Finished Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
Easily one of the weakest games in the whole series. Definitely bottom three.
The main story is almost non-existent. There are plenty of substories in every of the almost 20 regions but 99% of what happens there has no impact on the main story. The main story that is set in the present fares even worse. There are two section where you play as Layla, one after the first two or three hours of the game, then there's the 40 hours of nothingness with Eivor and just short of the very end you have another part as Layla. The implementation of the present was just awful.
The ending in both present and past is poor and leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth. The final assault is much smaller in size than pretty much every assault and optional raid before that. The final boss fight is nothing special either. It doesn't even feel like an ending but when you go back to your camp you get the message that the whole of England is now pacified. hurray?
I already mentioned that the sub-plots in some of the regions have repeating themes such as treachery and detective Eivor has to find out who's guilty.
When it comes to the Templars or The Order of the Ancients as it is called here, the leader is pretty obvious at some point even though I doubted it for a few minutes but in the end it turned out to be correct, simply because there weren't any suitable characters left that could've been it. The ending here doesn't feel rewarding either.
Another issue of mine is that the game is too easy... far too easy. I never died at an enemy's hand. I only died twice by accidentally jumping from too great a height. There's health regeneration if you don't let yourself get hit too often in succession. You can carry "health packs" and even upgrade the maximum amount you can carry in the inventory screen. I did this only once because otherwise an easy game would get even more easy. For the same reason I barely upgraded my weapons and amour.
What makes it so easy you might ask. Well, some abilities you can unlock are just too damn powerful. IMO the strongest by far is the one where everyone except Eivor turns slow motion when you dodge a hit. Dodging is very easy in this game and every single enemy is open to attacks when you do it. At that point, blocking is absolutely useless as it uses more stamina and you can deal less hits. Other abilities are completely useless like the one where you can counter-attack rune attacks as this deals far less damage than just dodging and attacking as normal. Two other abilities that are great are stomping on enemies and the running attack that deals about as much damage as three attacks and can be executed against almost every enemy.
The other set of abilites you have to find in books of knowledge scattered around the map. They can't be executed all the time as they consume a point of your ability bar of which you only start with one or two and max out at four or five I think. Out of all the abilities I used only two for the same reason I already stated above. The game is too fucking easy.
What else makes it easy? They nerfed the archers. I remember getting shot a lot at in Odyssey and Origins but archers rarely pose a threat here as they often miss their mark. You can also easily escape anything and run past everyone in your way. They barely follow you.
Since everything is so easy, stealth is pretty much pointless and it is never required in a mission. It's up to you, so why waste time sneaking around trying to get by guards or killing them from behind when you can just storm the entire place and easily kill off 20 enemies at once? The game does everything to disencourage you from using stealth.
Other things I didn't like:
- The map is too big and offers little variety in scenery.
- too much stuff to collect
- the mission in Vinland is a joke. What a waste of potential
- the weapon and armor system sucks. Everything is locked behind a chest and there's no way to find better gear until late in the game. Better improve the gear you already own.
- Hunting and mining ore is useless as chests give you way more of these ressources
- glitches and graphical issues
- Expanding your village is fun at first because you unlock useful buildings at the very start but after the first stage it becomes pointless since the buildings are little more than decoration and don't really serve a purpose.
- no ship combat
- the Raven is almost useless (especially since stealth is pointless)
Things I like:
- Graphics even if a little underwhelming for current gen
- I found my peace with combat gameplay. It's too easy but they introduce many different enemy types later on so there's some variety.
- core parcouring mechanics
- two special regions
- the introduction
- vikings
While the game still has many good gameplay mechanics at its core, it's definitely not a bad game but the poor story and some more than questionable decisions drag it down. As I said earlier, it's too big and too long for its own good. Make the game 50% smaller in size and cut out 10 hours of these sub-plots and you would actually improve the game. I still have the DLCs left and I hope they are not just more of the same. Both Origins and Odyssey are somewhere between 9.0 and 9.5 to me. This one gets a
8.0/10
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