I do the opposite and just choose to believe Eivor joins the Assassin's before leaving Norway, and everything he does afterwards is to benefit both his clan and the Assassin's
I played Black Flag under the same pretense. I'd get annoyed whenever my high-seas pirate adventure would get interrupted by the goofy-ass story which is unfortunately the foundation of this series.
Another proverb is: A man cannot serve two masters. It roughly means the same as the metaphor you used especially in Assassins Creed. Ubisoft should either cater to legacy fans or pivot to the new RPG fans.
@@joeclaridy it was the OG fans who bought AC and alloweed ubisoft to make money the RPG fans are just people who came from fallout and witcher they dont care about the assassins or templars because the RPG games dont have any of that
If they actually finish their games, have good world building, good NPC's, immersion, gameplay, storytelling, etc then they'd please A LOT of people, but they do none of them right. The games are drawn out, boring, clunky, garbage gameplay, garbage NPC's and it's been like that since AC2.
i have to say the music from this game is out of world. sure it doesnt have a significantly mind blowing track like Ezio family but its music library is so huge and the viking vibe/theme is so good that i can listen for hours
Jesper Kyd and Einar Selvik. Literally a god duo. That said, they kinda wasted the music with their atrocious sound mixing. I turned SFX down to like 25% just so the music would be audible. And the SFX being that low erased stuff like footsteps and soft animal grunts, which badly lessened the experience. All in all, just a sloppy mess of a game.
Hard to believe Valhalla is from the same team as Origins. Origins is still my personal favorite of the rpg AC's. It had the perfect blend of immersion, stealth and combat. Egypt is one of the most downright gorgeous and mysterious locations AC has ever had.
Origins could've used more stealth-encouraging environment design in my opinion, but at least your abilities and the story itself did lend towards practicing the subtle approach. Valhalla more or less plasters its innate desire to have you simply hack and slash through everything on its sleeve. And the map is oversized and filled with nothing but strings of two minute distractions to check off a list, to put it bluntly. The exp scaling is also pretty horrendous even without time saves...
Origins was my last Ubisoft game to date. I grew to hate its guts after being genuinely curious about it at first, since I'm a sucker for everything Ancient Egypt. But Origin's world felt so bland and lifeless, all the side quests so meaningless and the countless copy & paste outposts so tedious that I didn't have any desire left in me to even continue with the main story, which also was stupid af. Bayek swears revenge on a cult for the death of his son WHO HE HIMSELF KILLED?! (Even though by accident, because he's an impulsive idiot. But the fact still remains.) Pathetic how that's all they could come up with in a setting that has so much more potential to give. Unity was the very last gem from the AC franchise that had some real heart, ambition and care put into it. You can't even compare ANY other AC that has come afterwards with Unity. The drop in quality is palpable. Those are not even games anymore but a huge collection of checkmarks for the most publicly approved features and mechanics. Straight up garbage, year after year after year. And this goes to pretty much all of Ubisoft's franchises. The last decent game I played and thoroughly enjoyed from that publisher was Watch Dogs 2. No matter what someone might think of the game's setting, it was still genuinely innovative, creative and fun. A very well made piece of art that will always have a special place in my heart. That's when I still had respect for Ubisoft for their efforts and endeavors in trying out new stuff and enriching the gaming industry with new franchises and ideas. There was no other publisher out there quite like Ubisoft with such a regular and various output every year. Fast forward 7 years later and look how deep the mighty have fallen... Corrupted by greed and narcissism of its old fart of a CEO that has lost all touch with reality. Now I actually can't wait until the inevitable happens and this huge toxic exploitative hellhole that this company's become finally shuts down and their IPs - so I hope - go into someone's more competent and capable hands. What an utter disgrace we've been witnessing, folks....
It's so hard to go back to AC for me after Ghost Of Tsushima. The combat in that game was just so nuanced and dynamic. It really lead to alot of cool emergent gameplay opportunities and fun physics-based reactions from your ghost abilities and tools. Not to mention that Tsushima doesn't limit you in anyway, no stamina meters or anything like that.
