The quality of the AC games got worse on each game. All the time it feels like they just replaced the old models with new ones and made some clunky animations where the game design is the same. Nothing new and exciting yet.

So I beat the game and I just wanna say HOLY SHIT

It's such a fascinating ending and I am looking so forward to DLC to expand further on the now-current state of things. I thought Odyssey's ending and DLC were bonkers for the state of the AC Universe, but this takes the cake.

Real fantastic game.

At this point, AC is about wanting to explore a beautiful environment that takes place in a historic time and place. It's weird because when the first several AC games came out, ending with three (Black Flag was kind of interesting though), I very much wanted to see where the modern time's story went, but now any time I go back to the older ones, I wished there was an option to skip that stuff. That all said, from the little I've heard, it sounds as if Valhalla is encapsulating the events of the entire series, so I am curious how that goes.

Layla Hassan's stuff is okay, but not super engaging. I think to get the most out of AC now, you'd have to be fine with and feel rewarded by exploring every single question mark on the map. Honestly, while it's a lot of repetitive work, it can still be fun and by the time it's done, I look back and feel as though I conquered a lot. I don't think the formula is terrible, you just have to be into it. Also... best played on easy in my opinion. I'm mainly referring to Origins and Odyssey, and most likely Valhalla now.

I don't have this game yet and won't be playing it until I get a new generation console (probably on PS5). My brother got it and he says it's his favorite of the three most recent AC games though.

The amount of times I've ended up wiki'ing how to get to some treasure, or what to do with some mystery is starting to get a bit ridiculous at this point. I remember writing a post about how a bad Breath of the Wild-clone is the last thing you want (back when everyone was raving about it), and I think this game is pretty much proving my point.

The worst part is how it doesn't even really introduce you to most of the puzzle mechanics it uses. You can easily go through half the game before learning how to tackle certain common puzzles. And then there's a good amount of bugs, glitches and exploits to go around as well.

I'm more positive on the game overall than you, but I agree with this. I've hit the point where often if it isn't very straight forward, I'll just give up on some Wealth pickup. Especially if it is ever an instance where I have to find some exploding bottle that isn't immediately nearby. No thanks.

I'm probably 30 hours or so in the game and the story is definitely the highlight so far. The narrative is simultaneously fascinating and really messy. I give the writers credit - they really went for it with this triple-layer inception thing with a modern day person living the memories of a Viking living the memories of a First Civ big-wig but viewed through the cultural lens of Norse mythology all tied into the idea of the Ragnarok cycle repeating in all three eras. If nothing else it's ambitious.

I'm not sure if it entirely works yet - I think tonally it isn't quite right. The main game is a little too punny for my tastes, and that contrasts badly with how dour and up-its-own-ass serious the modern day stuff is so far. There's also some really good little moments in the settlement, but the flip side of that is the overall higher quality of writing as compared to Odyssey makes the bad parts of the writing stand out all that much more.

As far as gameplay goes, it's kind of "eh." The game is still too damn long and checklist-y. And the RPG stuff is still bad but in a different sort of way than Odyssey was bad. Odyssey sucked because none of the gear mattered and you got tons and tons of it. Valhalla gives you less gear but it still doesn't really matter because the stat differences are so minuscule between items. A lot of the stats feel like they are there for the sake of being a stat, too. Like, why are there separate types of nodes for "Stealth Damage" and "Assassination Damage"? The difference between them is never explained and they read like the same thing. And why have nodes for Light and Heavy damage, but other nodes for general melee damage?

After finishing two regions and doing a fair bit of mucking around, collecting stuff, taking out The Order targets (which they should just call Templars at this point) the game is definitely starting to lose it's hold on me. It was a fun bit of open world running-around but ehh, I'm starting to hit up against that wall where some things are a ways off and quite frankly the gameplay isn't hot enough to purse them.

Some of the best parts of the game so far have been missions with any sort of hallucination or dream aspect to them where they can get a little crazy. More of the game should be like that. I like the idea of the animus glitches in how they freeze the world, but the puzzles themselves are not all that fun to solve. The story is what it is - more often than not you're just looking at these characters thinking "you're really gonna do that?" and just shaking your head. It's this classic Assassins Creed naiveté where the protagonist appears to be absolutely blind to the motivations of those around them.

Gameplay overall is still very cookie cutter and sometimes even rough. In trying to make the world more mysterious and less obvious in not having everything highlighted for you they've made the game sometimes very tedious to play. Lets be honest there is no mystery here, just give me all the icons. Don't limit me to a "pulse" just give me constant eagle vision so I can navigate towards chest #106 and get the 30 leather from it. I like the small puzzles leading up to the chests so far because it's the only time I've had to actually think when playing the game but the rewards are typically not worth the effort.

