Tyr: Chains of Valhalla is a unique game that we’ve seen before many times. Sound confusing? It is. Tyr is loosely based on Norse mythology and old-school run ‘n gun games. It uses themes that we’ve all seen before hundreds of times, both in terms of gameplay and storyline, but combines them in a rather different manner. Ennui Studios convey this very clearly on the site for the game, and the concept is interesting.
Tyr is essentially a cyberpunk reimagining of Norse mythology by way of Contra funded by Kickstarter. In other words, a side scrolling action gun game that focuses on Ragnarok, the Norse version of Armageddon. Sounds neat, right? Cyber-Loki? Check. Bad-ass Odin? Check. Modern cartoon-style animated cut-scenes? Check. Seems like it would be a pretty cool game, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, the concept of Tyr: Chains of Valhalla is significantly better than the game itself. The introduction is entrancing, and then gameplay begins and you immediately realize a terrible mistake has been made and that anyone who had anything to do with gameplay or playtesting should be both fired and blacklisted. Tyr is hard. We’re talking soul-crushingly difficult. You could take a break to play Dark Souls III and it would be easier than this game.
When you begin Tyr, even the introductory level is ridiculously unforgiving. You’ll die. A lot. And it’s incredibly frustrating partly because the controls are just imprecise enough that you repeatedly make the same mistakes even though you know they’re coming since all the enemies are pre-set and not randomized. It’s also infuriating because the enemy placement and fire rates are so obviously sadistic that it’s impossible to miss. Tyr is designed for rote memorization and repetition ad nauseum. The only way to play the game is to just grind over and over hoping you’ll make every single jump and shot because you only have three points on your life bar and you’re running a massive gauntlet of enemies against a timer. The placement is such that you can either dive into frantic close quarters gun combat and attempt to fire between jumps until lesser enemies die, or simply stand at the edge of the screen and fire at enemies you can mysteriously hit offscreen so you don’t have to fight them at all.
The sheer scale of bad design choices in this game is staggering. The ability to shoot preset enemies offscreen is ludicrous in a precision platformer. Also ridiculous are the number of hits most enemies take, easily triple what they should. Every single enemy is a tedious dodging firefight that has no purpose other than to delay you, like Mega Man but more crude. At least in Mega Man, placement is fair and the enemies are neat. Not so in Tyr, where most of the character sprites are too far away to enjoy and you’re too busy dodging bullets for it to matter anyway. And if you manage to furiously grind your way to a boss? Good luck beating them. Quite literally, nothing is ever easy.
On top of the insane difficulty level created by poor design, the controls are rough at best. Your character is very slightly floating, leading to a number of jumping issues, and you have to jump a lot. It’s hard to time jumps into enemy fire patterns for one. It’s also hard to jump over pits and electric fences, both a necessity in this badly structured game. Dying from enemies is one thing, but dying from repeated accidental contact with electric fences that you knew were there is just rage-inducing. Add in that low health bar and infrequent places to heal and you’ve created a recipe for disaster.
Speaking of Tyr’s mechanics, a fair amount of the game is lifted in part or completely from other games. Level selection is straight out of Mega Man for one. And picking a different stage definitely doesn’t make the game easier, it just means you see parts of other levels before you rage quit them. The color based weapon selection system seems like it’s ripped from Soukyugurentai (aka Terra Diver) with your options of Red, Green, and Blue. However, it’s nowhere near as elegant as Soukyugurentai, being as it’s difficult to change weapon colors on the fly and instead of having to remember which enemies are affected by which colors, you simply match your gun color to the weird floating icon above every enemy and then shoot, doing something like triple damage with every shot. The platform style is blatantly Contra-like, as are your weapon options and the way you lose your weapon upon a single hit. Sadly, Try is nowhere near as accurate as Contra in terms of controls and doesn’t throw any real popcorn enemies at you. Oh, and your gun can’t shoot diagonally even though the enemies can. That’s convenient.
If you manage to make it to a boss in any of the levels, even after 50 or more deaths, you’re doing good. Deaths don’t really count against you, so there’s that, but making it through a level doesn’t make you more powerful either, and the enemy boss patterns are pretty nasty. Expect more of the same with giant enemies, undodgeable attacks and a general lack of caring for the substance of the gaming experience. By the time you have gotten anywhere in the game, you don’t really care what is happening, pay attention to the storyline, or honestly even want to play anymore. Oh, and Ragnarok doesn’t seem to be about the world ending by being slowly drowned underwater either, so if you’re a fan of Norse mythology and want to see it reimagined as cyberpunk, well, it’s not anywhere near as cool as that story could be if it were to be done differently. It’s hard to expect much from a company that can’t spell February correctly on their website on their own release date though.
And that’s the sad thing about Tyr: Chains of Valhalla. It’s a game that only a Viking would love. Grueling, unforgiving, and brutal, just like a real Viking. It just goes to show that no matter how good your idea is and whether people are willing to fund it, proof of concept is what vindicates you. Lots of things sound good on paper, and Tyr certainly does. But in practice, it’s an exercise in self-torture and better off being relegated to the forgotten wastes of gaming. It’s simply not worth playing, not fun, and not a good game, no matter how you look at it. Even on sale, this is a game to avoid. Unless you want to torture yourself, break your Switch controller, and not have fun doing it, don’t buy Tyr: Chains of Valhalla. Just move along and find something good like the Gunvolt franchise or the new Blaster Master remake. You’ll thank me.
This review was written based on a digital copy of Tyr: Chains of Valhalla provided by the publisher and played on a Nintendo Switch both docked and undocked. Tyr is available for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.