I’m not going to bury the lede here: I did not really enjoy what I played of Final Stand: Ragnarok during a press preview event last week.
That isn’t to say there is nothing there that I think the team at Unchained Entertainment, formerly City State Entertainment, can build upon, but as it stands right now, last week’s session might just be my final stand in Ragnarok.
For the uninitiated, Final Stand: Ragnarok is the first released title by Camelot Unchained developer Unchained Entertainment. A co-op looter slasher, Ragnarok throws teams of up to ten players against in the Norse afterlife itself and pits them against the ceaseless hordes of Hel. At its core, it’s a tower defense-style slasher, though there are plans to build out a Maze game mode and a battle royale-style arena.
Technically, it's been on Steam since 2021, when the Unchained team launched it into early access. It launches into...early access...again on March 14th, stating that its first release was instead "First Access." Confusing release conventions aside, it will be a buy-to-play title utilizing the same engine that the team is employing in its MMO project.
Donning the role of one of five champions, from the Scimitar and Shield-weilding Jalb al-Sulh Muqazi to the fire arrow-slinging Aella, each with their own distinct movesets, players will follow Lord Odin's instructions to defend the Realms from Hel, who is hell-bent on destroying the peace of the Gods, and eventually the Nine Worlds.
These heroes seem to loosely follow the standard Holy Trinity of Tank, Healer, and DPS, which means that team make up will matter, especially for those later rounds. Thankfully, you can have more than one of the same hero - which is useful for teams of ten players when there are only five to choose from.
It’s an interesting concept—taking warriors from various walks of life and tasking them with saving the various realms from destruction, Ragnarok upon them. It’s a setting I like—as someone obsessed with the Viking Age, Norse myth, and the Icelandic Sagas (and who may have streamed The Last Kingdom one too many times), the premise immediately grabbed me.
That said, the feeling didn’t last.
The Hordes of Hel
Final Stand: Ragnarok takes place in a stylized version of the Viking otherworld in the town of Odi, with the player taking the role of an Einherjar. Visually, the developers are going for a gritty, dark tone, albeit with a bit of whimsy.
As a result, the characters themselves pop against the darker landscape, feeling a bit cartoonish by comparison. This feeling of whimsy carries over into the actual dialogue itself, which Unchained Entertainment’s CEO Mark Jacobs says was designed not to take itself “too seriously.”
Right now, the voice acting is done by placeholder text-to-speech AI, and it’s noticeable. I’m not quite sure what to think, and I’m sure some will find it annoying, others will enjoy it - I’m a bit indifferent. My only hope is as FS: R moves through its early access period this will be replaced with quality voice-over to inject more life into the experience.
The main draw of Final Stand: Ragnarok, and indeed the spot that Jacobs seemed the most excited about, was the amount of enemies that can be supported on screen at one time. The Unchained Engine has a focus on performant, large-scale battles, whether they be player versus environment right now, or player versus player in the future.
As I jumped into my first match of the day and the hordes of Hel started to come at us, there certainly was a ton to contend with. At some points, there simply was a veritable sea of enemies in front of me, completely obscuring the horizon line with their bodies. It’s impressive when you consider Jacobs says that there is no culling going on—every single model on display is, in fact, being drawn in and given life by the engine.
Jacobs describes a situation in our press preview where we’ll see NPCs out at a distance. The CEO says he’s never seen a game render as “far out as we do, without culling.” Jacobs is adamant: when the team says there are a thousand NPCs in an area or on the screen, there are literally a thousand NPCs there.
Rather than manipulating NPC enemy numbers in waves, Jacobs said during the preview that they just send them all at once. And in my experience, that’s true. Hundreds of enemies surrounded me multiple times during my two game sessions, all seemingly bearing down on my team at once. There was no careful staggering or pathing to create less load on the engine or my machine—they were all swarming there.
In an interview after my sessions, Jacobs attributed the engine's ability to handle all this load to the team's focus on this exact requirement.
“It’s really simple, and it’s going to sound so trite, but it’s the truth. It’s what we focused on. We’ve had a lot of bright people, a lot of hardworking people. We’ve all been so focused on that. [G]oal number one was the engine [has] got to be able to support it. And we spent a lot of years in the beginning doing that.”
One thing that likely helps it stay performant is down to the graphics. Character models have some great detail, and the overall texture work looks clear, especially the stone paths of the town of Odin, but everything feels dated by today’s standards.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you - stylized graphics like this can be very attractive when done well, and there are some high notes here. The art style is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and at times it can look attractive. I particularly like the color palette, especially the sky - the starry night void looking down on the Einherjar doing battle felt perfectly on theme. It just doesn't look like a title that would be released in 2024. Instead, it feels visually like something out of the distant past.
Visual effects are one area in which I think it suffers. The lighting feels flat and dull overall, and while the VFX on hero skills are some of the more detailed effects Ragnarok has going for it, that, too, leaves a lot to be desired.
These things can be cleared up with improvements in Early Access as Final Stand: Ragnarok. However, combat is where I felt the upcoming looter-slasher suffered the most—and where I’m worried it can’t recover.
Uninspired Combat Is Uninspiring
For a game all about combat, Final Stand: Ragnarok’s combat was probably the spot I enjoyed the least. With both melee and ranged combat to work with, each hero excelling at one or the other, neither felt fun for me as I hacked and slashed my way through waves of identical enemies.
