Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018)

While absolutely gorgeous to look at, and a promising start to the game's story and characters, it suffers from the same problem most ubisoft games have. There's too much world, too much clutter on the map, and in the end the story is stretched between a whole lot of filler side-quests with a final mediocré pay-off. After a while you start seeing the copy pasted scenery assets. Every town starts to feel the same. You dont really care anymore about your choices. The DLC ontop made it even much worse specifically the first one, where all your choices are ripped away and the game shoves it in your face that, it doesn't matter what you do. We, the devs will decide what will happen to your character. It reminded me of the episode from Westworld where the story writer only wants to tell his story, not what the players would choose.

Another big disappointment was the supposed exploration mode for quests. The idea was that you would not be hand-held on the quest location and objective. You would only get a text description of what you're looking for and have to find it somewhere on the world yourself. Which sounded great! It reminded me of older rpg's where you really had to read the quest log to figure out where exactly you had to possibly go and stumble across cool area's you would not have found otherwise whilst exploring for this objective. However how AC implemented it is simply: Your quest is in this region. It's in this subregion. It's a place called this. There are only about 2-3 questionmarks already marked on the map so it's pretty sure you got to go to one of those. And the moment you get within about 500m of your destination your bird is immediatly telling you it found the location already. That's not how exploration is supposed to work in rpg's...

I did enjoy the amount of research they put into bringing the history of greece to life. Some of the great past characters are done pretty well and I wish something more was done with this.

I've played every single assassin's creed with the exception of valhalla, and this one felt like the biggest waste of time for me and the most disrespected by the devs who continuely try to hand-hold you and shove their story down your throat. Considering the way Ubisoft is now heading with the franchise and their direction on NFT's, I doubt it's going to get better anymore.

Is there a consensus on which DLC is better?

I quite liked Legacy and its inclusion of Persian history, the family baby thing came out of nowhere but I wasn't as mad abt it as most people seem to have been.

Atlantis... visually? Stunning! But I hate the layout of Elysium, hate the quests, hate the 'this is all a simulation to train you to get better with the staff' story, hate the new enemies, hate the fact stealth is being pushed when it's the weakest part of the combat system, just simply am not enjoying it anywhere near as much as the base game, or even Legacy. I'll still finish it probably, I'm just really disappointed cause it looked so cool

Just finished the main story (Odyssey, Cult and Atlantis)

Once again I find myself wondering how other people play these games. I finished the majority of the sidequests (I have maybe 5-10 outstanding, mostly ones on Lesbos, Xenia's treasure hunts and the generals who want Polemarch seals) and it only took around 55 hours.

I have the Legacy and Atlantis DLCs to play, and the free dlc quests.

For now, the main quest sort of fizzles and I was disappointed to see that the different strands didn't tie into one another more directly. I was also underwhelmed by the Layla ending (Kassandra appearing in business casual sent me into the beyond.)

Overall, I still think it's a great game and it didn't deserve all the backlash. But, it's not quite one of my favourites in the series.

I think I'm still enjoying this... I honestly don't know. I've almost finished the Naxos main story missions and am currently d!cking abt in Crete doing side quests.

Overall I do think it's a step back, or a step sideways into a puddle, from Origins.

My biggest issues are that the exploration isn't as fun, the environments aren't as unique and progression feels meh. The sub-plots in each area are interesting and I like doing them but the rewards rarely make it worth it. I love Kassandra and actually quite like the main plot. I'm so-so on the combat tbh, it feels more spongey than Origins. Anyways, I honestly can't tell if the assets are being reused or if everything is just samey looking. Also, the tombs here are god-awful compared to Origins.

I also have no interest in visiting the ?s when I happily sat and cleared Origins' entire map as I went along. But maybe that's just me not really liking Ancient Greece cause I'm really excited for Valhalla just for the medieval setting lmao.

yoooo whoever at ubisoft convinced them to release that next gen 60fps patch deserves a promotion because damnnnnn, the game went from yeah this is good this is fun to this buttery smooth gorgeous delectable deeelighttt

anyways, I'm at Athens (just abt 2 attend the Symposium/ 20 hrs in) - i appreciate them making Socrates as annoying as he (likely) was x

it's literally so good and Kassandra is the best protagonist in the series, FUCK all those YT channels always talkin mad shit abt this game

Ezio is dead, long live the Misthios ! x

On a serious note: do ppl just not understand how RPG mechanics work? I've just started Chapter 3 (after the confrontation with your 'father' and I've been able to primarily play stealth w only the occasional high ranking enemy surviving a stealth attack - which means I'll clear the weaker enemies first before going for them like Im- I also like the choice-making system, like saving that family on Cephalonia and accidentally unleashing an island-wide plague plzzz

y are ppl always proclaiming that the franchise is dead??? because now we need strategy? because the stealth functions now? because the combat is better?

so far the mercs have kind of been damage sponges, but idk I don't mind rn

This game is such a grind. I've played for 100 hours in game and 160 hours in the steam client, probably a mix of Discovery Mode and just being AFK in the main menu or something. I still have so much of the game to go, I'm not even sure how close I am to finishing. There are entire areas I haven't even got to yet and started to explore.

The game has become so repetitive that I have found myself putting on Star Trek and TV shows to watch as I clear camps and stuff. Unfortunately this has completely taken me out of the story and I find myself just reading quickly and pressing B to get through the quest dialogue and honestly it doesn't look like I'm missing too much. For some big story moments I've paused whatever was playing on the second monitor to try to focus in.

Yet I still find myself enjoying the game at times to an extent. I like the atmosphere, it's fun to just run around and explore, and it feels good to play. It does sort of feel like I'm in the ancient Greek world.

