A Critique of Assassin's Creed Valhalla | Too Much Assassin's Creed

assassin's creed valhalla is arguably the biggest assassin's creed game ever with multiple maps exponentially more extensive than that of previous installments enough side content to fill a game on its own and an overarching plot that spans well over the 50-hour mark this game has so much content in it that i found myself pondering how much assassin's creed is too much assassin's creed this isn't gonna work my apologies boys you know i was told if you drank some tea and maybe ate some crumpets before your voice over it would make your voice sound way better but i don't know i just feel like it doesn't sound like me anyways as i was saying how much assassin's creed is too much assassin's creed my time with assassin's creed valhalla was really fun and i mean don't get me wrong there were a few bumps in the road but overall i think this is an awesome assassin's creed game that will please all the different assassin's creed fans whether you're an og who's been here since the beginning or a fresh recruit who has only known the series in its rpg form now i wrote that statement 15 hours into the game on my notepad now that i'm on the cusp of 90 hours i can confidently say i feel a little differently now now since this game is relatively new i will be structuring this video differently in order to avoid spoilers if you scroll across the little red bar at the bottom of this video you'll see that the video is split into chapters anything that spoils the game after the first 20ish hours will be marked with spoilers in all caps and it'll pertain to either gameplay or story of course story spoilers will include spoilers for character arcs plot twists and everything else and gameplay spoilers will include things like abilities cosmetics weapons and side quests i'd like to say off the bat that if you have been on the fence and you want to go in as blind as possible but you're just not sure about it ah get this game if you didn't like odyssey it answers a lot of concerns surrounding odyssey and it's also a fair bit of fun in general if you're willing to have a few minor things spoiled in order to help you decide well then proceed with caution before we get started i need to clarify my copy of assassin's creed valhalla was provided to me by ubisoft this doesn't mean that i'll be biased in my praises and i can confidently say that i have quite a few issues with this game and i'll try my best to explain both praises and criticisms in as much depth as necessary i can't help the fact that i am biased however in the fact that i'm a very big fan of the series as i'm sure a lot of you know so do with that what you will please remember to try and be kind to each other in the comments because some of you are [ __ ] brutal down there and remember that this video is merely a recap of my thoughts and opinions it's not an objective statement of the game's quality but rather statement about my subjective experience with it also i'll be comparing this game to odyssey a lot and that's for a few reasons one it's quite similar to odyssey as it's another rpg-like game from the assassin's creed series and two it's coming directly after odyssey and there were a lot of changes that fans wanted so it feels right to compare this game to its predecessor and that's where a few big issues stem from in my eyes it seems like this game is trying so hard to please fans of the new assassin's creed and fans of the old assassin's creed then in my eyes i'm not sure if it'll fully please either there seems to be so many points where the game just doesn't know what it wants to be and it results in some frustrations which i will get into later for starters i played this on playstation 4 and my god is it pretty sure graphics don't make the game but i won't sit here and act like it didn't help with my immersion and that it didn't help me appreciate how well crafted this world is the snow-covered mountains of norway look amazing when contrasted with the beautiful aurora borealis that covers the night sky it may seem ridiculous but the sounds of your boots compressing the snow as you walk and the massive boot prints are left behind look awesome too and while it may be hard to believe this is running on a ps4 and it looks even better on a ps5 there is clearly a level of detail and care put into the weather and the level of this detail is still present in the buildings which much like the costume design blend right in and look fantastic they helped me feel immersed in the world and allowed 4 hours in the game to feel like only 1 hour but that doesn't mean there weren't any points where those 4 hours also felt like 40 hours one thing i have to point out is how awesome the animations are as you all know i'm a sucker for animations and this game delivers some really beautiful and really brutal ones when an enemy is staggered you can do a special stun attack which not only does heavy damage but also kills the enemy in spectacular fashion in some cases these attacks do vary based on what the enemy's weapons are however i found that they got quite repetitive i noticed this quite early on as i was performing the sword takedown on enemy after enemy and thankfully there is a little more variety as the game expands as you encounter more enemy types that use hammers shields spears and a lot more but i wish there were a few different animations here as eventually they're etched into your brain and it doesn't take away from these animations being awesome but it does get old after a while you may remember that odyssey had a neat takedown whenever you finished off the last enemy in a big group and that's here for nearly every enemy you take down this made combat a lot more interesting and enjoyable for me another interesting thing to look at is the cutscenes which are not just graphically appealing but are choreographed really well and they have a great atmosphere one of the beginning cutscenes exemplifies how masterfully crafted these cutscenes are and the detail that goes into them the only place where presentation fails is in the moment to moment dialogue that typically takes place before and after a side quest these short dialogue sections were very strange as not only was the lip syncing really bad in some cases who is this whitman what does he want he's a flailing elder man under the old king but they just reminded me of the talking head scene in other games like the arkham series i also found that the animations didn't always match the character's emotions these animations some of which are just straight up or used from odyssey show avor throwing their arms around as if they're so passionate about the conversation and what they're saying but the line delivery says otherwise welcome my friend you're most welcome here are you well better than well i am present it just felt jarring and while it didn't happen too often it happened enough to mention it here one detail about these cutscenes that i really enjoyed was when wearing a face mask to look as much like a viking ninja as possible your character's dialogue is muffled it was a pretty nice touch rally our army we will drag this mouse from his hole i also want to draw attention to awards running style which when looking at the footage here may seem out of place she runs like she has clown shoes on lifting her feet so high but it makes a lot of sense since she hails from a hometown that bears many inches of snow which is why she has such an aggressive run the world here or more accurately worlds is really beautiful and the massive rolling hills never fail to make you say wait this is on a ps4 and it only gets better when you experience it in a slick 60 frames per second there are two primary areas you'll be in the starting area of norway and england where a majority of your playthrough will take place they both have some great architecture and the many structures and towns you'll visit are nowhere near lacking in their detail the ui here is also as good as it's been in the last few games and the menu system looks great even though i'm not a huge fan of every game using the quote-unquote destiny style menu i have to admit though that it works nonetheless i know a lot of you get thrown off right from the get-go about seeing an enemy with a health bar and seeing damage numbers and whatnot but i can assure you that if you have assumptions that this game is some quote unquote damaged sponge game like odyssey then you'll be very pleased here one of the biggest criticisms in odyssey was how beefy its enemies were in odyssey enemies would take anywhere from 10 to 20 hits to take down assuming you ignore certain mechanics a lot of people didn't bother to upgrade their gear or use the best weapons in their inventory or spec themselves properly into certain skill trees hence why the enemies were often damage sponges most enemies went down in three or four hits and the only enemies that didn't go down that fast were either far outside my level or they were boss fights regardless valhalla now make sure you can get by and take out most enemies in a few swings even when you don't bother to use any of the mechanics presented to you even 30 hours into my playthrough i was still using the starting axe because that's seriously how broken the progression becomes and progression is one of my major issues with the game but we'll have to get back to that later for now let's get back on track and talk about what works with the combat in my eyes and what doesn't most enemies have a variety of different attacks the basic ones that can be blocked parried or dodged some faster ones that can still be blocked and parried but require a little more timing and attacks that cannot be blocked or parried and attempting to do so will turn you into a nice norwegian kabob they're a really nice selection of enemies and they all vary based on their size and the weapons they wield they don't require entirely different styles of play but they do require you to change how you approach them in a lot of cases spear wielding enemies will often parry your attacks meaning you can't just spam light attacks on them the big boys perform a lot of attacks that can't be parried so dodging out of the way is a little more important compared to when you're fighting a shield wielding enemy so performing heavy attacks and light attacks and dodging isn't anything new here but something that is new is the stamina bar now thankfully your stealth and traversal abilities are not tied to the stamina bar but it does dictate how many dodges and heavy attacks you can do it makes the combat quite similar to the dark souls series and its stamina management however it's certainly a good addition and it made me use my noggin a little bit more in combat i also appreciated the enemies had a variety of different attacks some of which saw them lunging towards you and others saw them spitting fire in your face another sort of twist this game puts on enemies is that they have stamina bars too essentially