So yah, my biggest praise for AC Valhalla is "nothing else is out so I guess I'll keep playing this" but thats as far as it goes. If this wasn't a pack-in with my Series X I would never have bothered with it. These new AC games really lack any sort of heart. It's all fairly well put together but it feels like Lego rather than this living, breathing game.

Boy, the combat system may be fairly simplistic, but the way the hammer feels is great and dual wielding them is crazy satisfying.

My favourite parts of the game are the few occasions where you get to solo stealth your way around a large fort, when I get to try to pick off everyone in it without being spotted, and looting the place dry, apart from the things I'm not allowed to access until I hit the story trigger for that area. Sadly those story triggers are usually large battles which was never why I like the series. If there'd been some way to have me continue to sneak around amidst a giant battle that might have been interesting. Now, three England regions in there are some hints at an interesting story ahead, though Sigurd's sudden turn to crazy seemed to happen between one mission and the next, a little out of the blue which felt odd. Maybe I missed something in previous interactions. Beyond that, there's clearly some mystery to uncover but I'm wondering if it'll pay off. There's also quite a few places with area that are inaccessible until the story catches up with you, or which feel a little weird to revisit once it does which, if you're an explorey-type open world player, can be jarring. It's a tough balance because I do love the freedom to move around, but the story would probably be better served without the fully open world. But then I'm one of the weirdos who really loved the first game, and was baffled by complaints like "it's just going from place to place assassinating people" - yeah... you're an assassin, and I loved the blending, the social stealth, hunting down your target, bam, kill them, and out. Story aside (I also liked the potential of sci-fi switching, and what could be been made of the modern day stuff if they'd had the confidence and the chops), I'd play a whole much longer game that was just a variety of people and places, with their own architectural and geographical challenges between you and your target. But *your* target - you and your wrist-blade's, not you and your army's and special powers' target. But obviously that wasn't how the series was destined to go.

Actually it's Hitman, isn't it. I want Historical Hitman.

@tdous: I just got to the part in your spoilers and legit felt like I missed something or played too long while drunk one night and did something I had forgotten. It is such an odd turn both by that character and even Eivor to some degree. Just many harsh shifts out of nowhere.

@sethmode: Yeah, I feel like I wasn't able to have Eivor react the way I wanted to this. I guess I've been playing a pretty chilled Eivor, and didn't seem to be able to do much but yell. Nuance - less of a reasonable expectation in a) a viking character, or b) an Assassin's Creed character ;)

Definitely don't get the praise around this game. It's a bland story that already seems weak in comparison to the little that I've played of Origins but on the other hand the environment is more compelling than the boring wasteland of sand in Origins. I guess these new AC games just are not for me.

I'm enjoying them more in Valhalla than I did in the previous two games, usually the solution (oil jar, or hidden entrance) isn't too far from the marker. The main frustration for me with getting these collectibles is that the game doesn't indicate in any way which collectables are unobtainable because they're locked behind a story quest. So I've switched to completing the story arc in an area before I try to get all the collectibles.

In general I've enjoyed all the main-line Assassin's Creed games, and this one doesn't seem notably worse or better.

PS. oh I also hate the bullshit mysteries which are boss battles against some enemy way higher level than the surrounding area -- forcing me to just skip those and come back to them later.

This game doesn't have mercenaries hunting you and interrupting what could be a perfect stealthy run through an enemy base, does it? Asking for a friend.

@warpr: The mystery bosses that are way higher level is just baffling to me. Yesterday I was in a level 50 zone and I'm level 90 (Power) myself - stumbled upon some unique cool looking ghost spirit boss.. turns out this thing is level 240 or something. Why put an enemy in that zone with that high level??? There are other zones in the game which are rated in the upper hundreds, why not put a challenging boss in one of those, within the level parameters? It's a weird design choice.

Also I agree with @tdous above that I'm having a lot of fun being stealthy for as long as I can. Maybe it's because I genuinely like stealth games or maybe it's some AC muscle memory but I do love slinking around and taking guys out without being seen. Kind of miss the double assassination for two guards standing next to each other.

That said I also appreciate that when things do get loud the fighting against these normal goons is also alright. It's a very smooth transition from stealth to brawling.

I just get an extremely strong sense of "Would this character be doing this..?" when I start sneaking around exclusively. I do get some of that like.. UbiGame habit kicking in of like okay I wanna take out this guy and that guy and skulk over there and..

Oh wait I have 2 large axes on my back.

@permanentsigh said:

It does, unless you destroy a piece of paper with your name written on it that's really easy to get to right after they introduce this game's version of those guys. I guess they put in a contrived in-game option to turn that off.

Yeah this game has broken me. I'm glad I'm not the only one who had a bad time getting the treasures and completing some of the mysteries. Both features are almost universally annoying across the entire game.

