Best AC game yet! Edit: worst

Played Odyssey, it took me over 200h to 100% it. At some point it stopped being fun.
Is Origin still considered the best? As I heard it's more condensed experience and I'm not really eager to jump into another chore fest with Valhalla.

I'm making my way through that first area - not sure how long it is but I'm past the Quick Look events which admittedly are early on. They just introduced me to the original "crowd stealth" mechanics except there were no crowds and the hood just kind of made them notice me a bit slower. Seems like a very tacked on remnant from the old games. The guards spotted me twice and I ran around the tower and hid in tall grass to disengage and then "snuck" in which made the whole thing kind of ridiculous.

I dunno. I didn't really like Origins all that much but back then my disappointment was half-n-half design choices and performance. Valhalla is running at a near steady 60 FPS at all times and looks really well so thats great.. but so far it still suffers from the same shortcoming I thought Origins had. Past AC games were exciting for the historical cities they recreated with huge cathedrals and buildings that really felt monumental to climb. Origins by nature of it's setting was very empty for the most part and the few settlements were all that impressive architecturally. Climbing on top of the pyramids wasn't nearly as exciting as scaling the Hagia Sophia.

So Valhalla for the most part is still this vast, empty world with some primitive architecture here and there. Not sure how much I enjoy the fact that you can no longer tag enemies and certain information is obfuscated to create "excitement" but in reality it's a lot of travelling for a "thats it?" revelation towards the end. Most Blue Mysteries dots I've encountered so far have been incredibly inconsequential. The very earliest one of those was a guard that was a sleep walker - so the whole thing amounted to me watching this NPC slowly walk his scripted path and then get some dialog near the end. I guess I was expecting these to be a little more involved and bespoke. I've heard some can get pretty wild.. but what is the ratio? I will admit that the one Mystery where you have to trash a raider couples house, actually setting it on fire, so they can get excited enough to have sex was kind of funny - although it's too bad they the whole thing felt very Ubisoftish as these two wooden NPC's sat on a bench as a awkwardly broke empty crates in their square room. The combat feels clunky more often than not but it gets the job done. I still prefer sneaking around when possible.

It's ok. I wasn't expecting it to win me over because these new-age AC games are not what I want out of that franchise and from the outside looking in this didn't appear to be a significant departure from that style. The norse stuff is interesting enough but I hope they lean into the crazy supernatural mythology a lot more going forward.

I'm enjoying Valhalla quite a bit but I'm glad that I went into it with the right expectations. Basically that I would like the (female) main character, enjoy some good shanking and not much else. I can find some humor in a few of those side quests, even though I agree with @humanity here that's it's just a bunch of nothing. It also helps that I bought an LG CX last week and the game looks gorgeous on it.

I've found the stealth to be a step up from Odyssey. All my difficulties are set to highest and I've gotten my ass beaten pretty good if I get myself surrounded. So far I needed to carefully stake out a place, pick off some lone guys and carefully stealth my way to targets. I've managed to do some really good assassinations that reminded me of the early AC games. I like that the game lets me focus on those missions without feeling forced to do every little activity that comes my way. Maybe that's a me-thing. Maybe I've just grown out of that Vinny-mindset.

I understand that Odyssey and Valhalla both love their big battles and although they've been fun, they're not really the draw for me.

Oh, I absolutely want to highlight the loot system. This is pretty much what I want out of an rpg outside of looter ARPGs.

There are just a couple of little things that I personally find irritating. Not highlighting loot-able kills so, particularly for smaller animals in snow if you kill a bunch of things in different directions you have to remember where they were to find them, and retrieve your arrow. Not impossible obviously but a bit fiddly. I can't tell if you can craft arrows, with some descriptive text in-game saying you can, and some internet threads saying you can't. Might just be something they teach you past the point I'm at. Maybe the most annoying thing is that you can't always swing your axe in the direction your pushing. It will sometimes force Eivor to turn towards whatever nearby thing the games decides you should be breaking, rather than letting you attack in your chosen direction. Not so much in combat, but say you're in a hut and fancy smashing everything - that fence? No sorry you need to break this pot first before we'll let you attack in the fence's direction. And the lack of current inventory stock in the shop UI.

