RUNE II: Decapitation Edition is a viking action RPG, by developer Studio 369 and publisher Ragnarok Game, LLC, taking place in Norse mythological times. The story is very straightforward. Play as your own character, that you get to customize and name yourself, a dead warrior of old Norse times brought back to life by the Norse god Heimdall so that you can defeat Loki and his crew. The main plot is really just an excuse to get the game rolling. There are more characters and such that you will meet as you play, but all this sort of takes place behind everything regarding the gameplay, which is much more pronounced than the story is.
RUNE II: Decapitation Edition’s gameplay is the basket they put all the eggs into for this game. There’s a good amount that goes into the gameplay, but the biggest thing that everything else is going to revolve around is combat. There needs to be something said about the combat in that it feels a little off. It tries to have the style of combat where you can equip something in each hand. This leads to the popular style being a one handed weapon and a shield for blocking. It’s not only awkward to block attacks, but actually hitting enemies also doesn’t always connect and the animations for it are hard to hit, it just doesn’t feel comfortable.
Weirdly enough, everything related to combat outside of the actual combat is very nice to the player. Being able to select your style of combat based on weapons is always a good thing and always fun. They even give you a nice wheel to easily switch between your weapons even in combat. A lot of games don’t offer quality of life things like that so it is definitely noticed.
The RPG elements are the next big part of the game. There’s crafting, even more straightforward than the story. You collect the materials by breaking trees and rocks then when you get enough for the tool you need to craft you can go craft it. The next couple of RPG elements would be the runes, your class, and leveling up.
Runes work sort of like abilities; they give your character powers or buffs on a time limit. When you select a class, each one has its counterpart Norse god packaged with strengths and weaknesses of the class, it’s actually a really cool mechanic. Lastly is the leveling up system. As you level up, you gain more ability to assign special traits and aspects to your abilities to make them stronger.
Overall, RUNE II: Decapitation Edition takes the big idea of Viking RPG and runs with just about all the usual aspects of that: Ragnarok, one handed weapons vs two handed, light elements of magic in the form of runes. It doesn’t really try for anything new, and that is totally fine. Games are not bound to that expectation. However, when it comes to trying new things, I can at least applaud the attempt, RUNE II: Decapitation Edition is an example of not trying anything new as well as not getting much else very well done.
Check Out the Rune II: Decapitation Edition Trailer:
RUNE II: Decapitation Edition is now available on Steam for $29.99. and Epic Games Store.
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I'm a second-year student at Michigan State University and, I grew up mostly on Nintendo games, specifically GameCube and Wii. My favorite games growing up were Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion, Wario World and Super Smash Bros Melee. Nintendo was a huge part of my upbringing, but that did not prevent me from trying other consoles. I built my own PC for gaming when I was around 13 and that is where most of my gaming resides nowadays, I do however have a plethora of consoles because some games are meant to be played on a TV. My favorite Video games right now are the first Portal and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but that tends to be malleable.
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