Playing Ghost now and about to go into act 3. I love the game and combat but exploring is not rewarding and nothing you find is valuable or exciting. I love AC games. If they had GoT combat it'd be a lot better. Also not being able to skip scenes sucks. The quests in GoT are inferior. The haikus, fox dens, and baths are just me sitting there and the fun dies pretty quick. I love both games
This is one of the most fair reviews ever. I also played the heck out of Valhalla, couple hundred hours, and enjoyed my time, but felt like it was lacking almost all the way through. It’s possible to enjoy flawed games while still recognizing their flaws.
Same for me. I have played it a lot and enjoyed my time with it mostly. But it just left an overall unsatisfying feeling for me. I definetly rate it the worst from the three new gen ACs. The video describes the problems I have with it really well. Also I have not played the DLCs yet but will give them probably a try since I am now back on PC and got them for a deal.
I feel like ubisoft games are amazing if you have never played a ubisoft game before. And then the magic wears off after you realize all their games follow the exact same formula.
1. liberate the territory 2. free the prisoners 3. follow the guy 4. sneak into place and get the thing bonus objective: collect the hidden stuff (0/5)
This is exactly how I felt playing Valhalla, as a former fangirl of the franchise. Ubisoft's kept _Assassin's Creed_ going for sooo long, they've backed themselves into a corner. They can't innovate further without making AC more unrecognizable from its roots, and they can't fully commit to those roots because they've beaten that formula to death for fifteen years already, so they've settled on Frankenstein-ing the two together. As a result, for me, Valhalla ended up feeling like a case study of that popular quote: "Appeal to everyone and you'll appeal to no one." Maybe Ubisoft should take the hint and wrap it up, though in their current state, I have zero expectations of an ending worth sticking around for anyways.
I really don't think I agree with this. They can very easily strip down the formula and do a complete overhaul of gameplay while retaining the core pillars of Assassin's Creed, it's just that they seem to refuse to want to commit to that because they know the money is in familiarity
Well, it seems confirmed now they have 7 projects in development with the aim of appealing to every splinter demographic of the franchise. Can’t wait to see how poorly this turns out .
They honestly should just reboot the whole franchise and start over. Take what works from each era and try to make something cohesive and that stays true to the pillars of what Assassin’s Creed should be, at the same time that builds up onto a blank slate with new lore and new characters.
I love it when you said ‘these stat boosts seemingly have no changes to gameplay at all’, because the entire rpg system of this game is fake. You can have +500 attack damage and you will notice zero difference in your actual combat. They’re only there as placebos, including the skill tree. No stats you gain there actually matters.
@@AdamOwenBrowningyes they have an effect but due to the enemies being damage sponges you won’t feel stronger. Doing 500 damage more won’t matter if the enemy gets 500 more HP at the same time
@@achmahnsch I like the game, but I stopped after two hours when I found out there's no NG+ and there'll never be one, I'm not going to spend 200 hours just to throw the game away or let it collect dust afterwards, I wanna be able to use all the secret weapons and armor and legendary shxt on NG+ that I spent all that time 100%ing, now that I know there no NG+, I'll be returning the game, fxck that shxt, and fxck Ubisoft!
"You may also have noticed that I haven't brought up modern day..." followed by the pause, sniff, and throat clear was a really good and subtle moment of comedy.
