Come on man, don’t we have this routine down by now? Deep breath, repeat after me, FUCK YOU CHICK!!
I would say so. You can always play Valhalla later if you want. So far (three English regions in) there’s nothing that obsoletes Odyssey, and quite a lot that is inferior. I do slightly prefer the combat in Valhalla though.
I mostly played dude Eivor, but I occasionally switched over the chick Eivor to re-verify that the voice actress was still awful. She did not disappoint.
I guess this is one of the reasons I liked it so much. It was the stuff of Skyrim and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, but stripped of the fantastical fantasy elements. This left the idyll to speak for itself, minus heroic knights, dragons, hobbits, and wizards. I really liked the juxtaposition of Roman ruins from the past with early Christianity working its way towards the glory of cathedrals in the future. The more primitive Pict settlements in the north compared to the workaday layout of London. The nascent glamor of Canterbury, the magical (but not literally!) forests of Gloucester (I think that’s where the Samhain stuff was), the whaling towns on the south coast. I liked how the castles and monasteries and churches were variations on each other, mostly form with occasional flashes of unique style.
The setting was appealing because, ironically, it wasn’t exotic. It was appealing because the folks at Ubisoft – they really are fantastic environmental artists – were working with such a seemingly prosaic palette from a non-spectacular time and place in history. I could appreciate a field of flowers and low stone walls and a waterwheel by a stream. They weren’t upstaged by monuments or grand temples.
In a way, it reminded me of going diving. When you go on a dive and see something amazing like a shark or an octopus or a bunch of sea lions, they’re the centerpiece of the dive. Which is awesome, to be sure. But most of the time you go on a dive you don’t see those things. Then you appreciate things like the light and the way the kelp moves and the smaller fishes and the zero-G bliss of just being down there. That’s kind of how England felt. It didn’t need the usual spectacle. It was just idyllic bliss, without dragons or temples.
I’m probably not articulating it well, but I guess my point is that it was nice to have something that wasn’t exotic, but was nevertheless beautiful.
God, the Eivor backstory was so terrible. His motivation is so half-assed, and it risible every time he gets asked to choose who’s going to be the next king in one of the shires. Really? You want this douchebag to pick your leader? It’s like the kingmoot, or whatever it was called, at the end of Game of Thrones. We pick, uh…Bran! Yeah, Bran! That’s our pick! King Bran!
What surprised me was how much of the story walks you through the Order assassinations. I was kind of looking forward to that as something I could do on my own, after finishing the storyline, but there are really one one and a half branches left after you do the story. Lame.
Yeah, I missed the idea of a heat level. If the zealots were supposed to function like the cops, I never saw it.
Regarding Viking naval battles:
Well, first of all, I would challenge that assertion. :) The setting might have been historical, but the gameplay and character stories were pretty far-fetched.
But, yeah, I figured the Vikings had naval battles. But without something notable like the Battle of Salamis, Ubisoft probably figured they could get away with cutting the naval battles that were in Odyssey. Also, I wonder if they got some sort of feedback that people didn’t like naval battles? It was obviously a conscious decision to turn the longboat into a river barge, but it robbed the game of a lot of awesome traversal in Odyssey when you’re sailing from one island to another, and you run into pirates, or you want to antagonize one of the factions, or you dive for treasure. I really missed all that, and without it, I see no point for the boat customization, much less the crew stuff.
Yep. So lame.
My stupid Jomsviking sprouted a rune icon over his head at some point. I’m not sure what it was telling me, but I meant to look it up. At any rate, the rune icon never went away and it followed me all over England. No matter where I was, way up in Jorvik, or down on the Dover coast, or out west is Gloucester, that icon appeared on my screen marking my Jomsviking’s location back at the settlement. So annoying!
Yep, as I mentioned in that thread, I’m glad Ubisoft is taking my suggestions over Twitter! Now I just have to Tweet about wanting to switch bows without going into my inventory screen, needing a sort option for runes, and buying resources from merchants without have to sit there for 15 seconds holding down the button to set the quantity.
It’s the dismemberment, right? I can’t play games without dismemberment anymore!
-Tom
Overall, I’d agree with the review (not that, you know, Tom is sitting around clutching his beads waiting for my stamp of approval!). I probably enjoy it a tad more than he does, as I came late to the AC world, and like the mechanics and game flow of the last three games (Origin, Odyssey, Valhalla). I had to go to YouTube and find out about all of the backstory and Abstergo and Animus and Isu shenanigans beyond what I got in the games. And I have no expectations about what an AC game should be, just my take on what the games are as I play them.
