Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018)

This game... is honestly not that great. But I still loved it. I've played through the entire game twice now, first time was by myself and I was inpatient so I would often skip lines in cutscenes and I did every question mark, though I didn't pay much attention to the details of the game. I finished that playthrough in about 100 hours. This time, I watched my boyfriend mostly play it, as he never tried it before either. He's obsessed with Greece and Greek mythology, and he was actually able to recognize some in-game places as their real-life counterparts, as well as tell me about some myths that were displayed in the game. It made me notice how much detail the developers actually put in the game. We spent 150 hours doing every quest, question mark and also both DLCs, Legacy of the First Blade and the Fate of Atlantis. The main story and the story from Legacy of the First Blade are goated, like SO good and definitely a must play. It's fun as hell to go around killing cult members and collecting clues for the next one. Fate of atlantis was kind of weak in our opinion; it's such a cool concept that you go to elysium and the underworld and Atlantis but it all just kind of fell flat? Like the quests and all the Isu characters were a bit lackluster.

Aside from that, mechanics and controls CAN be a clunky mess. Climbing somewhere and Kassandra/Alexios would just stop climbing. For like no reason. In some spots there would suddenly be invisible walls that were definitely NOT supposed to be there. Stealth mechanics were dumb, most enemies spot you instantly so it's kind of hard to really be sneaky when you had to be for certain quests. And the whole storyline with Layla and her little doctor friend?? It feels so forced and like we weren't able to care about them and always just wanted to get back to ancient greece as quickly as possible.

This game definitely has it's faults and it's not great for an assassins creed game, but if you are a completionist or like Greek mythology it's definitely a fun game and worth the experience. 7/10

A very fun AC game if you're into old greek mythology. The world is really vast, there is a lot of sailing to do and also ship combat (although that part is not as good as in black flag). It's one of the 3 AC games with the 'new' formula, so the old city-sneaking is not so much present in this game. Having said that, it's still prefectly viable to build and play a sneaky character.

What i liked most about the game is the story in it. Out of the 3 'modern' AC games i found this one to be the best story, maybe because i was more into the old greek mythology than into viking or egyptian lore. Other than that it's jut a very nice game with smooth combat, lots of exploration and a really good length of game.

The DLC's are also very good. Legacy of the first blade adds some cool story to the game, but it's mainly the atlantis one that is awesome to play through.

*4.5 stars/96hrs/100% Achievements

The world-building, writing, graphics, characters etc. are all amazing here. You're really able to embody the exaggerated swagger of an Ancient Greek Misthios in this fully realised world.

I wish the main story had been a bit tighter and that the three strands were better wound together, and I also wish that the environments weren't so similar (a problem with the setting more-so than the game I guess). I don't mind the RPG-ification of AC, if you do then this probably isn't the game for you because it expands greatly on that aspect of Origins.

DLCs: Both are worth playing, and they almost doubled my playtime so they're worth the price in terms of amount of content. Legacy has some odd (to say the least) story developments, but adds Assassin lore. Atlantis adds a lot of Isu lore but has a bad start imo in Elysium, but with the Underworld chapter it improves and then it hits its stride in the actual Atlantis chapter. The Lost Tales of Greece adds a bunch of great side quests that flesh out Ancient Greece and it's free so I would definitely recommend playing through them!

The recently added Korfu story was also entertaining, if a bit light. But hey, once again, it's free!

I have 99 hours and 45 minutes on my last save game. I've finished every quest (except randomized of course), every question mark and got every achievement. And, God, I feel so relieved and exhausted in the same time.

I like many things about this game: Ancient Greece is beautiful, it's a pleasure to explore it and find familiar things and personalities from the history classes; combat system is ebjoyable, especially in the beginning, because at some point you find the best skills and all the battles look the same. Even the story and some side quests have their cool moments.

If only this game would be two or three times shorter. In the second part of the game I started to get tired of routine gameplay, similar side activities, useless loot and non-memorable quests. It was like going on the boring office job or playing old Korean MMORPG. I miss old compact ACs, this one is too huge.

PS4 Pro. Completed main quests and cultists, didn't bother to finish Arena or become top merc or play expansions apart from the included Atlantis quests,

So I accept the criticisms of this game - empty shallow world, repetitive missions, grindy, so-so story and voice acting etc - and to be honest, I did feel some of this in the early mid-game ( i guess levels 10-20).

