It mostly serves as a distraction where you can find useful new abilities for use in the boss fights. Exploring the varied environments can be interesting, and is often breathtaking, but where the game falters is in providing a compelling gameplay reason to navigate these areas. You explore the five areas inside Ginnungagap that each house a different jotun, enormous elemental giants that reside at the end of the areas you’ll be trekking through.
When she dies an inglorious death, she is cast into the void called Ginnungagap where she must again strive to prove herself, this time to the gods so that she can reach Valhalla and live up to the standards she feels she’s failed to meet. Hers is a journey for acceptance and validation, the former from her father as a proven warrior and the latter as the younger sister living in her brother’s shadow. You play as Thora, a woman whose life is defined by her father naming her for the god of thunder. Fighting and defeating the Jotun really helped keep the spirit of the game alive until the very end, and in the end - I was glad to have played and journeyed through Jotun: Valhalla Edition.Rarely is Thora this close, but her hand-drawn style is consistent with all the art in the game.
But even though some parts were dull and barren, I did enjoy the beautiful setting of the mythological regions created before me. The use of lively camera direction and beautiful backdrops had me in awe at parts, but ultimately I couldn’t help but feel disinterested throughout most of my playthrough - and the long loading times definitely did not help.
The design of Jotun Valhalla Edition is very simple, and overall I think the lack of dynamic gameplay hindered the experience I had with it. Otherwise the game seemed to run fantastic, and I didn’t really experience any frame rate drops. Each level has a very simple design, so exploring for the sparse health power ups wasn’t very enjoyable - especially when highlighted by the up to 15 seconds long loading times in between maps. While traveling between areas, a relatively long loading screen consistently shows up, which was really one of the biggest problems I had with the game. The simple gameplay of using light and charged attacks mixed in with knowing when to use the strong powers obtained along the way, works well in creating a fair fight, and feels satisfying when downing a foe 100 times your size. These fights can get pretty intense, but never feel too hard to overcome after a few tries. The definite highlights are when facing the Jotun, for here is when some good ol’ fashioned Boss patterns show up.
Playing sort of like a top-down Zelda, you will spend most of your time running through various environments, solving moderately easy puzzles, and occasionally having an enemy show up to attack. But all in all, the visuals stand out as one of the bigger pluses included in the game. Some artwork is more impressive than others however, and I felt that throughout the game everything felt a little inconsistent, partly due to the frequent amount of scaling characters and enemies that made some enemies look a bit goofy. When entering new areas I did feel a sense of wonder as the dynamic camera panned in and out, highlighting the depth and size of the areas I was journeying through. The background scenery and character animation, for the most part, is sublime.