Prior to the massive battle you end up doing sub skirmishes, freeing Viking prisoners and generally hacking legion warriors into tiny bits. You’ll accrue enough of an army to prepare for an assault. It’s not all blood and battle though, you can if you wish, approach the various slave camps with a stealthy eye and use sneak tactics to stealth kill your enemies, whittling them down until there’s only a few left you can dispatch in a bloody ballet of torn limbs and crushed skulls. It allows you to improvise even in the direst of circumstances usually, switching from a sneaky backstabber to a mighty warrior who can cleave a path to the goal.

It’s up to you how you take on these odds, since if you happen upon a horn blower, he will summon reinforcements unless you cut him down or kill him before he becomes aware of you. I managed to survive one those battles where I ended up wading through a slew of around thirty or so summoned troops who came running in from all areas of the enemies 2nd biggest fortress in the game. It was a legendary moment where I used all 3 of my potions and barely survived, when I saw Skarin standing triumphant though, I knew this game was something special since I was able to win via tactics and the application of various simple combos and techniques.

These were also a mix of berserker types, warriors, heavy shielded warriors and thug-like wimps. Skarin’s health bar was depleted almost to nothing and if I’d have died it would have been right back to the start of the massive fortress that I was trying to infiltrate (I’d died once before there) so it was a real nail-biting moment that made the victory all the more sweeter. I’m glad that the developers allowed you to regenerate health if you’re in a spot where there are no enemies and Skarin’s not in his stealth pose. It saved trying to leave and get more potions, because I needed all that health when I stumbled upon a kind of mini-boss, the Legion Commander.

These hulking brutes take a lot of practise to kill; you need to use combination attacks and well timed dodges/counters until they finally drop to one knee. Once the B button flashes you enter a quicktime event ala God of War where you must bash buttons to finally end your foe. The payoff is usually a lot of gold or some item you need, like a key to a chest full of gold or a cage where your men are held captive. Fortunately the combat system is up to the task and whilst there are occasionally some niggles with the camera, it’s responsive and allows you to perform a variety of attacks with finishing moves against numerous types of foes.

You can use two kinds of attacks, swift and heavy, A and X respectively. Skarin is capable of trading blows with different warriors, dodging, countering and activating special powers with only a couple of button presses. It’s a bit tricky at first to know that you must hold down LB to use your special combos, whilst countering is enabled by using the LT to block and then tapping Y to dodge then A at the right time (making sure you’ve let go of the LB) to finish them off or strike a hard blow. It all becomes fairly fluid if you spend some time with it and with the application of the runes, fire, ice or lightning from your sword, you can become a whirling dervish of punishment.