But slowly the game grew on me and my attitude to it changed.

Yes, there is a lot of empty space, but it is beautiful empty space and with my horse auto-galloping to the next marker I can relax and admire the scenery.

Yes, every location acts in essentially the same way - but it's relaxing fun to clear a fort, even if it does involve a lot of hiding in bushes, whistling and assassinating.

Mercenaries and bounties can be frustrating - I'm fighting some soldiers, passers-by join in with mops and sticks, suddenly three high-powered mercenaries have arrived to kill me for "murder" - hey, what about self defence! But they do add a bit of unpredictability and tension to the fight, and few things are more satisfying than tracking a bounty sponsor to fort and killing him from afar. That will teach you to send mercenaries after me to do your dirty work. I mean, I'm pretty sure I actually said that every time I did it.

The cult mechanism is simplistic but satisfying, and if I'm tired of forts I can take a break to track down some cultists. If I'm tired of both, i can do some quests or go to the arena or fight some mercs or take out some ships (well, not the last one because I hate naval combat)..

It is a bit of a grind, but it's fun grinding and the skill upgrades are always worth it. You do get a genuine sense of progression, even with level scaling on.

Most of all, the game is just so smooth - climbing works effortlessly, combat is responsive and fun, the map is clear and helpful, quicksave on a console and so on.

In reality, this game is essentially a very well produced "single player MMO" and I can imagine coming back to it to chill out and level up (with the expansions, I guess).

Things I really didn't like: Naval combat - it's just not my thing and I hated it when I was forced to do it for a quest or cultist. Conquest battles - just run around in the chaos killing captains if other enemies don't accidentally get in the way, which they always do. Naval conquest battles - can't the ships on my team do ANYTHING AT ALL?

Overall - I played for a long time. PS4 doesn't track hours played I don't think, but must have been 100-150 hrs. I could have played for much longer, but you know how those other games start calling.

8.5/10

I skipped out on the Assassin's Creed series after Black Flag, with every game after that getting varying degrees of horrible reviews and me getting burnt out on the formula. After about five years of mostly forgetting about the series, I saw that Origins had gotten extremely good reviews critically, but more crucially - several people I knew personally were saying that it was good as well. That put AssCreed back on my radar, and by the next Steam sale where I was looking to buy stuff, the sequel to this new beginning for this series was like fifteen bucks! Great!

I can't speak for Origins, because I still haven't played it, but this game feels like a parody of the bullshit RPG mechanics bloat that are in seemingly every game these days. Everything has a level, and there's incredibly aggressive scaling to force you to do exactly what the designers want when they want. The open world is rendered almost meaningless when every zone is locked off from you with level gating that means that if you're not within one or two levels of them, you can only win if you're willing to slowly chip an enemy to death over the course of several minutes without getting hit yourself, which isn't very fun.

The lower-level content is generally scaled up to your current level, which actually makes the obvious gating more transparent - the world isn't a place where different places are more dangerous, it's a place where you effectively cannot go into certain places until you pass the magic line.

The combat itself is... fine. It's not anything mind-blowing, but it's solid. The RPG bloat manifests itself even here, with dozens of weapons that all have pluses and minuses to all sorts of stuff that I don't really care about when the single most important thing in the game for determining if you'll win or lose is the number over your enemy's head.

I dropped it after 15-20 hours, I really just didn't care for it. I think that the move to a weird Diablo loot game in a game that also is trying to be an immersive historical experience is a baffling move, and its incredibly aggressive level gating harms it as an action game, an open-world game, and even an RPG - low level challenge runs are a hallmark of the genre, and this implementation renders it an incredibly tedious slog if not outright impossible. Maybe Origins is better and Odyssey fucked up a good thing they had going, maybe AssCreed still isn't for me anymore. Dunno.

I enjoyed this game much more than I thought I would. I've played most of the Assassin's Creed games, but have taken a break from them recently. I picked this up during then winter sale and sank much more time into than I was expecting.

I've got about 60 hours in and have completed the story. I got sidetracked by all there is to do in the world, so if you just focused on the main story, it would take you significantly less time to beat than that. The world itself is huge! The map just seems to keep going. Luckily there are quite a few fast travel points, which you have to first synchronize to use, but they do make it much faster when quests have you running from one end of the map to the other.

