Hnefatafl
This game the most fun I can find these days (coming from an experienced hobby chess player). Different rules and game types are available for the ancient Hnefatafl game that was played in the viking area before the advent of chess. Hnefatafl is an unbalanced game where the strategy for each side is very different. One side plays the defender and must escape with the king while the attackers rush to capture him. Because of this unbalance in the rules the computers are still no match for decent human players. Try for example the mode legacy berserk and you will find yourself at the top of the food chain in no time. The number of possible moves to play increases faster than in e.g. chess and go, making it hard to calculate and predict far ahead, especially for the larger boards. Because of this complexity and the unbalance in the rules it will take time for the computers to play well leaving the arena for us humans to compete using intuition to guide us. Maybe you have what it takes to come up with a new way to play and beat the current top ranked players?
– Real player with 912.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Historical Chess Games.
This appears to offer everything you need if you are interested in this ancient game, including all the main variants, the ability to customise the game and rules and create your own variants. online play, synchronization with with the mobile phone version, decent graphics and interface, graphical mods, and great developers who listen to feedback and strive to keep improving the game.
I suggested an interface/display change to make the game look better on my monitor and screen resolution, and with a day or two an update was released with the idea implemented. Fantastic!
– Real player with 117.4 hrs in game
Age of Viking Conquest
Very good game. Positive features include simple mechanics, aggressive and intelligent ai, graphics and gameplay that have a real feel of the period. It’s also excellent value, with lots of replayability - 3 very different scenarios, 3 playable factions in each, provincial set-ups that can be randomised, multiple unpredictable events. That combination of positives is rare. I’ve tried scores of games but I can only think of one other that achieves the balance - for about 7 times the price! There was an initial problem about freezes in more complex scenarios, but the dveloper has now overcome that with the current version. I’m still learning tricks and tactics to make me more successful, but the fierce ai means that I haven’t yet got to vinland, done a Canute on the British Isles or achieved the Rus feat of raiding into the Black Sea and the Caspian - all possible on this map.
– Real player with 35.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Historical PvE Games.
A very good game. It can be quite a challenge, especially when you dont know and cant see the enemies armies.
Got some good concepts in their, I like the spying / discovery aspect and feel that it makes you think about every move.
Only downside that I can see is the achievements dont seem to work. After I discovered Greenland and Vinland (then conquered) I didnt get the achievement for it, nor when I conquered the Atlantic. But hey, its just achievements and doesnt take away from the fun,
Well worth the £4.99
– Real player with 13.4 hrs in game
Expeditions: Viking
STORY
Good. Is well written and very immersive. I always wanted to know what is going to happen next. I don’t know if is historically accurate but it feels so. There is at least three ways to beat up the game: gaining wealth as trader, gaining support of a powerful ally or impose the Danish law (kill, burn and pillage) which gives you replayability. The only fantastic thing is the game so you won’t fight against orcs or elves and you won’t use magic missiles and fireballs. Your choices matter and will greatly influence the way you will walk the story, the factions attitude toward you and if some joinable characters will leave or not the party.
– Real player with 158.5 hrs in game
This is probably my favorite game of all times, and I’ll definitly be honest and say I have a bias towards Vikings and the setting, that’s not why it is my favorite game of all time(though it’s a great bonus, no question!). I’ll split things into sections to make it easier to read:
Map\Travel\Exploration
The game is an isometric turnbased RPG, you travel between locations on a world map, and in\on the locations you have a local area to run around in, Like in Fallout, Wasteland, etc. Unlike Fallout there are no random encounters, but instead random events(often bad, but sometimes good), where you are given some sort of decision to handle(when sailing it could be a companion falling off the boat, or a storm closing in etc, dependant on your ship and resources depends on the effects that’ll happen and what decisions are avalible).
– Real player with 130.1 hrs in game
Hammerheart
Great start to an early access game! The combat is fluid and exciting, and your tactical decisions make all the difference. I especially appreciate the research and effort into providing a historically accurate experience, all around (finally, Vikings done right!). The devs are very responsive to feedback, and have already implemented a couple of suggestions I had. The amount of content is pretty meager at the moment, but that is expected as the game is still very early in development, AFAIK.
