Assassin's Creed Valhalla (2020)

There is some good about this game - I played about 60 hours, so I was definitely enjoying it for a while - but there is so much more that is bad that I'm leaving this game unfinished.

The biggest negative for me was the bugs. In nearly every play session I encountered a bug. Most of the time it was annoying but harmless, but still many times it was game-breaking, forcing me to restart the game - that is when it didn't just crash. The game is clearly unfinished and the bugs make it unplayable. The kicker for me was realizing that, due to a bug, an entire questline was made unavailable to me. There's an entire portion of the game that I literally cannot play because of a bug.

Another issue is that the stealth is completely broken. Enemies detect you immediately after you leave cover, or, when they get suspicious, they have a supernatural sense to determine your exact location. And I had the stealth setting set to Easy. I eventually gave up on it because it's so much faster and easier to just barge in and fight, but in an Assassin's Creed game, you want stealth.

Finally, the game is way too long. Like I said, I put in 60 hours, I honestly haven't done much of the extras, and I'm still not done. It's fine to have 100+ hours of content, but at least make it optional. Some of the main quests were honestly so drawn-out and boring and for no reason; many of them could have just been made into side quests. I don't know when developers got into their head that longer = better, but that's not the case. I'd rather spend more time on a short game that I actually like than continuing to put the bare minimum into this.

Really disappointed in this because I love the series, but I'm backlogging this until the bugs are fixed. I'm unfortunately going to have to do a lot more research when the next installment comes out to make sure I'm not wasting my money on another unfinished, unplayable title.

2/5

Put this game down in the end to play Cyberpunk 2077.

Enjoyed the exploration and gear progression systems - finding and using the upgrade materials was an engaging gameplay loop. I also enjoyed that some of the exploration tasks required me to think and scan my surroundings, a big step up from walking towards a marker on my screen. Combat was janky and pretty whack. Stealth was somewhat satisfying but made trivial by combat, and very shallow. Story was low-tier garbage and even if I had no other games I would not have stuck out with this. Graphics were good.

Trying to play as a full run-through with completing all territories, I really enjoyed this game out of the gate for about 30-40 hours. There are a lot of novel mini-bosses and cool minigames, but after about 40+ hours, the mechanics, general fighting, and base attacks started to get really stale and repetitive. Also, some of the stories for the side territories were honestly so boring that I feel like it would have been better to just not include them at all.

I went from really enjoying it to getting bored with it and pushing myself to get through the end story. End story is kind of anti-climactic, unfortunately.

This game suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. Assassins creed is about assassination - targeted, stealthy strikes. That just doesn't mesh with the vikingr (raider) fantasy - where a loud battle horn is sounded as you and your raiders approach enemy strongholds.

That said, the combat was fun, the story was interesting, and the progression is well done. I really disliked the modern portions of the game (where you warp back to modern times) and it felt very tacked-on, but I'll take it if needed.

It was also far too long - with the need to subjugate every province in England being a bit of aslog in the end. There are just too many. My playtime clocked in at over 71 hours - which is just a hugely long time. Too long for a game like this.

In any case, this could have been 5 stars - the setting (England, Asgard, etc) is spectacular. The combat is pretty fun. The sneaking works well when you get to do it. The difficulty was a bit on the easy side (which is usually how I prefer it). It runs at a smooth 60fps on the series X, and as such felt pretty next-gen. I enjoyed it!

To all those that say that "you pay 60 bucks, thus the game needs to have more that 60 hours", that is such an amount of bullshit. Let me tell you, gameplay time doesn't translate in game quality. As a student film, let me tell you something I noticed going through many film catalogues: a 180min+ movie is a masterpiece, when the runtime is justified, usually by treating themes that are overly complicated or many of them, is also a masterpiece if the whole journey feels like a whole. But from a point of view, I appreciate more a -90 minutes that deals with just as complicated themes, yet having a much shorter runtime, it condenses and gets the point across like the 180min film.

What I am trying to say is that having main stories such as here in Valhalla or Ghost of Tsushima be longer that the runtime of games such as God of War and TLOU Part II is clearly unjustifiable. Mainly because there is no complicated theme to get across, and the quality of their writing isn't as good. Mind you, I am talking of Main Story runtime, I am not talking about side quests. Games like Dark Souls are so cleverly made that you can stretch the game to the 100 hour mark, and if you are a pro can finish it in less that 15 hours. Open world games are obviously fit for longer gameplays, specially if you are an RPG, so Witcher 3 is a masterpiece and its runtime is incredible justifiable... Valhalla although it tries doesn't have the enthralling, world-engrossing design of Witcher.

So, I am 25H into the game, and I have recently played what I believe it would be the peak and most interesting thing this game might offer. And if I have to wait for another 25H to reach same length, with its gaming cliche story, is just so you can imagine, if I had to play two times TLOU II, is it worth it. I don't think so. The only thing at this point that keeps me into this, is because I have been waiting so long to be a Viking, and I still love my longship. But the game is becoming very tedious, to the point that it's bringing me to mainline the story, and use fast travel; two things which I consider sinful to do in an open-world and RPGs, and I abstain to do in almost every game I play. But this supposedly 65H runtime, for main story only is... yeah, a bit asking too much of your player's life. I have other games to play and I start wondering if it would be more worth it to stop here and replay God of War or begin Hellblade which I started when it came out, but didn't go through the whole thing and if I remember well, I was loving every bit of it. I don't know...