The quests vary and aren't always just simple fetch quests. The character quests are fun and bring life into the NPCs you interact with along your journey. I haven't had a chance to play the DLC yet, but it seems like it's going to be every bit as engaging, if not more so, than the main content.

My biggest gripe with this one is you don't exactly feel like an assassin. There are also enemies EVERYWHERE. It makes it nearly impossible to sneak in and out of places. I don't mind a challenge, but this game takes it to another level and you almost have to kill at least some guards in order to sneak around. Another immensely annoying gameplay item is the shear number of restricted sections within the cities. While just running around the city trying to take the quickest path from point A to B you can find yourself in a random restricted section with all the guards in the area after you cause you dared step foot in their area. When sprinting it's hard to pull back and go around since it doesn't warn you until you're in the area.

All in all, this was a great game and I enjoyed the time I spent with it. I'll more than likely return to finish out the DLC.

I spent nearly 170 hours playing this and have done all the missions and have 99% of the trophies so I can say that... nah.

I love the story. I love the DLCs which brought the precursor stuff back to the front of the narrative. I think the game is gorgeous looking! I dug my Kassandra and her choices.

BUT

Too much bullshit! Too long. Too much push to play money to make the game more fun, I guess? It feels bloated where it could absolutely be tighter.

The lack of focus feels purely motivated by selling more cruft. I want to love the series but there is too much cynicism in the way these things are made.

I had a love-hate relationship with this game since I started playing it. Completed everything in the game in 70 hours and some moments were incredibly frustrating and I had to quit the game to not lose my mind. Some other moments in the story and gameplay were well done and kept me going. As a completionist, this game is perfect. The UI is clean and the game has many satisfying animations and rewards for doing things which makes you want to explore and complete more stuff. I rate this game a 7/10 and here's why:

The bad:

The world is too big. They tried so hard to make it wide and open but forgot the detail and as a result we're back to the classic puddle ocean. Most cities and locations are forgettable (there are exceptions such as the mythical and mystic locations) and they all look copy-pasted. This goes for characters, enemies, well anything really. Most of the stuff in the game are in such a large amount that you'll get lost in it. Many quests ask you to visit locations previously visited, but with such a huge map it can take time, and sometimes you'll even have to google it. There's also way too many underwater and cave locations, which are just a chore to go through. Tombs with ability point collectables return from Origins and they're more boring than ever. Half of them have the same layout, and there was probably only 1 harder one. Huge step back in that area.

Taking out the Assassin's of the Assassin's Creed. The game takes several steps back when it comes to being an assassin. Perhaps it has to do with the brotherhood not being founded yet, but since it's such a staple of the series it really should have been in the game. There's no social blending in, there's no double assassination, enemies mostly survive assassinations, there's less hiding spots overall.

Mercenaries, bounties and the crime system. Mercenaries are completely randomized meatbags who follow you around and will make the game difficult for you. Get in a fight? Mercenaries come running out of nowhere. Not in a fight? Mercenaries will walk in your vicinity, sometimes look in bushes you've entered. At the beginning of the game I was very opposed to this mercenary system but after I got the hang of it, I found it more acceptable. A thing that sucks is that they got way too much HP, they're supposed to be on my level but somehow deal double as much damage and take half as much as me. They also seem to be gods in the crime system, because they're never attacked by anyone else, regardless of where they walk or what they do. That brings me to the next thing, the crime system. Civilians and enemies will report crimes you make, but apparently killing someone in self defense is called "murder" and you're halfway onto the next mercenary bar already. Sometimes civilians in the game will attack you, this happens most of the time you're in a fight where civilians are around. They're completely mortal and you get no consequences from killing them, other than the "murder" crime. Often they're as tough as enemies even though they wear no armor(?).

Some small details that makes playing the game tedious in the long run. For some reason, you can't sprint with the horse outside of a settlement, city or enemy outpost. Sometimes you have to be some meters outside but sometimes it's literally a mile before you can sprint. The same annoyance happens in caves where you are forced to trot instead of being able to freerun normally. With the amount of time you're spending on horseback and in caves this really could've been made smoother. 90% of animals in the game will outright attack you as soon as they see you (very realistic, not) and we're not talking one or two times. No, the animals in this game are EVERYWHERE. Every single meter there's an animal ready to attack you. Once, I saw about 6-8 full grown bears within a 10x10m area. Some animals require some skill to fight such as boars, and others are one-dimensional like the shark or the snake. Sharks are very hard to hit while being able to stun-lock you, and snakes are easy to kill but for some reason deal half your hp in damage, no matter your level.