I've watched a lot of Valhalla critiques over the past couple years and you are mentioning issues that I've never heard anyone talk about. Without a doubt, this is one of, if not the best, most complete and constructive critiques on UA-cam. You get to the heart of nearly every issue in this game and still manage to be relatively concise. Excellent video :)
I had so much fun just being a Viking in this game, catching arrows and spears and just chucking them back at enemies. The story and writing is tapwater, but it is at least fun
I’m glad someone enjoyed this game but to me it was more of the same AC rpg, with boring combat mechanics. It doesn’t even matter to me whether the story is good, since my favorite ac is unity, but it’s just not fun for me. Co op is the single best gameplay decision Ubisoft ever made and it’s sad they never brought it back. Valhalla doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, nor doesn’t it expand on existing mechanics like with what GOW ragnorok did. It’s just the exact same
@@eladrio2311 I like the game, but I stopped after two hours when I found out there's no NG+ and there'll never be one, I'm not going to spend 200 hours just to throw the game away or let it collect dust afterwards, I wanna be able to use all the secret weapons and armor and legendary shxt on NG+ that I spent all that time 100%ing, now that I know there no NG+, I'll be returning the game, fxck that shxt, and fxck Ubisoft!
I would also like to add to the discussion: the downturn of the Animus UI. For some reason, Origins actually has a fantastic in game animus layout, which Ubisoft somehow forgot about with Odyssey, and even more so with Valhalla. Like part of the immersion is the contextual framework that we are playing inside of a high tech, science fiction machine, so the visual and audio design should fit within this. Valhalla more egregiously than Odyssey just said, “nah fam”. Say what you will about AC 3, Unity, and Syndicate, but the UI implementation was amazing!
In my opinion biggest mistake Ubisoft made is dropping the Bayek and Aya storyline... AC Origins was such a good settings and had great characters it made me fall in love with this series again, it really gave me that "assassin" feeling from the Altair era, and instead of continuing the story with Aya in Rome they just abandoned it for some reason... I hope Mirage gives me that eastern "Origins" vibe again, because whereas I enjoyed Odyssey and Valhalla it really felt like some random games instead of assassins creed games
Yeah ac origins was good but atleast they are trying their hardest to return assassins creed to its former glory since they are losing millions now crazy how it took them this long to get it right 😅
I enjoyed Odyssey more than Origins, but even I thought it was stupid to do another prequel after Origins. I was really hoping the game after Origins would show the Brotherhood start to grow and expand.
The thing that bothered me with origins is Aya saying she lost her love for bayek when their son died even though there was absolutely nothing up to that point showing that. Felt like I got M. Night Shyamaland.
@@ryanhays429 Aya was going to be the player character originally but one of the misogynistic scumbags at Ubisoft (not naming him in case his defenders find this) forced them to change her into a side character. same with kassandra in Odyssey.
My biggest complaint about Valhalla is how little Sigurd and Basim were on screen. That was a relationship I wanted to see more of in the game. Eivor consistently referred to Sigurd as his brother but then you arrive in England and he fucks off for the remainder of the game. I always felt like Sigurd would have been better as the main character and having Basim training him as an assassin would have been a much more interesting character arc than Eivors imo. Eivor was given a hidden blade told to kill Templars and he just took that idea and ran with it. Meanwhile Basim was whispering in Sigurds ear and teaching him the ways of the hidden ones. Ultimately leading him to lose himself and then eventually to relinquish his power as the leader of the raven clan. It felt like it just kind of ended after a certain point. I think Sigurds story would have been better if he was the main character and Eivor was either a side character or removed entirely from the narrative. That’s a much more engaging story imo. Overall it was a very disappointing experience and that bums me out because I played this directly on the heels of Origins which was damn near perfection.
