Asgard's Wrath in the test

"Dive into Norse mythology and become the next great Asgardian god yourself. Sharpen your blade in swordplay and take your fighting style to the next level. Solve puzzles and transform animals into war companions. Take the fight to Asgardian. A God-scale VR adventure awaits you."

This is how the game description for "Asgard's Wrath" reads in the Oculus Store. But is it really a God-adventure? There is good reason to believe so, but also a few small contradictions to this God ability. After a long stay in the myth world of , it is now time to take stock.

Not so long ago, Bethesda brought us "Skyrim" first on the PlayStation VR, a complete conversion of one of the greatest PC RPG adventures of all time: for virtual reality. A little later, the VR port also appeared for the PC. Although the huge computer role-playing game is already eight years old, it was of course a treat to suddenly rediscover the numerous dungeons and castle mazes from the complete 360-degree ergoperspective and not only wallow in nostalgia, but also operate arrows and swords with my hands. But when I play "Skyrim not had played it before, even then I would have noticed that it would have required quite a bit of additional optimisation for VR support: too many option paths, texts that were too long and overlapping dialogue-human scenarios marred the VR gaming experience. But the controls were also adapted one-to-one from the PC version on all platforms. A good year and a half later, "Asgard's Wrath", an action RPG specially developed for VR, has been celebrating its debut in the Oculus Store for a few weeks. The adventure occupies a good 125 gigabytes on our hard drive. According to the Oculus Store, it is even better to expect 165 GB of storage space.

Epic prelude

The makers of "Asgard's Wrath" seem to have set out to draw the player into the action from the very first scene. Similar to Sony's showpiece swashbuckler from "God of War", you are already exposed to a very spectacular ship battle in the intro scene, in which you take on giant squids and perform various evasive actions. The music also has a very orchestral, poldering quality.

But fortunately, "Asgard's Wrath" is not primarily about bogged-down gods and non-stop hack-and-slash combat, but of course primarily about acquiring numerous skills to survive in battle and uncover new paths. So you will also collect lots of items, combine a variety of enemy weapons, brew potions and conduct dialogues in the mythical northern saga world. But that's not all.

Much to discover

As usual for an RPG, you have to complete a series of tasks in a main quest story and interact with dialogue. The whole saga world is huge, so you can also beam around on an obligatory world map. Ultimately, it's about "levelling up" to use better armour and weapons to take down the zombie-like enemies with precise efficiency. Of course, it's also about getting ahead. For example, right at the beginning you will have to look for a bugle to drive away a mythical creature in front of an entrance gate to another world. But what makes "Asgard's Wrath" special is that over time you will also have more followers to support you in battle. To do this, you morph into a god figure and choose animals that become powerful war allies through your divine fingers. Defending and striking in virtual reality is so much fun that I once accidentally smashed a Valve Knuckles controller against a bookshelf. The enemies, however, are mostly not that difficult or do not seem to be blessed with the smartest AI.

All in all, there are about ten animal fighters who mutate into your loyal host and assist you with their virtues in battle and in overcoming the upcoming path obstacles on a one-to-one basis. Your daring companions will follow you wherever you go, fight for you and stand by your side even when you cannot pass a dicey spot. For example, if you didn't have armour to block flames before, the humanoid turtle will now do it with its shell. It's a similar story in later game environments. For example, if you need to move a platform upwards via a windmill, as soon as you have it, you call out to a bird-like creature that blows the wind into your engine.

Not quite balanced elements

The world of "Asgard's Wrath" is divided into four main regions, in which you will encounter various dungeons and larger villains. In addition, you can transform into a god figure once you have brought the emblems to the respective altars.

Mostly it's about clearing an obstacle out of the way, repairing a bridge or tracking down an animal that grows into a human-like fighter through your godly hands. However, the game element with the god's powers seems a little thin, because there is not much to do on the divine sphere. The dialogue is also not as deep as in "Skyrim". I also found the many training interruptions for basic combat functions annoying. In my opinion, the more demanding combat skills such as parrying attacks could have been shown as a training interlude and elementary actions such as sword slashes and throwing actions could have been explained during the exploration of the main game world.

Tested on Valve Index, Oculus Rift and Vive Cosmos

"Asgard's Wrath" is an Oculus title, but performed best in our test on the Valve Index via the Revive-Mod played. It's mainly the Valve Knuckles controllers that let you pick up items naturally thanks to finger tracking. This feels very intuitive when picking up weapons or reaching for a potion from the inventory menu. Otherwise, the controls are very similar to the Oculus Touch controllers and you will of course be able to play the adventure perfectly on the Oculus Rift or Rift S. You can increase the frame rate on the Valve Index - for even more enjoyment - but despite a GeForce GTX 2080 Ti, we had to struggle with occasional stability problems and crashes. Unfortunately, the Cosmos controllers are not yet supported, although the game can also be launched on the new Vive Cosmos. A pity. But what is not, can still become. It will also be exciting for players who perhaps only own an Oculus Quest. "Oculus Link" will be distributed to Quest users in November as a software update. After that, it will be possible to connect the VR glasses to a PC via a USB 3.0 cable in order to play PC VR games, provided that the PC hardware can keep up.