Flecks and glimmers of something that could've been great sprinkled throughout Valhalla, but ultimately culminates in one of those most bloated and empty games in the franchise and a real sign of the times for modern open-world gaming as a whole. Valhalla does try and remedy the tried and true Ubisoft formula with some small tweaks and changes, more dynamic gameplay puzzles, a non-linear story arc structure, and the return of the upgradeable hub base.
For the positives, I enjoyed the story arc structure for the most part and thought it was a decent switch-up for an otherwise bog-standard Ubisoft open-world type game. I also believe that the overhaul of sidequests to becoming dynamic events you discover in the game world akin to something like Red Dead Redemption 2 was compelling. I also thought the slew of collectibles, and being able to customize Eivor and Raventhorpe to be adequate and engaging collectible design.
However,
The nature of Valhalla being an RPG, and Ubisoft leaning more into this vast, hundred-hour RPG epic with dialogue choices, results in Eivor becoming a blank slate for the most part. In an otherwise character-driven series, Eivor is an empty husk for the player and no amount of character dialogue choice is sufficient to deepen them as such. The glimpses we see of Eivor in cutscenes and being, I don't know, a character is something I wish we saw more of. A warrior living in the shadow of his jarl slash blood brother is a good starting concept. The fixer for the real "protagonist" of these characters' stories. Unfortunately, the game just can't help but get in the way of itself and have these ultimately meaningless wannabe Witcher 3 dialogue choices that have very little consequence to the story.
The gameplay is standard. It's a slower Odyssey, with more of an emphasis on chunky finisher animations. This is where I encountered Valhalla's most bizarre issue: The Audio. I don't believe I have ever played a game with audio this compressed where I can physically hear the bitrate. In the Year of Our Lord, Present Day, I cannot understand the development choices that resulted in such abornally godawful sound quality in a really fucking expensive video game.
Additionally, for the narrative, its choice to use non-linear and story arc structured narrative kinda fell flat? Alot of the stories you follow are vastly the same. A young man, destined to be Jarl, doesnt want to be a Jarl and Eivor says hey you should be Jarl, and they're like only if you fight in this big battle for me and then he's like "okie dokie I'll do that for you, pal" and then you do it and the arc is over and you report back to do another one. There are some that are legitimately fun or engaging, one that comes to mind is dressing up as a pagan Halloween creature and solving a murder (to find who will be the next Jarl, mind you).
Finally, i have a gripe with your gear. Gear is no longer a droppable item, its something that you must attain from a shop or from looting the world map. Because of this, I felt like the loot pool was just really small, and I would rock the same outfit and weapons for a large majority of the game. I would have to go out of my way to try out different weapons in hopes of not becoming bored. Why would I swap around and "experiment" when I can just have the thing that does the most damage? It's not like there is any depth to the combat or anything.
In the end, Valhalla is a bigger and worse version of Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I don't understand how Ubisoft pulled off Odyssey, and why I enjoyed that game so much, but I felt like Valhalla exacerbates the glaring problems with Odyssey and dials it up to 11. These RPG games are here to stay, unfortunately, and I hope Ubi learns their lessons from this one because I just cannot see myself spending this amount of time in a game like this again. Shrink the map, dial it back on the RPG-ness, and just have some characters that can make their own decisions. Sometimes I don't want to choose things, I want you to do it for me!
For the positives, I enjoyed the story arc structure for the most part and thought it was a decent switch-up for an otherwise bog-standard Ubisoft open-world type game. I also believe that the overhaul of sidequests to becoming dynamic events you discover in the game world akin to something like Red Dead Redemption 2 was compelling. I also thought the slew of collectibles, and being able to customize Eivor and Raventhorpe to be adequate and engaging collectible design.
However,
The nature of Valhalla being an RPG, and Ubisoft leaning more into this vast, hundred-hour RPG epic with dialogue choices, results in Eivor becoming a blank slate for the most part. In an otherwise character-driven series, Eivor is an empty husk for the player and no amount of character dialogue choice is sufficient to deepen them as such. The glimpses we see of Eivor in cutscenes and being, I don't know, a character is something I wish we saw more of. A warrior living in the shadow of his jarl slash blood brother is a good starting concept. The fixer for the real "protagonist" of these characters' stories. Unfortunately, the game just can't help but get in the way of itself and have these ultimately meaningless wannabe Witcher 3 dialogue choices that have very little consequence to the story.
The gameplay is standard. It's a slower Odyssey, with more of an emphasis on chunky finisher animations. This is where I encountered Valhalla's most bizarre issue: The Audio. I don't believe I have ever played a game with audio this compressed where I can physically hear the bitrate. In the Year of Our Lord, Present Day, I cannot understand the development choices that resulted in such abornally godawful sound quality in a really fucking expensive video game.
Additionally, for the narrative, its choice to use non-linear and story arc structured narrative kinda fell flat? Alot of the stories you follow are vastly the same. A young man, destined to be Jarl, doesnt want to be a Jarl and Eivor says hey you should be Jarl, and they're like only if you fight in this big battle for me and then he's like "okie dokie I'll do that for you, pal" and then you do it and the arc is over and you report back to do another one. There are some that are legitimately fun or engaging, one that comes to mind is dressing up as a pagan Halloween creature and solving a murder (to find who will be the next Jarl, mind you).
Finally, i have a gripe with your gear. Gear is no longer a droppable item, its something that you must attain from a shop or from looting the world map. Because of this, I felt like the loot pool was just really small, and I would rock the same outfit and weapons for a large majority of the game. I would have to go out of my way to try out different weapons in hopes of not becoming bored. Why would I swap around and "experiment" when I can just have the thing that does the most damage? It's not like there is any depth to the combat or anything.
In the end, Valhalla is a bigger and worse version of Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I don't understand how Ubisoft pulled off Odyssey, and why I enjoyed that game so much, but I felt like Valhalla exacerbates the glaring problems with Odyssey and dials it up to 11. These RPG games are here to stay, unfortunately, and I hope Ubi learns their lessons from this one because I just cannot see myself spending this amount of time in a game like this again. Shrink the map, dial it back on the RPG-ness, and just have some characters that can make their own decisions. Sometimes I don't want to choose things, I want you to do it for me!