Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018)

The absolute low point for this series conceptually, and by far the worst of the RPG trilogy. A game absolutely embarrassed of its identity, virtually nothing in this entry has to do with anything meaningfully related to Assassin's Creed as a series.

Bland as hell dialogue, a truly dull story, lackluster stealth and arguably worse combat leaves little to be desired for anyone who actually wanted to play an Assassin's Creed game. People who laud this title as the height of AC are tourists to the series and should not be taken seriously, despite Ubisoft's complete capitulation to the lowest common denominator of consumers.

The only thing I can say it did well was its art direction; the game is jaw droppingly gorgeous, and ancient Greece has never looked this good. Too bad they couldn't put in as much effort to any other aspect of the game.

Odyssey is a huge game in a beautiful world. While so much of the world works so well the game is dragged down by a bloated main story (that contains way too many repetitive fetch quests and depressingly similar assassination and/or theft missions). The story takes a long time to get going and even longer to demonstrate its links to the broader AC narrative. Additionally, as the setting is Greek islands the setting and towns and islands are unfortunately repetitive.

But at its best AC: Odyssey is one of the best open world games I've played. The way the story fits into the broader narrative of the franchise is compelling and the impact your choices make on the story makes the world you're inhabiting feel more real.

This game got completely dismissed I feel like. Nobody is talking about it, everyone blew up about the incredibly minor mico-transactions and it won nothing at the game awards. Makes me sad.

I loved this game. Ubisoft is making better and better AC games it feels like. Origins was amazing and this one was even better. The next one is gonna be next level I hope.

There are some definite flaws though. Like that the love interest quests are all really cheesy and hilarious, they don't take their time in building any of the relationships so its just funny how quickly they decide to "do it". Haha.

And it can get grindy sure but thats only if you make it a grind for yourself. You don't have to do many side quests at all. Just stick to doing the gold diamond marked side quests and you will get a fully thought out side quest every time.

So yeah thats basically all the negatives. I liked the story and the many different choices you can make. The world is also beautiful as you can always expect from an AC game, not quite as polished as Origins though for some reason but that didn't hurt my enjoyment any.

Theres also a bunch of side characters that follow you on your journey that you get attached to. And then theres Kassandra. Who was the main character I decided to play as. I really like her. Shes a good protagonist.

And then theres the gameplay which is completely polished now. I love exploring the world and clearing enemy camps/forts and doing a stealthy approach to take out all the minor guards before going in for the commander and having a mini boss battle.

And then theres also the ship combat which is pretty fun too but not quite as much of a big deal as it was in Black Flag. But it is cool to upgrade it and deck it out in different designs. Its sort of your main base throughout your journey.

The gold diamond side quests are all pretty good as I mentioned before. Theres some really good ones and that hit deep.

Pros: -great main story -quality side quests and content -fun engaging combat and stealth gameplay -really good music -lots of exploration -side characters you like -good protagonist

Cons: -romance quests are hilariously bad -some grindy (optional) side quests

Overall, a great AC game. Even though theres no assassin's... Or a creed. Wait a minute. Why is this called Assassin's Creed? Well it ties into it kind of but whatever. Still great. 😊

The latest installment of Assassin's Creed is incredibly fun and absolutely lives up to the hype. In this game, Layla enters the Animus to experience the life of an ancient Greek mercenary who is a sort of precursor to the Assassins. From the get go, she is faced with a choice--to go through the simulation as Kassandra or Alexios. From then on, your choices affect the game play.

The introduction of player choices to the game is enthralling. A choice might be as insignificant as affecting the tone of dialogue to changing the outcome of the game. And while in other games the outcomes might seem obvious, that is not the case this time. A seemingly insignificant choice made early on might have large ramifications later. I found this to be refreshing compared to games where your the difference in outcomes is obvious, or worse, where they don't really matter. Obviously, the main plot points remain the same, but it's totally possible to play through this game and have different experiences and endings than other players, which I liked.

I also felt the mechanics and gameplay of this Assassin's Creed were much smoother than I experienced in the past. I will admit I was pretty terrible at earlier installments of the series. In this game, I actually felt quite competent, especially while captaining my ship. I really appreciated the cleanup here as it easier and more fun to execute abilities and maneuvers.

The biggest drawback to this game: It's too big. This starts as a quest for the player character to find their family, who they lost as a child. In doing so, they discover that a cult is secretly controlling politics in Greece, and set out an additional quest to uncover and assassinate its members. As you learn more about the Cult's goals, you also start a quest to prevent them from accessing a cache of Isu knowledge. In other words, there are 3 main quests, all of which take a considerable amount of time to beat. Compounding this is the world map, which is a beautiful open world, yes, but is also way too big. It took me 80 hours to beat this game--most of which was fun, exciting, but which eventually got overwhelming. I think the game would have been better if the world was smaller and the story more compact.

That said, it was still a ton of fun. I recommend it to old and new fans alike.