@nateandrews: I don't think I'd get through this game either, if it wasn't for the fact that I randomly read about an exploit that lets you break through barred doors. Playing through the last half of the game with that knowledge was quite freeing.

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup

@tdous: Also been in the chill, brotherly Eivor camp so watching everyone just go full HAM on each other was jarring, to say the least.

@nateandrews: I'm still really enjoying the game and the story, but man...just have to say again that this whole wealth/mystery thing is a mess. It already feels like half baked BOTW, but then when you combine it with sometimes shit being locked off story wise with no indication? Infuriating. I spent like 15 minutes trying to get to a chest at one point that I eventually got to via story progression and it kind of saps any sense of reward or enjoyment out of the moments. And don't get me started on things that require explosives that don't appear in your Bat vision.

@sethmode: I learned after roughly 55 hours of playing that you can use the explosive trap arrows to break those walls. Wish I had known that 55 hours sooner! Yeah I was way into the story but I just could not get over the constant hang ups. They never end!

@nateandrews: fucking WHAT.

@tdous: oh bother. Glad there’s an off switch for that crap. Thanks!

I've put around 20 hours into it on the series X and it's fine. It's more Origins/Odyssey which i completed 100%. Exploration is similar, but you have to be closer to the map marker and "ping" to see what it is. I actually find the combat worse and less precise then the older ones. I have also found the raven to be almost completely useless.

That being said, i am somewhat enjoying my time with it, the setting is interesting, and the town building is engrossing enough to keep me raiding so far. Minus the ordinary character models and terrible animations the game itself looks fantastic. Incredibly buggy though, i've had multiple quests become uncompletable due to unresponsive NPC's, including a main story quest. And several bosses have thoughtfully decided to get stuck in their idle animations leading to an easy victory, so that was nice of them.

Weirdly enough, blowing your horn twice in a row seems to sometimes get unresponsive NPC's to reset and activate properly. My series x has powered off for seemingly no reason a few times playing it.

At this stage i've put it on the backlog until some patches are released.

I've never been able to finish an ac game after the first one. Will probably hold out until the next one that I will get and bounce off after 43 minutes and 22 seconds of playtime.

A couple of hours into it and I'm not liking the combat nearly as much as I did Odyssey. Also the skill tree padded with all the point something percentages kinda sucks (not to even mention the fog). I'm enjoying the setting though.

How was that even an issue for you? The bounties are super cheap and could be paid at any moment to make them walk away.

@sethmode:

You can also use the Dive of the Valkyries to break barred doors. Pretty sure that one's unintentional though, not quite so sure about the arrows.

@d_o_a: I've had issues with unresponsive NPC's on PS5 as well. So far, I've found that fast traveling away from them and then returning to them gets them to respond, if it's an option. I've also found the raven to be mostly useless. It has helped me find some underground entrances but that is about it.

The combat can be frustrating at times. Some enemies are invulnerable in knockback/dodging/attacking animations in a way that can be frustrating. Having my axes go straight through an enemy and not do any damage is annoying.

That being said, I am having a lot of fun with it. My opinions on AC games align more closely with Vinny in that I want a stealth game where my character is an overpowered assassin, but this is fun. This doesn't feel like an AC game to me but it is a fun open world romp.

@hack1501: Fast travelling and even reloading saves didn't help, just helped me notice the save corruption message after reloading one them haha, it ended up loading fine though. Blowing the horn twice in front of the npc oddly seemed to get them to trigger the dialog to continue, though you can't always access it.

Fired it up last night and it does seem to be in a better place after the most recent patch which is great.

@hack1501: the main things that make this an assassins creed game is the leap of faith, the hidden blade and an insistence on having hoods - all elements that seem very roughly shoehorned into Valhalla. I agree that for an open world game, bugs and gameplay “roughness” aside, it’s a decent enough time.

@humanity said:

I lol'd.

@tdous: While in some AC games certainly appropriate, in others the hoods are just downright silly. It was an integral part of gameplay for the first game given its time period but turning the robes into a requirement for all future titles was a mistake in my opinion. The hidden blade is the hallmark of Assassins Creed and is a much more interesting and important symbol. It is baffling that they relegated the blade to the background (and as far as I know just completely omitted it in Odyssey) yet they so desperately cling to the hoods in all character designs as if that is what primarily makes an assassin. Valhalla is this pronouncement how little they really care for the blade or it’s mythos which makes me wonder why they bothered putting it in at all - most of the game is composed of huge open battles anyway.

@humanity: Agreed. It does feel to me as if the trappings of AC are there to justify being a member of the franchise but they're only minimally interested in it actually being part of that world. I guess if you're playing those notes for the sake of appearance, the hood is an easier visual win.