you'll see a yellow bar above an enemy's health bar which is indicative of their stamina when this bar gets to zero you can stun them and perform the stun attack i mentioned earlier you can only perform the stun attack once however so it's not like you can go to a high level area and just parry your way through it unfortunately the stamina bar isn't so restrictive as to not allow you to just parry your way through a boss but it's a little bit tougher than in normal circumstances there is a way to stun enemies with your bow too each enemy has a few weak points on them and hitting them will drain their stamina and leave them open for a ranged stun attack hitting the weak points will be especially advantageous against some of the mini boss enemies speaking of which there is this one type of enemy that i have to talk about because i really really don't like them the zealots these guys are part of a quest and there are a fair handful of them ranging from different levels my issues with these guys is the difficulty i set my difficulty to normal mode but eventually switch it to hard and i consider myself well-versed in this type of combat but holy hell are these guys brutal it's not their damage output that's the problem or the large amounts of damage that they can take but it's the speed at which they attack you these attacks come out way too fast and while the damage they do is reasonable they have a bunch of attacks that seem to come out so fast i found myself not able to dodge them leading to a lot more frustration than i'm comfortable admitting there are a few other issues with these zealots but i'd have to get into them later for now that's my biggest gripe i want to mention that i also seemingly dropped a lot of inputs here too i would hit the l1 button to lift up my shield but i would just sit there like an idiot this happened on both my playstation 4 and playstation 5 so i don't know if this is an issue for you guys or if it's just an issue with me aside from the zealots mentioned earlier i never really felt challenged by the combat even on harder difficulties i just found that i always did a lot of damage and while i definitely took a lot i never took enough to be worried you can heal yourself by grabbing rations which are found all over the place and because of that i only felt challenged when i was going against enemies way stronger than me or when i was against a boss but even the bosses can be stun locked to all hell and again i'll talk about that later the abilities from odyssey make a return here but there are some differences in how you obtain them and of course in the selection of such abilities the adrenaline bar is back and it dictates how many abilities you can perform for starters abilities can be found around the map as well as purchased within your skill tree finding these books i essentially teach you an ability was pretty neat and i always got a little giddy when i had a new ability on my hands there are some basic ones like applying fire buffs to your weapons or throwing axes at enemies but there's also some that see you ramming an enemy into a wall doing massive damage these abilities are present while at range as well as some of them see you shooting an explosive arrow and some will see you queueing up four arrows all of which are being locked on to up to four enemies at once dealing insane damage to multiple targets this specific ability was actually pretty broken to be honest and for that reason i generally avoided using it i actually like the abilities here a lot however it felt like they were a little too good getting a bar of adrenaline isn't too difficult as you fill up the bar by attacking with light attacks dodging and parrying and it led to me getting an absurd amount of adrenaline absurdly fast this meant that when boss fights came around even if the boss was a significantly higher level than me like upwards of a hundred levels higher than me it'd be going down in less than a minute the boss fights here are also again much like odyssey nothing special the issue i had is that they were all over quite quickly but that doesn't change the fact that some of them were really fun and some were definitely not on top of that a majority of them were just human enemies that all fought like normal enemies but with a bigger health bar there are a good selection of weapons such as axes spears and a few two-handed hammers and swords i always preferred the shield in one-handed setup but there's plenty of room to experiment here such as ditching your favorite shield for another axe leading to better overall dps but worse overall defense my favorite weapon was the spearhead that was attached to a chain it had pretty poor range but it could easily stun lock most enemies leading to a massive amount of damage it wasn't great for crowd control but this thing rarely lost one-on-one fights it was essentially the only weapon i used once i got it because of how good it looks as you whip this thing around melting health bars in an incident stun locking a lot of bosses my only real complaint with the weapons as far as melee goes is the lack of one-handed swords a ton of your allies and bosses wield sword so i don't really know why we can't use one as i would have loved it fortunately a lot of enemies will use a wooden shield and you may notice that if you continue to hit them even if they are blocking with their shield the shield will deteriorate and when the shield is finally broken the enemy stamina will take a huge hit this feature helped me feel like i was really doing some damage and it's just an extra layer of realism as far as ranged weapons go it's a little more limited you essentially have a bow different types of bows sure but it's ultimately just a bow and that's perfectly fine i mean [ __ ] the atomos could have given me a nice car 98 but i'll take what i can get the different bows as far as i've seen have modifiers like enhance zoom and of course different stats to slightly separate them the different types of gear you can get also have some variety to them and they come in sets similar to the way they did in odyssey there is one feature here that i really appreciate and that's the ability to hide gear you can choose to either show or hide whatever gear you're using such as your shield i like using shields because combat wise they're super useful but they're so massive and when walking around having a big ass slab of iron on your back it doesn't always scream assassin so i'd have it turned off meaning it wasn't visible unless i was using it one feature that unfortunately doesn't return is the ability to make the cosmetics of your gear separate from the stats for example you could have a really nice barbarian armor set that statistically speaking is way better than any of the other gear sets but if you don't like the way it looks you can make it look like any other piece of gear without sacrificing the stats of said gear i'm sure they could probably patch it in and ubisoft if you are listening i've talked with a few of my friends who played this game and they all agree with me that it's a feature that they'd like to see the different gear sets do look really good but they were often few and far between this goes for a lot of the gear however i felt like especially with the armor there wasn't the widest selection with that being said the selection here is really good and i prefer it over odyssey which seemed to have more gear sets but only four or five sets that stood out to me i also appreciate that you can toggle your hood however when you get into combat your hood is taken off which i didn't really understand like why not just let us keep it on all the time like in odyssey my biggest issue with the loot in general is just how pointless at all this gameplay wise i had no reason to go looting for new gear because the gear is usually within the same quality level regardless of their rarity and you can just upgrade your gear so using different gear is chalked up to what you enjoy aesthetically sure some gear sets have bonuses but i never found a reason to make use of them even on harder difficulties purely because i never needed to besides for most of my playthrough i felt pretty overpowered as it is for example i use the starting gear that you get for upwards of my first 40 hours and didn't upgrade the gear at all and basically ignored most of the mechanics and it didn't matter because your damage output and input is tied to your level more than anything the gear here reminds me a lot of dark souls as there isn't really any point of using gear aside from aesthetics and that's fine by me but i did wish that gear played the same role here that it did in odyssey i also want to add a side note about this game's currency silver it is really really easy to get silver like it was in odyssey and it has very little use much like odyssey if you remember from that video i mentioned that i always had a ton of cash with nothing to really spend it on and that rings true here i always had a ton of money on my hands and i was always struggling to find a place to spend it all so that's essentially all that's changed combat and loot wise from odyssey and as a whole i don't mind the gameplay here but i find it a bit repetitive when it comes to the combat i don't think that's the combat's fault however as i only found it kind of boring after the 50 hour mark and to be fair to the game i have not had many games keep me engaged combat wise for such a long time i'm not trying to say that's not the game's fault necessarily because it definitely is however i feel like it's the fault of the game's length and not the fault of the combat itself because i can't really see how they can improve the combat thankfully you don't always have to use the combat as stealth returns and in a big way stealth and odyssey was criticized heavily despite it being quite a lot of fun in my eyes it introduced stealth abilities which allowed you to stab one guy and then throw your spear across a room to another guy and it spiced up stealth however there was one big big big issue people had stealth didn't one shot an enemy you could stab a guy with a spear and he wouldn't die sure it wasn't every enemy but bosses certainly don't go down in a single hit and enemies outside your level range didn't either now i personally like that there would be certain areas that i wouldn't be able to go through yet and i'd have to just come back later it made the progression strict and i enjoyed that a lot it made me feel like i was really improving when i was within the level range i knew that there was an enemy or two that couldn't be taken down with stealth i enjoyed sneaking around said enemy and taking out all of his lackeys before getting to the big guy which went down through one stealth attack and maybe an overpower attack mixed in with an ability here however things are different the biggest change however being the hidden blade you now have one and you get it early on on top of that it can one shot any enemy well not