– Real player with 95.4 hrs in game
Quality game. Developer has clearly paid a lot of attention and passion to it. A good thing to support, a developer who has put in a lot of time and effort into bringing about something like this. It is about as historically accurate as it can be, and the developer, Bennett, is reaching out to reenactors out in Europe for advice over the era. He seems rather knowledgeable on the subject, and I highly recommend that this game be purchased.
As it is still in development, I would like to include that it also has more room to grow even better. Will update this as the game updates.
– Real player with 35.6 hrs in game
Playing History: Vikings
Old school gameplay type with point and click action.
The game sells for cheap, but that doesn’t mean it’s one of those trashy games, sure this game has some rough edges and a bit of QOL could of made it more pretty and even smoother, but it’s totally playable and enjoyable, it has replay value which is great too. The game main function is to educate people about the Viking culture and you do this with Erik as he go about doing quests, meeting people, be they friends, enemies or merchants. You learn pretty much everything based on the viking culture from raiding enemies to living life as an actual viking. Some in game object s can be interacted with to offer up more information regarding specific topics.
– Real player with 13.7 hrs in game
Tags: Casual - Youth
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library
TLDR: Too stressful to worry about anachronism, poor historical representation while trying to enjoy what should be a laidback game.
Due to this being marketed as somewhat educational and since the work has not been put it to make it worthwhile in that manner, it makes it a dubious product for children. Best to play something that is fiction and inspired by historical events or play a proper historical game. This kind of akward in between with minigames with a primitive engine and childish tone just accomplishes nothing by trying to touch too many bases.
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game
A Total War Saga: THRONES OF BRITANNIA
I really enjoy the historical setting of this game, however Britannia is no where near as well crafted or as engaging as most of the other titles in the Total War collection. It is slow-paced and the battles are a cakewalk, even on Legendary difficulty. Look to Shogun II or Rome for a challenge. Marginal recommendation.
– Real player with 394.1 hrs in game
A nice little total war game. I appreciate that the game is quicker to play than standard total wars while keeping the main game play. You can play a campaign through in an evening when you know what you are doing (as oppose to a week with some other games in this series). I like to play this as a pallet cleanser between Total Warhammer campaigns. Their are a few annoying quirks with the game (like building guardposts makes your govenors disloyal) and some of the mechanics are not well explained, especialy around estates. But the key charm of this game is planning ahead and building effective armies from small pools of warriors, then leveraging those units to best effect using formations and combined arms tactics.
– Real player with 71.5 hrs in game
Ancestors Legacy
Overview:
Ancestor’s Legacy is a hybrid game of RTS and Real-Time Tactics(RTT) Gameplay, though it likes to side a bit more with the RTT genre.While this game has base building, it isn’t in the typical sense. The player is given a main base camp that has a build menu. After clicking the button to build a structure, the structure is built by peasants at a location predetermined by the game. The base camp is also not the main place the player will get resources. A variety of villages of different sizes are scattered around each map with resource points attached to them. Each faction has different specialties. Units can be leveled up and be given armor to increase their power. The squad limit is set at 10. The game uses a Rock-Paper-Scissors style system to make some armies great at defeating others, but each factions version of the army has their own individual stats. The graphics are phenomenal, the sound design is great, and the campaign is excellent.
– Real player with 35.8 hrs in game
These people nailed what a limited base building unit capped RTS should be. There are choke points, open fields, water that slows you as you move through it (including swamps), trap building, terrain elevations & weather effecting line of sight (and fire), special traits per unit per factions that still feels balanced.
It executes exceptionally well on limited base building RTS with unit creation and replenishment and rewards well thought out RTT gameplay as all units level and can be upgraded thus rewarding teamwork and unit specialization with the population cap, traps, and size of the map encouraging strategy whilst limiting unit production to the starting base and permitting unit replenishment at any captured (ally) village for a nominal fee.
– Real player with 33.4 hrs in game