Okay, now I'm about 90 hours in and I have lost a lot of enthusiasm. The story is pretty bad, though some of the individual regions have very cool storylines that the overall plot is just blah. The world is not the streamlined world that they promised talking about cutting down on bloat, the sheer volume of poorly written side quests and identical houses with locked doors is a bit much. I will say I had a solid 60 hours of absolutely loving this game until it kind of showed it's true colors as far as copy and paste goes. Honestly origins is my favorite assassin's Creed game and has a lot of these same problems, but I think the environments that they had in Egypt were a little more diverse and the main character of Bayek was just so sympathetic and compelling that I just wanted to be him as I got 100% of the achievements in that game. That's not to say this game is not good, cuz it is very good, it's just become another one of those at the 90 hour mark.

I've enjoyed the overall game for the most part, and while it is herky jerky to say the least, I am mostly intrigued about where some of the bits are going. Having said that though, it's just way too god damn long and I am so far past caring about any of the mysteries or artifacts any longer and don't even bother with wealth unless it is clearly easy to access.

There are side things that I don't mind (the tablet mysteries seem alright and I'd like to get the reward that they provide), but even then I just can't summon the energy to ride around and check all of the dots for this game that even mainlined now will probably take me like 115 hours to complete.

I do still thoroughly enjoy beating the shit out of dudes with dual wielded hammers. They continue to have a very satisfying feel.

After being bored into submission by both Origins and Odyssey, I’m absolutely shocked that this game has its hooks in me so immediately. Also, I generally hate the right bumper/right trigger melee combat, I found Immortals a miserable experience in large part because I couldn’t feel comfortable with the controls. But here I’ve getting by just fine with the default controls. Not sure if I’ve just been content starved for video games so far this year or if there’s some genuine “getting the formula right” happening here, but I am pretty fully invested in this game.

I'm 80 hours into this. I've come around on the combat, and I am actively enjoying most of the story stuff. The pattern is familiar and old--go to new area, do quests until people like you, repeat--but I find most of the characters to be well written with believable motives, so I'm fine with it. But I just got to a certain point in the story and I'm frankly ready to be done with the game now, but it just won't stop. It's getting to be a chore.

@bladeofcreation: Yuuup.

I enjoyed this game, but it definitely overstays its welcome. The last zones felt like a chore and it doesn't help how completely disconnected most are from the main plotline. Not that the main story is good anyway. Still a great podcast game and I liked some of the characters. The fact that I could finish it already puts it above Rogue.

I was kinda annoyed they didn't follow Odyssey giving you the option to swap control presets. First thing I did was lookup if someone put the time into remapping to a more traditional layout. Found a pretty good one on Reddit.

This is a really messed up thing nobody is really talking about with the Ubisoft games from last year. They don't have optional control schemes, just full manual remapping. What sucks is that because these games overload the controller so much, it's actually impossible to manually change anything without creating a conflict. I spent hours trying to create an alternate control scheme in Immortals, the best I could find still prevented me from running and carrying objects at the same, and introduced weird issues that would randomly make me throw objects I was carrying. This made the already tedious puzzles of that game even slower.

The real trouble is how inaccessible this makes the game. I have joint pain in my hands and sometimes odd control schemes can be really difficult for me to get comfortable with. You might think that full remapping functionality is great, but it means nothing if it can't be used. It's like putting a wheelchair ramp in front of your restaurant but it being at a 120 degree angle. It just doesn't work.

I am almost 80 hours in and I think I still have a number of sizable questlines to get done. MAN this game is long. I'm kind of shocked that some of this didn't wind up being DLC. I wonder how big the DLC is going to be, anyway, and how many people are going to be too exhausted to bother with it?

@rorie: The crazy thing is that in order to get the full picture of the meager story there is in this game - the current day overarching story that is because the Eivor stuff is completely incidental and unimportant - you do have to literally finish everything. Pacify every single part of the map, complete both vision hut storylines and assassinate all the order members which in itself means having to play that dice game, complete drinking challenges etc.

I mean on top of just the regular Eivor stuff, it's A LOT of game to burn through for what is essentially.. 10 minutes of plot development? And the game still has the audacity to end on a massive cliffhanger.

@humanity: @rorie: I have a particularly strong aversion to games that resolve a massive plot point that should be near the end of the game, and then tell me to go do more of the same shit I've been doing for several more hours before I can start the ACTUAL endgame. I feel like that's what's happening here. And I'm not even doing most of the small things like treasure/mysteries/artifacts. The anomalies are just so tedious I've decided I'm not even going to do them. I have a feeling I'm going to stop playing as soon as I finish the main story, and I'll just watch any of the extra stuff on YouTube.

I thought they were gonna do something with Randvi. She looks and has the same hairstyle as Kassandra. Guess Ubisoft felt like reusing assets and thinking no one would notice.