Tales Of Glory 4 : Ragnarok Review

A One-Developer VR Viking Sandbox, Positioned as a Prequel

Tales Of Glory 4 : Ragnarok is a full-physics VR combat game from solo developer BlackTale Games, framed as a prequel to the studio's earlier Tales of Glory, set generations before the kingdom of Kvir was forged, as scattered northern tribes chafe under the rule of foreign Eastbornian occupiers. Rather than canned animations or context-sensitive combat prompts, every swing, block, grab, and throw is driven directly by the player's own physical movement, in the vein of VR sandbox brawlers like Blade and Sorcery. On top of one-on-one physics dueling, the game adds squad command, letting players lead a Viking warband through large-scale battles across snowy forests, burning villages, and fortified camps, while a promised story campaign, still unreleased, is meant to eventually chart the rise of Kvir through village defense, dungeon exploration, and full-scale assaults. It entered Steam Early Access on September 9, 2026, for $29.99, VR headset required.

Positive Out of the Gate, Bolstered by Franchise Goodwill

Tales Of Glory 4 : Ragnarok launched to a "Positive" reception, with 32 of its first 36 English-language reviews recommending it, a ratio that holds up almost identically once the broader international pool is counted, at 38 positive out of 43 total reviews. That's a strong early signal for a one-person Early Access project, but it comes with an important caveat worth flagging up front: a large share of the enthusiasm traces directly back to goodwill earned by the original Tales of Glory, which multiple reviewers describe having played and loved "over the years." Several reviews explicitly frame their positive rating as conditional, tied to trust that the promised campaign will eventually arrive and that early technical issues will be ironed out, rather than as an assessment of what currently exists as a finished product.

Physical, Weighty Combat That Reviewers Say Recaptures the Original's Appeal

The reviewers recommending Tales Of Glory 4 : Ragnarok are consistent about what's working: the physics-driven swordplay itself. One long-time VR combat fan writes that they "play a lot of VR combat games, but I'm rarely happy with most of them," singling out the original Tales of Glory as "one of the few I kept coming back to over the years" and reporting that this new entry "has already recaptured what I enjoyed most about the first." Another highlights a specific mechanical touch, the ability to slide a hand along a sword's pommel mid-swing to shift between slashing and stabbing grips, calling it "actually incredible" once you dive into how it changes combat flow. Several reviewers compare the large-scale battle content favorably to Mount & Blade: Bannerlord reimagined in VR, praising the sandbox of custom battles, squad commands, and enemy variety, including a villager-uprising mode that one reviewer says they "lost three times... on insane" before finally breaking through. Reviewers also credit the sole developer directly and repeatedly for responsiveness to feedback and a visible, steady pace of updates since launch, a factor several cite as their main reason for optimism about where the Early Access period is headed.

No Campaign Yet, Rough Optimization, and an Uncomfortable Weapon Grip

The complaints, both from reviewers marking the game negative and from cautiously positive reviewers hedging their recommendation, cluster around three issues. The first and most consequential is content: there is currently no story campaign at all, only custom battles, meaning the "prequel" framing and the promised narrative arc toward Kvir exist solely as a future promise rather than playable content. One reviewer who marked the game negative writes bluntly that at "the low low price of $30 you can play another arena fighting game with like 6 maps to play on," adding that this entry "got rid of the good part of [the original]... the campaign" while barely changing the combat that reviewer considered its weakest element. The second is performance: multiple reviewers report significant frame-rate drops during large battles, with one describing "terrible optimization" running at 10-15fps even on a Valve Index paired with a high-end graphics card, and another noting weapon swinging feels "messy right now" as a result. The third is a specific, recurring control complaint carried over from the original game: several reviewers are frustrated that weapon-gripping still uses an index-finger trigger hold rather than a more natural reversed grip, with one negative review calling it a "Cardinal Sin" repeated from the first Tales of Glory and pointing out that competitors like Blade and Sorcery and Battle Talent solved the same problem years ago. Every reviewer, positive or negative, is careful to note this is an Early Access launch and therefore expected to be "JANKY, LAGGY, POORLY OPTIMIZED, and UNREFINED" in the words of one, but that framing doesn't erase the fact that the core promised content, the campaign, simply isn't there yet.

Verdict

Tales Of Glory 4 : Ragnarok is an Early Access VR sandbox that's winning over its launch audience almost entirely on the strength of its physics-driven combat feel and the trust a solo developer has built up from an earlier, well-loved game in the same series, rather than on what's currently playable. The custom-battle sandbox and squad-command large-scale fights are genuinely well-regarded, and BlackTale Games' visible post-launch responsiveness is giving reviewers real reason for patience. But at $29.99 for a build that ships without any campaign, with frame-rate problems in its signature large-scale battles and a weapon-grip control scheme several reviewers say repeats a known flaw from the previous game, this is a purchase best suited to VR combat enthusiasts willing to buy into a promise and ride out the rough edges, not to anyone looking for a complete game today.