Full disclosure, I did not plan to pick this game up. I hate traditional assassin's creed and the only game in the series I liked was Valhalla, which this game is basically a pleading apology for. But I got a code for it with my new PC so I gave it a go. Ubisoft goes back to its roots by making a weird half and half of AC1 and Valhalla using Valhalla's engine. Everything that made the 5 hours I spent with this game compelling was "hey that's kind of like the thing I liked in valhalla". It's somehow buggier: sometimes cutscenes just wouldn't play; I don't think the preanimated takedowns actually featured my blade intersecting with the target once in my entire playtime; and for a game that touts itself as the return of stealth to AC the stealth mechanics are just entirely lifted from Valhalla and about as good. In Valhalla you played as a viking pillaging monasteries so it didn't matter much if you got spotted and had to go hot, but in this game you die in like 4 hits and the combat has returned to AC1 simplicity - it's bad. There are weird RPG elements shoved in because this is clearly cobbled together with Valhalla's basegame and they do almost nothing.
It doesn't go all the way into being a stealth game, so I feel like fans wanting classic AC back will be unhappy. The overworld doesn't have much to collect which was one thing I actually liked in AC2. The writing is still on Valhalla's surprisingly alright level from what I played but that's what this game felt like to me. This is a Valhalla expansion that got molded into something it isn't and it suffers for it, and it's fucking dumb that Ubisoft seems intent to give up the RPG style AC games entirely if they're still going to fucking use Valhalla's framework.
I guess fans of the RPG style will have to wait until Ubisoft inevitably gets diminishing returns from this return to classic AC and pivots yet again without learning that the reason the games stopped selling well is because every Assassin's Creed game feels like you're squeezing the few drops of soul out of it you can like sucking a crawfish.
This game is fine. I didn't like it because classic AC isn't my thing, fans of that will probably like it, but I'm not really sure with how littered the game is with vestiges of Valhalla's design.
It doesn't go all the way into being a stealth game, so I feel like fans wanting classic AC back will be unhappy. The overworld doesn't have much to collect which was one thing I actually liked in AC2. The writing is still on Valhalla's surprisingly alright level from what I played but that's what this game felt like to me. This is a Valhalla expansion that got molded into something it isn't and it suffers for it, and it's fucking dumb that Ubisoft seems intent to give up the RPG style AC games entirely if they're still going to fucking use Valhalla's framework.
I guess fans of the RPG style will have to wait until Ubisoft inevitably gets diminishing returns from this return to classic AC and pivots yet again without learning that the reason the games stopped selling well is because every Assassin's Creed game feels like you're squeezing the few drops of soul out of it you can like sucking a crawfish.
This game is fine. I didn't like it because classic AC isn't my thing, fans of that will probably like it, but I'm not really sure with how littered the game is with vestiges of Valhalla's design.