you know, an assassin during this era could have been a really interesting concept. first story idea that comes to mind is that eivor tries their best to be this strong and brave viking, but they're just not strong enough and struggle constantly to live up to their family's reputation (they're known for their prowess and can't be beat....except for eivor). parents finally have had enough and disown eivor out of shame, who is forced to set on their own journey and have to adapt to work with what they have. could have been saved by assassins and joined the brotherhood in search of belonging and a family, and takes on their cause. maybe the main antagonists are a group of very powerful vikings trying to screw over everyone, and are too powerful for even eivor's bio family to take down, so the brotherhood are the only ones able to defeat them due to their "dirty tactics" (can you tell I don't know much about vikings nor this game lmao). not the most original story, but it's one that really lets you play with the concept of sneaky stealthy assassins in an era and area where they're very much frowned upon and enables you to include the assassins in....you know, an assassin's creed game-
@@albnoelthere’s countless women warriors in history, not just viking history, Joan of Arc, Captain Kidd, Night Bomber Regiment 588 and Boudica just to name a few
@@scyobiempire4450comment you replied to is dumb but it still is pretty ridiculous the only two canon women other than Aveline and Evie are a Greek soldier and a viking. There's like 3 known instances of women being Vikings ever and none at all recorded about Greek soldiers. Also absolutely no one wants to play a viking game where you don't have a beard. Like playing a Yakuza game where you don't have tattoos.
I clicked on this video thinking it would be an 100k+ subscriber channel but I'm very impressed by the production quality and formatting of this video, you earned a sub
I’m an old school fan, but I loved Odyssey for what it was and spent hundreds of hours running through different builds. Valhalla took most of that away and left us with a very average experience that left me totally unfulfilled
@@iurysaraiva3411 I've played all the assassins and I find them quite boring....the most impressive is A.C odyssey and it's actually one of the most favorite games in my life...well done UBISOFT.
@@zicuvalentin2251 Halo, Saints Row, F.Horizon , Cod, etc... companies bring new players stepping on the old ones.. the new ones finance thinking the "soul" of the game was meant to be like this.
I love Valhalla. I have over 520 hrs logged (I injured my knee and couldn't walk for a long while) on the normal difficulty and I have restarted now after a break on the hardest settings. Loving it all over again. It's fun to pretend to be a Vikings!
@xdrastig_4207 I understand that. I said I had an injured leg while this was happening. I like a lot of content. It seems silly to complain that they gave us too much to do in a game.
@@joeharris9426 That's one of the dumbest things I have ever read. 50-100 hours of quality writing is infinitely better then 500 hours of garbage. I won't ever tell someone they can't enjoy something but you most certainly can have too much of something.
@Entreped That's one of the dumbest things that you have ever read? Clearly you don't spend much time reading. I like the quality of the content just fine. I have played other games that are shorter, and it is always disappointing when the game is over a few weeks after it starts. Just another grown ass adult crying about a video game.
My main problem is that all 3 of the newer games are much longer, each being longer than the last. Valhalla is fun but im at 140hrs and just now playing the dlc, which now I might not even finish now that I know it doesn't get better only worse. The game drained all the fun I had for it by the 80hr mark and after that it felt like a duty to finish it because of the time I put in it already. Tbh I had the same problem with Odysey so Idk what I expected. As much as I love Valhalla, I just miss being able finish a game without having to take breaks inbetween them because I get bored of them.
I am in the middle of playing. Brother bought for me a year ago even though Origins felt laborious to me. I really liked this game for 80 hours. Hate most moments after. I am 155 hours in and feel like I still have another 100(at least) to go. Way too bloated. Also, I am at level 310. Playing regions of 160-190, it is just too easy and unfulfilling. Hopefully they keep games to 70-100 hours going forward. Great value to those looking for it I guess.
I got about 100 hours in and said I was done and never came back. It's a shame because it'd be a good game if it was condensed even a little bit at all. It's so ridiculously big that it seems like they did it as a joke.
I learned to play for a few days completing a 'territory', then take a break. Obviously after the initial 'wow response' wore off after 20 or so hours. I knew I was in for a long game and the landscape of Briton is a pain in the butt. When the overall story and areas became stale, I'd do a DLC or just run around mindlessly seeing the game without a quest marker. Games of this size seem to have a problem with the story endings never being up to expectations after so many hours of player involvement.
