In the month of October there’s an indie game festival that takes place in Austin, Texas called Fantastic Arcade. At Fantastic Arcade, indie developers from around the world gather to showcase their games in the set up of an 80’s/90’s arcade. Its a good event to attend if you’re looking for games that are more artsy, experimental and totally out there. I bring up Fantastic Arcade because its where I first played the original Nidhogg. Nidhogg is a fighting game by Messhof that has two players fighting with fencing swords. The object of the game is for either player to make it to the other side of the screen to win and be eaten by the NIdhogg. For a simple looking game with a simple concept that sounds, well simple, its pretty in-depth with it comes to its fast pace combat. That was back in 2010. Seven years later in 2017, the worm resurfaced on the PS4, Xbox One and PC in Nidhogg 2. A year later, it made its way to the Nintendo Switch, which is the version we are looking at in this review. How has Nidhogg changed in the past seven to eight years? Take up a sword and let’s find out.
Glory to the worm
New visuals- The first thing you will noticed about Nidhogg 2 are the new visuals. Gone are the simplistic 8-bit stick fighters and backgrounds. In their place are 16-bit highly detailed yet cartoony and grotesque fighters and background. And I mean grotesque in a good way. The levels are highly detailed with various locals that players fighting in. These range from a dinning room in a castle, an sewer system and beach to a night club and even inside a Nidhogg whaling airship. As for the fighters, in Nidhogg II players are able to customize their looks ranging from the color of their skin to individual body parts. Seeing fighters get sliced up and exploding when killed is a pretty satisfying time.
Revamped fighting system- The fighting system in Nidhogg was pretty simple yet in depth. Nidhogg 2 takes the fighting system from the first game and revamps it. In the first game players could only use rapiers, punches and kicks to attack each other. In Nidhogg II in addition to rapiers, players are able to fight with daggers, bow and arrows, and broadswords. They can also stomp down on grounded opponents when they have been knocked down, and are able to roll dodge/attack. By having these new mechanics and weapons in the game, this allows players to form more in depth strategies and option to take out each other and make it to the finish.
Tournament options added- Tournaments can be a bit of a pain to set up and organize. Not only do organizers have to set up the rules and the elimination system manually, they also have to gather the players and set up the tournament tree. Not many fighting games have built in tools/options to help create and organize tournaments. In Nidhogg 2’s case, tools/option have been added. Players can set up either local or online tournament for up to eight players on a Switch. They can choose the length of the match, the elimination system (single or double elimination), and activate any cheats, such as low gravity, bone sword, no jumps, etc. The way that Nidhogg 2 has its tournament mode/options set feels like it was made for the Switch.
Bumping soundtrack- Music in fighting games are not just some background tracks to fill in the silence. They set the mood of the fight and hype up the players. Take famous tracks like Ryu’s or Guile’s themes from Street Fighter. Once you hear the open riffs, you start to tense up in anticipation for the fight. Nidhogg 2 has some really awesome music. It a mix of electronica and chiptunes if I had to give it a description. The music gives the players the motivation to go in for the quick kill and hurry over to the end screen.
Stomped out
Lack of modes- While fighting games primarily focus on having only two modes in the past (arcade and versus), in recent years they have been adding more content and modes. Story mode has players play through the game with a character and see a story unfold through their perspective. Practice/dojo modes let players train and practice using special moves. Training mode teaches players how to use certain characters. Modes like these add to the game. Nidhogg 2 does not have any of these save for arcade and versus (local and online). Maybe its due to the simplicity and straightforwardness of the game’s fighting system that there aren’t many modes, but it would have been nice to learn more about why these weird creatures fight and then get fed to the Nidhogg.
Nidhogg 2 surpasses and improves on the original game. It updated visuals are cool looking and gross. The revamped fighting system give players more depth and options on how to take out the fighter in front of them. The music is a great motivating force to keep the fights fast paced and brutal. Couple all of this with the ability to create local and online tournaments and you have a very solid fighting game that you can take anywhere. The only slight problem I have with the game is that its bare-bones. As I mentioned, maybe it has to do with how simple and straightforward the game is, but it would have been nice to have more modes. If you’re looking for a fighting game that’s simple to learn but also has depth and has the ability to be able to taken on the go, I suggest getting the Switch version of Nidhogg 2. Praise the worm.