necessarily you can very early in the game unlock an ability which allows you to theoretically one shot an enemy through stealth by completing a simple quick time event in this quick time event you end up timing a closing circle of sorts and the timing is tighter and tighter depending on how much health the enemy has the issue i have with this is that it's easy as hell with this upgrade i could waltz into territories that are way higher than my level and just start stabbing everyone and don't get me wrong it's cool that you could do this but it completely broke the progression for me i know that a lot of people may like it but i don't know i'd just rather come back to an area after leveling up then just cheese a boss fight by doing a quick time event and hiding in a bush if you do happen to get yourself caught you can just run away and the ai immediately forgets what happened so it didn't matter much either there are options for hiding in plain sight such as sitting on benches and hiding in crowds but i literally never found a use for it finally we should talk about the changes to traversal and there isn't really any basically all of my criticisms from odyssey about the traversal carry over to this game yet i somehow found myself getting stuck on things more here but who knows maybe i'm just bad at it essentially to recap there's little fall damage to the point where you can haul yourself off a cliff and everything will be fine and the parkour is brutally limited i'm okay with it being limited as like with odyssey there isn't a ton to really climb on aside from the odd tower here or there but you won't be jumping from roof to roof very often i didn't enjoy the parkour much here as when scaling a mountain it can be a little finicky at times and there isn't a real danger aspect to it due to the whole no fall damage thing but it is what it is the only upside is that you don't need to use it too often when trying to get from point a to point b you'll typically use your horse or just any horse i was confused that you didn't have an actual horse here but it doesn't really matter regardless your horse seems to move quite slowly and has a stamina bar which didn't make a ton of sense to me i mean sure it's realistic and all but it does slow your movement and it's not like avor can ever get too tired of sprinting your horse also does that awesome thing that it did in odyssey where it slows to a crawl when approaching a town except now it slows down more and it slows down even farther outside of the town's walls on top of that your horse also slows down when in combat and there are hostile patrols and hostile animals on the main roads the only place where you can ride your horse at full speed without draining the stamina bar you'll be getting into combat way too often on the bright side there is an autopilot mode for the horse which allows it to automatically follow the main roads to your destination and when in this autopilot mode you can activate a cinematic view which looks awesome however there was one issue for some reason most of the time when using the autopilot the game would just send my ass in the wrong direction and it happened to at least one of my friends so i don't think it's a bug that's exclusive to me it just made the autopilot feature completely useless as i'd hit the autopilot button when i was say a thousand meters away from my destination leave to rock a piss and when i came back i'd be 3 000 meters away it just kind of sucked exploration here is essentially the exact same as before as you have to rely on your eagle or in this case crow to mark locations and enemies most of the exploration here saw you going to a general area where the game would then ask that you use your bird to locate your target which never took too long in fact it was so simple that i wonder why they didn't just give us a waypoint because when using the bird it highlights exactly where you're supposed to be and if for some reason you can't find it you can use your eagle vision which shows you exactly where your objective is so now i believe we should talk about the gameplay loop and the main story missions we'll be seeing the gameplay loop is nothing out of the ordinary but that doesn't mean it's not fun you'll be doing basic gameplay objectives like go here kill x go here find x go hear kidnap x but there are plenty of twists that are put on the missions to make them fun and i didn't often feel like i was just going through the motions there are essentially two plots here that are going on in the past and while they somewhat intertwine throughout the game they are mostly separated there is the england settlement story and the order of the ancients i'll explain the order gameplay loop first and give my thoughts on it because it works quite similarly to odyssey there's this group in the game called the order of the ancients and they're basically templars some of them can be found through completing the main story and some can be found by collecting clues around the map these clues can be found most commonly by just picking them up but can also be found by completing certain side quests and mini games around england each clue has a vague description about where the next clue might be and i enjoyed pulling up the clue then subsequently pulling up your map to find where the general area of the next clue is i found myself spending upwards of 20 minutes on this pseudo scavenger hunt at times and finally giving a revealed member the old 1-2 auditory was a lot of fun and pretty satisfying adding to the satisfaction was the x-ray-like animation that played which showed your blade entering the member's body and it was just really neat reminded me of like mortal kombat and all that when you kill one of these members you get a little chit chat with them similar to previous games i didn't enjoy these conversations very much though because they didn't really say anything new it was all the same ideas and statements previous games have touched on a million times by now specifically things how like you'll never stop the order and even if you do wipe out every member a new one will emerge it's like don't get me wrong is it based in red pill yes is it boring as [ __ ] by now also yes these conversations also have these seemingly random thuds that remind me of the thuds you hear in those instagram comedy videos one dead branch on a fast dying [Music] you know that thud my clan will not be forgotten there is a particular point in the story where the special mini boss-like enemies called zealots will be enticed to hunt you and you can choose to let them come get you or burn their communal hit list meaning you won't have to deal with them i decided to burn the list meaning i was safe but i eventually ran into a problem by the time the end game hit i couldn't find half of them and i've been told it's much easier to find them when they find you and for that reason i still haven't found them all and it sucks these guys don't have a proper resting place either they just ride around general regions so a guide won't be the most helpful so if you're going to complete this game and finish one of the main plots being the order then make sure these zealots are on your ass otherwise have fun grinding them out while you comb all of england for those bastards the reason you need to get rid of the zealots is because they're part of the cult and they must be taken out in order to reveal the final member of the order at this point we're getting into spoiler territory for basically the rest of the video and for that reason if you have been convinced to buy this game then feel free to do so i think you'll enjoy it however you should probably not complete the game's main story maybe play it casually doing whatever interest you is i believe that unless you're a die-hard fan of the game by the 15th hour finishing this game's main story will drain you and potentially ruin the experience there's a ton of fun stuff to do in this game and while it's not perfect it's worth picking up if you've enjoyed what you've seen here getting back to the order the order screen should be completely avoided in my eyes until you get the in-game notification that says a member has been revealed the reason is because when a member is not revealed they are cloaked in darkness however this cloak doesn't work very well and upon barely looking at who the leader is i was immediately able to tell who it was and it's not like i was looking at it with a magnifying glass like it's brutally clear who it is and it sucks because i didn't actually suspect it was this particular person there are multiple points where you interact with king alfred and one of which sees him asking for your help as he fears for his life and in order to keep him protected you have to kill a few members of the order then after god knows how many hours you confront him and he explains that he doesn't actually like the order and wanted it to be destroyed so a greater order could be created at that point you end up not killing the leader and you both go your separate ways if this sounds familiar that's because it's near beat for beat the same as odyssey's ending like listen to this okay there is an order that has multiple members and you meet the leader during the main story and they help you take down some members of the order so you may assume that they're not part of such an order after you discover who the leader is you confront them and you end up not killing them they discuss how their order is flawed and that no matter what a new one will spawn now tell me which one am i talking about cult of cosmos order of the ancients cause i can't tell i just felt like i wasted my time this is a common theme seen across the game repetition and unoriginality to the point of being disappointed why not have an epic battle where we storm king alfred's hideout and have a cutscene that shows us taking him down while he screams bloody murder why is the cult just the exact same here the worst part is that this is just one of the endings of the game and because it comes after almost every other plot's ending it just ends up feeling even more underwhelming it just ends no credits no life just quest completed before we get into the more colonial aspects of the game we should quickly talk about the side content that is littered around here there's flighting which is a viking style rap battle they essentially involve insulting your opponent and rhyming at the same time simple stuff but it was a lot of fun you know yeah it's prime time rapping is this what they put me up against super hot i never heard of you i'm looking at him like is he stupid i'm about to murder you boom there's another mini game you can participate in called orlog orlog essentially sees you rolling six die each side of said die has either a shield a hand an arrow a sword or a helmet the helmets block swords the shields block arrows and the hand steals your opponent's tokens you roll all six dice and pick which ones you want to keep however after