Once my Favourite game, as you can see I have 1k hours. I used to adore this game and recommend to everyone who asked me.

I dont play singleplayer, I bought this for the multiplayer pvp so I cant comment on that aspect of the game. This review is based soley on the multiplayer experience.
Northgard used to be a fun multiplayer experience although flawed it was fun, and if you had experience in the game could soon find yourself climbing rank and progressing. The lobby system used to allow players to choose who they played with, creating matches that where balanced and fair in skill and rank, for both high rank and low rank players

The new auto matchmaking is a joke and has slowly but surely brought the decline of the multiplayer scene. Players perpetually stuck in low rank even though they are skilled because team imbalance, auto matchmaking didnt and doesnt respect player skill, often a player with experience and skill getting placed with the low rank new players against 3 other high rank players, an obvious loss even if you attempted to play it through.

You might think, oh he is mad because HE is stuck in low rank and is probably just bad at the game. I cant tell you how many games I enter where I come across another wooden shield player who clearly should be king rank or higher, a raven player with a wood or silver crest only to pull off play perfectly. I should have lost to them but alas because high rank players have been matched with low rank players for such a long period of time now that they are stuck with poor teammates allowing me to dominate their team.

Rank no longer has any meaning in this game, its a crap shoot and you have no idea the skill level of the player you are playing with or going up against anymore, making it an overall terrible experience. and I haven't even gone into the bugs that get introduced with each update sometimes making the process of getting into a game in the first place a nightmare.

My advice to the devs would be to bring back the lobby system, the matchmaking system just does not work and I have finally after several attempts at coming back to this game decided to lay it to rest and not come back anymore.
It was really my favourite game for a long time and I'm bitter that I no longer get to experience the joy I used to have playing this title, hurts to see it decline so much over the last year or two.

Locking updates behind DLC in a $30 game is never ok

I used to love the game, but now its clear the dlcs are game updates. skip this game