Tribes of Midgard Review (MFdinosaur)
This is a bizarre, bizarre case. The reason you're seeing this game everywhere, and the reason there are ANY positive reviews is that the ***design*** of this game is actually... weirdly brilliant. The ideas and gameplay loop/structure are a breakthrough that is genuinely ahead of their time. What's happened here is that a brilliant design team has been put in charge of making a game with what appears to be development entirely outsourced to Fiverr. Please don't buy this game. Let's not encourage this type of predatory business model on Steam.
If you look up the developer, "Norsfell Games" you'll find that they quickly purged their entire history from the internet when this game took off. However if you look hard enough, you'll find that they've existed since 2013, making standard money trap mobile games. Everything about this mess of a product has become clear after I finding this out.
Surprisingly, given their roots, the monetization model here is not a problem at all. There's microtransations, but they're (currently) totally inoffensive. The art (especially UI) also absolutely does have "that" look, but it doesn't matter. The real issue is that it's PAINFULLY obvious that this company has outsourced all art and development to one of those huge firms from Asia or Eastern Europe that churn out turn-and-burn mobile games as quickly as possible for companies in the western market.
The game is a janky, buggy mess. All of the movement, gathering, attack animations are clearly purchased stock that feel like placeholders in an alpha release. Combat is far from being fun in any way. The whole "fighting the jotun" thing we all saw videos of and wanted to buy the game for? Yeah that consists of standing at their feet tapping the attack button while occasionally rolling away from their three very, very slow attacks with completely random collision boxes. Genuinely the closest thing to applying skill or thoughtfulness is these fights is that to attack them, you have to be clipped inside their feet, and you build up an understanding for where their collision boxes are during various attack animations, so you can to roll out of their model without getting stuck.
There are several menus that break in the same way every time you interact with them. There are several ways to repeatably break your controls, softlocking the game for you. There is a "I'm stuck, kill me" button in the menu, and you will be pressing it often. No, it does not refund what you lose, and you still have to go back to where you were stuck to attempt get your gear.