Midgard Saga is a casual free-to-play role-playing adventure game launched on Google Play and the App Store in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan by Bybit’s GameFi team, Yeeha Games.
Players build line-ups of Heroes and equip them with skills and gear before engaging in combat. Woven into the gameplay is a narrative about a prince defending his realm and uncovering the mystery behind his father’s assassination.
About Midgard Saga
Story/Lore:
The story of Midgard Saga is set in the fantasy lands of Midgard Kingdom. Players enter the game just after the spring of Miral 1600 when Crowe, King of Midgard, perished inexplicably. In the chaos, Dark Lord Hodr, with the aid of the Vanir Empire, ascended to power and descended the lands of Midgard into further turmoil and Chaos. Players play as the fallen King’s son, Prince Forseti, who has to work with the original Midgardian Knights and Royal Guards to save the Kingdom.
Gameplay:
The gameplay for Midgard Saga revolved around assembling groups of various heroes; equipping them with different skills and gear; and sending them out to battle to explore dungeons and take down bosses. Throughout the game, players will find various materials to upgrade their team including the coveted Void NFTs which include both Void Gear and Void Heroes that can drastically change the playstyle for the game.
Game Review:
Story/Lore: 8/10
The story itself felt quite well-woven into the actual gameplay. Within my first hour of gameplay, I found myself truly caring about the Prince and his efforts to save his kingdom. For a game like this, the developers could have fully neglected the story aspect of the game but instead, they chose to flesh out many of the personalities and even added micro-interactions between Forseti and various other characters that added quite a bit to the atmosphere of the game. Albeit, his relationship with the princess is a little off-putting but I won’t go into spoilers here…
Overall, the story felt unintrusive to the gameplay but still gave a level of depth that kept me engaged.
Gameplay: 5/10
Despite the developers describing the game to be “easy to pick up but has deep strategic gameplay,” the gameplay itself could see some more depth. The game itself is indeed easy to pick up as the early game is as simple as picking your team, equipping them, and sending them out to battle. However, as the game progresses, players’ teams will start getting outscored and they have to start learning in-depth game mechanics to be able to get through some of the tougher stages. This may be fun for players who like min-maxing characters and analyzing complex rock-paper-scissors systems, but this is not for me.
In terms of team building, the game offers a lot of variety. I’m about a week into the game and I already have a roster of over 30 heroes to choose from. Each hero does feel unique due to their innate passives, stats, and skills. In addition, the game has its cultivation system where players need to collect different types of resources to upgrade various aspects of the heroes. The game also keeps some of the mechanics familiar to games in this genre like AFK rewards that give just enough incentive to check back in at least 3 to 4 times a day. Once all the team building is done and the equipment is upgraded, the actual combat is just a long animation that players watch. I would have loved to see some avenues for more active participation in the combat to keep me engaged, especially in the late stages of the game where dungeons could take up to 10 minutes to explore.
While Midgard Saga is advertised as an NFT project, the game itself does not need any NFTs to be played. The entire gameplay and story can be experienced without Void heroes and gears but purchasing them does add some more aspects to the gameplay and certain story interactions. I find this to be very refreshing as I can play the game to focus on the actual experience rather than treating it as a financial instrument that many other GameFi projects are disguised as. I’ll go into more on this in the Tokenomics section.
Artstyle: 8/10
I’m not sure what else to say here. The game’s Chilbi art graphics just works with me. The art is done well enough to fit the game’s adorable environment and the large distinctive facial expressions gave me a warm feeling as I played through the dungeon. The visuals are done as well as I can expect for a game of this scale despite their being some room for improvement.
Tokenomics: 10/10
Before going into this, I wanted to quickly repost Yeeha Game’s mission statement:
“The GameFi industry today is filled with many amazing ideas and utilities of blockchain technology for gaming. However, most titles never realize their visions and result in becoming financial instruments that use graphics, animations, and the “play to earn” slogan as a disguise. While disappointing, this result can be expected due to GameFi developers neglecting a fundamental element of gaming: the experience.
Providing interoperability, compatibility, and ownership to virtual gaming assets will undoubtedly enhance their value but only under the pretext that the game has an experience that is worth enhancing.
This is the mission of Yeeha Games, to provide gaming experiences that are worth enhancing, beginning with titles like Oath of Peaks. Our vision is a Metaverse where the value of virtual assets are secured by the most important element in gaming: the experience they provide.”
This mission really hit home for me. Digging into a lot of GameFi projects today, the gameplay is quite atrocious and without a game experience, digital assets in gaming are worthless. To put it more bluntly, they are Ponzi schemes.
While I did not find the Midgard Saga gameplay too enjoyable, the experience is there and there is definitely a market for gacha games like this. The entire game also can be played without having to purchase any NFTs but the more hardcore players will want them to improve their experience. Knowing that my NFTs are backed by an enjoyable gaming experience gives a lot of comfort regarding the asset’s stability. Participating in the Yeeha Games marketplace allowed me to quickly customize my team while liquidating assets that I don’t want to use anymore. This alone makes the tokenomics of Midgard Saga, and Yeeha Games, one of the favorite ones that I have come across.
Overall Impression
While Midgard Saga did not provide the best experience out there, if it’s any indication of what’s to come from Yeeha Games, then I’m super excited. The core idea for the tokenomics of backing the value of NFTs with gameplay experience isn’t something novel but it’s done incredibly well. With their next project being a large budget MMORPG, I will definitely be keeping an eye on this team and what they have to offer.