the third roll you must use all of your dice you gain tokens by selecting a die that has a yellow border around them and after you've picked your dice you move into the god favor phase there are a few different favors you can use but they all depend on how many tokens you have for example doing a basic damage favor will cost 4 tokens but will only provide 2 points of damage save up 12 tokens and you can do 8 damage points so saving is a decent idea it's not that simple though as your opponent can steal some of your tokens and if you plan on using that 8 damage favor as an ace in the hole and your opponent steals your tokens to the point where you can no longer afford such a favor you'll be in a significant amount of trouble i enjoyed the minigame a fair bit as there is a reasonable amount of luck but never enough to where pure luck can trump a smart player it's something you could easily lose a lot of hours into and while it wasn't as complex as something like gwent it is certainly worth some praise in my eyes there's also a basic drinking mini game where you're essentially just doing a continual quick time event but as you get more and more intoxicated you have to control your balance while also nailing those time triangle presses it's simple but it doesn't need to be more complex than that it's just viking hijinks in its purest form you may also notice when waltzing around that there are haunted areas in the game essentially there will be an area that has a thick haze over it in order to stop it you have to destroy whatever effigy is causing the curse finding these was never too difficult nor too easy and i really like the little letters littered around here that explain why the area is cursed there's also a handful of secret locations you can visit such as the assassin bureaus where you can find a hidden one's armor set and they have pretty good weapons there too there are also codex pages with some good lore about the hidden ones and i appreciated the little puzzles associated with these bureaus i feel like it didn't do anything radical but still i found myself getting excited when i accidentally ran into one there are also a myriad of actual side quests in the game but none that i've found yet have been anything special they're not bad by any means and they definitely have variety like this one that saw me coming across a grate in the floor i heard some people talking about how it smelt a little strange i followed the sewers and found a woman behind a cage who was asking me for viper eggs she wanted three viper eggs and so i brought them to her and then she wanted a few more i went out and got some more and she wanted even more regardless i gave it to her and she and i'm not joking here farted and [ __ ] herself so hard that she smoked out the people above so i brought up this quest for more than just the excuse to talk about how ridiculous it is but to highlight a common theme in this game in order to grab the eggs you have to kill some vipers that can be found in and around the sewers finding them isn't a big deal however it's the fact that you have to keep grabbing them and bringing it back to her that just feels so unnecessary just make the side quest shorter and bring her the eggs once why do it three times especially when it's the same thing three times in a row not all side quests are like this as there were some that were over and done with quite quickly and there were some that had entire story arcs tied to them but this one just stood out because it was so repetitive there's also animal hunting and fishing here but it's not worth noting as it works exactly as you expect if you like that kind of stuff great if not you won't be missing much i know i've skipped over a few things here but i don't want to go over too many of them since none of them stood out as exceptionally good or exceptionally bad and this game is just oozing with stuff to do boss fights here are relatively basic and they see you just fighting a juiced up enemy or a beast however they were good enough for me some of the fights against the giants and asgard were some of my favorites due to the way you use the environment against them such as sticking by a bonfire in order to get away from the piercing hailstorm that the giant can send down one of the changes that a lot of bosses have here compared to odyssey is their abilities some bosses can still light their weapons on fire but you won't be seeing enemies like deimos here that can just activate an unbreakable shield that totally kills the pace of the fight some of the bosses ai aren't very friendly though such as the fight against dag dag was a major [ __ ] throughout nearly the entire plot of the game and for that reason i really wanted to give him the old you know bop bop but this ai for some reason insisted that he run away from me and i had to tirelessly chase him around the arena just to get some hits in but this could just be a bug as my game also crashed during this fight so i don't know my only issue with the human bosses were how easy most of them are since you can just ability and parry spam sure their health bars are large but you could typically hit them with an ability that would do huge damage and also leave them stunned mix that with a weapon that would also stun lock them and i could pull off a combo where i could fill a bar of adrenaline use the ability light attack spam and rinse and repeat a new feature added to this game are raids and a returning feature is your settlement that you can upgrade essentially when you get to england you'll need to upgrade your settlement and this can be done by raiding other settlements some of them are of course tied to the region's level but it's easily ignored through stealth essentially you pull up to a place with your viking squad and eliminate the enemy forces while also breaking into different houses to steal the wealth as inside busting down a lot of doors here and collecting the wealth is a two-person job so you can't lone wolf it here what you can do however which is especially useful when attacking a base is a much higher level than you is just go around and stealth kill all the guards surrounding the area so that when you do start the raid there's no enemies to stop you whatever enemies are left over can be cheesed through spamming some abilities since performing an assassination gives you an adrenaline bar when you want to start the rage you'll blow your awesome horn and your fellow vikings will show up on their boats ready to loot and pillage a raid is completed when all the loot has been seized it's a simple mechanic but i always found it reasonably fun and using the materials gained from these raids was rewarding too you can create houses for different towns folks and also start services around ravensthorpe like a cartographer who sells you maps that reveal the location of different gear and other resources there's also a blacksmith forge that you can build and he'll sell you gear not that any of it's really useful but upgrading your gear is the more places you upgrade and build the higher your settlement level gets with each new level boasting some good rewards such as new faces joining the settlement and new buildings to unlock i liked upgrading my settlement and seeing the new faces that showed up and the raids while being on the simplistic side were not so abundant as to get old as far as the side quests are tied to the raven's thorpe settlement go they're okay i mean they're just like all the other side quests in the game so i don't really have much to say on them one thing i really do like is the rare opportunities in which you have to play the role of a judge in the settlement feuds you'll be given some sort of dilemma and you can choose how to deal with it though they're usually very one-sided and it was always quite obvious in my eyes at least which person was in the right you can also build a home for two assassins that'll be joining you python will be the only one that really hangs out there as bassim accompanies sigurd and with each bundle of order medallions that you bring to hythm medallions received after assassinating a member of the order you'll receive a new ability you can also find some codex pages and upon bringing all six of them to hythm he'll show you a letter written by bayek which fans of origins will likely appreciate there are also of course the arcs around england and you have a bit of freedom in how you accomplish them and in what order you do them in but regardless in order to finish most of the main quests you'll have to have them all completed the thing that makes these tough to talk about in a video such as this is just how long each of these arcs are so what i'll do is give my thoughts on a few of them as talking about all of them would not only take up a majority of this video and be generally unnecessary but also because my criticisms and praises of these arcs are pretty much the same across the board and i'll take a closer look at those that break out of those broad thoughts for starters the arcs are typically way too long they're made to be much longer when most of the stories are so similar to each other each arc sees you entering a new area and arriving in a time of conflict a conflict that usually has the region's crown up in the air and our job is to secure a crown for a potential ally while eliminating any members of the order that are potentially involved i enjoyed a lot of these arcs in a bubble but it's when they're put in the context of the entire game and that in order to progress you have to do them over and over that really kills it for me most see you dealing in politics and raiding castles however a lot of them have a neat twist on them such as the east anglia arc which i enjoyed a lot east anglia was the third region i had been to and i was already feeling pretty burnt out from the gameplay loop of the other regions which just see you raiding bases and talking about war and glory this arc sees you looking for the king of east anglia but there isn't one around you find out that the soon to be king is the sheepish and seemingly insignificant king oswald or well he would be king if he had the approval of his queen's brothers they don't approve of oswald due to his pacifistic nature and general unimpressive stature you're tasked to use showing oswald how to be a real stand-up king for example you show him how to flight and insult his opponents with words we explain flighting to oswald then it serves as a tutorial of sorts for players as well since the ark is pretty close to the start of the game we also show oswald how to fight and we even get into a bar fight with the queen's brothers which was really fun and it was a good break from the usual missions we had seen up to that point we eventually find out that while oswald may not be the strongest fighter or the sharpest tool in the shed he's got determination a heart like no one else and he genuinely wants the best for his kingdom as the ark develops we find out that the bandits