But yeah, the writing here is mostly dreadful, the voice acting varies a lot, and the story is kind of, well, I was going to say “full of sound and fury signifying nothing,” except that there is not much fury here and the sound is wonky. I disagree with those who find England boring, in terms of its physical representation in the game. I’m not English, and my experience with the English countryside is minimal, but I like the game’s geography. One, I think it is absolutely gorgeous, if somewhat climatologically odd (I mean, the time of year seems to be late autumn, but it verges into early winter and back again, almost randomly). Two, I think there is a lot of variety, from rolling fields and meadows to craggy peaks, and lots of wetlands and waterways and forests and stuff. And the ruins are really cool. Now, I’m pretty sure there’s not a lot of historical fidelity here, but that’s not an issue particularly for me.
The combat is very good, IMO, and the animations are in general top-notch. Luckily, I don 't need much more motivation than “go kill these dudes and take their stuff,” though yeah it would be nice to care more about these schmucks. There are a few nicely realized characters–Ivarr the Boneless comes to mind–and even Eivor (female version at least) once in a while has her moments. But mostly, I just want to lop the heads off of most of the people in the game. Starting with Odin. What an asshole.
They are getting better even when they kind of make a averageish game.
I always thought about modern-day series like Watch Dogs or GTA or even maybe Far Cry like that. They show you a place you can actually visit, but it’s a little more condensed and turned into a theme park. It’s like your memory of visiting San Francisco or Thailand or wherever else. With AC I see worlds I can never reach in reality. Valhalla feels in between those and it doesn’t speak to me personally. But I get your point. No point in arguing about it of course cause it’s a most subjective subject ever.
And so romantic.
Have you played Mount & Blade Viking Conquest, or did you think I was asserting that AC: Valhalla is historically accurate? I’m guessing it’s the latter, sorry if I didn’t articulate my previous post well enough.
Is this a spoiler free review…? I don’t want to wait until I’ve played 150 hours this time.
Oh, absolutely, and I didn’t mean to sound like I was arguing. I didn’t spell it out in the review, so I just wanted to explain why a place that was so obviously unexotic was so appealing to me! But, yes, entirely subjective.
I think I was also kind of surprised. During the first several hours in England, I was all, “Is this it? Really? Mud and huts and the occasional church? Man, I hope I get to go to France or North Africa or someplace cool…” But the longer the game went on, the more I came to really appreciate the landscape, doing that usual thing of setting a waypoint, putting the horse on cruise control, and flying my eagle for to take in the countryside along the way. I went from being disappointed in how prosaic it all seemed to completely won over. And kind of appreciating the bits in Shakespeare like I cited from Richard II, when the Bard goes all ga-ga over the beauty of England. I was all, like, yeah, I get it now!
But, yes, entirely subjective, and I realize it doesn’t have the appeal of the Aegean and ancient Egypt.
No, not romantic! Needy! Hey, Tom, I’m over here! Hey, Tom, I’m still here, waiting if you need me! Hey, Tom, I’m waiting way down here in Mercia in case you want to visit! Hey, Tom, you haven’t forgotten about me, have you? Hey, Tom, yoo-hoo!
Did you know that you can’t fire your Jomsviking? Lord knows, I tried. It’s apparently a lifetime appointment.
-Tom
Well, I think all my reviews are spoiler free. For what it’s worth.
-Tom
Oops, my bad! I thought you were talking about Valhalla! I have not played any of the Mount and Blades. Although now that I’ve played Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and Rune II (har har), I’m kind of curious to see where Mount and Blade: Viking Conquest falls…
-Tom
Depends. For instance, it’s widely know in marketing materials that you’ll visit Norway and England in the game, but there are other places Tom mentions in the review — though the one he names is not a surprise if you’ve played a few hours of the game, and the other he keeps unnamed, so as spoilers go, it isn’t a big deal.
I think that’s it in terms of potential spoilers? I wouldn’t consider them spoilers myself, but YMMV.
Of the 3 newest AC games I’d rank them:
- Origins @ 140+hrs played.
- Valhalla @ 32+ hrs played so far.
- Odyssey @ 85+ hrs played.
So if one has not yet played Origins or Odyssey they might be a better choice to play over Valhalla at this point?
I was going to try Valhalla before I cancelled my Uplay+ sub, but maybe I should just fire up an earlier sure bet over an average entry with weaker voice work and narrative.
Oh, good lord, get thee to Odyssey, posthaste! Don’t bother with Origins or Valhalla.
-Tom
Fake news. Origins is excellent.
Odyssey was the worst of the 3 games, ugh Greece.
(sigh) All right guys, only one way to solve this one.
The best AC game is obviously AC Liberation.