This is one of those situations where I spot seemingly pedantic little details because it is a series I've enjoyed so much, and it's a setting I'm hopeful I can enjoy once it opens up a bit more.

@humanity: One of my biggest disappointments as I've gotten deeper into the game has definitely been the cities. While there are some absolutely stunning vistas in the game, with the wide open nature scenery, the cities are a massive letdown. Even London barely felt like more than a marketplace with a few houses scattered around.

@ares42: I'm sure it's historically accurate because thats their thing, but yah, the series lost a lot of it's allure when it became a bunch of forests/desert/snowy mountains separating quests.

I played a ton of this over the weekend. I haven't played an AC since AC4: Black Flag. I think that's probably about the right amount of AC over time. Anyway, I'm loving the game, it's really fun.

I guess I've never really thought of the cities as being this big impressive thing. Architecture is not much of a fascination to me and while there is historical novelty to climbing to the top of of a really tall historical landmark and jumping off of it I much prefer the kind of vistas the later games provide to just a whole lot of dense citscape.

There were no big cities in Europe at the time the game takes place.

I'm curious how this plays on PC and how it compares to PS5/Series X?

I was much more enamored with the sweeping vistas of ancient Greece than any of the buildings there. While Valhalla is also a very good looking game, I feel like I'm running around New England in the fall. Don't get me wrong, I love living in New England and the fall is my favorite season. I'm not, like, doing parkour all over the buildings here, but other than that I can pretty much see forested hills and river coasts whenever I want to.

It really feels like enemies can spot you a mile away if you exit cover for a brief moment so I have eschewed all form of subtly and instead wield a 2 handed axe in each hand.

Which really fits the tone a lot more than skulking about I think.

@efesell: depends on the stats you choose on the skill tree and the stealth difficulty you select in the menu.ive been assassinating and sniping my way through almost every encounter and it feels great. Not as great and shattering three dudes shields with a greatsword before flipping a guy into the air by chopping his feet off, and decapitating him before he hits the ground haha

I took the daily quests for opal. One was to track down a thief and kill them.

The marker led to Ravensthorpe and I was concerned that this foul villain had infiltrated my home. Even more concerning was that he had been there the entire time and I never noticed.

@aistan: This rules.

@efesell: Okay, so I just unlocked this ability. And at level 100, I'm able to take on small groups of level 280 enemies. Holy crap. This might be the way to play.

@aistan: I just got this one too! Did you finish the quest for completing 10 contracts right after it? I did and it mad eme wonder if this is always the 10th contract.

@efesell: I felt this too. In addition to how quickly they see you, their vision is incredibly broad. See a few pixels of an enemy's head and that meter starts filling up. As others mentioned, there is a setting for that. I'm keeping it at default but it definitely seems ramped up.

@bladeofcreation: No, it was my second one.

Pretty sure the game just searches the world for valid assassination targets and chooses one at random.

If they fix this they'll have fucked up. It's legitimately hilarious.

@aistan: Ah, okay. The timing of it in mine made me think that might be the case. I agree, it's hilarious. Was it a glitch in the Animus? Was it an enemy that was dressed in a really amazing disguise? Had this dummy somehow insulted Reda and he demanded revenge? All possible answers! We'll never know! Some of the side content has been pretty amusing.

I just finished the East Anglia storyline and so far that's been the best part of the main story by far.

Yesterday I sat down thinking I'll do some more blue side-quests at the end of the night and suddenly the Norway section just ended and England began - of course this was all intercut with rather lengthy scenes of sailing and talking. With how short Norway is.. unless the games goes back and forth a fair bit, I just don't see why they didn't start in England to begin with instead of giving you two tutorial phases.

I built the seer's hut at my settlement. And uh... I was not expecting the direction it went after that.

