A slice of Viking strategic combat right out of the heart of Scandinavia’s indie development scene, Bad North joins the likes of Element at the vanguard of a new wave of smart yet intrinsically accessible real-time strategy titles. With enough enemy variance to convince you you’re playing an interactive episode of the Vikings TV show, this endlessly entertaining sea of bite-size battles will teach you to fear - and love - the sound of the oncoming horde.
put simply, this game is fun !!!!
i switch the blood off ,great option
this game relaxes me a lot, and i ENJOY THIS MINIMALIST STRATEGY WAR GAME
i spent more than 200 hours, cant stop playing it in switch ps5 an xbox
NEED MORE GAMES LIKE THIS AND DLC
A truly fantastic game. The "5" to "7" reviews are mind boggling. Message to reviewers hating to restart the campaign: there is a menu option for level re-starts! lol. The difficulty curve is gradual, with some tough characters added in that can admittedly destroy your whole crew. That said, even not using level restarts, the game features checkpoints, so you can save after five to six levels or so. I finally bought it on sale in 2022, after hesitating because of the common 7/10 reviews. Nintendo life gave it a 9/10 and it's so deserved. Easy mode is too easy for me. I beat normal mode using level re-starts. That was incredibly fun and helped me get situated. Now I'm halfway through a perma-death run on Normal. It's so tense and exciting. Can not put this game down for three days straight now!
Bad North not only manages to bring the RTS genre to the consoles, but it does that in a surprisingly good way thanks to its minimalist philosophy and rewarding tactical combat system.
Bad North is, broadly speaking, a hard game to recommend even if I came out the other side enjoying it. The style and thoughtful minimalist reworking of the real-time strategy game is exemplary, but the unrelenting back half of the roguelike adventure can sour a good time. I can wholeheartedly recommend Bad North if you fall into either of these camps: someone who’s into a novel RTS twist on the good old-fashioned hard-as-hell roguelike or someone who can chill out to a brutal yet serene RTS that has some rough edges.
By taking a genre that thrives on its deep mechanics and attempting to streamline it into something anyone can pick up and play, we’re left with an experience that doesn’t wholly appeal to anybody.
Bad North has a lot of potential, but it wastes most of that by doubling down on simplicity over depth. In many rogue-lite games starting a new run is an exciting prospect, as you know your newly acquired player skill will carry you through, but the slower pace here makes it feel a lot more like having to do the hoovering again because someone ate a pastry with no regard for your nice clean carpet.
For an indie, this game just keeps dragging me in and making me want to play more. With it's maxed 3 minutes per island, this is a pickup and go which is literally defining the switch. With different classes to choose from and findable items, it's one of those games that you actually wanna play again, which is rare for most people. Overall just a beauty for a simple indie title.
Bad North is a fantastic little adventure that tells the story of a small group of warriors that are fighting to save the small islands they live on from invaders. Bad North has some beautiful art, solid music, and a very addicting gameplay formula. The game does fall short in some areas mostly in providing the player with more variety in customizing their units. Overall however the game is incredibly charming with a great simple combat that strategy game lovers will fall in love with.
The art style of Bad North is absolutely beautiful throughout the journey. The islands are randomly generated and always come out looking beautiful. The colors are soft and pop really well with the fog that surrounds the island. The further you get into the journey the more character the islands get. I remember thinking earlier on that I thought I had seen everything the islands had to offer until I landed on an island that had red grass and a huge cemetery throughout the island. Each time I landed on an island I was general looking forward to seeing its design and always took a bit before starting to admire the great layouts that they game created. Another piece of the islands that I really admired was how the weather could change the island. Rain and wind as well as thunderstorms give the islands even more character and beauty.
The music in the game compliments the art style and gameplay really well. The songs are intense but don't take away from the beautiful nature that these battles take place on.
The game makes the player protect the island from invaders that come in waves. The island is setup in a grid system similar to other strategy games but really analyzing the island and finding the best spots to hold make a huge difference in your ability to fight off the invaders. The main goal is to protect the houses and other buildings found on the island. Each house, depending on the size, provides the player with points that they can spend on upgrading the different platoons. The standard units can be upgraded to new classes like archers and infantry. The different classes have strengths and weaknesses that add to the strategic approach the player must take to each battle. The game is set to ramp the difficulty up as the player progresses like most rogue like titles. As you upgrade your units to archers the incoming waves also obtain archers.
Really learning how to use each unit and figure out where they will do well on each island creates a great deal of strategy to this game that seems quite simple at first glance. The developers also added skills and items that you can give to your platoons to create another interesting layer.
Bad North has many parts of the game that are absolutely lovely and make it a title that I would suggest strategy lovers should buy for their Switch. There are some places where the game struggles though. The combat feels simple enough to pick up but, can get a little tiresome with how forward it can be. The upgrade system provides a great layer to the combat but with only one branching choice on which class the platoon should be it feels a bit unfinished. I also feel like the game could benefit from an explanation of the journey. The story isn’t at all important to the game but, I think it would add to the narrative of the battles if we knew who these warriors were and why they are fighting. The bad parts of the game are small complaints when looking at the game as a whole and shouldn't sway anyone from picking up this fantastic title.
Bad North’s simple game play and beautiful world give a great adventure that pulls you back for more even after your first failure. There are small things that don’t feel fully fleshed out that hold the game back from being something truly great but, they don’t stop it from being a true joy to play through.
So the core mechanics of this game - the RTS vibe - are great but what's missing is a sense of progression. I know that this is supposed to be a roguelike and what comes with that is the frankly unnecessary difficulty, random stages and starting again but after an hour or so it's just doing the same thing over and over again. I like the game, a lot, however there is only so many times you can do essentially the same thing without any actual progress or development.
it just didnt keep me entertained. Visually its pretty nice. The pacing, controls and gameplay are just a bit off for me. Played for an hour and uninstalled
i dont think that it is a bad game, it is just too shallow? can we say that? ive read a destructoid article on bad north, and it is exaclty how i felt. its too shallow, too underdeveloped, too cheap? not enough meat on the bone. it should be for free or $5 perhaps imo. and i hope that those super positive reviews on metacritic are not fake accounts of the dev really because this game is no way that successful so far
SummaryBad North is a charming but brutal real-time tactics roguelite. Defend your idyllic island kingdom against a horde of Viking invaders, as you lead the desperate exodus of your people.