(not rating this because i didn’t finish it, how i feel is so heavily influenced by dumb parts of my brain and i feel like i’ve not explained how i feel very well lmao)
This is the third time I’ve picked this up, had fun and then thought “I can’t do it”. The world is so vast and incredible, it all feels cool to explore and just keeps going, making you feel tiny as you look over entire populated, structured towns and realise they take up like 1% of the map. The story seems a bit silly but its characters are fun without just being consistently goofy and careless so that pulled me along nicely.
It’s a really good open world RPG, I just felt like I was being tricked whenever I played it? Every element of its gameplay can be traced back to another popular game without quite capturing the same feeling because it’s used in an unrelated context, which along with stuff like your horse being able to just automatically follow the road for you directly to wherever you’re going, makes it feel very designed, as if the game is more concerned with making sure you’re comfortable instead of immersing you into a world. I ended up thinking about how much goofy fun I had with the similar botw and totk because of their confidence. Those have elements that people don’t like such as the rain and weapon durability but they both at least cause drama. Memorable, fun moments come from the game pushing against you which it never feels like Odyssey does as, even on hard, I was able to easily run in somewhere, stab people, run away and repeat. I looked forward to new gear and levelling up because it would make it slightly easier to stab people and run away, never because something seemed cool and fun to experiment with. The way the game presents itself adds to this feeling too. Not the presentation itself, it looks fine and everything but just the weird stuff it throws in your face? The in-game store, daily quests and ads for other games and DLC give it this cheapness, along with the Assassin’s Creed iconography and naming. I don’t care that the game’s not about Assassins and plays nothing like the older games but carrying along its identity in certain places and nowhere else gives it this kind of jumbled aesthetic and draws comparison to games that do certain things better because they’re doing something completely different.
None of this is awful, in fact I’d happily go through it if the game was like 30 hours long. Its gameplay loop feels scientifically designed to be satisfying, but it is satisfying! And there’s other elements that I find cool enough to enjoy this as dumb popcorn entertainment but it’s apparently like 80-120 hours long which is way too much popcorn. Dedicating that much time to something that doesn’t do much more than “feel good” feels bad and so I can’t help but feel guilty for playing it whenever I do. At the same time though that vastness is part of why I enjoy the game, I just wish it was used in a different game or didn’t require you to engage with all of it.
It’s weird because these aren’t bad aspects really? “The game has a lot of content” and “its gameplay loop keeps you engaged” aren’t generally complaints but it’s just how undisguised it feels along with it being obvious that Ubisoft’s intentions with this were to make a live service above anything interesting. It’s engaging so that you keep playing, not so that you have a good time.
This is the third time I’ve picked this up, had fun and then thought “I can’t do it”. The world is so vast and incredible, it all feels cool to explore and just keeps going, making you feel tiny as you look over entire populated, structured towns and realise they take up like 1% of the map. The story seems a bit silly but its characters are fun without just being consistently goofy and careless so that pulled me along nicely.
It’s a really good open world RPG, I just felt like I was being tricked whenever I played it? Every element of its gameplay can be traced back to another popular game without quite capturing the same feeling because it’s used in an unrelated context, which along with stuff like your horse being able to just automatically follow the road for you directly to wherever you’re going, makes it feel very designed, as if the game is more concerned with making sure you’re comfortable instead of immersing you into a world. I ended up thinking about how much goofy fun I had with the similar botw and totk because of their confidence. Those have elements that people don’t like such as the rain and weapon durability but they both at least cause drama. Memorable, fun moments come from the game pushing against you which it never feels like Odyssey does as, even on hard, I was able to easily run in somewhere, stab people, run away and repeat. I looked forward to new gear and levelling up because it would make it slightly easier to stab people and run away, never because something seemed cool and fun to experiment with. The way the game presents itself adds to this feeling too. Not the presentation itself, it looks fine and everything but just the weird stuff it throws in your face? The in-game store, daily quests and ads for other games and DLC give it this cheapness, along with the Assassin’s Creed iconography and naming. I don’t care that the game’s not about Assassins and plays nothing like the older games but carrying along its identity in certain places and nowhere else gives it this kind of jumbled aesthetic and draws comparison to games that do certain things better because they’re doing something completely different.
None of this is awful, in fact I’d happily go through it if the game was like 30 hours long. Its gameplay loop feels scientifically designed to be satisfying, but it is satisfying! And there’s other elements that I find cool enough to enjoy this as dumb popcorn entertainment but it’s apparently like 80-120 hours long which is way too much popcorn. Dedicating that much time to something that doesn’t do much more than “feel good” feels bad and so I can’t help but feel guilty for playing it whenever I do. At the same time though that vastness is part of why I enjoy the game, I just wish it was used in a different game or didn’t require you to engage with all of it.
It’s weird because these aren’t bad aspects really? “The game has a lot of content” and “its gameplay loop keeps you engaged” aren’t generally complaints but it’s just how undisguised it feels along with it being obvious that Ubisoft’s intentions with this were to make a live service above anything interesting. It’s engaging so that you keep playing, not so that you have a good time.