Game Review: Jotun: Valhalla Edition (Switch)

Jotun: Valhalla Edition, developed by Thunder Lotus Games, is a delightful action game. Players take on the role of a Viking traversing the underworld on a mission to impress the gods. Along the way, she gains new skills and reveals her backstory, and concludes her journey with an appropriately epic showdown.

"Epic" is the perfect word for Jotun's hand-drawn visuals. The Viking, Thora, is consistently dwarfed by the enormous environs of the Norse afterlife. At certain points, the game pauses to slowly zoom in on something enormous and significant in the background, which would surely delight Norse mythology nerds. It's like playing through a comic book.

Thora can only succeed by finding runes to unleash and then defeat the Jotun, the giants of mythology. The levels to be explored are appropriately wild: one has Thora climbing Yggdrasil while a giant hawk swoops at her; another is the lava stage, with rock creatures throwing boulders that can then be sent against them or used to make bridges; and there are a couple of ice areas where Thora must be quick on her feet or else fail. There's also some easy puzzle solving involved, always a plus!

I failed to impress the gods multiple times. The controls and gameplay are straightforward, but battles reward the swift. There's a dedicated button for Thora's new skills, but players must very quickly decide which to use, scroll to it, and then deploy it. She also has basic moves like axe swings and jumping. Boss battles are incredibly fun because the Jotuns are HUGE and Thora is comically tiny in comparison, yet keeps earnestly hacking away.

The protagonist is a strength of the game. Voiced by an Icelander with the most Icelandic name ever, Thora is stoic, determined, and prime Valkyrie material. Through her intense voiceovers, we learn that her ignoble death is why she must seize her second chance to enter Valhalla. There's another narrator who guides Thora, but mostly he just kept telling me, "You have failed to impress the gods!" All dialogue is in Icelandic, further enhancing the Norse-ness of the enterprise. The narration works well with the very cinematic soundtrack, although the volume on the voices is a tad on the low side.

Overall, Jotun delivers on every gaming element, with its stunning visuals, excellent sound, clean gameplay, myth-inspired dungeons, solid heroine, and best of all, its slew of utterly fantastic and challenging Jotuns. The Valhalla Edition on the Switch lets Thora just wail on the bosses without the exploration and puzzle-solving, but be warned: the Jotuns got powered up, too. All the better to challenge you, my dears!

TL;DR: SO FUN! Highly recommended.

---

This post brought to you by hamburger!