Continuing the recent trend of Ubisoft games suffering from what I call "schizophrenic experience," Assassin's Creed Valhalla does not deviate much from its predecessor in terms of scope and its (flawed) method of reaching. Just like Odyssey, Valhalla prides itself on being a near 100-hour epic action RPG with more things to do than a reasonable player should ask for, all the while trying to convey a story of the franchise that has perhaps gotten bigger than it should be.
Common theme going around with Valhalla is that it's a bloated mess, and to a degree, this is true. The game's structure is at fault here mostly, with the game's "ending" only showing up once you have finished all the main quest arcs. Each arcs are confined to each province of England, and the structure of each arcs usually stay the same: meet the quest-giver, he or she asks help in overthrowing or keeping their claim to the region, often has a big siege battle at the end, and it's back to the Map of England and do the same in the other region. The structure not only gets repetitive, but the arcs began to blur into each other and some of the worse ones become more or less similar at the end (FYI, there are THREE arcs about trying to make a ruler out of a shy, peace-loving Saxon boy). This also means that many arcs simply has no real connection to the game's main story of the relationship between Eivor and his/her brother Sigurd, which ultimately contributes to the bloat. Many of the arcs feel like a side quest that was forced down player's throat for no real reason other than to have a "main story" arc tied to that region.
What is even more unfortunate is that some of these arcs, despite their little to lack of connections to the main story, have some genuinely good story and ties to real world history. There are some arcs that tie a character's paranoia to something that players familiar with history would definitely pick up, while it also shows a well-balanced look at the early Christian integration into pagan cultures and how people negotiated between the two. Problem is that most of these "good" side arcs are back-loaded to the later part of the game, meaning the game feels inevitably full of "fillers" by the time the player has to go through the mid-point slog. While I was fine with the main story of Odyssey considering you can indeed blaze through the main story, but that is simply not possible with Valhalla.
More than any other Assassin's Creed games before it, Valhalla feels most algorithmic and committee-made. The more one plays, the more one realizes that many aspects of its gameplay were created separetly to each other; when the story makes Eivor to help the Christian Biship of the area, he also raids monastries in the bishopric with no remorse. Much of the assassination targets are once again very detached from any kind of context, which makes their "memory room" conversations after assassination even more absurd.
And that really is a shame, because Valhalla boasts one of most impressively constructed Assassin's Creed story since Assassin's Creed 2, one that encompasses not only the historical story of Eivor conveyed in a convincing way, but also the modern-day story which really never were good for the vast majority of the series' long history. Here, the story of the Isu ("Those Who Came Before"), 9th century Norse and 21st century Assassins come to a satisfying convergence, with a twist that perhaps rivals that of Odyssey. Most main characters have excellent voice acting, especially male Eivor whose whispers are near-ASMR quality.
The world to explore within the Animus is also consistent with the series' high quality. Despite my initial concern when it was revealed England will be the region--and let's be honest, it's not difficult to think of rainy drap when one speaks of England--the game is full of beautiful hills and forests, green pastures that offer soothing vistas that are different from that of its two previous ventures in ancient Egypt and Greece. One disappointing aspect is that out of the three big cities (Lunden, Wincestre and Jorvik), the two southern urban areas are aesthetically identical, both showing the typical medieval town built on the ruins of a Roman one, a theme quite common throughout England.
The world is also filled with collectibles typical of the series, but this time also boasts an exhaustive list of "world events" similar to that of the "stranger" missions of Red Dead Redemption. These are usually hit or miss: most of them are small side stories distinct from one another, but there are also repeating events that gets tired after a while. Again, none of them are required, but it is quite annoying that their quality is wildly inconsistent when there are so many of them. Also, the obtuse nature of some of the objectives in them can potentially confuse the player whether they did something wrong or the game glitched out.
Overall, the game is, again, a collection of elements inconsistent in quality never quite coming together as well as they should. Ubisoft has been making games that suffer this syndrome for a while now, where a game wants to be something at one point, while trying to be something else entirely at others. This is the foundational problem of all their games now--more so than the "padding" and "filler" contents that people critique, their games have been suffering lack of coherency. While I have very little confidence that a game titled Infinity will improve in this regard, here's hoping.