Yep taking me about 4+ weeks playing this game. I played it for 2 weeks straight 9am-5pm and I still didn’t get anywhere.. I took breaks my 3rd n 4th week playing but god damn.. IM STILL NOT FINISHED WITH EXPLORING all the islands 😭😭😭 on Odyssey.. everytime I go to a “?” Im begging it isn’t a bandit camp or fort
I think Ubisoft realized that Monolith with Shadow Of Mordor took what Assassins Creed had laid out and shook it up enough to keep it interesting, and made big open battles doable, with non-stealth CQC being a very viable option in SoM if you'd rather it to stealth. And Ubisoft took that, and the example of peak RPG gameplay laid out by Witcher 3 and tried to jam Assassins creed into that formula and it just doesnt work. Assassins creed has always been rigidly objective based, you are an assassin, your goal is to assassinate targets, and the story progresses and unfolds organically around that. Making it fully open world is a really difficult thing to do without very very big considerations into how that would keep the player on track. They utilized the "hero for hire" element of The Witcher, which makes sense for a character like Geralt, a literal monster hunter for hire by definition, but it becomes alot less believable that a character like Bayek, even being a sort of peoples protector, would just be dropping everything to help a random stranger who asked politely, especially when the problem was trivial or unrelated to his greater goal (avenging his sons death). I think Ubisoft (whichever studio under their umbrella is making these games) is stuck in the box of wanting to make a fun fantasy Action RPG, but being forced by the big investors and higher-ups to continue to slap assassins creed atop these games when they don't need to. These more recent AC games feel like they're chasing the dragon and forcing themselves to adapt to the changing fads of modern gaming seeing it as their only option to be like The Witcher, or Shadow of Mordor, or Dark Souls, or Ghost of Tsushima or Red Dead Redemption, when literally all people want is a game that tries to be like Assassins Creed!!! I hope they realize this at some point and return to the style of the older games, black flag (and rogue) were the last two that felt like they really worked, Unity and Syndicate were fine but they weren't even close to as fantastic as the games that preceded them. A good metaphor is to compare them to the Halo franchise: Assassins Creed is Marathon (the game that preceded halo) Assassins creed 2 through revelations is Halo 1-3 AC3 is ODST (not everyone's favourite but a good game in retrospect) Black Flag (and Rogue) is Halo Reach (peak mechanical gameplay and impactful new storytelling) AC Unity and Syndicate are Halo 4 and Halo 5 respectively (things feel unsteady, it's clear the devs are missing a certain je ne sais quoi) And the new games are the Destiny of the Assassins Creed games (a great concept, poorly executed due to oversight problems from financiers and rushed development/late stage changes)
The Supideo mission was paramount to my Odyssey experience; it was the most enjoyable side mission but also demonstrated the balance between light-heartedness and heavy matters throughout the game. It was a beautifully written story. Valhalla feels like it was written by people that have never played a video game or read a book or even watched a movie.
Valhalla is not a bad game, but why having a Viking game so focused in England instead of their homeland. I think the game would have been a lot better if we actually stayed there and not leave after the prologue. I felt a lot more immersed during the first 2 hours, felt like a real Viking. Also the main story is kinda boring, compared to Origins and Odyssey where you really feel for Bayek and Alexios / Cassandra
Not leave? Do you not know anything about Vikings? Being a Viking was a profession you took as a Norse warrior to trade or plunder in foreign territory, in this case the Viking invasion of England in the 9th century. A Viking game like Valhalla wouldn’t be a Viking game if the game didn’t let you invade England, a key part of the game’s whole story.
viking is basically a group of pirates who left their original country. Their life was about sailing to other countries and plunder. Those who remained in norway were not vikings
I was so pumped after the first raid in Valhalla then I needed to upgrade the village and gone through a bunch of raids and spending more time finding keys instead of fighting. I've never felt so miserable in any game
choose a viking era as a theme for AC is a huge mistake. viking warriors are known for their raw power and brutality, which is why stealth and parkour are not working in this game. it just doesn't feel right
Personally I think any era could make for a good Assassin's Creed game, and Valhalla would have been especially interesting if they committed to having to be discreet in Anglo Saxon towns. What we got, unfortunately, hit neither the viking fantasy nor the Assassin fantasy in my opinion.