that have been attacking oswald's village are led by the queen's ex-husband avor leads an attempt to storm his fort and upon doing so oswald challenges him to a duel he obviously loses or more accurately he is about to but he ends up taking the queen's ex-husband with him off a cliff after searching for him and storming another fort we have a boss fight against the queen's ex who is revealed as a member of the order and were given a choice to either spare him at oswald's request or kill him which would see you eliminating a member of the order but disrespecting oswald in the process i chose to spare him because hey i'm trying to form an alliance here and once that's over oswald gets approval from the queen's brothers and we attend the wedding which is pretty nice we just get to hang around and party drinking with oswald's new family shooting targets and talking to people but as the wedding is about to end a certain someone escapes capture and challenges oswald to another duel however this time we step in and finally take him down the couple are pronounced husband and wife and that's about where the ark ends of course with an alliance attached to it i know that compared to everything else this is really mundane and boring but that's kind of what i like about it the whole main plot in valhalla is this epic quest to conquer england and you encounter pieces of eden and you're keeping up with sigurd's plot and it's all so serious sure there's some serious stuff here too but you're mostly just partying getting into bar fights teaching oswald how to fight and showing him how to insult someone else's mom i liked oswald a lot and some people have argued that oswald feels near inhuman and that his arc is completed too quickly as it seems he quickly goes from being a coward to a king but i didn't really feel that i don't think that being a king means that you're not a coward and i believe that at the end of the arc oswald is definitely still a coward and he's even absent from the final battle at hamptonshire i think the reason he becomes king is because he has the heart for it and even if he does cower and fear at the first sight of trouble he's willing to make the sacrifices necessary to protect his kingdom he literally sacrifices his own life in order to protect his loved ones and that sounds like a king if you ask me his arc isn't about oswal learning to not be a coward it's about realizing that there's much more to being a king than killing anyone in your way and being a fierce leader sure he certainly has a lot more self-confidence and rightfully so and he knows to a greater extent what he's capable of but that doesn't mean he's rushing into battle anytime soon i don't believe you can teach someone how to be brave or how to not be a coward it doesn't matter how many spiders i kill i still squeal like a little [ __ ] every time i see one there were other arcs in the game that i enjoyed such as granite bridgeshire which god that name is a mouthful from now on we're just gonna refer to it as the soma arc essentially this arc sees you helping a woman named soma as her army's been attacked during a night of celebration and we have to figure out who the traitor is and also help her retake a settlement and rebuild her army of course i'm sure as most of you expected there are some members of the cult running amuck in here too i specifically enjoyed the moment where we have to ask around the town for everyone's whereabouts during the attack it felt like a little game of viking among us a lot of games when doing an investigation type mission like this make them quite easy however i felt like this one was pretty engaging and it wasn't until the game confirmed it to me after the mission that i was 100 sure that i caught the traitor i also really enjoyed some as a character here too and she even joins my little boat team which was pretty cool there weren't any in particular that i remember not enjoying outright that is except for the sx arc the essex arc sees you assisting a king that is very clearly not fit to rule as he spends most of his time and money on luxuries rather than the kingdom he's trying to rule we sage a kidnappings that his wife can leave without worrying the people and we play cupid and set up the king with a new queen it's all unrelated to the plot and it was so easily forgettable it doesn't help that the thing took so long too regardless that's the only one i didn't really enjoy and everything else was fine at worst the only ones i'd say i got the closest to not liking were the late game arcs since that's when i was most burnt out from the game the main story i found relatively interesting and engaging however i'd have to do all these arcs before i could get back into the main plot and it sucked ass i would finish and i can get to see some plot development which would pique my interest and yet i'd have to go through tens of hours of gameplay before i even get a glimpse of the next plot point and i just got to this point where i just wanted to rush through the arks as fast as possible there are a few arcs however that directly intertwine with the main plot and add a lot to the assassin's creed lore one of which is the asgard arc this one seems to be a little controversial as some of you that are in my discord link to that in the description seem to think it's filler but i don't really think so as it isn't required for the progression of the main plot it definitely helps the main plot and supplements the lore implications of the ending but if you really aren't into it you can still grasp the ending without it regardless i'd like to give my thoughts on it essentially the asgard arc sees you in the position of odin who is referred to as javi all of this by the way is taking place within a hallucinogenic vision induced by the seer special potion given to avor asgard looks so fantastical off the bat and its counterpart jodenheim is equally as fun to explore i also appreciate that assassin's creed found a way to explore the mythology of these different cultures in a way that doesn't compromise the consistency of the world like odyssey did anyways asgard is a beautiful landscape that is also one of the only locations in the game with a relatively manageable scale the massive tower in the center of the map that is always satisfying to dive off of and the incredible bifrost is always a pleasure to journey across there's also jotunheim which is home to the enemies in this world these big ass blue people no idea what they're called giants maybe i i don't know regardless their home is much more mysterious as entire buildings will faze in and out of existence it was always so neat to try and figure out what angle you need to look at a structure in order to actually enter it i also really enjoyed the boss fights here too as they were much like everything else in the arc pretty balls to the wall and since these fantastical elements are not nearly as present in the main plot it made it more of a special occurrence anyways the story essentially sees odin attempting to prevent ragnarok which is essentially the end of the world when they realize that they cannot prevent the end of the world they decide that they will try to have themselves reincarnated in a way by drinking a potion of sorts but due to a conflict with odin loki is not present in the reincarnation party i know it may seem a little pointless to bring this stuff up now but i promise it is important so just remember this little story bit i enjoyed seeing the different characters from norse mythology like thor and loki and seeing the different locations was fun too as far as the actual story it didn't feel like it did anything too special but it was certainly good enough for me the boss fights here were a ton of fun too and i enjoyed that one of them actually saw you using the environment to an extent to take down your foe which is something not seen in many other boss fights within the game i'll now give my thoughts on the story as a whole but first we should do a summary and boy is this a long one so apologies if i skip over some details i'll also be explaining and giving my thoughts on the more specific plot points and arcs as they become relevant our game begins with a child like avor running around a celebration hosted by her family more specifically her father upon getting attacked nearly all of avor's settlement is struck down and avor's father submits his life and essentially dies a coward on the promise that the attackers won't touch the rest of the village after his head gets chopped off right in front of avor's eyes the attackers decide to slaughter the rest of the village anyways avor is barely able to escape with her friend sigurd but along the way is thrown off a cliff and is attacked by a wolf however she is saved at the last moment we flash forward 18 years and see that avor is still trying to take down the man who attacked their village however the king of the raven clan avor's adoptive father has heavily advised against it as to not risk open war between the two rival clans avor is at least able to grab her father's axe and upon doing so has a vision of odin and upon talking to the local seer about such a vision she has another vision where she sees a massive wolf sigurd with one arm and a lot more that'll come to fruition at some point in the story sigurd returns to the village to great avor and brings a few friends along with him who are clearly assassins or at this point hidden ones they give avor a hidden blade and they show her how to assassinate people avor and sigurd then attempt to attack the man who killed ivor's father so long ago and actually gets support from king harald it's then revealed that the hidden ones that joined sigurd plan to assassinate the leader of the supposing clan but decide to leave the kill to avor after her victory king herald pledges to unite all of norway and by doing so crowns himself the king of all the clans a war and sigurd's father decides to comply meaning that there is no longer a throne for sigurd to inherit in a bout of anger sigurd and avor decide to move to an old settlement in england and make it their new home calling it ravensthorpe in order to secure their safety and stake their claim they begin forming alliances with other regions conveniently they can also help bassam and hythm the two hidden friends of sigurds take down the order of the ancients in england throughout your many conquests and forming alliances you'll get glimpses into the next bits of the story and all of them are spread across a solid 40ish hours anywho upon meeting up with sigurd again we see that he has come into contact with an isu artifact the saga stone as it's called shows sigur division and this vision leads to him believing that he is a god a member of the order named folke also delivers this and ends up capturing sigurd and during this time in confinement he is tortured traumatized and fulca even cuts off his arm sigrid's plan is now to fulfill his perceived destiny and return to norway