Common theme going around with Valhalla is that it's a bloated mess, and to a degree, this is true. The game's structure is at fault here mostly, with the game's "ending" only showing up once you have finished all the main quest arcs. Each arcs are confined to each province of England, and the structure of each arcs usually stay the same: meet the quest-giver, he or she asks help in overthrowing or keeping their claim to the region, often has a big siege battle at the end, and it's back to the Map of England and do the same in the other region. The structure not only gets repetitive, but the arcs began to blur into each other and some of the worse ones become more or less similar at the end (FYI, there are THREE arcs about trying to make a ruler out of a shy, peace-loving Saxon boy). This also means that many arcs simply has no real connection to the game's main story of the relationship between Eivor and his/her brother Sigurd, which ultimately contributes to the bloat. Many of the arcs feel like a side quest that was forced down player's throat for no real reason other than to have a "main story" arc tied to that region.
What is even more unfortunate is that some of these arcs, despite their little to lack of connections to the main story, have some genuinely good story and ties to real world history. There are some arcs that tie a character's paranoia to something that players familiar with history would definitely pick up, while it also shows a well-balanced look at the early Christian integration into pagan cultures and how people negotiated between the two. Problem is that most of these "good" side arcs are back-loaded to the later part of the game, meaning the game feels inevitably full of "fillers" by the time the player has to go through the mid-point slog. While I was fine with the main story of Odyssey considering you can indeed blaze through the main story, but that is simply not possible with Valhalla.
More than any other Assassin's Creed games before it, Valhalla feels most algorithmic and committee-made. The more one plays, the more one realizes that many aspects of its gameplay were created separetly to each other; when the story makes Eivor to help the Christian Biship of the area, he also raids monastries in the bishopric with no remorse. Much of the assassination targets are once again very detached from any kind of context, which makes their "memory room" conversations after assassination even more absurd.
And that really is a shame, because Valhalla boasts one of most impressively constructed Assassin's Creed story since Assassin's Creed 2, one that encompasses not only the historical story of Eivor conveyed in a convincing way, but also the modern-day story which really never were good for the vast majority of the series' long history. Here, the story of the Isu ("Those Who Came Before"), 9th century Norse and 21st century Assassins come to a satisfying convergence, with a twist that perhaps rivals that of Odyssey. Most main characters have excellent voice acting, especially male Eivor whose whispers are near-ASMR quality.
The world to explore within the Animus is also consistent with the series' high quality. Despite my initial concern when it was revealed England will be the region--and let's be honest, it's not difficult to think of rainy drap when one speaks of England--the game is full of beautiful hills and forests, green pastures that offer soothing vistas that are different from that of its two previous ventures in ancient Egypt and Greece. One disappointing aspect is that out of the three big cities (Lunden, Wincestre and Jorvik), the two southern urban areas are aesthetically identical, both showing the typical medieval town built on the ruins of a Roman one, a theme quite common throughout England.
The world is also filled with collectibles typical of the series, but this time also boasts an exhaustive list of "world events" similar to that of the "stranger" missions of Red Dead Redemption. These are usually hit or miss: most of them are small side stories distinct from one another, but there are also repeating events that gets tired after a while. Again, none of them are required, but it is quite annoying that their quality is wildly inconsistent when there are so many of them. Also, the obtuse nature of some of the objectives in them can potentially confuse the player whether they did something wrong or the game glitched out.
Overall, the game is, again, a collection of elements inconsistent in quality never quite coming together as well as they should. Ubisoft has been making games that suffer this syndrome for a while now, where a game wants to be something at one point, while trying to be something else entirely at others. This is the foundational problem of all their games now--more so than the "padding" and "filler" contents that people critique, their games have been suffering lack of coherency. While I have very little confidence that a game titled Infinity will improve in this regard, here's hoping.