izigame.me

Let me start our just stating off with the fact that I love Hammerhelm. I played this game for 10 Hours straight last night and didn't even realize that it was morning until my wive's alarm went off. It engrossed me that much. I honestly can't recall the last time a game really and truly made me loose track of time that badly before. I mean sometimes I will lose a few hours, but not 10.
I decided to play Hammerhelm on the Steam Deck as it is green verified, so this review will only be from the point of view of someone playing from the Steam Deck as I haven't tried in on my gaming rig yet.
I tend to do Cons first on games that I like as there tend not to be as many so with that said:
Cons:
1) While the game is Steam Deck verified I did run into a couple minor issues that caused my death with menus that I accidentally toggled that I got stuck on in the heat of the battle with now way to back out of. Sometimes I would mange to get stuck on the inventory or worse the skill tree screen and no matter what I did, I was unable to back out to regain control of my character. Thus my character would die in battle, which isn't overall major in the game, however once I would respawn the screen would still be stuck there forcing me to Steam Menu and force close the program. Usually I would lose very little if any real progress but it was still an annoyance.
The first few times it happened I thought I was missing something being a N00B at the game, but by the fifth or sixth hour I concluded there had to be some bug in the game somewhere. That said, I haven't looked at the forums or other reviews so maybe there is some known issue or some work around I just haven't seen. All that said, as mentioned the games auto saves have always been pretty good.
2) I often would come across Dwarves just standing around in the middle of the forest not doing anything. I didn't really notice this until I had about twenty villagers but it seemed at around that point some of them just lost their mind as what to do. I checked their traits and they were not ones that had anything that would have caused them to be lazy so not sure what was causing that.
Those are the only two Cons that I have right off my head. So now on to the good stuff......
Pros:
1) I like the cartoonish graphics that are stylized much like World of Warcraft, or recently another game I reviewed Hydroneer. Not only do those type of graphics run well on lower powered devices, I just enjoy the style. It fits the mood perfectly.
2) I like that you don't personally build the buildings, that you just place the layout. There are enough games I play were I have to manually build the buildings so having the villagers do the work is nice. Having to manager who you want as a regular worker versus a skilled worker and assigned to what building is a fun task as well. It is a fun job micromanaging once you get over a dozen or more villagers you have to shuffle around.
3) Combat is okay, but could be better. The combat isn't really the big selling point of the game but you have to part-take of it. That said it gets old pretty quickly once you learn how to handle casters, and power hitters and juggle your potions. Unless you run into the getting stuck behind another screen you shouldn't really have issues with dying in the game even when outnumbered including with casters.
4) Storage never really becomes an issue once you have a blacksmith to make you a storage container.
5) The biggest thing at first is learning to balance food/beer/prettiness of the village while trying to maintain all the other aspects of the game. It seems at times like you are doomed but once you get the flow worked it out tends to go pretty easy.
6 ) Other than the one issue I mentioned in the Cons with getting locked behind other UI elements during combat, I didn't experence any other crashes and with the default video settings I maintained a steady 45-60 FPS. I only once or twice saw my FPS dip below 45 and even then I never recall it dipping below 40.
7) You will get a lot of quest from the villagers, but few if any have to be done in any particular order. So there is a lot of freedom when playing the game.
Once again, I lost 10 hours in one session and literately didn't know it was sun-up until my wife's alarm clock went off. I haven't done that in years, and I don't recall doing it on a non-4X game. When you get to my age (50+) you tend not to have the energy for all night game sessions you used to, so when a game comes along that gives you the energy to play it that long in one setting you take note. Congrats to the Developers.