I'm not sure I'll rush to get Valhalla. I think there are other open big world games that I have yet to play such as Red Dead Redemption II that may do this gameplay better, we will see.

But I've come this far and for some reason I do have a desire to 100% this game and see it through to the end.

60 hours later, I finally completed the main quest. As a final veredict, it was worth playing, though some issues started to get to me over the last few hours. It ultimately failed as an RPG experience and the stealth was pretty meh, but as an open-world action game, it's pretty good. 7/10, story had ups and downs and so did the gameplay.

Though I really like some changes brought by Origins and Odyssey, I do miss the older style of AC and it's a shame that they probably won't go back to that.

I'll probably take a few months off before I try the DLC's. I'm actually excited for the Atlantis one, hopefully it will remove some of the bad taste the late game left me with.

Reached the 50h mark and 88% main completion according to UPlay. The first of the 3 main story arcs is completed and I am a bit disappointed. Some issues I was having got even worse and some new ones appeared.

• The level gating is, frankly, the worst I’ve ever seen and it’s the biggest gameplay issue with Odyssey. It wasn’t particularly good on Origins, and even Witcher 3 had issues with it, but I’ve never been this aggravated by that mechanic as I am with this game. Being more than 2 levels behind the enemy puts you in a position where it takes a LOT of hits to defeat them, but they can dispatch you far too easily, even common enemies, even on Normal, on Hard it’s simply ridiculous. This doesn’t make that kind of encounter difficult, but annoying, because it takes much longer and a single mistake can get you wiped out of the fight. The fact that you can’t use higher level items even if you have them makes it worse, because there’s no decent way around the stat gating regarding how much damage you do or how much defense or HP you have. Though I really enjoy the flow of combat in this game, the level thing almost breaks that. At least I have the option to let the enemies level increase alongside mine, so I don’t suffer the risk of trivializing encounters by being 2 or 3 levels higher than I should.
• I am very close to accepting that Assassin’s Creed turning into a full-on RPG is a bad idea. A good use of RPG mechanics was a good feature on Origins and even some games before it, but Odyssey fails at being a good one. Kassandra is still a better character when her actions and interactions are out of my hands, but at the same time it’s weird that some important events in the game are attached to her decisions and not my own, given how on many other instances I have a choice about how she handles things. There are good examples of choices having proper and well thought consequences, but too many dialog options feel like insignificant tone changes that don’t affect the direction of conversations in a meaningful way.
• There are issues in how the game handles the more serious/dramatic bits. Phoibe’s death didn’t hit me that hard, but I got it spoiled and knew it was coming, so it’s hard to judge. The entire third act of the family questline was a mess. Many scenes felt rushed, Alexios made it REALLY hard for me to want to redeem him and, honestly, I don’t feel that the game allowed me to actually do that, his change of heart felt very weird to me. And don’t get me started on Nikolaos (I let him live btw) appearing out of nowhere on that dinner scene for pretty much no reason at all! It’s funny how such a large game, full of meaningless objectives and dozens of hours worth of content still managed to rush this part. Had they removed a couple of locations and attached quests and polished this section of the story things could be much better, because it’s clear to me, given the best bits of the game, that there were lots of talented people working on this project.

On a positive note, some moments over the last 30 hours of gameplay were genuinely amusing.

• There were still plenty of amazing sights in the game. Corinth, Laconia and the valley of Olympia were all astonishing!
• Though the game was super hit and miss with the dramatic stuff, the humor has been mostly spot-on.
• The entire lead up to the encounter with Myrrine, including the quests to get information about what she did after the Mount Taygetos scene up until the moment you actually meet with her is fantastic and is a great example of the game handling the serious moments quite well, I was honestly touched by it.

So, I had to take a break from the game for a couple of weeks due to PC issues. During that time, I played through Chrono Trigger, which absolutely lived up to its hype and immediately conquered a spot within my favourite games of all time.

Back to Greece, I finally reached the 20 hour mark with 26% completion so far according to Uplay. The experience has been very good overall, but disappointing on some aspects. I’m comparing it to Origins a lot, which is understandable given that I played that one not too long ago and enjoyed the hell out of my time with it.

- Combat is an improved version of the system in Origins. I like the special moves that are unlocked via the ability tree after leveling up and the unique moveset of each weapon class is just as much fun. I miss the shield and preferred the parry system in Origins, but so far I can safely say that Odyssey has the best combat in the series.

- Ship mechanics are nice. I’m liking the customization and upgrades for the ship, as it is simpler to do than on Black Flag. Combat is also simplified, but I don’t mind it too much as it is not the focus of this game like it was on IV.

- The world is quite large and beautiful, as expected, but I’m not completely sold on it yet. When it comes to ancient civilizations, the Greek has always been the on I was mostly interested in. Because of it, I’m surprised to say that I was way more immersed on Egypt back in Origins. I haven’t figured out the reason for it yet, and obviously there’s still a lot for me to see on Odyssey (I just got to Athens, btw) so I guess we’ll see.

- I’m also not entirely sold on the story and the presentation has been lackluster. I like how the main plot is being designed as a Greek tragedy, but its characters are lacking in quality. Voice-acting is decent, especially for Kassandra, but the role-playing is bad and her best moments happened when I had no control of what she was going to do/say, which makes me question if a fully designed character like the old protagonists of the series wouldn’t be a better fit. They tried The Witcher 3’s cinematic approach for cut scenes and dialog, but only reach that level of excellence 50% of the time, some scenes were actually laughable, but the good ones deserve a lot of praise.

- Side-quests are using the same approach as the ones on Origins. I like them in general, as they are a good way of developing the setting and motivating me to do activities without getting bored, but they were better on Origins as well (so far, at least).