Assassin's Creed Odyssey - It's time to Greek out

The battles are a pretty great source of XP if you don’t mind doing them. Very repeatable too and a good source of purple loot (I’ve had a couple of zones become available for battle seemingly without any of my own intervention).

I haven’t really been able to make the Warrior build work on nightmare. I’m finding that the devastating shot ability is the lynchpin to my whole build/strategy. With this and the hunter passive, headshots take most things out fairly quickly. Warrior based attacks on the other hand seem pathetically weak, even when I spec into that tree. The main use of normal attacks seems to be keeping things staggered and building adrenaline. I kinda feel like I’d need to run warrior engravings on everything to make it even close to being viable, but that’d be incredibly expensive to maintain given how frequently you replace equipment.

Does this have cursed weapons like there were in Origins?

Does it matter what order I play this series in? Or can I just jump in?

The RPG features interest me.

Jump in.

The water is warm and clear, and if you see a shark, just punch the fucker.

Seems you will burn out on the overabundance of content.

I didn’t even realise there were two people.

Yeah the lady in the cave and the one she was talking to on her coms. She also talked to William Miles during the last of the present day cutovers.

Quick recap of AC:Origins present day stuff:

In late 2017, Miles traveled to Egypt to find Layla, a rogue Abstergo Industries employee who, after having been tasked to retrieve the sarcophagus of Bayek, the founder of the Hidden Ones, decided to relive his memories without Abstergo’s permission. William found her hiding out in Bayek’s final resting place in the Qattara Depression after she had been attacked by Sigma Team, and offered her a place with the Assassins to work on the Animus. Despite her reluctance to join up with the Brotherhood, she agreed to his offer, needing protection against Abstergo. The two then waited for a helicopter to take them to Alexandria.

Not a huge fan of the present day stuff, but I still try to follow along.

Can I cover the “Pffft, it’s John Walker” square on the fanboy game review backlash bingo card?

Is a sandbox game.

You don’t say “Minecraft is too long” because people will laugh at you.

I think everyone must pay attention to the fact Ubisoft take feedback seriously and fix the things that seems broken in every title. While superficially Odyssey looks like a rerelease of Origins, they can’t be more far appart if they tried. Odyssey is a silly arcade game on a sandbox.

The seriusnose Bayek game is the one with sanddunes that is kind of boring and also introspective. And Odyssey is the one with Kassandra, the madwoman misthios that is going to murder more greeks that every Kratos game ever released and is silly fun good times.

At times, Odyssey feels like Saint Rows 2, Crysis, Mercenaries 2, Farcry 2, Borderlands, Witcher 3 and many other games. And is because have learned from these games, and made their own take and owned it.

No kidding.

Oh, right, I thought he meant two playable characters. I don’t feel quite so bad.Though I definitely didn’t remember her name. I really don’t get the point of those bits. If you’re going to have a modern day section, have a modern day section. Don’t have a perfunctory tiny location with a codex that you visit a handful of times. That’s way worse than nothing.

I think patch 1.03 just downloaded to my PC.

I know the 1.03 is out for consoles from last night.

“meaning and sense of accomplishment”

I think the author of that complaint piece is working in the wrong domain. Or I am. I never feel a sense of meaning or accomplishment in games. I certainly feel the potential of them when I’m in the flow, but a moment of meaning or accomplishment is a cadenza that breaks my immersion. It points out to real life, where accomplishment is more tangible. What I love about games like this is how all the systems and environments groove me into “play”, and resist metacognitive states. I really don’t want an “end” from Odyssey, just a continuous crest of present pleasure.

BOX QUOTE!

So a couple of things I noticed today…

  1. Leveling of the enemies - they’re not fixed like they were in Origins. The enemy levels will always be the lowest of either your current level, or the max level for the area you are currently in. So if you first visit Phokis (9-13) as level 10, the enemies will keep up with you until you’re level 13, then they’ll stay there. If you visit Euboes (12-16) for the first time at level 19 (as I did), then you’ll always have level 16 enemies (aside from other Mercenaries).

  2. I don’t think Origins did this, but you definitely get a damage bonus from arrows if you are above (and maybe at the same height) as what you’re shooting at. If you can’t get a clean headshot, see if you can get one from higher. I saw that this was an engraving bonus, but it seems to be true even without it, and height advantage engravings just give you more of a bonus.

Hadn’t seen those mentioned, so thought I’d throw them out there.

Oh I was wondering how that worked. I like some sort of level-scaling in games, but I don’t like the heavy-handed Oblivion approach of “everything is always your level!”. I noticed levels of previously visited areas raising and I was hoping I wouldn’t end up with a homogenized map of everything being within 2 levels of mine. I like having a dynamic difficulty level I can set on the fly by choosing where to spend my time. I also like having areas of the map "off limits’ until I can work my way up to them.

That’s interesting because up until now I thought that they’d just nerfed ranged (hunter) damage and I’d been avoiding bows. I had noticed that bows seemed much less effective than in Origins.

I actually hardly use the bow. Fact is I am terrible at this combat and tend to flail around relying on my strategic thing re:gear and weapons etc. I think that’s the rpg in me. I think I actually parried today. I shoulda got a chievo for that.

Three hours in and I’m still on the first little island. I guess I’m actually enjoying this game?