Because Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla wants to be a settlement building game that progresses through a story in which one man unites all of England under various rulers of his choice. Basically, you show up to plunder, and you instead do a bunch of dumb and ahistorical nation building by virtue of your supposed Viking charisma. What’s more, your boat is nothing but a pointless river transport. There’s very little actual Viking-ing in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.
-Tom
Ah, I see. Because if you want the kind of problematic Vikings I thought you meant, I give you:
copyright 1980
There is one scene with a topless prostitute in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, so at least it would be R-rated if it were a movie. So lurid!
-Tom
This game is amazing! Absolutely addicted! Got it for my kids for Christmas and I haven’t stopped playing. Highly recommend!!! IMO better than Zelda! I told my wife numerous times how great this game is!!! Enjoy!
Thanks for this review. It makes me a bit sad for gamers that this game is being overlooked. I put 250 hours into Zelda, so I liked it a lot. Fenyx is better in every way imo. I have 50 hours logged so far and just got to Kings Peek. I’m a completionist so I like going around opening chests, doing myth challenges and vaults. Super fun game. I HIGHLY recommend buying this game if you like open world type games. You won’t be disappointed imo.
Dang, that’s quite the resume. This and Tom’s review have added Fenyx to my wishlist.
So, this doesn’t seem like my thing but it very much does seem like my girlfriend’s thing, and it seems we could pick it up very cheap on Switch. However, there have been some very discouraging things said about its performance on Switch, which is by far her preferred way to play. The Nintendo Life review (my go-to for Switch reviews) didn’t mention performance at all! Who has this on Switch? How bad is it?
I have it in the Switch and while I’m sure it has better performance on other platforms, it’s been fine for me. The fog seems to open way up after the tutorial and even going back to the same tutorial island the fog is much less of an issue. I assumed it was part of the story to have the world kind of open up visually once you complete the first tasks and can leave the first area. Fog is still there but seems much further off and the whole world is brighter. I haven’t noticed stutter but I’m not one to notice that sort of thing anyway. There is a bit of a loading screen when you jump into and out of the vaults but it’s not too bad.
This is all in docked mode, so ymmv when portable.
Vaults…there sure are some sweaty palm and white knuckle inducing jumps in those things. Basophobia FTW!
That is very good to hear, thank you!
The muddy color palate of the tutorial area was a super weird design decision. That part looks awful on the Switch. The game looks much better after leaving the tutorial island.
Some related inquiries about Switch performance:
Yeah, but then Clay is one of the people who said after tutorial island it looks a lot better, so I have to wonder if all of these are initial impressions from the beginning and if those are well managed it works fine after?
Glad I got confirmation from someone else that my eyes/memory hadn’t deceived me. And I too thought that was a poor design choice even if it made since in terms of story. It really gives a lousy first impression due to this.
Between this glowing review of the writing and setting and Rhamorim’s advocating, it’s getting really tough not to succumb.
I watched this video and found it very informative:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08WlmoF3lo0
In some foggy places shown at the start it looks very mudded (might be that tutorial area mentionned above?), much of the lighting work is gone. But overall it looks surprsingly good I tought, especially in the open world.
The two main victims on the Switch seem to be 60fps (which I can’t stand, I love my 30fps, and it seems the Switch version can’t manage beyond that) and bloom (which is an effect I enjoy desactivating whenever I’m allowed too, like motion blur).
You heard it here, before I even bought it: Switch version is the best version :O
Motion blur is simply the worst. I also deactivate it whenever possible.
I literally bought (at full price) and refunded the game after an hour because it just looked (and ran) horrible on my Xbox One X. If it actually gets better, then yea, horrible decision. It’s still on my to-buy list if i ever get a Series X, but since the game is already half off I expect to pay $5 by then.
I recall you mentioning this and hesitated a bit on my purchase. When the switch version went on sale I finally grabbed it due to @tomchick and the other glowing reviews. Then when I start it up I on my switch I just couldn’t believe how dark and muted it was. But since Switch, no refund. So I plugged on. Then I finish the tutorial part and the world is suddenly bright and glorious! I played for a bit and eventually went back to the starting area to look for stuff I’d missed and see if it was still gloomy. But nope, it was as bright as the rest of the world. Still, I wondered if I was remembering wrong until I saw some posts here about the gloomy start.
If I had purchased it on a refundable platform I probably would have refunded it too.
Edit: to be clear, I would have refunded it if I’d only seen the initial dark and gloomy area and before I realized this was just a poor first impression and that after a half hour or so of tutorial the world was plenty bright and beautiful.
Well along with an unasked for Best Buy gift card we ended up getting it from Best Buy for $10, because she’s excited about it, so I’ll report back here for sure on performance and also if it turns out to be better than it looks to me.
Wait. What?
Personally I’m running PC, at 160fps on a 49" monitor, the cutscenes are normal size but the rest of the game is ultrawide and gorgeous
