly Rune stone in Normal difficulty, but it still feels like you’re hitting them for too long.

Overall, the game is great even for people who don’t necessarily enjoy strategy games. The objective and execution of commanding an army in the game is simple enough that anyone can play it. Add the benefit of being able to influence the fight as an immortal Viking general, then you have yourself a game where you’re always the star and have the others make your light shine brighter.

Pros of Sons of Valhalla

Things Sons of Valhalla Got Right
Interesting 2D RTS Integration Good Unit Variety Simple to Understand Combat

Interesting 2D RTS Integration

The game allows you to create armies and even command each of them by separating each unit’s orders. Having the frontline build a wall while the backline focuses on eliminating the enemy force is a tactic that’s as old as time but proves to be one of the more effective ways to defeat your adversaries.

Good Unit Variety

There’s a sizable amount of different units to help you in your conquest of England. Ranging from the simple Shielded Swordsman to bolstering your frontline, the Archers to thin the enemy numbers, and siege machines to destroy buildings blocking your path. There are more units for you to support your mission like Shamans, Berserkers, and the like, but these are for you to discover.

Simple to Understand Combat

The combat is pretty simple. Other than being able to command your army, you can take it upon yourself to eliminate key targets rather than hanging back. To put it in perspective, you’re a hero unit in an RTS game, you tip the balance of the fight often. Using the simple mechanics of charged attacks and rolling to dodge, you have the ability to immediately zero-in on key targets like catapults, archers, and healers to change the outcome of the engagement.

Cons of Sons of Valhalla

Things That Sons of Valhalla Can Improve
Roguelike Elements Seem Forced Sword Sponge Enemies Clunky Army Control Big Army Frame Drops

Roguelike Elements Seem Forced

The game does have roguelike elements included. But other than stat bonuses for you and your party, it seems negligible for the most part, with the exception of the Divine Runes. The runes are normally stat boosts for you or your army to make the experience easier, and you end up sacrificing one of them if you ever die in combat. Personally, I think the game doesn’t really need this element as it can stand as an action-strategy game.

Sword-Sponge Enemies

Truth be told, I don’t have a problem with mini-bosses and certain armored enemies being hard to kill, but the watchtowers take a LONG time to destroy. Early in the missions, you’ll barely have any resources to take down watchtowers, which means it’s going to be a lot of back and forth until you get a good army. You’ll be faced with watchtowers that will need you to try and get a siege weapon immediately just so your progress doesn’t stall too long.

Clunky Army Control

In the later levels, you will be commanding large armies of different units. While you have the option to split the orders properly, it will take some time to get used to the controls of splitting your army properly. It probably would’ve helped if you could make control groups using the d-pad or several other binds instead of two menus to go through just to tell your overextended archers to retreat.

Big Army Frame Drops

While your army grows bigger, your FPS goes lower. The game seems to have performance issues when there are too many units on the screen. This can’t be avoided in a war simulation like this, but it may be alleviated by either lowering the graphics or waiting for the dev team to address performance issues.

Is Sons of Valhalla Worth It?

Absolutely, It’s Time to Conquer England

For the low price of $20, it offers a lengthy campaign with interesting gameplay along especially to those who have fun with simple base building strategy games. It’s not the most complex or even the strongest strategy game out there particularly because its limited to side scrolling, but it’s undeniably fun and engaging to command and lead your army to victory.

Digital Storefronts
Steam	Epic	GoG
$19.99

Sons of Valhalla FAQ

Will Sons of Valhalla Be Released On Consoles?

Not at the moment. But the devs have made it clear that they have plans to do so and will focus on the PC version first as it has the largest playerbase.

What are the System Requirements to play Sons of Valhalla?

The System Requirements are as follows:

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Sons of Valhalla Product Information

Title	SONS OF VALHALLA
Release Date	April 5, 2024
Developer	Pixel Chest
Publisher	Hooded Horse
Supported Platforms	PC(Steam)
Genre	Action, Strategy, RPG
Number of Players	1
Rating	IARC 16+
Official Website	Hooded Horse Official Twitter/X Account

Michael Gerra-Clarin

Fighting game nerd and avid FFXIV fan. He is currently retired from FFXIV until Dawntrail. He is actively playing anything he can get his hands on while having a massive backlog.