where he confronts his father and essentially scolds him for the sake of being a petty [ __ ] he then enters an isu temple by speaking isu and both sigurd and abor hook themselves up to a machine that places them in valhalla or more accurately a simulation of valhalla i believe avor wakes up and sees most of her friends barring her father and even sees sigurd who has both arms and they rush into battle quickly after catching up when in the combat that takes place on the rolling golden sunglaze hills of valhalla you'll notice that all of your attacks make the enemy instantly explode i really like the way they portrayed valhalla or at least sigurd and aevar's version of it we see them in a loop of sorts waking up to a full courtyard of all their friends however not all as well avor isn't content to live the same day over and over just running into battle kicking ass helping sigurd who loses his arm and upon expressing how much she misses her father sigurd makes him appear the next day this pisses avar off though just a brief explanation of how valhalla works by the way from what i've gleaned from the game you have to die a warrior's death meaning you died fighting for your clan and for honor and died with an accent hand or you fought until your body just couldn't anymore throughout the course of the game it seems the whole weapon in hand thing also plays a large role in someone's admission into valhalla we're given choices when killing important characters to either put their weapon in their hands solidifying their entrance into what is essentially heaven or deny them entry and make sure they die empty-handed this is why avor gets upset at the sight of her father he doesn't belong in valhalla and it's revealed to avor that her friends are not actually in valhalla but this is rather a simulation of her friends but i believe sigurd is actually there since he is along with avor hooked up to the machine that sent them there she becomes quite upset because she is essentially just living forever in her own mind and decides she wants out upon leaving with sigurd bassim shows up confirming that avor cigarette and bassam are all reincarnations of odin thor and loki bassim wants revenge on the reincarnation of odin and proceeds to attack both abra and sigurd however avor traps him in valhalla or the machine that transports him to valhalla at this point avor and sigrid have become so emotionally distant and thankfully they choose to put it all behind them with sigurd either returning to england with you or staying in norway it's funny there are five important choices that influence cigarette's decision if you commit two of the following actions sigurd will not want to stay with you in england steal stibe ruins cargo start a relationship with ranvi punch bassim deny dag his axe and contradicts cigarette in front of his people the reason i find this funny is because i did all of them not knowing they would influence my ending anywho upon returning you can call your friends to make a final push against wessex and king alfred the king you've been trying to push out of england for the last 40ish hours it takes siege and defeat alfred's forces leaving him essentially a king without a throne upon completing the elimination of the cult we get our final interaction with alfred and that's it now there is a modern day story too but i'll get to that later as there is just so much to discuss here to explain a little bit more of the lore there is a series of side quests that see you entering what is essentially a glitch in the animus they allow you to play as the modern day protagonist since you performing some platforming and puzzles these weren't super challenging but i won't sit here and act like they weren't engaging and having a side quest that generally focuses on platforming was really fun and i'm glad we got it regardless the reason i bring up this side quest is to talk about the lore implications as at the end of these corrupted portions of the animus we get a glimpse of a forgotten memory finish all of these animus anomalies and we can see the full cutscene which resembles another scene it looks nearly identical at points to the scene at the end of the asgard story arc now here's how i interpreted it essentially the asgard arc was a hallucination that resembled an ancient memory of the isu odin thor and loki and all those guys are isu and ragnarok is actually the great catastrophe that wiped out the isu and it's the same event that desmond once prevented in 2012 and the one that we as layla are trying to stop again the reason i believe that we see it as asgard is because it's the extent of aevor's imagination as the years have gone by these first civilization issues had their stories told and retooled eventually painting them into gods and these are likely the stories that have been told to avor that's why when she is remembering these events she sees them in the form of the norse gods and the hallucinogens likely help we see in a cutscene that a machine seems to be taking the blood of the isu and injecting it into a baby assumedly a human the biggest part that i'm not sure about is how these babies are eventually born but regardless there are now these humans avor sigurd and bassim that are the reincarnations of odin thor and freya but it appears loki snuck into freya's place now i said reincarnation but that's not entirely true it's more of a mesh of personalities the babies shown in the cutscenes are at the stage of development where their brains have been formed so they already have their personality set in stone this is why odin appears as a physical manifestation in avore's mind and we can assume that loki appears in bassim's mind and so on i want to clarify that a lot of this is speculation and well-educated assumptions however if anything here is incorrect i will mention it in the pen comment below so take a look there if any of this seems off so the implications here are pretty large the biggest of which in my eyes is that religious figures are now theoretically members of the first civilization does that mean jesus is an isu wait is the flying spaghetti monster in isu seriously though i think that these lore implications are pretty neat and yet before we go too far on another tangent we should talk about the modern day the modern day picks up a little bit after the events of odyssey where we see laila and god does she look like hell on top of that shawn and rebecca make a return and what the [ __ ] happened to rebecca she looks like bones from monster house delson row [ __ ] dmc devil may cross shawn also looks quite good and i don't mean to get too distracted but i appreciate layla's design here she really looks like she's seen a lot from what we've been told the issue staff has been corrupting her and causing her mood to be swayed and her mental state is clearly deteriorating supposedly sean had installed a mood stabilizer and they have also moved to the final resting place of avor they received a signal that called them there and the sources as of right now unknown using her memories layla wants to find the device that might stop the great catastrophe that could have potentially happened in 2012 for good we find out that this catastrophe is a cycle of sorts and that essentially every time the assassins stop it another is doomed to occur while in the modern day you can explore around outside and whatnot but there isn't really much to see aside from the different audio logs scattered around the computer you know i didn't think these would be too interesting but god was i wrong i spent a literal half hour just listening to the audio logs and reading the different emails here it was really interesting and it actually touched upon a lot of things that i was curious about especially with desmond in the audio logs desmond criticizes the creed and explains that the creed is all about giving people the freedom to do whatever they want yet stops the templars who are just exercising their freedom desmond also mentions how he was born into the creed and never really had a choice to join it or not it also reminded me of characters like ezio that were put in positions where they didn't really have a choice ezio even speaks about it at the end of revelations i too thought of the hypocrisy of such a creed and seeing it addressed here was really nice another thing that was brought up which i had always wanted was desmond psyche during the events of his trilogy desmond by the end of assassin's creed 3 had lived three separate lives to the point where desmond didn't really get to live his own it's actually quite sad now that i think about it more the guy who just moved away from his parents at an age where he could potentially do anything is now stuck living the lives of others sacrificing his own in a way but not in the traditional sense of just dying but by actually sacrificing all of his time and energy these audio logs also dip into the idea of someone living so many different lives through the animus that they essentially have no personality as they haven't had much time to form one seeing the way these audio logs are handled here really made me feel like i was missing out on a potential greater story seeing all the stuff with desmond i would love to see how it affects the layla but there isn't any of that here sure we see some of the stuff in audio logs but i wondered why they bothered to hide such a captivating story and such interesting concepts behind an audio log rather than leave it front and center i know that generally speaking the modern day plots and assassins creed games have been on the weaker side but seeing this just showed me that these different ideas were here and developed and it just sucks i guess most people won't even bother to look i guess it's there for the quote-unquote true fans but i would have just loved to see this stuff expanded upon and if any dlcs come this game's way then i think these ideas should definitely be explored more and in a more notable way not behind an audio log that 90 of the player base will likely not even see anyways my apologies for going on a tangent there layla after completing the memories of avor gets to the temple that houses the tree of life and finds a machine that can take her to the same simulation of valhalla however something is off there are all these glitches and we eventually enter into this gray area akin to the loading screens in something like revelations where we see these weavers that have been featured in many different parts of the game i don't know their purpose but my theory is that they're potentially weaving the different aspects of space and time and i'll expand on that in a moment but for now we come across another tree-like object upon walking closer to it layla comes across a man made of what looks like pure energy who i believe is desmond i'm like 90 sure it's desmond like same voice and all he explains that when he touched the device at the end of assassin's creed 3 he was transported to this different plane of