To start I want to say i do not support the way Ubisoft treats it’s employees. I follow gaming news closely and I know about all the internal allegations and misconduct. I fully support the better treatment of workers. I choose to support the games and the franchises because I genuinely enjoy the world the developers and people on the ground create. I support the artists, voices, designers, engineers, musicians, testers, software developers etc etc who make these games come to life. It’s sad that such a collaborative art can be held tight in such a strangle hold of capitalist and dude bro toxicity. So I Support the workers who make these games come to life. I enjoy the games and the world they build for me to experience.
I have always found video games to be a release or escape. Like a good book, movie, or TV show, video games have always given me great stories, interesting puzzles, or downright memorable characters. Assassins Creed Games satisfy all the gaming itches that I feel. I completely understand the criticisms of the game for being overly bloated with side content, or being too long, or having convoluted stories and endings. Those reasons are why I LOVE AC games. Especially since AC Origins, when the series dove more into the RPG mechanics. To me that is when the series really started to shine. I’ve been into the AC series since it opened up a bit in part AC3 with Connor.
This game features a main voiced and acted character, Eivor. You can choose whether you want to play as a male or a female gendered character and the game even slyly justifies you being able to change midway through the game. The game implying that the DNA is so old that the Animus system is unable to determine gender (or something to that degree) It’s a non issue, just thought it was clever. I chose to play as a Female character “letting the animus decide”, it didn’t change for the whole game and I never messed with it again. I think if you make certain choices it may change your gender at some point in the story, but as I said the Animus decided I was a female Eivor for the whole game till conclusion. There is very little difference in dialogue options and story other than the voice of the Character.
The controls are a bit looser than the past entries. I don’t know how to explain it. The blocking and parrying is a bit delayed it felt, compared to AC Odyssey. I very quickly got used to it and it was a non issue after the first hour of play. Just something I noticed. It may be tightened up now a year and some months after release. All the other functions worked well. There are a lot of systems in this game. But as in any game that is part of the fun of learning and becomes second nature
AC Valhalla is a tale of brotherhood, and loyalty. A story or triumph and a touch of AC’s famous mystical, metaphysical, sci-fi, computer shit. It follows you leaving your clan to attain your own glory and status in the world. Tired of the old ways Eivor and her brother Sigurd, whose family adopted Eivor, decide to leave their clan in the icy north for the shores of what would be medieval England. From there you establish a settlement village by going on viking style raids up and down rivers and the coasts of the beautifully crafted world map. this all gets more complicated when you meet up with your brother and he is obsessed with these strange visions and beliefs. You slowly conquer your way through the land helping replace thrones and otherwise help people along the way. This game loop was fun for me. The characters are well written and voiced well.
I genuinely liked being a Viking and learning about their culture through the games lore and my own curiosity. Assassins Creed games genuinely interest me because they inspire me to learn more about the time setting and see what may or may not have been actual history and what was completely AC Fiction. Regardless it inspires me to do light research into history to further personify the character I’m spending dozens of hours with.
I liked the raiding aspect and the overall RPG elements felt good. The world they crafted is absolutely beautiful and the Music is solid. The settlement you build feels alive and subtle audio details enrich the visuals, like wind in trees and the sounds of animals and people chatting and singing. The music is enchanting, and I never got tired of stopping at my home settlement just to play some dice, rest, upgrade, or plan my next series of event for the main story. The winter festival was absolutely wonderful and decked out he whole settlement in decorations and let me take part in dorky drinking games and drunken boxing matches. Great little touches like that is why I still admire AC games and the people who make and design them. (NOT shitty CEOs or Shareholders)
The game play loop of conquering areas of the map, raiding monasteries, and upgrading the settlement in pursuit of keeping your brother happy felt mostly balanced to me. I enjoy the combat in these games because I change it up regularly. I don’t repeat the same tactics because then the action would get boring. there are so many ways to take out enemies that the game should only ever really get bored if you let yourself get bored with it. Usually by that time in a game I’m more than powerful enough to just finish the main story at least. There were some good mind****s in proper AC fashion. The ending is bat-shit crazy and begs to be discussed. I implore you, Finish your games.. so we can talk about them. 🙂
Some things that may be seen as negative. Assassins Creed is long. I don’t mind this as much but I also make time to play video games. Someone with less time may not enjoy the sheer amount of playtime it would take to explore and see and keep up with the story. There are tons of side content that distracts you from the main story or conflict. I am used to these games and I have two different play styles. I alternate my time playing side content, collection, and exploration, then the next session I am usually strong enough to power through a larger chunk of the main story or complete a full quest line. instead of constantly distracting myself in-between major story missions. It helps me keep track of where the story is, I’ll get to a good stopping point, and then switch to exploration and side quests.
People who get bugged easily by glitches may be annoyed sometimes. It was never game breaking but during the larger sequences, A LOT is going on on the screen at once. Sometimes I would see some pretty funny glitches. Bodies flying and glitching out in silly ways, NPC’s not helping me bash down doors, and other minor sound and visual anomaly. The one that bugged me the most was the audio being absent in dialogue sequences. The subtitles worked so it wasn’t game breaking but would require me to save and restart from the main menu. Again nothing terrible. I bought it on launch day and in my 100+ hours in the game it only ever fully crashed maybe 2 or 3 times playing on old ps4 hardware. i’m sure it’s a much tighter experience by this time a year on.
This game was great to me. A wonderful way to spend the coldest parts of the year. A good story where your choices have some impact on the final scenes. Some of the music still rings in my head from time to time. Eivor was a solid character and some of the philosophies they spoke were relatable and thought provoking. I try to go into every game pretending like it’s a new experience. I know games can be cheesy and ultimately fall flat for some people. That’s completely OK. I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a long story in a beautifully crafted world. As a player it felt up to me whether I was playing the story or whether I was engaged in side content and collection.
who would enjoy this game.
All in all I highly recommend this game. It’s a long, epic game, but should be experienced by anyone who loves rich colorful worlds, walks through historical settings, or fairly consistent action or exploration. RPG lovers may take to the modern formula of Assassins Creed games as well. This series may have gotten stale for some, but the games have gotten better since Black Flag in my opinion. I finished this game around February of 2021, so it’s been a minute. Just catching up. Thanks for reading, hope this review was helpful or informative.
Pax
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