In my first match, I took up my spear as the seemingly Celtic-inspired Gwenllian. I rushed into the fray, eager to quench my spear’s leaf-blade’s lust for Hel’s spawn. However, as I bore down on my enemy, thrusting my spear in, I couldn’t tell clearly whether I was making contact.
It felt like I was cutting down air, as enemies simply seemed to ignore each spear thrust. There wasn’t any sense of connection, nor did enemies react realistically to each blow, simply falling where they stood when their invisible health bars were depleted.
Ranged combat doesn’t feel much better, though it’s easier to see if an attack connects, especially with Aella’s fire arrows. Yet, even with some of the more explosive skills, like Aella’s Firestorm ability, which sees an arrow explode on impact, it never seemed to deal much damage. Then again, there were no health bars to work with, so it was never quite clear how much damage, if any, I was doing overall.
Sure, there is a small flicker of light and a squelching sound effect, but it didn’t really add to the feeling that I was doing damage. As a result, it felt as though my weapon was passing through air, especially with melee, rather than a wall of enemies.
Alternatively, there is no real indication I was being damaged also, except for the slow draining of a health bar off to a corner of the screen. My character model didn’t seem to react realistically to any attacks, nor did we get any vignetting on the edges of the screen or anything to indicate battle damage.
As a result, there were times when I would be knocked down by an enemy, unaware that my health was low to begin with. There really needs to be more visual and audible feedback that you’re being hurt, especially as players are likely to be focused on the action in the middle of the screen, not at the bar on the side.
One skill I did like was Gwenllian's Call to Arms, which summons shade versions of the warrior to defend me. This was nice to use when the swarm got too heavy around me. When mixed with her Rally skill, which summons another spectral ally, it can create a powerful wall to push enemies back. When these synergies worked, combat felt like it had some potential. But it couldn't overcome its many, many shortcomings to keep me engaged overall.
Battling back and forth between towers, portals, and more to defend, I did feel like we were in a small tug-of-war between Odin and Hel. One moment, we’re fighting the denizens of Hel to defend the central tower of the town of Odi; the next, we’re tasked with defeating witch and lich enemies who are looking to corrupt health and mana fountains, taking their regenerative powers from us.
Heroes all have a Divine Barrier, or shield, that can be depleted in battle, with pick-ups dropping throughout each encounter to recharge it over time. Additionally, other items can be used throughout the fight and even saved in your inventory to use at the right moment. Some, like barriers, can help to funnel enemies into predictable paths to crush, so long as your teamwork is good. Others, such as a giant meat sandwich, can be used to quickly replenish health in the off chance you notice it’s low.
For The Horde(s of Hel)
The biggest issue with the combat, in my opinion, is down to the hordes of Hel. There just doesn’t seem to be any intelligence to them. It’s a swarm, nothing more.
Instead of feeling like I had to fight waves of enemies, forcing me to strategize and think on my toes, I found myself simply being overwhelmed by numbers alone. There was no strategy involved, nothing that got me or my team to think tactically to overcome the enemy. Rather, I found myself just pointing in a direction and hoping my spear connected. This swarm also meant my teammates were dying, a lot, and we’d have to cut a path through the bodies to attempt a revive. However, if you are too late, your teammate can die permanently for the rest of the match, so keeping each other on their feet is vital.
Enemy pathing also felt, to put it bluntly, dumb. They’d bunch up and play a deadly game of “follow the leader” instead of thinking tactically. It became easy at first to just kite the rivers of enemy bodies, throwing themselves upon the honed tip of my weapon, until the numbers ramped up to an overwhelming level.
I’m all for massive battles - I play Total War games on the regular. It’s these types of large-scale battles that made me a PC Gamer when I realized they were only possible (at the time) on the platform as a kid. But throwing enemies into the fray just for the sake of it stops being fun after a while and, at least for me, became quite tedious and uninspired. Hopefully, as the other game modes come online, this also evolves.
It also makes me worry about the state of combat in the upcoming MMORPG the team is working on, powered by this same engine, Camelot Unchained. Will we see more refined combat when it releases sometime in late 2025? I really hope so.
If the swarm could be controlled, made more intelligent, and indeed allow for some incredible strategic and tactical up-close and personal fights, then I think the team could really be on to something here. Instead of throwing thousands of enemies in one giant wave at once, all attempting to overwhelm with numbers, we can see organized NPC armies acting as a battle unit against a similarly arrayed player army, which excites me. The potential is there.
We’ve all read about the giant battles that players have in games like EVE Online where you have thousands of players on grid all at the same time, but the engine has to slow to a crawl to accommodate this. Well, my hope is that the Unchained Engine is capable of doing that without the need for any sort of trickery to make it happen. This is the first step towards that.
Jacobs was quick to temper expectations in our preview, telling the assembled press that this game never boasted it would be the next Fortnite or Destiny, rather they are hoping they’ve built a fun game that can be played with some friends for some quick fun.
Like every live service game nowadays, there will also be a battle pass-style system to help fund the game outside of its initial cost and a Season system—both of which will be expanded on during this Early Access period.
As a result, at least as it stands right now, Final Stand: Ragnarok just didn’t feel like an enjoyable game to me, and more like a glorified tech demo, eager to show off its tech to anyone willing to pay the price of admission. I left my session disappointed as I was eager to see this succeed, if not for its own sake, then for Camelot Unchained’s. Instead, I’m left knowing I’ve already made my final stand, and it wasn’t the glorious one I was hoping for. Yet the engine’s potential is there to make it better for the future.