The good:

Forts and abilities. Forts are the one location type where I had fun in every single one. THAT'S WHAT BEING AN ASSASSIN IS ALL ABOUT. Being able to plan and strategize how to kill a leader for example, or just take over the fort by killing enemies one by one. There's nothing in this game that beats that. Game could've been only that and it would've been great. What helps a lot when taking out a fort is the several abilities you can acquire. The skill tree is big and there's many fun abilities, builds and gear to choose from, they did that quite well I think.

The story, half of the time. The main storyline is interesting but it's not what I mean in this part. I mean the Cult/Ancients, the tie-ins with the modern storyline and the artifacts, the DLC storylines and the several mythical character and god stories. That's the type of stories and characters that stood out from this game, not the hundreds upon hundreds of fetch quests which it also had.

I finally finished the main story lineS (multiple story lines??) in AC: Odyssey so here are my feelings:

Pros:

• I LOVE Kassandra. I love her wit, I love her character, I love EVERYTHING about her. She is one of my favorite characters in my history of gaming. Only qualm is her eyebrows (see my status on the eyebrow rant).
• Sailing around Greece is probably the most pleasant AC sailing experience yet. It is relatively easy to control, fuckin' WHALES and DOLPHINS jump out of the water and swim by your ship; the storms make the waves feel HUGE and imposing; the sea chanteys add that little something extra that makes it almost relaxing. I love the dialogue the characters have on the ship as well.
• The "Butterfly Effect" Mechanic: It seems like every dang game these days plays on this idea, but it makes the game interesting and different for an AC game. I, of course the lesbian I am, had Kassandra hit on every woman I could and I loved that. I think the choices you had to make were difficult ones, and although the impact on the game seems to be fairly minimal, it still made an impact on the endings. Not an original idea, but it worked and broke the AC mechanic a little bit.
• I liked the characters in the world in general. I liked interacting with them and getting to know them. It was pleasant.
• Swimming is GORGEOUS and I'm glad it was a rather large part of the game.

Cons:

1. Exploring: It's just not as fun. Usually I'm the kind of person who needs to get every dang "?" in a game, but once I finished I felt no need to. I actually groaned at the thought of discovering more, which is not how an exploration based game should make me feel. After playing and exploring through AC: Origins, the discovery in Odyssey LACKED. I only discovered more camps and forts, and you can only discover so many before you want to never look at that damn map again. I missed the cool things you could explore to in Egypt. They had a major missed opportunity on that end.
2. The cult nonsense: This needed MAJOR editing. At first I was like "ooo I new cult member" but by the time I was almost finished, I was so sick of trying to hunt down clues and bullshit just to find a cult member I had no affiliation with. I liked the cult members you had to dispose of that would impact an entire city and you found out more about them through the quests in that town. It made it interesting. I don't want to go to the middle of Samos to find some stupid clue and them to be like "oh here they are! Go to a naval battle!" just ugh no thanks.
3. The artifact part of the game felt like a last minute addition, as well did the whole animus business. It felt like Ubisoft said, "Well we already advertised it as an AC game, so we got to have Layla and the animus and tie it in SOMEHOW" and it didn't work. It was an after thought. I'd rather just play as Kassandra in Ancient Greece and leave it at that.
4. Did they really do their historical research? Every single temple looked exactly the same art wise and construction wise. After the amount of detail that went into showing the different art eras in Egypt reflected in the temples, I was horrendously disappointed that I kept seeing the same Minoan motif in every temple and tomb I went to. They weren't all Minoan, some explicitly were Mycenean, but somehow still had Minoan work??
5. As per usual, the combat gets boring. You get to a point where you're so OP that fighting is a nuisance and there's no point in being stealthy anymore.
6. The mercenary bs. What was the point?!

If I had to choose between the two most recent AC games, I would pick Origins. I just wish Origins had a Kassandra in that game. Origins, in my opinion, is just a more fun overall kind of game.