existence meaning that he never really died in assassin's creed 3 but instead just shed his physical form his purpose here is to look through the different timelines that spawned when desmond sacrificed himself to see how the human race could stop the next great catastrophe desmond explains that he's been here and has sifted through millions of timelines but has yet to find a solution layla suggests that maybe they take a look further back and sift through the millions of timelines that could have occurred if desmond had not touched the device that stopped the catastrophe they decided that maybe that isn't such a bad idea and layla then sheds her physical form as well the same way that desmond does however i think layla does have the opportunity to come back from this plane of existence because her physical body is still present assuming she can get her hands on the isu staff unfortunately it isn't there and basum who we remember from the main story is trapped in that other plane and he's now able to return to his physical body and upon getting up grabs the staff and returns to sean and rebecca with a man bun and a wolf shirt what i mean don't get me wrong it's not a three piece my god is that wolf shirt such an odd choice basim who is also loki is now in the present day and wants to speak with william miles and that's essentially the most that we're given as the gay man's right about after that i assume the next game will pick up with our new modern day protagonist bassin but if bassim is an isu i'm not totally sure if he's on our team here i apologize that that was a lot of summarizing but man if there isn't a lot of plot here my biggest issue is that all of this really neat stuff that i'm talking about happens in the span of hours but in order to get to them you have to complete tens of hours of side arcs a lot of them not impacting the overarching plot at all it's because of this that the plot feels so strangely paced the beginning in norway was paced so well and it worked so well too but once you got to england it felt like the whole story went off the rails and this goes for most of the plots in the game the worst part is that most of these stories involve things that we have seen before a plot about finding an isu temple with an isu artifact has been done to death having a cult that you've spent endless hours grinding out only for the leader to turn around and say that they wanted it to be destroyed is really cool the first time seeing it again here was beyond disappointing the story with sigurd and avor is really good in my eyes and it's not anything that gave me that feeling of deja vu but it's just so short not in the time it takes to get it done but in what actually happens in the story sigurd for the most part is absent and in fact when he's captured he criticizes you for taking your time to come get him but the game literally would not let you rescue him until you form some more alliances sieger y'all back where you belong ah i missed you my brother yeah you missed me yeah once or twice i hear what you took your time to find me it wasn't for this to enjoy your time on my throne i just kept thinking man i would have come sooner if i could one thing i did enjoy was the foretold betrayal of sigurd i assumed that this betrayal would come from something predictable and that eventually sigurd and avor would have to duke it out or something but my expectations were happily subverted the betrayal in the game isn't a direct backstab but rather a few small betrayals and it doesn't end in bloodshed like a million other things do in this game it ends in the two talking it out and even if they don't come to the most ideal conclusion they both still have a mutual respect for each other and the betrayal is more of a somber excuse for the two to go their separate ways i liked it but as i'm gonna say a lot it just felt a little underwhelming and that goes for the cult ending too the only plot that felt like it had a reasonable conclusion was the overarching issue plot but even then the same issue comes in and that it will take so many hours to complete that i often found myself questioning if it's even worth it there were multiple points where i was able to choose a mission that was a way higher level than me because i stuck to stealth and since the game was so easy across the board i didn't feel like i was progressing at all that's also considering that i didn't touch any of the side content until i finished the main plot and those who did will likely find themselves extremely overleveled making the issue of difficulty and progression much worse i just felt like i was doing one chore after another and chasing a twinkie on a stick for an excessively long time after 50 hours i just wanted the game to end so bad that i began to nearly resent the game and how many things it asks you to do again the individual arcs here are not that bad trust me but that was never my goal for example when sigurd gets captured you have to do a few arcs before you can rescue him but i didn't care about the politics for whatever region i was in i cared about rescuing sigurd and having to take care of these plots that just aren't as interesting to me for multiple hours just to get back to what i was really looking forward to only to have another roadblock of arcs just sucked this was ultimately the same with the order too as killing members as i went along the main plot with aboard sigurd was a lot of fun but when i saw that i had upwards of 10 to 20 hours of grinding ahead of me just to kill the last guy i was so frustrated i think valhalla should have and i cannot believe i'm saying this take it a page out of skyrim's books make over half of these arcs completely optional and separate them from the main plot you can make a few of them mandatory to entice the player to do more of them but ultimately some of them should be optional such as east anglia i enjoyed the east anglia arc a lot but it felt like it was so disconnected from the main plot and it didn't really further the plot at all the reason i bring up skyrim is because in that game while it functions a little differently the side quests in some cases take just as long as main plots and they are totally optional imagine if you climb your ass up high hrothgar and the greybeards say we won't train you until you formed an alliance with the companions so then you have to go do that side arc that will take hours and while it might be a ton of fun in its bubble it wouldn't do the main plot any favors you're not doing it for any reason other than furthering the plot i really like the dark brotherhood in skyrim but i'd be going into the quest with a completely different mindset if i was forced to do it in order to access the rest of the main story i'd be going in with a mindset of okay i need to help these guys so i can go back to what i was doing before instead of what it actually is in skyrim which is i've stumbled across this deadly crew i should probably take a look into it and see what they're up to and the intrigue of the side arc itself is what drives the player to complete it not the fact that they have to complete it ease anglia is a plot that i likely would have eventually done too and a large criticism against it that i can't refute is that it's a direct roadblock in front of the main campaign it doesn't mean i can't appreciate it for what it is but it does mean that my mindset going into it was entirely different while we're on the topic of the game as a whole i want to bring up my feelings of this game just being pulled in two directions gameplay watches look at the combat the combat in odyssey was accused of being too slow and enemies took more than one hit to go down now in what i can only assume is an attempt to please the older fans the enemies go down with no effort meaning i never felt the need to upgrade my weapons at the blacksmith or really do anything with my weapons the only reason i even bothered using the other weapons i found was just to see the different animations and honestly for the sake of this video the same went with gear having better gear didn't make a ton of difference in fairness it helped a little bit but i also came across so many materials that it was uncommon for me to say to myself oh i need more upgrade materials if for some reason the base i was attacking was 50 or 60 levels above me i would just end up using stealth to choose whatever mission i was on or whatever bandit camp i was working through south is another area where it feels like we're pulled in two different directions as they made the south way too easy as to please the older fans but in doing so they alienated people like myself who enjoyed the changes that were brought to stealth i'm not saying that being able to one-shot an enemy through stealth is inherently bad but here it just feels like it defeats the purpose to use the combat since stealth gets the job done faster and much easier i feel like we're in a hybrid right now where ubisoft is trying to please both sides of the assassin's creed fan base and i'm worried if this will please either of them if we're going back to formula and making games like the ezio trilogy and i think in order for ubisoft to be successful they need to commit to it get rid of the rpg elements the dialogue choices and all the abilities and make the games smaller with the amount of time and passion that goes into ubisoft games can you imagine how the next assassin's creed game would be if it had a smaller scope i'd argue they'd nail it instead of having three different arguably half-baked stories across a massive journey that is so big it's detrimental to the game they can have a nice compact 20 hour story that has replay value tight gameplay and a tight-knit story the real victim here is the progression progression and odyssey whether you like it or not was consistent you're always leveling up at a reasonable speed and you had a lot of reasons to level up because the combat was less forgiving the progression was strict meaning that if you wanted to punch above your weight and hit an enemy that is a few levels above you you had to make sure you upgraded your weapons and you could use some stealth to take a larger portion of their health bar down to make sure you had all the odds in your favor upgrading your gear could only get you so far and abilities much the same there were still restrictions in your progression such as weapons and gear being locked behind a level requirement this meant that you couldn't just waltz into an area 10 levels higher than you and cruise through it of course older fans and when i say older fans i'm not referring to age but rather the types of games they enjoy old being pre-origins fans older fans of the series didn't like this and so valhalla tries to fix it but the issue now is that the progression is heavily watered down gear isn't locked behind your level enemies that have hundreds of levels on you can still be taken down through stealth so those areas and enemies are really only a soft cap