Doki Doki Ragnarok mobile review - "Dating around is tiring, even when you're a mighty Viking"

True love is hard to find, whether IRL or when you're immersed in pixelated lands on your mobile. Of course, this is even truer when you're a burly and uncouth Viking finding love in hopeless places, especially when your OTP is an elusive village that's always just out of reach.

In Doki Doki Ragnarok, dating around is the same as pillaging villages for loot and love. This unique dating sim tasks you with finding your match in the most ridiculous way possible, but is this kind of humour enough for you to give it your all in the search for true love?

Table of contents:

• Doki Doki Ragnarok visuals
• Doki Doki Ragnarok gameplay
• Doki Doki Ragnarok verdict

DOKI DOKI RAGNAROK VISUALS

This Viking visual novel features vibrant visuals and lovely artwork that complement the humorous nature of the game. There's not much to see in the UI except for your main character, the villages you're wooing and the dialogue options you can use as your ultimate weapon to pillage your OTP village once and for all.

While the character designs look incredible to me, I wasn't a huge fan of how small the text is on my phone, making me wonder if this game was ported onto mobile without full optimisation for smaller screens. My fingers sometimes got in the way of the dialogue options, which is a bummer when one wrong answer can drive away a village you've been reeling in for eight turns.

It's also not ideal for a visual novel to have such a small text size when the game mostly uses text to drive the progress forward - and it's a shame because the dialogue and narration truly are top-notch.

THE GAMEPLAY OF DOKI DOKI RAGNAROK

The point of reading all the text is, of course, so you can catch those crucial clues in order to date the villages you love. Yes, it's a ridiculous concept, but oddly enough, it works - you'll have to pay attention to what the villages are saying to get a sense of what they'll like, what'll drive them away, and what will finally land you that sweet, sweet permission to raid them and gain all those hearts.

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But while some villages are - for lack of a better term - easy, some can play hard-to-get until you run out of turns. Some have tricks hidden in their pockets, while some may say one thing but mean something else entirely. In a sense, how these villages are written does reflect how people actually behave when they're trying to get to know each other - some put up pretences while some wear their heart on their sleeve.

In particular, after you've engaged in some painful small talk for a while, you'll be offered four options that will help you seal the deal. You can drink mead, praise Odin, raid the village outright (the audacity!), or - hilariously - attack England. These can all turn the tide in your favour or push your beloved village away, so you'll have to be mindful of your timing as well when you're mastering the art of seduction.

On the other hand, it's not all about villages here - you'll also stumble upon angry townsfolk, the quirky Allfather himself, a wayward goat, and the most dangerous beast of all - the Corgi.

WHAT'S THE APPEAL?

I have to admit - I was immediately smitten with the concept of the game from the very beginning, and I had fun reading all the ridiculous dialogue lines and the crazy Narrator's unmistakable voice. I also particularly enjoyed it each time Bjorn Rivalson popped up - your rivalry with him certainly spices things up and breaks the monotony, which does sink in after a while.

Raiding Britain, France, Sweden and Iceland was certainly fun, but the repetitive loop did get a little tiring after a while - not to mention the text was really, really hard for me to read. Of course, you're certainly not meant to finish all the raids in one sitting, but I did find myself wishing there was more to do after a while. The villages have some variety - the "boss battles" are particularly challenging - but they kind of blend together after a while in a sea of similar towns, and when that starts to happen, it might be a good idea to put the game down and give it a rest for a good while.

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In the end, Doki Doki Ragnarok has its moments, but I suppose whether or not you find everything funny depends entirely on your mood for the day. If anything, it's a great turn-off-your-brain way to pass the time when you're not looking to take yourself too seriously.