Song of Iron Review

"By the Axe"

Campaign

November 4, 2021 at 10:25pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a single player experience that’s a few hours long, possibly shorter depending on how often you die. It’s very much Limbo like in its approach with a great sense of atmosphere and mystery, without necessarily a whole lot of execution in that regard. It is fairly gory and violent since you are this Viking of sorts going about slashing opponents that get in your way. The just of the story is that the love of your life has died, and now you need to get it together to save your people.

The journey will have you face off against other tribal forces, dangerous creatures and even the gods as you meet up to chat with Thor. There are some further mystical elements you’ll come across, but it’s best you discover those without looking into it too much as that will likely spoil things. There are minor collectible type aspects to gather, but it’s fairly straight forward and you’ll just be finished with it once you reach the ending of the game.

Gameplay

If you’ve played Limbo you’ll get the just of this one really easily. You’re sidescrolling in one direction with a constant push to move forwards. It is creative in that you really have to think about some situations. Do you keep fighting, or do you perhaps rush onwards? Nothing too complex, but it was interesting think about what the game wanted you to do. At the same time, that was somewhat frustrating in its confusion.

It doesn’t really tell you what’s going on, so you need to figure a lot out. Mix that with some bugs where things don’t work as expected and you’ll likely have to restart a checkpoint here or there in order to fix it. Speaking of checkpoints, those are brutal and you’ll often have to sit there listening to a stronger foe monologue. There are basic puzzles that are present, and some light abilities you’ll unlock for combat as you go forward. You’ll also find yourself taking on the odd boss battle here or there which was interesting.

The Xbox Achievements were also somewhat broken when I last played it, I defeated the goblin king though you’d never know! Combat is straight forward here, you mostly get whatever slashing weapon you pickup and a bow. You need to balance stamina, and the approach of enemies. At times your foes will be on different plains of existence which can be annoying. The visual aesthetic is decent, it’s almost minimalistic yet that style does work for this one quite effectively. It’s very atmospheric in general.

The Conclusion

Song of Iron has a really great sense of atmosphere to it, but it’s rather short and has some bugs here or there that makes the experience feel as though it lacks polish. It’s a really cool sort of game, quite stylistic which was neat. I liked what they were going for with it, but I felt that some aspects of the game could have expanded upon further.

The concepts behind the story were neat, but I also felt the story itself could have been conveyed further. It aims to provide a mystery, which was surprising yet at the same time it felt almost predictable that something weird was going to happen due to the structure of this game’s style. It’s cool, definitely one unique experience.

Read our Die for Valhalla Review
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Song of Iron Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Joe Winter

Rating Overall: 5.6