Developer: Noxfall Studios
Publisher: Noxfall Studios
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Nordic Ashes: Remnants of Corruption – Review
Slightly over a year ago, we reviewed Nordic Ashes: Survivors of Ragnarok, which was an amazing Survivors-like that managed to set itself apart from the endless horde of similar games that have been flooding the Steam storefront. We enjoyed the theme, the many available characters, and the interesting level-based format. Over the course of that year, a lot of new content has been added in the form of new stages, characters, and relics that spice up the gameplay even more. Now, developer and publisher Noxfall Studios has released its first (non-cosmetic) DLC for Nordic Ashes, namely Remnants of Corruption. This DLC is more than just some additional content for the base game, as it adds a completely new, separate mode and upgrade tree. We were happy to dive back into this Viking-inspired Survivors-like to see if the DLC offered more of the same or something unique. We’ll not dive into the basics of what Nordic Ashes is about in this DLC review, so we advise reading our original review by clicking here, if you don’t own the base game yet.
Instead of wading through the different realms of Norse mythology, you’ll instead find yourself at the base of a tower in the Remnants of Corruption DLC. You’ll have to play through the easy difficulty first and clear the first 15 floors to unlock higher difficulty settings. Higher difficulties allow you to tackle more floors before you reach the end. It’s a fairly basic format that works well within the Survivors-like genre. Every fifth floor, you’ll fight a boss, which is significantly harder to beat than the generic monsters. Instead of killing bosses and minions, you’ll have to survive a specific amount of time on each floor to progress to the next one. Many floors also have you choose between different options as to what your next floor will reward you with. This is entertaining by itself, and it makes you use the available characters differently than you’d use them in the base game.
It’s mainly the progression and the somewhat smaller gameplay scope that work against the DLC’s concept, if you’re used to the fast and explosive nature of the original game. In Remnants of Corruption, you’ll progress really slowly, often only being treated to one weapon upgrade per floor. Many of these upgrades are only of a common rarity, making it feel as if you’re barely getting any stronger. This does get old a lot quicker than dealing loads of damage or getting more bombastic splash effects for your attacks. The different floors are also tiny in size, so you’ll constantly just run in circles, rather than finding decent pathways to escape from your never-ending pursuers. The more powerful you become, the more corruption starts to spread. When you go up in corruption levels, you’ll meet even stronger foes that make survival more difficult.
All of the progress you made in Nordic Ashes: Survivors of Ragnarok will not be carried over to Remnants of Corruption. You’ll have a new ‘skill tree’ to work on here. The Corruption tree works a bit differently than the one in the base game, however. You’ll unlock more options the further you get into the tower. With every point you spend in the Corruption tree, you’ll also gain more corruption during your run. It’s a system that may grant you some passive upgrades to make your consecutive runs easier, but it will also make enemies tougher. While we understand the game not being too easy, we felt like the odds were constantly stacked against us, removing some of the aspects that made the base game a lot of fun. Don’t get us wrong, however, as we still enjoyed what was on offer, but it felt like a totally different experience altogether.
The biggest strength of the DLC might actually be the newest character, Lili. Her quirky arsenal of weapons and her hexes spice things up quite a bit. We played quite a few runs with her in the base game as well, and she’s loads of fun to play with. Even if you’re not a huge fan of the tower format, Lili is still a massive asset to the original game.
Conclusion
Even though Remnants of Corruption feels a bit rougher around the edges than the base game, we are quite certain that Noxfall Studios will be adding more and more content to the game to balance things out and provide players with a more pleasant experience. If we compare the content of the base game and what it has to offer now, the game has already doubled in size. Even so, the format of Remnants of Corruption felt slower and somewhat less impressive than the original game, probably due to the limited freedom in the tower’s level format and the slower progression curve. Does that mean it’s not enjoyable? Not really. We still had a blast playing through the tower, but we did find ourselves returning to the base game more often than we expected during this review. The latter might also be because we truly wanted to turn Lili into an overpowered abomination.
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