To me thats why this game somewhat works we are not a assassin at most we are allied to them we are still apart of the ac world but are no longer limited to being and playing as a assassin.
As someone who had 160 hours on this game, I actually enjoyed it a lot, yeah it had its own little problems and animations but overall it was a fun game :)
I see it as the witcher 3 changed the landscape of these type of games abs starting with origins ubisoft tried to copy it. I enjoy it I approach them as witcher clones in the assassins creed universe.
I couldn’t look at Valhalla as an AC game for the longest time but I couldn’t put it into words exactly why. This video outlines it and brings up points I hadn’t considered.
this game isn't a game you look back with good thoughts, it's a game that makes your dopamine receptors hyperactive and that's why you come back and keep playing it.
Man by the time I wrapped up my 75 hour playthrough year's ago I couldn't wait for it to be over so I could play Ghost of Tsushima again lol I even tried playing it again recently and I just can't get back into it, and to be honest I hated this game even on my first playthrough.
@Lum1n Otryc lol nah foreal 😂, matter of fact, during my playthrough the thought of not playing the game anymore made my dopamine receptors hyperactive.
Valhalla was the first Assassin's Creed game I didn't finish. There was just too little incentive to move forward. The main plot was non-existent, it's just like you said - it simply felt like doing disconnected side quests in every region. And the setting was kinda meh, with all the regions feeling very similar to each other. The game just couldn't keep me invested.
The biggest sin of this game is truly that it fails to deliver either an assassin experience or a viking experience. Tries to do both and ends up missing the mark for both...the biggest part where i noticed is in raids....Animus wot allow you to kill innocents.....Not a huge deal breaker but an example of how the assassins side of things holds the viking side back and same the other way around
Vikings actually didnt kill peasants etc Sometimes they killed one or two for example but the rest of the people have been captured and sold to slavery Human was one of the most valuable trade item in the medieval times
@@maciejpolak2458 That's fair. But you can't engage in slavery in Valhalla either, so it's not like they are accurately reflecting the "Viking" experience in that way.
I agree with just about everything you're saying. 1/2 way through "Valhalla", I just couldn't wait for it to end. It was just so dull. "Odyssey" had that a couple times but then I'd discover some new thing or place that renewed my interest. "Odyssey" was long but by the time I finished it, I really felt like I'd accomplished something. "Valhalla" I never looked back. Had no desire to buy the DLC. I enjoyed fighting the bounty hunters in "Odyssey". They were tough but fair. In Valhalla they were always way above my level. It was tiring to shave off a little heath with each hit and getting one-shotted when I missed a dodge. I can't think of anything that Valhalla did that was better than "Origins" or "Odyssey"
@@rocktheconqueror6903 played valhalla 150 hours and is about ZEALOT not bounty honters and is most boring game I ever played...this game is too easy on difficulty nightmare....
@@zicuvalentin2251 zealots are not as same as mercenaries or bounty hunters. They're like boss fights. You may think it's easy in nightmare difficulty because of shitty odyssey and origins combat. But I'd say it's better in valhalla cuz unlike odyssey and origins there is no button smashing or enemies who are damage sponges in valhalla. Also there is no level system in valhalla so that you can finally be stealthy without having to worry about alerting enemies . Combat is definitely one of the good thing in valhalla It's long yes, boring sometimes but overall it's a good game but that's just me.
