| Title | Despite Odyssey's long shadow, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla holds its own |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Game reviews |
| When | November 24, 2020 |
In Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, you have to play as a Viking named Eivor, which is pronounced "AY-vore". Eivor is a flaccidly drawn Mary Sue of badassery whose flimsy characterization consists of machismo and shit poetry. The male voice sounds uninterested..
Hear, hear!
I was really hoping you would switch genders every paragraph, but I suppose it reads better this way!
So I can just skip this game like I skipped Origins? Cool.
Origins at least has strong narrative and relatively unique setting. Gameplay-wise it’s Odyssey but a bit simpler, and it might be better for it in some regards. Like you don’t get loot overload.
One thing I’m puzzled about is that Tom likes England. I mean Valhalla’s portrayal of it. Cause for me it feels like the worst set in the series. AC has always allowed me to dive into places and times that I will never see in such detail in any media. But this AC gives us a fantasy version of a place that inspired traditional vanilla fantasy I saw a hundred times. It’s like less imaginative Skyrim or Witcher world. And it’s very liberal with the history. I’m much more interested in all those other places the game has to offer. But as Tom said those are boring gameplay-wise.
So it’s not like I dislike Valhalla. But it’s the only game that really feels like an Ubisoft open-world bore to me. All the other AC games are accused of it but for me they’re elaborate history(-ish) pieces.
This is my take exactly - I find this England to be samey and boring and flat and not really interesting to explore. Its kinda like looking out the window so to speak (Sans the castles, obviously), and while thats realistic, its also extremely boring.
I can’t tell if this is just a jibe or meant to be a real question, but - I’d much rather play Origins due to its fantastic setting, than this.
I’m about at 100 hours in Valhalla. It’s a good game.
But it’s inferior to both Origins and Odyssey. Olde England can’t compare to Ancient Egypt or Ancient Greece. It’s infinitely less interesting of a setting.
Eivor has no reason at all to care about the Order, whereas both Bayek and Kassandra did. I don’t read the Order bios when I kill them, and I don’t care about their monologuing. Why should I?
The removal of the Mercenaries from Odyssey is a huge step back. The Zealots are a joke of a substitute.
Building up the home base is slightly interesting, but of course you can’t really change anything.
I’m sure a history nerd can tell me Vikings didn’t really have naval battles.
My main video game foray into the Viking Age, the janky Mount & Blade: Warband - Viking Conquest, featured a large naval battle in the campaign. This was a game that seemed to be intent on historical accuracy, so I assumed that these things did indeed occur and looked it up:
While naval Viking battles were not as common as battles on land, they did occur. As they had little to fear from other European countries invading the inhospitable regions of Scandinavia, most naval battles were fought amongst Vikings themselves, “Dane against Norwegian, Swede against Norwegian, Swede against Dane.” Most Viking-on-Viking naval battles were little more than infantry battles on a floating platform. Viking fleets would lash their boats together, their prows facing the enemy. When they got close enough, the fighters would throw ballast stones, spears and use their longbows. Archers would be positioned in the back of the ships protected by a shield wall formation constructed in the front of the ship. Depending on the size of the defending fleet, some would attack from smaller craft to flank the bigger ships.
This is an accurate description of the naval battles in Mount & Blade Viking Edition.
Speaking of which, am I right that the crew and Jomsviking customisation is entirely cosmetic? Changing gear doesn’t actually improve them, and they don’t have tiers like the Odyssey crew? If so, what a wasted opportunity. It seems really weird that the settlement is even less tied in to the game’s systems than it was in AC3, given how much emphasis they put on it in the marketing.
It’s not entirely cosmetic. Jomsviking with a two-handed sword will use two-handed sword and is probably heavier and slower than the one with two axes.
But yeah, they’re all immortal and have roughly the same effectiveness. Also I had no problem clearing out monasteries alone on the highest difficulty setting, it wasn’t any harder than clearing out a bandit camp or whatever. You only really need raiders to open heavy doors and chests.
It always cracks me up that Nottingham used to be called Snottingham.
A name like Shiropshire is just lazy writing.
Wait. How come that, in your review, @tomchick , you didn’t even mention Orlog, the dice game in Valhalla? Which is apparently getting a physical version soon?
He saves the real stuff for Twitter!
I know. That was my way of 1) noting he never mentioned Orlog despite enjoying it, and 2) letting him know that a physical version is coming after all. ;)
After reading most of this review, I went looking for your glowing 5 star review of Odyssey, but you didn’t give Ubi the pleasure!
It’s nuts how blah both Valhalla and Legions are compared to their previous installments.
I prefer driving electric cars around a propped up a London facade in the service of remote controlling my thousandth spider-bot, to sailing from one muddy island to the next and decapitating ye olde yokels.
To me, it sounds as if Ubi is driving both AC and WD into tedium territory.
So should I be buying the Black Friday 75% off deal on PS Store AC: Odyssey Ultimate instead of this? I just don’t know what do do if there’s no 5 star Tom review to guide me.