I’ve heard some people say there are too many games these days based on Norse mythology. As MassivelyOP’s resident Norse myth nerd, I disagree; what we have is a glut of is games that lazily slap some Norse branding on without doing any actual research into the mythology.
I didn’t have a lot of hope that Kakao Games‘ recently launched mobile and PC MMORPG Odin: Valhalla Rising would reverse this trend, but a glance at the lore on the game’s official website did show what seemed to be a greater level of faithfulness than most, so I gave it a spin.
Just getting into the game proved harder than it should have been. Character creation is frequently disabled due to the servers being over-crowded, and even once I finally could make a character, I faced lengthy server queues. Based on community chatter and my own experiences, I found bots seem to be a leading cause for the over-crowding, which doesn’t inspire confidence.
There are four classes to choose from — priest, rogue, sorceress, and warrior — and they are gender-locked, with warrior as the only male option. I doubt this was a nod to authenticity, but to play devil’s advocate, you could argue this is faithful to ancient Norse culture, as it did have fairly clear gender roles. War was the role of men (as it has been in many cultures), and magic was considered a feminine practice.
But there are still plenty of exceptions in history and mythology. The Valkyries were female warriors, the goddesses Freyja and Skadi were both known for their skill in war, and archaeological evidence has proven the existence of flesh-and-blood shieldmaidens, as well. Meanwhile, Odin himself was a man who practiced magic, despite its womanly associations. There’s also no historical argument I can see for rogues being a female class.
I chose priest, as I thought it be fun to play a religious class that draws its inspiration from pagan faith rather than the Abrahamic themes used by similar classes in most games. In practice, I didn’t find this priest felt much different from standard priest classes, though I did see them summoning images of the World Tree in some trailers showing higher-level gameplay, so that’s cool.
Upon zoning in, I immediately recognized that Valhalla Rising was designed as a mobile game first. Auto-play is intended to be the primary way of interacting with the game, with the option to set all of your abilities and potions to auto-cast. However, you can also turn this stuff off and just play it like a normal MMO, though auto-pathing to turn in quests is hard to get away from as there’s no quest markers on the map I could see.
What did surprise me is that this is a traditional tab target MMO with auto-attack and everything. I just naturally assumed that a flashy Korean MMO released in 2025 would have action combat.
Probably the most unique mechanic of Valhalla Rising is its avatar system. Avatars are sort of like character skins, but they also have stats, and they determine your subclass, so you can change subclasses just by swapping out avatars. Confusingly, there are also purely cosmetic skins that can overwrite the appearance of your selected avatar.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that at least so far, the avatars and skins feel pretty authentically Norse-themed, and most are not overly sexualized for female characters, which feels like an unusual level of restraint from a Korean studio.
Avatars are mainly acquired through a gacha system, so I imagine that will be the focus of the game’s progression and monetization. It is important to note you can buy “pulls” with gold earned in-game, but of course you can also dump as much real world cash into avatars as you please.
A similar gacha system is also used to acquire mounts, and mounts do provide small stat boosts as well, so there’s an impetus to collect them beyond the cosmetic. Valhalla Rising offers both ground and flying mounts, but freeform flight doesn’t seem to be possible. Instead, flying mounts can be used only to glide short distances, and they serve as part of the animation for fast travel.
The game’s opening cinematic sets up the main story as what feels like a relatively faithful depiction of the myth of Ragnarok, the story that every Norse-inspired game seems to hyper-focus on.
You’ll not be jumping into epic struggles between gods off the bat, though. The early quests are so devoted to bog-standard MMO tropes it feels almost quaintly charming. You get in a shipwreck, lose your memory, and end up helping local farmers cull animals.
The main story quests are fully voiced (though quality is inconsistent at best), and I did find the NPC outfits and overall art design once again felt surprisingly faithful to ancient Norse culture. The only exception is the character faces, which have that overly polished look that all Korean games seem to have. The graphics are a bit dated, but still pleasant to look at, and the music is nice.
The welcoming environments and sheer Norse Vibes kept me humming along for a while. There are worse fates than cosplaying a Valkyrie while bonking goblins in a nice sunny field. The extremely classic MMORPG game design even felt pleasantly nostalgic for a time. But eventually the painfully generic quest design, toothless enemy mobs, and dull tab target combat left me struggling to find the motivation to continue.
The bottom line is that Odin: Valhalla Rising mostly feels like a generic temport, but it does seem to have put a surprising amount of effort into respectfully depicting its source material, so I’ll give it some credit for that. I don’t want to play more of it, but I’m also not offended by its very existence like I am by some other allegedly Norse-inspired games I could name.
