While I’m stuck on mobile internet for a while I thought I might as well check out some mobile games. As is known they are not my favorite kinds of games. I however wanted to revisit these kinds of games and see what some of the bigger ones are like these days.
For a while now I’ve been wanting to play a game where I was some kind of Viking. With how many people are playing Viking Rise these days I thought I’d look into this city builder PvP game and see if it could hold any interest for me.
It became quite apparent within moments of playing this game that Viking Rise follows quite a blueprint setup that you would expect from a mobile game that has city building and PvP. It had quite a lot of similarities to mobile games I’ve played in the past such as Game of Thrones Winter is Coming among others.
While there were some key differences as well. It became quickly apparent it was just not going to be enough to keep me around from the issue I always see in these kinds of games. That is boosters and PvP. More on that in a bit.
When I first entered the game, it appeared to have a little bit of a story. As much as one can expect for a mobile game. I also noticed the map my kingdom is on was quite massive. It gave me high hopes this game was going to be quite different than what I’ve come to expect from certain kinds of mobile games.
It seemed quite like I had to hire some workers and manually tell them to do things. First, they were just picking food, stone, and wood off the ground. When I could not find any further of that they had to clear out some of the forest that was around me.
Before long I needed to raise a bigger army to take out a pack of evil creatures. Once they were defeated that would allow me to gather even more resources. These resources for the most part are, however, a one-time deal.
While sure I’d get some random quest here and again that would suddenly have a wood pile appear down the road from my kingdom. That I then could spend people out to gather. I would have to keep building my armies to take on even more challenging PvE content if I wanted to have enough resources to continue growing.
Along the way, there are also just an insane amount of short and easy quests that give rewards. I’ve found in my personal experience from playing games like these. That such rewards are just there to feed you into a binge of massive growth.
They give you boosters, free in-game gems, and most importantly lots of building resources like wood and food. Such easy comings however would not last forever. I’ve found games like these are designed to get you hooked on easy rewards, so you are spinning in your seat when you come up short on building materials and have to wait hours for a single building to finish.
I however knew that ahead of time. So instead of rushing to wait. I decided I’d be waiting regardless and held onto any premium currency and boosters that I got. If I was going to use a booster it would be in a way I could leverage.
Such as if I need to be offline for eight hours. I have a building that would take 6 hours, but my current building has an hour remaining before it finishes. So, I would use a booster to finish off the hour. Then I’d have a six-hour building construction while I was offline instead of an hour one. Optimizing my time away from the game the best I could.
At least the first few fights were fun and as expected easy. You send your army out and you get to watch them fight it while in the kingdom view. No need to control troops more than just sending them off.
The best part of games like these is you should never lose troops in PvE. You have some kind of infirmary which this game has. As long as you have enough beds in that infirmary you are not losing troops.
That can also be a double-edged sword. As I expected but did not get to experience it. At some point, you start struggling without paying to have enough beds to save all your units. You also tend to get suck saving the tier 1 units while your better tier 2 units end up getting killed off and lost.
That is also what makes the PvE element such as clearing the map in your kingdom so smart by the game developers to allow you to progress forward. Usually, in a game like this, I’d hold off on wasting materials on weaker units.
While there is the PvP element of this game. You have as expected a certain amount of time to build yourself up before anyone can attack. Which is why I usually don’t like to spend resources on troops before I need to. This game however is not the case.
I also built as soon as it was permitted a guild building. In games like these, you need to quickly get into a guild. Guild members can all press a button that speeds up the construction of buildings and even research.
So, the moment I got invited into one seemed to know what they were doing. I joined and relocated as ordered to the cluster they were forming. The leader seemed to be quite a bossy individual. I can only guess I joined around the time a new realm was made and I got in early enough that everyone was starting on fresh accounts.
I ended up trying this game out late at night. I assumed I got invited in because of how quickly I was seen leveling up and growing my power. After a couple of hours and things slowing down, I went to bed.
What I was not expecting was to be kicked out of the guild when I logged in the next morning. Even though I was still quite a few castle levels ahead of most of the guild without wasting my boosters to do. I was deemed to not be “inactive.”
I guess in a way it’s my fault for joining so late into the evening. It’s clear my schedule and the leaders were not going to be on the same page. I am, however, someone who could have adjusted their schedule and if that person had waited, they would have seen that.
I even hung out for a couple of days since I had a protective barrier without joining another guild just to show I was more than keeping up and even surpassing quite a few of their members. They would not re-invite me back in.
Perhaps all they wanted was a bunch of people they could feed on once the barriers around kingdoms dropped allowing them to be raided. Moving to the cluster cost me the free location that the game gives you. I also was too high of a level to use another and would have to spend money or the limit number of gems to pay to move again away and elsewhere.
Games like these can be quite brutal. Some people expect players to be on 24/7 playing and spending boatloads of money. I have no idea if that was what would end up being expected of every member of the guild I was invited into.
Final Thoughts
After a couple of days, I hit that time wall that a game like this you expect to hit. Where you need to start spending money to speed things up just so you can hurry up and wait some more to spend even more.
I was also not in a guild which put me back even further as not having any help from a guild. I also could not send my troops out on joint rallies with a guild to start taking things down needed resources to keep growing my kingdom.
While this game had a lot more to it than that. I just know a game like this is not any fun if you are trying to play it casually. You will be farmed into the ground by other players. While there are some resources and troop protection. Those have caps and you will deeply struggle with a giant target on your back when you can’t go above those.
Being in a guild is also quite important in games like these for events. Games like these want to reward the top guilds even if they are not all spenders to do well in those events with lots of resources and boosts. Setting anyone who is not in such a guild back so far you have no hopes of being anything other than being farmed and needing to pay for the protection of a bigger guild.
In the end, it will all just turn into massive PvP, backstabbing, and lots of players all moving to the next new realm in hopes things will be better for them this time around. I would not be shocked if the leader of the guild I was in plays on many realms and will be starting over in a few weeks if things don’t go well enough for him on the realm I was on.
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Viking Rise.