My Opinion on AC Series

I have played every single main entry on the AC series -in fact, I grew up with them- all of them to its main-story completion, that is except for Odyssey, the game was so massive and so full of nonsense, that it failed to grab my attention. In fact my problem with the series is even more complicated. I certainly believe that AC had its logical conclusion with AC III, after Desmond, there wasn't a need for more entries. However, Ubisoft delivered to us later on Black Flag and Unity, perhaps the best entries to the "classic" cycle. Syndicate, I found to be terribly awful, and the transition into a more RPG-landscape in Origins felt like a gust of fresh air, and I wholeheartedly embraced it, since then, it has become one of my favorites AC games, as well, as being one incredible game by itself. *Odyssey * felt incredible, for the first couple of hours, then its own vastness weighted it down and toppled into my least favorite AC games.

But what I think that is becoming incredibly tedious in these games, is the conflict between the sects, the Assassins and Templars. That's why I believe, the series had its logical ending in III, also the whole concept of the Animus, has become useless and in most games has proven to be incredible effective in breaking the narrative flow of the game. Now, of course, I mainly don't play these games for their story, but as someone that has grown up loving and reading history, their settings are what appeals me the most. I can tell you I spent more hours wandering through Renaissance Italy, Revolutionary Paris, Ptolemaic Egypt and Penopolesian-War Greece, than paying actually attention to their monotonous stories.

If they were to keeping the games inside their fictional world, where this two sects fight behind the shadows, it would make for a much more appealing story, instead of being thrown into this millennial mess. And if they were even smarter, or if they treated their audience as being mature, having implemented a quasi-RPG system, they would offer the player the freedom to choose between sides: want to play the good guy be an Assassin? a villain, you can be a Templar? Or would you rather to be an anti-hero, you can do the right thing but never choose sides. The writing is extremely weak in the series, as it is in most games generally, but playing through Valhalla it certainly has delivered some eye-rolling moments. As an example: I was riding with a group of characters, one happens to be British, the only one in that Danish posse, he notices that Eivor's -the main character- accent is different to the other "Danes", that's because he is from Norway. The British has never heard of Norway, he didn't even thought possible there could be land northern of Denmark, then as the conversation progresses, we come to talk about a Norwegian king, the British of course, as he stated that didn't have any idea that Norway did exist, seems to be interested in him; but suddenly as if the following, was written by someone else, the British gains in the space between him saying "I don't know who he is" and at his next line, he suddenly has an encyclopedic knowledge of the king. How can someone make such mistake, I cannot even fathom, but the series and Valhalla included is filled with them.

First Impressions of AC Valhalla

Playing through the PS4, the games looks astonishingly beautiful, like most recent Assassin's Creed games. And just like in Origins and Odyssey, the gameplay is great; the game feels more RPG, this time, decisions seem to matter, but I am only 13H into the game, so I cannot formulate an opinion yet. The setting is brilliant, and this alongside God of War (2018), has definitely fulfilled all my Viking and Norse dreams. The writing is extremely weak however, and I thought the game would be less focused on the Assassins vs Templars thing, but it's still there, and it really feels like a game I have played before. The Animus, and modern day stuff, and that character Layla, they should be gone, they suck, but really, they stink, Black Flag and Unity were the last games to implement the Animus and modern-day thread most effectively after the Desmond-era. I am afraid, however, that not sufficient changes have been made, one that is noticeable is they have implemented more classic-stealth mechanics, such as blending with crowds, sitting on benches and using drunks as distractions, but it feels half-assed, it definitely still has a more focus on its action. The game is massive, and it's said that the main story alone is 60+ hours, I don't think this game is capable enough to hold my attention for that long. What's with games being extremely long nowadays, if you are going to make a 30H+ experience, you have to earn it, you need good writing and excellent and enthralling game design; Valhalla sadly, simply doesn't excel at neither, for now. It still is a deftly Viking simulator however, and I am very much enjoying my longship.

Just got my review copy (why do they insist on sending me the review copies on launch day? It's like they don't care about the latin american market at all).

Anyway, I'm back on my photo mode bullshit.

Got the game at -91% sale because of some mistake on Ubisoft's side. The game's decently good so far. I'm enjoying it more than I expected from such a stale series. I do have to say that the game doesn't particularly excel visually tho. It's kinda bland and uninspired. Doesn't particularly look much different from the now 5-year old Origins which I got along when I bought my CPU.

It certainly doesn't look like the real locations it's taking place in. I come from this part of Norway and the mountains do not look like this. Mountains are a lot more rounded here. Up in the northern part of Norway, mountains may look more like this, but certainly not here.