Assassin's Creed Hotyssey

I'm gonna let you all in on a little secret. That newest Assassin's Creed game? It's great!

That take is hotter than 50 Shades of Sparky, I know, but I'm wildly happy with this game. I should be - I've been playing it off and on for a damn month pretty much exclusively, and with over seventy hours in, I'm barely past the 60% storyline mark. That's partly on me, because I like monkeying around in the universe and because I have a hard time spotting certain objectives or things to destroy. But it's also because I'm just having a great time exploring.

Now part of that is due to the fun I'm making for myself. I've been swapping pretty freely between weapon types, and at level 55 or so, I'm pretty much just ramming through combat encounters for funsies. That aspect was a little frustrating for the first ten or so levels, especially when it came to the mercenaries who breathed on me and I died. Now I'm playing drums with three or four mercenaries' skulls at a time while fire-lovin' ladies are spitting at me with their devil bows and I'm loving it.

Kassandra's a dope character, voiced particularly well by Melissanthi Mahut, who I hope is a name we see featured in a lot more games. Kassandra's alternately full of wonderment and brashful exuberance, and is a fantastic counter to Abubakar Salim's equally likable Bayek from the previous game. The islands aren't quite as fascinating as that setting, but navigating Kassandra's world is still a great deal of fun.

My enjoyment is also aided by books on tape, which if you haven't tried before, grab yourself a good podcast game, get to your library, and bullshit with your librarian about Overdrive on your computer or device. I've been mowing down Craig Johnson's Longmire novels playing Odyssey and the combination of cowboy procedural and old timey hackin', whackin', and stabbin' has been a riot.

And that's it, I suppose. Sometimes I just gotta give a game its due, and this is one of those times. AC Odyssey is a real delight.

Yeah, the AC games have long been great podcast/audio book games; especially, if you let yourself indulge in some perfectionist bullshit and just start checking stuff off the map. I'm really looking forward to seeing one of these modern entries in the franchise, but I still need to get through Syndicate first, and that probably won't be anytime soon.

You run into the xp gain wall people complain about Sparky? Where it feels like you might have to buy boosters unless you want to grind for hours upon hours?

wonder if they've fixed that yet

I had a ton of fun with Odyssey. Maybe my opinion would've been different if I had played Origins last year, but it was a fun mix of RPG-style quests, open world exploration, and old-fashioned base takeovers wrapped in a package with nice graphics and music. The abilities you can unlock are really satisfying and the combat personally never got old for me. I was ready for the game to be over after the end of the ~70 hours I spent with it (completing all major "endings" but nowhere near 100% completion), but I had fun pretty much the whole time.

@slag I had no problems with the XP progression, but I did a bunch of optional quests along the way. If someone tried to just main-line the critical path, I imagine they might start running into issues.

@slag: It definitely has slowed down after level 50 but I didn’t have any problem hitting there naturally. I started playing just before they implemented a much higher level cap, which I suspect might have also patched out some of the grind. In any case, doing quests and exploring has given me pretty much what I need to blow through the game.

I will say this - their mastery levels (permanent boosts to a bajillion percentages like life steal, armor penetration, damage with skills, etc.) are ridiculously cool and make me hope there is a new game plus that keeps my old exp. levels.

@cloudymusic: @sparky_buzzsaw: Nice! Sounds like my only fear with the game is not a big deal.

now to just actually find the time to play it....

Yep. AC: Odyssey is one of the only 2018 games that I actually played through to completion.

It's a great game, and as you noted, is a really good podcast/audiobook game.

@slag: I never hit any XP issues. There is a point maybe around level 20-30 where I always felt a little underpowered, but once you start really figuring out the skills and exploiting damage bonuses on gear, you'll start to feel very overpowered.

@chaser324: Flaming weapons + the fighter skill tree's ultimate buff + the RB+RT attack = everything dead all the time. I have a hell of a time using bows, but that LB+LT bow shot skill knocks damn near everything off ledges which is pretty much an insta-kill anyways. It's really awesome once combinations like those become available.