The afterlife is supposed to be the eternal reward, a place where the soul can carry on after a life well lived in an endless existence where the burdens of the world can finally be set down. Some afterlives truly suck, like that of Greek mythology, while others offered hope for those who lived a life of bravery, like the eternal party of Valhalla, or you could run a few loops of Jeremy Bearimy until it's time to let go. The myths of the afterlife tend to play fair to all departed souls, but sometimes the souls get diverted based on the whims of the gods. In the case of Valheim, Odin needed souls to secure a severed branch of Yggdrasil, fighting unimagineable odds and a harsh environment in a land where the gods hold no power.
Valheim is basically a brutal Norse Minecraft, although with less blocky terrain and a more modular approach to construction. Set loose in a vast, untamed wilderness with nothing but your Norse underwear to your name, you need to pick up branches or punch only the smallest trees, build a crafting table, establish a base and then use every resource you can gather to grow in power. Even something as basic as a boar can be deadly and the enemies rapidly scale in power from "punch a few times" to "Run away!"
Fortunately the opening area is forgiving, at least by Valheim standards. Branches and loose rocks are everywhere in the meadows, as are tasty mushrooms and strawberries. While there's no hunger meter and it's technically possible to play the game without eating a single bite, food temporarily increases health and stamina, both of which are in alarmingly short supply. While there's no shortage of fighting in Valheim, the game is about survival first and foremost, and that means building a base where you can rest and stock up on needed food and other supplies for the adventure ahead.
It takes a while for all the systems to come into play, however, thanks to the way various gameplay elements are tied to available resources. Starting off you're basically living from the land, scavenging berries and mushrooms while hunting boar and deer for meat. Wood and rock let you make an axe, and the flint found near water is perfect to construct not only a spear, but also arrows for an easily-constructed bow. A bit of practice with the bow and deer meat becomes available, and deer also drop hide to make the first proper armor from. All of these crafting projects, of course, need a proper shelter to be built in.
Wood and stone are lovely but don't do much by themselves in a raw state, and that's where the first crafting bench comes into play. There are a few things you can make just by holding the materials, but it's all low-level gear that's only slightly better than punching everything bare-handed. To craft the good stuff you need a bench, which can be tossed down pretty much anywhere there's level ground. By itself the bench doesn't do much other than allow structures to be built within a generous radius, but put a few walls and a roof around it and the bench becomes a proper crafting station. As long as there's a shelter you might as well put down a bed, but a bed needs a firepit for warmth to allow you sleep. A firepit is also a perfect place for a cooking rack, allowing all those bits of boar and deer to transform into edible food, and at this point the quick shelter is turning into an actual house.
Building in Valheim is done by pieces, with walls and floors snapping together any way you'd like them to. So long as there's support everything fits together nicely, and you can not only raise and lower ground but also add beams where needed to keep the structure stabilized. The initial buildings won't be much more than a box with stuff inside, but it doesn't take too long for the possibilities to open up as a multi-story building made of varying materials seems like it could only be improved by installing a nice balcony over the cliff to provide a great view of the ocean sunset. It's your world, after all, so it might as well be a comfy one.
It is, however, a slow climb to building the fancy bases, because progress is gated by seriously powerful boss encounters. The goal of each area is to defeat its huge beastly overlord, whose location is revealed by finding large runic stones that pinpoint the summoning site. Getting strong enough to both make it to the site and beat the boss requires mastering every resource in the boss's biome, crafting new weaponry and armor while creating food that gives buffs strong enough to help overcome not just the major encounter but all the smaller ones along the way. Enemies are relentless and Valheim isn't shy about creatures that can kill you in a single hit if you're unprepared. Running across a bear or troll early on is almost guaranteed death unless you run away, and even later on the deathsquitoes in the plains are made of pure spite and evil. There will be a point where the basic enemies of a new biome become cannon fodder, after a long struggle to become powerful enough to handle them, but there will always be something dangerous lurking in the world that requires paying attention.
While the encounters can be brutally tough, combat is actually fairly straightforward. Most weapons have a standard and alternate attack, plus a block that doubles as a parry when used with proper timing. Everything but walking, however, requires stamina, and this is where Valheim goes from challenging to feeling obnoxiously difficult.
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