Anyone give that chick her Viper Eggs? That was, uhhhh, something else.

@aistan: Yeah, hit that point tonight and holy shit.

I kind of like it. Having everything visible from the start means I'm going to pick the "best" abilities first, and not care about the tree anymore once I've unlocked the few things I wanted. Obscuring the tree forces me to pick the best of what's available at the time, but I might still be surprised later on in the game with a cool new ability I didn't know existed.

Granted, I always play these games on the easiest difficulty, so I also don't need to worry about what pick anyway... my character will be overpowered either way ;)

Some of these bossfights are fuckin nuts, playing on higher difficulty settings is awesome for these huge fights,but I will say my enjoyment is very much contingent upon the skill tree, I've spent a bit more time than I'm proud to admit unlocking down every path and resetting just so I can see what I want and then minmax

This game should come with one of those big "GET OUT OF THE HINTERLANDS!" Warnings on the box.

Now that I've spent some time in England I think it is important to let everyone know that HEY don't do ANYTHING in the first part of the game. Don't bother unlocking any perches, don't chase any gold or any blue mysteries. Mainline this part and get it over with as soon as possible because the game opens up in such a significant way in England that any time spent in Norway is an absolute waste of time.

@humanity: I don't know about that...I enjoyed much of the tutorial content and I think it served a good baseline purpose...plus there was at least one blue dot fight that I quite enjoyed and served as really great parrying timing practice for me.

Yeah I dunno, I liked the Norway intro just fine. I picked up every collectible in the place, didn't take very long and it's a good head start.

So after messing around with dual-wielding a bit, I've found that a heavy sword in my main hand with a bearded axe in my left is a pretty good combo. Holding the L1 for the left hand attack makes me just hack away repeatedly at the enemies. So far it's pretty effective to break shields with heavy attacks and follow up with a flurry of axe blows.

@bladeofcreation: you want to dual-wield the same weapon type in both hands, that unlocks special dual-wielding attacks. If you do two different types you basically just get the toolbox of two different one-handed weapons, but still only attack with one at the time.

@efesell: @sethmode: You can always go back and the game has so much more to show you later on that it should absolutely be skipped at the beginning.

Sure, a thing two people like means it absolutely should be skipped? Come on. Again, I thought it ramped up well, was worthwhile, and I overall enjoyed it. If someone asked me if they should skip it completely, I'd absolutely say no.

I personally find it silly story-wise that you're allowed to go back any time you want. I was happy that I did everything I wanted to do, because I liked the flow of the overall story better that way.

For those that have come to complete the Seers quest: while crazy, I thought it ended with a bit of a whimper. Thoughts?

@sethmode: Did you complete the full series ? I just finished the first round, but got a follow-up for a second round later. Dunno if the ultimate end is any good though.

@sethmode: Different strokes for different folks of course but I think anyone spending a lot of time in the opening area is doing themselves a disservice in that you're getting stuck in a beginner zone before the actual game opens up. Especially since you can always just go back, and in fact there was one zone I encountered in Norway that just said "not available yet" which made me realize I should definitely just move on.

I'm not just "come on" -ing you here - this is something that severalwebsites have written about in beginner guides for the game.

@ares42: Hah, no, as soon as I thought it was over another part opened up, so here is hoping I'm wrong. I did do everything I could in the first part which took several hours and the payoff left A LOT to be desired...

@humanity: I'm not going to get into a pointless debate with you over a part I think is good and worth playing and not skipping. I said what I said. Go write a review if it you find it a disservice to the player. All I've said from the beginning is, I disagree.