it could just be me but i never felt like i was really progressing and i would be leveling up so much and yet not seeing any difference i haven't tried stockpiling over 20 skill points and spent them all at once and still felt no change in damage dealt taken or anything outside of maybe a little more health or an extra adrenaline bar even the story felt like it didn't know what side it wanted to be on it did some things that would please the older fans and some things that would please the new fans however i felt like there wasn't a ton that was new the order of the ancients was borderline beat for beat with odyssey and the many endings were similar to the older games pre-assassin's creed 3 and yet they felt so short and underwhelming especially the modern day and the cultist ending i know it may seem that i didn't enjoy the story but that's not true i did enjoy it a lot but what i didn't enjoy was how stretched out it was and how fast the game ends it just threw me off regardless the point is it's not like i don't enjoy it but i felt like i was playing the strange hybrid of the old assassin's creed and the new assassin's creed so i know a lot of you probably want to know what i like more odyssey or valhalla and honestly it's a tough question to answer i like different aspects of each game and making a definitive statement will be difficult but i'll do my best to try when it comes to the combat stealth and progression i'd have to say i enjoyed odyssey slightly more due to the more restrictive progression than my eyes felt more rewarding the story i'd say is far in valhalla's favor despite how its pacing is the thing is odyssey's main campaign is much shorter so the story flows more consistently aside from two points where it forces you to do side content but compared to valhalla which made you do multiple arcs in between story beats i'd have to say i enjoy the pace of odyssey story more as for the actual story that's being told i enjoy valhallas much more it did a lot to expand on the lore and it told a really great story even if the modern day was quite brief it's certainly a lot better than cassandra showing up in a suit which still honestly makes me giggle a little bit the side content i feel is pretty equal between the two but the cult was done better in odyssey in my eyes purely because the zealots were not present and i didn't enjoy it in valhalla due to how similar it was to odysseys i won't include odyssey's dlcs in this comparison because valhalla has yet to have the chance to release any dlcs i also have to acknowledge i enjoy the aesthetics and history of greece more than norse aesthetics which is no fault of the game but something that does influence my opinion regardless my final answer though is odyssey don't get me wrong i like both games a lot but for those wondering if i had to pick i would still pick odyssey i enjoy it more but not by much so to answer the question i posed nearly an hour ago how much assassin's creed is too much assassin's creed well about 50 hours i didn't imagine i'd be giving such a definitive answer but after reviewing my notes and my notes from odyssey i was ready to tap out of the 50 hour mark for both games and i lost a significant amount of interest past that point i think with the amount of depth present in the gameplay and how drawn out the story is i'd say 50 hours should have been the maximum for this game i don't think this applies to all games as i happily put in 100 hours and some change playing persona 5 and i'm currently doing it again for persona 5 royal but that is because the game has a story that has enough going on and gameplay with enough depth to keep me interested for almost the entire time i just can't stand when a video poses a question and doesn't answer it by the end of the video or says something like that's up for you to decide so i figured i'd give you my best crack at an answer i will reiterate i think if ubisoft takes the development time money and effort that they put into this game and put it into like a 20 or 30 hour adventure and scaled down the scope they could seriously have a masterpiece on their hands they could use odyssey's more strict leveling and progression system but make the level cap lower and allow players to punch above their weight a little bit more if they pay close attention to their gear and levels i think if they also tone down the stealth by making critical assassinations harder to time and have more complex enemy routes it would help too i also hope that the next entries try to expand the story and explore more of the ideas that were touched upon in audio logs i would also really like some more modern day segments that see us platforming and perhaps even assassinating foes as a modern day protagonist of course remember that i'm not a game designer so it's not like i can give an easy fix to a game's problems but i can at least explain what i would personally like to see i think valhalla just overall is too long it took me so long to get anything done in the game ranging from the game's plot to even a side quest as simple as gathering viper eggs and i found myself questioning on a frequent basis if i had wasted my time i feel like ubisoft is always trying to make everything bigger and bigger but why not instead of trying to make everything so much bigger and bigger try and smooth out what you have or try something new don't make a bigger world necessarily but make a world with more depth and a world and story that is dense i'm not saying they didn't do this in valhalla but i think it could benefit the next game greatly i know that seems like i have so many issues with the game and while that is true do remember that there are a ton of things i like too the progression is really the only massive criticism i have and the unfortunate downside to that is that it affects nearly every other facet of the game overall i enjoyed valhalla despite my criticisms i think it's a good time but it's just too much of a good time and it's stretched so far and maybe it's just too rich for my taste assassin's creed to me is just so rich and like anything if you have too much of it you'll get sick of it and begin to resent it and even hate it and i don't want to hate valhalla hey guys thanks so much for uh making it to the end of this uh little this little video um i hated that i've never made a video this long and it sucked ass that was way too much editing way too much writing i was talking with uh nam uh link to his channel in the description and i was just saying that like 45 minutes i think is my cap anything longer than that i just i found to get burnt out anyways i just want to say thank you to our gold tier patrons a beat beck bossian 22 christopher moreno francis pop this is a new patron and i'm sorry if i mess it up predica predica pradissa i don't know but thank you um thank you pyrite thank you slatty and thank you to our silver tier patrons dr nannard jacob douglas and thank you to our bronze tier patron denzel ritesh i hope you guys feel like you're getting your money's worth i know that um this wasn't a good patreon month because you guys have gotten literally one video in the past month and it was the infamous video and i tried not to take too long with this video but guys i'll be honest school was just killing me anyways uh yeah next video i kind of want to do spider-man ps4 cause i like that game a lot and it's always been a game that i've kind of wanted to talk about i want to thank white light hard for uh for helping out on this video his little cameo was pretty sweet and and i really appreciated that he had like a good sense of humor about it like i messaged him and he immediately was like yeah let's do it like so um you know a big respect for that it's pretty cool you guys i'd say go check out his channel but you guys know who the [ __ ] he is there's no if you don't know who white light is just go watch him he's like a better version of me i also want to shout out now i'm one two three nine nine i wanna shout out my second channel where i'm live streaming every now and then i do a few editing streams couple of cod stuff so just don't know go take a look if you feel like it also check out nam12399 he's working on a big video on persona 2 right now so if you guys are interested in that go take a look and uh yeah i don't really have much else to say i've been just like nothing's happened in my life because my entire life has been valhalla for the past month ubisoft gave me the review copy and i was like yeah guys i'll have it out in the first in the week of the game's release and uh that was a [ __ ] lie so here we are a month after the game's release and uh we finally have a review out um i also want to clarify that um nam was telling me that a lot of my criticisms against valhalla especially when comparing it to uh odyssey seemed a little like i was just sort of i just didn't like that it wasn't odyssey and that's true to an extent um what i was more talking about is just like when comparing the two it's just like i like odyssey the way odyssey did it more and so i don't really enjoy that they changed things like stealth in this game because to me odyssey stealth was perfectly fine and i liked odyssey stealth a lot and i'll tell you what playing valhalla makes me really want to go back to odyssey and i hope i can have some time to to go back maybe do the dlcs for those games yeah as far as assassin's creed i might take a break for a bit i'll be honest like making this video was really discouraging because it's like one i have so many like assassin's creed fans on twitter that are like either talking [ __ ] about me or like just straight up lying like they're saying like you know that boy aqua thinks brotherhood is just a mad game and that he thinks odyssey is the greatest game in the franchise and it's like that's not true like i like odyssey a lot and i had a good time with it and i like brotherhood a lot too the only like super unpopular opinion i'd say i have is that like i don't like assassin's creed 2 because enjoying odyssey is perfectly fine it's only an unpopular opinion because people say that i think odyssey is like the greatest thing since sliced bread which isn't true odyssey has plenty of flaws but yeah so anyways that's that's me ranting a little bit um yeah i hope you guys enjoyed this have a good one take care of yourselves stay safe boys see ya [Music] you

Channel: That Boy Aqua

Views: 925,009

Keywords: Assassins Creed Valhalla, A Critique of Assassins Creed Valhalla, Too much Assassins Creed, that boy aqua, assassins creed valhalla, a critique of assassins creed valhalla, too much assassins creed, that boy aqua assassins creed, assassins creed valhalla review, assassins creed valhalla critique, assassins creed valhalla analysis, assassins creed valhalla ending explained, assassins creed odyssey, Assassins Creed Valhalla Waste of Time?, assassins creed retropsective

Id: TZ05j5lcNuc

Length: 68min 22sec (4102 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020