Beat while adjusting the difficulty between Easy and Insane. I started off on Hard and bumped it up to Insane after the prologue. I followed Tyr for shield use, and later invested into bows. I put 1 point into staves very early on to test if passive hp boosts worked on different weapon styles; it did not. I found the first stage to be brutally difficult; I really had to fight carefully and keep a careful eye on the cold meter. The game became far more manageable once I realized that I could manually save by walking to any inactive checkpoint flag, and that healing fountains respawned. Since fountains, checkpoints, level up altars and safe spots were clearly shown on the unexplored map, it gave a strategic element for how to clear the map. I was not able to beat the first boss after numerous tries, so I changed the difficulty to Easy. It seemed like there was no option for Normal; maybe it was mistakenly called Hard because it did seem like I had to select past Hard twice. I then re did the first stage as a hunt just to see what it was all about; just a way to farm xp and resources. By this time I had a bow and my combat style was to shoot until enemies got into melee, then switch to melee. I don't recall every single stage and boss, but the next time I had to lower the difficulty was at the troll witch boss because of her healing totems. It really felt like the game was not well balanced for the Insane difficulty mode. The regular enemies were just right, encouraging efficient use of abilities to drop them before they could do too much damage. The big tough enemies were ridiculous bullet sponges that hit way too hard to fight without kiting; they were a huge slog. Not only did Insane difficulty give them insane amounts of hp, but higher level enemies also took less damage, and these big guys were always multiple levels higher than me. The first troublesome enemies were the shield maidens, who had a shield to block attacks, moved fast and had a ranged attack. They were a challenge to kite, and it was shocking how many more powerful enemies moved far slower than the player. I hated the priests for their healing ability. I literally could not kill them if they were higher level than me, and even then it took an optimal cooldown rotation to burn them down before they could heal. The ice attack helped a lot by stunning them, but the best way to deal with them was the legendary sword Garm with its 4% chance to insta kill most enemies. Vorpal blade, oh yeah. I even used that into the end game for priests and ettins, despite my main weapon having like 300 higher dps. The worst enemies by far were the hooded giants with riders. Not only did they have dump truck loads of hp and armor, hit incredibly hard, and have a ranged attack, but they could heal themselves. What the fuck. They seemed to be immune to vorpal and the scattershot instant death, so I had to lower the difficulty to Easy each time.

I actually managed to beat most bosses on Insane, because I used a high defense regeneration build and could win via attrition as long as the boss could not heal and there was not too much unavoidable damage. I did manage to beat the second fight vs the troll witch on Insane; possibly because I could kill the healing totems fast enough and she stopped using them. The next time I had to lower the difficulty was in the woods to find Merlin because of the 4 minibosses. Not that I could not kill them, but they had to be fought in closed arenas with poison gas. Maybe I missed a safe spot but there was no way I could kill them on Insane before dying from the poison. Then the level bugged out when I put the difficulty back up to Insane for the boss; a checkpoint happened right after activating 1 of the 4 braziers, and it would not allow me to activate it upon loading. So I redid the entire stage on Easy, including the boss, who was not difficult. I grinded each trial of the gods 5 times for the skill points; on Easy of course and it was still a challenge. The most difficult one was Thor because the lighting damage zones HURT, and there was a miniboss near the end that could heal himself; I had to come back after a couple level ups to be able to dps through that healing. I very rarely used talismans. There were a few times on Easy where I used the bonus healing to focus on dps; on hooded giants, the self healing miniboss in Thor's trial, and the large group of troll shamen (I think that was also Thor's trial). On Insane, I used the bonus healing a couple times to avoid death. I never even tried the stunning and offensive talismans and am not sure if frequent use of talismans would have allowed me to get past those tough spots that made me lower the difficulty. By the end of the game I was level 26 and had to play the final 2 stages on Easy because I was underleveled. It was just as challenging as playing other levels on Insane as the enemies went up as high as level 32! The final boss was level 35 and was a dumb gimmick fight. It was braindead easy because his first form was slow and easily kited, while the gimmick form could not even do enough damage to counter my regeneration. It was just a boring and tedious fight, though I wonder how much of a pain it would be on Insane.

I spent my level up points to max armor, then started on hp towards the end. I hated the staggered level requirements for spending skill points because it made it a pain in the ass to figure out where to spend points. I should have been able to max each ability as long as I met the level requirement for the first point, especially given the resource costs for upgrading the level up altar to be able to get more than 1 point in a skill. I spent my points more or less evenly between shield and bow. I did not care much for critical hits, cooldown reduction, movement speed, bonus xp and exposure protection. Rather I focused my skill points on raw damage, hp and survival boosts. Since cooldowns were shared between weapons, I switched back and forth to use my favorite abilities. I never even learned the bow kick as I loved the shield's area fire attack. The long range X attack on the shield was much better than the poison arrow, but I did use both. The slow on the arrow made it decent for kiting while the wave hit more targets for more damage. For Y attack it was scattershot all the way; the shield slam was a waste of a point compared (unless I needed it to unlock the tree). I abused the hell out of the chance for instant death on scattershot; most of those late game giant bosses died from it. Then for B attack it was the shield barrier with area knockback and slow; really handy for bow kiting. The rain of arrows was only worth using if I was too far away, and I only put 1 point in. The last skill was the ice attack on the shield; freeze was great for bow kiting, or I could melee backstab for high damage. I never bothered to learn power shot so no idea how good it could be. It would definitely be useful for frost enemies. At the end I maxed out all the town upgrades and crafted a set of the highest quality Balheim gear. I put the highest tier attack speed rune in Garm for that sweet insta death action, and mid tier hp bonus in my armor. The rest of my gear was pretty meh; the magic boosts on gear in this game were underwhelming. My sword was blue with 3% damage boost, 9% dark damage and 2 rune slots that I did not use. My bow was green with a slight boost to crit chance and 9% lightning damage. Blue helm and green shield with crappy resist buffs. I crafted a green ring of regeneration to replace the grey one I used for much of the game, but the bonus was minor. The rest of my gear was found: blue healing charm with 12 regeneration and +800 hp, legendary belt of the great smiths with +25% armor and other minor stats I don't care about, blue totem with 8 regeneration and some other stats, and legendary Fafnir's armor. I was not kidding when I said I had a regeneration build. The bonuses on that armor were minor but the actual armor value was way higher than the best crafted armor; I always went for the highest armor value regardless of weight.

My character stands to improve on new game +. I did start it but I do not want to play it any time soon. This game was too much of a slog that dragged on and on; perhaps I should not have played on Insane. It is no Diablo 1 or 2 with legendary replayability, though I could see making a new character in the distant future to try out 2 other weapon types. The story and dialogue were competent but not really engaging. The Dark Souls inspired stamina, dodging and healing flasks made the higher difficulties a little more skill based, and I have never played an rpg with such a strategic emphasis on securing valuable objectives on the map. I am more neutral towards the exposure system. On one hand it was annoying to so frequently run back to safe spots, but on the other that contributed to the strategy for securing those safe spots. It was overall an enjoyable game with the only real bad element being certain enemy abilities that were unfair on higher difficultly.

7.0/10