Agreed with how good this game is, they feel like they finally tuned their post-Origins open world / RPG design to something that works for me. Origins I liked for the story and some of the quests, but it took me quite a bit to finally finish it. Odyssey I dropped 30-odd hours into, but felt like I still had 100-hours left and it was overwhelming to make any progress. This corrects most of that:

Bite-size few minute sidestories and environmental puzzles when I feel like roaming around. Plus everything gives you something meaningful in terms of upgrade currency, collectibles, items, skills or XP. Those are laid out in contrast to bigger, multi-hour / multi-part questlines with memorable characters that get fleshed out for each area. Combined with eliminating the huge mercenary ladder from Odyssey and combining it with a more focused web of nefarious bad guys to hunt, and it never feels like I have a checklist of eighty quests or things to finish in each area.

Even 15-20 hours in I still only have one major questline, a few minor long-term questlines on my list, and a fairly manageable list of open-world exploration things to do in each area. It at least feels possible to 100% this game, and never feels overwhelming in terms of crap on my questlog and map. In comparison with 20 hours of Odyssey I had about two dozen major and minor quests, 10+ areas with another dozens of little things to do on the map, the giant order/mercenary trees, AND some other ancillary side-systems. And none of it felt rewarding to do!

On the systems side there's a completely fixed loot system focused around collecting sets of equipment and upgrading ones that fit your style. No more having to spend 10 minutes of every hour comparing and breaking down loot, or trying to find a new, higher level, higher rarity piece of equipment that fits your style. And an improved leveling system that gives you a good combination of standard numbers-go-up improvements to your "level" along with skills/upgrades, with a fun element of uncovering the web to see what skills are hidden. Skill points also come along at a fairly good clip if you're doing quests or exploring, so you don't have to worry too much about tossing them into things you like.

Overall just feels like they've learned from the mistakes of the previous two games and found an open-world style that works.

EDIT: One thing that I can complain about is that the game still has unfun open world jank. I've had several of the joint chest/door opening animations bug out and the lock me out of things. Climbing/parkour is finicky in parts and makes the "chase" mini-collectibles annoying to get. Stealth doesn't feel great and the spotting/line-of-sight on characters seems broken at times. None of it has broken the experience, but I do run into an annoying thing every hour or so.

I wanna shout out East Anglia plotline - its maybe the most "complete" feeling story out of the ones I played that lands just about everything it sets up.

The city "pledges" have been very disappointing so far. They are almost the same with slightly different characters and feel like AC1 or something - kill target A, kill target B, get info to kill target C.

@deathpooky said:

As some one who just lost another 10 minutes of progress because this time I'm stuck in a hay cart I definitely would have preferred they polish this one off a little more.

@deathpooky: great post man. I've been trying to get a sense of this game from reading peoples impressions but they've varied so wildly without much detail. Your post makes it sound like I actually might be very into this one as it adjusts off the first two games.

For me I just have to hopefully enjoy the combat. It was solid in Origins but if this doesn't have as much stealth stuff (correct me if I'm wrong there) I have to enjoy that and hopefully its refined and improved too.

All of the Hamlets are Exquisitely Flammable and I'm being such a little shit every time I run into one.

@toughshed: Thanks! There’s a very small amount of required stealth, and you can try to stealth takedown some enemies in an area, but otherwise it’s very open to you just running in like a Viking headlong to each situation.

I feel like the combat is slightly improved from Origins, especially once things open up with more skills. It’s largely the same set of parry or dodge attacks, mix in ranged attacks, use some abilities. But at least so far I haven’t run into damage sponge enemies or annoying encounters like the previous games. And there is some more variety in skill load outs and weapon options from what I’ve seen so far.

Some interesting thoughts in here. For me, Odyssey is probably my favorite game in the series, and Origins is pretty close behind. But I'm beginning to cool on Valhalla after 34 hours unfortunately. I'm surprised that people have raved about the Mysteries so much, because I have found nearly all of them to be really bad.

I'm disappointed that loot was toned down so much and not really replaced with anything meaningful. Combat has become rather boring because of it. I'm also getting super frustrated at how many locked and barred doors there are. I want to be able to just bash my way through these instead of lingering around trying to find a way in, especially when I know the reward waiting within is probably just some scraps of leather and a piece of ore to slightly upgrade the stats of my shoes.