I feel I should start by addressing the obvious elephant in the room regarding this game. AC Odyssey really, really wants to be the Witcher 3. I reckon it's a good game to imitate though.

You have a huge open world that is soft-gated off by level requirements, like the Witcher. Admittedly, the game world is the strongest part of this game. UbiSoft put in the effort to really make you feel like you're experiencing ancient Greece. The buildings and statues of the cities are awesomely recreated. They even have the statues painted like they should be. The countryside is bright and varied with mountains, olive groves, and farms. Some of the rock walls you spider climb up did have some poor textures that didn't load in.

Greece being more a collection of islands, we see a return of sailing to Assassins Creed. It's pretty lackluster. I mostly used it to reach new islands & for maybe one or two missions. UbiSoft may be trying to rebottle the lightning that was Black Flag, but triremes full of archers can't compete with the Golden Age of Sail. When I did any lengthy sailing I was just wishing I was on the Jackdaw instead. Also, the sea shanties in this game don't work as well because they're in Greek, which makes them less catchy than the pirate shanties.

The combat is much more Witcher now as well with light and heavy attacks. Assassins Creed has always felt a little clunky to control and that is still present in this new combat. The default setting has attack on the R1, which is really weird for a sword fighting game. Luckily, you can change it to a more familiar control scheme. However, to counter an attack you have to hold R1 & L1, which, thanks to the clunkiness, can be a challenge to hit fast enough. I had to switch to easy mode because of the awkward combat. And this game is filthy with bullet sponge enemies, or sword sponges I guess. The mercs, monsters, and special animals all just have insane health bars until you get 2 levels above them.

The last thing I can think of that they borrowed from the Witcher 3 is some of the story beats. AC has dialogue trees with lie, threaten, and charm choices that have no real point. You also begin your journey, or odyssey if you will, by searching for your lost mother. You do this by visiting three different places she was spotted, talking to the locals, and watching flashbacks. And some of these flashbacks are unnecessary. ex: "Your mother was a thorn in my side" ~flashback~ "You are a thorn in my side, lady" ~end flashback~ It's all a discount version of the search for Ciri. The whole main story was a bit drab as it was made of the worst type of fetch quests. By the time I reached Sparta, I was just chugging through the game, begging for the end. The Spartan king give you two chores, and then those chores are broke down into 2 or 3 more chores, which may have 2 parts within them. They usually boil down to sneak into this fort and kill this guy or steal this item.

I played through the story as Kassandra because I was told she's the cannon character & I'll admit I'm a simple man who likes a Mediterranean accent. She's a fun enough character to follow, especially cause I played her as an arrogant merc with a temper. And there's plenty of historical characters you hang out with that add to the game. Socrates was one of my favorites, he's sorta like that guy in college who is always baked & talking philosophy. And Alkabedes took diligent notes the day the Greeks invented innuendo, he was enjoyably corny. Sometimes the dialogue felt off, I don't know if Greeks said "fuck" & they drop the word "Malaka" so much it feels more like a future sci-fi swear.

There's a bunch of side missions that I largely ignored after awhile because they aren't interesting either. They work in the Witcher because you get unique dialogue encounters or a new monster to fight at the end, but in Odyssey it's just more sneak here, kill this.

Two things on a more meta level. I hate that I notice this, but it does seem UbiSoft is misrepresenting history in pursuit of their progressive ideas. Sure, I assume Ancient Greece was pretty "anything goes", but one of the facts mentioned in a loading screen says how women couldn't compete in the Olympics, then Kassandra competes in the Olympics with no one raising an eyebrow. They could've at least played it up like a cheesy 80s movie.

And this game is very far from the Assassin Creed of old. I don't mind most the changes. I found the Templar/Assassin battle uninteresting & after so many games the gameplay needed a change-up. Honestly, I would be okay with dropping the whole assassin pretense and let us just play as different heroes in history; a Greek soldier, English pirate, etc. Still I do miss the sort of HItman-esque assassinations from Syndicate, the fact stealth attacks are one hit kills, and the little silhouette that marks where the guards last saw you.

All in all, I enjoyed being a part of an Ancient Greek world with some fun characters, but the mission design left something to be desired. I still want Assassin Creed to go on, because they can take you to random historic periods that other games don't touch often.