Review: Griefhelm

Clearly inspired by 2014’s Nidhogg, Griefhelm is a more serious alternative created by Johnny Dale Lonack and published by Thorrnet Publishing. It is a medieval sword fighting game that has multiplayer! So dance around your friends or foes in battle, deflect their attacks, and try to go for the victory in this award-winning game that makes you feel like a true knight! Sounds good, right?

What we liked!

  • Controls: Griefhelm tells you as soon as you start that this game is made to be played with a controller/gamepad. I couldn’t agree more. When you start, it can be quite hard to walk with your left joystick and aim your sword with the right one, while pressing your button to attack. However, after playing for a while this will feel absolutely awesome. So don’t give up, even if you keep getting slaughtered. I haven’t played much of these games before but I was really amazed by how well this works. I have not seen anything go wrong with this. I thought there would be times where I would be: I was blocking that! But it has worked absolutely perfect for me. So I’m happily surprised about that part. I also had fun just jumping around like a bunny between fights. Yes, you can jump with your incredibly heavy armor, who would have thought. More about this in the what we didn’t like part. Disclaimer: If you do not own a controller/gamepad I would not recommend buying this game.
  • Music: When you start the game, don’t worry, your sound is working fine. The menu just doesn’t have music, just like almost all the maps you will play. You will hear wind, and the clashing of your sword and that is it. This ads to the feel of this game in my honest opinion. Some might need upbeat music to feel like there is stuff happening., but just the shear sound of metal hitting is so thrilling. Especially if you are playing 2v2. Can you imagine hearing your opponent hit your blocking sword, full well knowing that if you did not block that, you were dead. Then turning it around by stunning him, by hitting him in the head, and then hearing his scream as you pierce him with your sword!?
  • Game design: You literally walk the “Path” of a knight. You start on a map, with little dots on them. Every dot is a battle, waiting for you. You can choose where you want to start. Then the journey begins with all different kinds of rewards and game-modes. 2v2, horde, 1v1, “boss” fights. It’s all there. The rewards are also very nice. Some are just cosmetic, but mostly I picked either additional lives, or buffs I could use for future fights. You might think, why would you want lives back so badly? Well, when you lose all your lives, your journey ends. You lose all you have gained, and start over. But if you make it to the end, you keep everything for the next journey. I find this an awesome way of doing things.

Somewhere between

  • There weren’t any things I really had mixed feelings about. It was either like or dislike. To be honest, more like then dislike as you can see. I do, however, want to mention that on the Seam store page, I cannot find that this game is REALLY recommended with controller and I really think its important to know before you buy this game.

What we disliked

  • As I said before there was something I didn’t like about the jumping. I, myself, did not use this successfully and it has not been used against me either. But I’ve heard a lot of complaining about people jumping and attacking at the same time. This makes it hard to judge where the attack is coming from ( top mid or high attack). So, I sincerely hope they will either remove jumping all together, or remove the ability to jump and attack at the same time.

Rating:

90%