I had to go down the Thor path which apparently gives me a buff to using Hammers and then all of his side quests that are Thor specific involve me killing Draugr with Hammers. Hel serves as the third option and her tree I think is supposed to feel like the more stealthy path… but mostly it is sneak attacks and life drain abilities. Odin seems to be the more group support tree with things that aid your party members… which only really comes into play if you are playing through the game co-op with friends… that is apparently a viable option. Thor serves as the DPS path with lots of AOE abilities and things that increase your time in berserking mode. Upon reaching the summit you are given the opportunity to devote yourself to one of three gods of the realm. The thing is… the dungeon respawns it seems and you can keep going back into it at will as you continue to level. There were several rooms with boss encounters and a ton of chests along the way that provided copious amounts of loot. Clearing through it reminded me very much of Tamtara Deepcroft or something similar to that. However to get there you need to pass through this huge sprawling cave filled with various encounters. You venture forth into it in an attempt to reach some divine summit. What is interesting about this first town however is it also has a very MMO style dungeon in it. Out in the world there are a number of runestones which will also teach you new patterns expanding the relative power of the type of items that you can craft. Each new building you add however increases your access to crafting resources like the ability to craft healing items that come in extremely handy. Again you do a number of traditionally MMO quests and also build this village up until the cycle repeats itself with waves of NPCs attacking it. Your adventure sends you forth after some arcane relics that Heimdall needs, to the next village… one that worships him. The end result is somewhat of a base defense game where defensive towers aid you as you take down several waves of encounters and a boss encounter ultimately saving the village. Then before you move to the next village you are attacked by the forces of Loki who is trying to bring about Ragnarok. You chop down trees, break rocks for ore, and eventually complete a number of buildings while you other quests to learn how the basics of the game work. The game I am playing however feels very much like a single player MMORPG, where you are dropped on an island and do a number of quests for the NPCs where you help build the village back up to its former glory. From what I am reading there were no real quests or NPCs to guide you along your journey… just the death loop mechanic until you got strong enough to finish the game. If you died… and you were very likely to die… the loop would start over again with progression in your character saved as you continued to get stronger until eventually at some point you could defeat the final encounter of the game. When that timer hit zero, Ragnarok happened and you were sent to fight Loki. When you started the game you were thrust back into the land of the living with a timer ticking down in the upper corner of the screen.

The game that launched in November was apparently considerably different to what I am now playing. Since I am going through the “install all the games to play on the new rig” phase of new hardware, I stumbled upon this game in my library and thought to give it a shot. Based on what I am reading it was really not well received because the core loop of the gameplay was a bit flawed. I picked it up… and then promptly forgot about it and never actually played during the launch cycle last November.

I had never played the first game, or at least I don’t remember playing the first game but what I was seeing about the sequel looked pretty cool. So last winter I happened upon a game that looked interesting called Rune II, that was an epic games store exclusive. Hey Friends! There are times when it is actually a good thing that I have way too many games fighting for my attention.

Rune 2 forums