I realized a few weeks ago that I spent $120 on this game as a birthday present for myself and that in total, if you wanted the complete experience, with every gear set and DLC, you would spend upwards of $500 dollars. That is criminal. I've played Valhalla for 150 hours total, playing Wrath of the Druids right now, and I just finished God of War (2018). Good Lord the whiplash, I think I'm just gonna stick to other games
As an AC "fan" who hasn't played an AC since unity and hasn't finished one since 4, I literally burst into laughter after your brief summary of valhalla's plot. Ever since killing off desmond in 3, these games have had no arc to their plots at all. It's so obvious that they just put a bunch of cool sounding settings in a hat, pull one out at random, and try to make an AC story out of it. Without the modern day Desmond plot to tie everything together, there's nothing for a fan like me to care about. I have no reason not to just play a better stealth game, or a better action rpg, or a better historical game, or a game with a better narrative, or a game with better dialogue and romance options. These games have no identity, no soul. I'm baffled that people can find anything at all to enjoy about these modern AC games. To me, this series died with desmond in AC3, and should have just ended after revelations. Without Desmond, without the animus, without the ideological war between assassins and templars, without a grounded historical setting, there is no Assassin's Creed.
Assasin's creed went from one of the biggest innovators in gaming to a contender for the laziest uninspired annual release game. One of the best examples for why gaming suffers when its in the hands of people who only see gaming as a cash cow.
Yes. If your original combat system is getting very stale, that would be a pretty good signal that the series should end. One does not simply change a thing so integral to the franchise to something totally different. Especially if the replacement is just a subpar imitation of what's popular at the moment.
I can sum it up this way. I've 100% completed Black Flag 3 times and it's still fun. I haven't been able to finish Valhalla's first DLC (I finished the main story before DLC began, I just can't force myself to gruel through the game more than about 15 minutes now before I shut it down and look at UA-cam videos instead).
9:30 A painfully slow (choke?) animation that lasts almost 10 seconds and ends with your character standing over them and doing a cringe shout for about 3 seconds, then slowly turning around, is the opposite of fun or cool.
"i enjoyed it, but it never hooked me" is the perfect encapsulation of how that game made me feel. I very rarely drop games, but i dropped it after over 40 hours.
This long form content is amazing. I love how you actual put thought and effort into your videos. I hope you end up doing reviews of all the games in this series. Very impressive
I have NEVER really enjoyed stealth in video games I usually just instantly go loud or just tolerate forced stealth but assassins creed odyssey stealth was very fun
I think the short and sweet explanation would be "Assassin's Creed died with Desmond in 3, but they kept using the name. We didn't know at the time but something else was wearing its clothes after."
Nah...its truly died after Syndicate. Sure that black flag make you spend more time on sea and ships but the core of AC still there, pakour, stealthy, cool story and twisted history. Rogue may not be about brotherhood but the moral and questionable motive of brotherhood is really good aspect too, unity is full of bugs for sure, story is plain, but the mechanics were there and even the best still this day. Syndicate may not be well know, being shadow by other game in the franchise but still, a AC game from the core to the core. Only thing change from origin. From origin, ac fanbase plit into two group of mindset. One really really love the rpg, other prefer stealthy and adventure. As some one who like AC stealthy, enjoy the franchise since AC2 upto Unity (those my first AC is black flag). I found Valhalla is charming in it own way, just wished it wasn't publish as AC. And all the assassin appear to be crossover contents or easter eggs like what they done with watchdog. Valhalla is a very good RPG game recently release after many failed. It didn't exceed in any but also neither bad in any aspect. It was long game so does other RPG. Grinding as much as other RPG, i see no real downside in valhalla if you really want or need an rpg. But i know, it's frustrating when it under AC's franchise. I hate it as alway, will never touch origin or odyssey for that matter. Doubt i will touch valhalla if i wasn't interested in Norse myth.
I never liked Desmond. If you actually gave the games a chance, you have to admit the gameplay only gets better as you go. Odyssey and Valhalla are by far the best games in history. Unity and Black Flag are up there with them. anything prior is too janky to go back to and believe me I have tried. Completed them all in release order and tried to replay them on PS4 and Switch.
@@ak-nt2trDesmond was the main character of the original AC. The whole story was based on him becoming an Assassin and saving the world, until new developers came in and wanted to take the game in new directions and expand the universe therefore killing him off.
@@kylegardner6272 Desmond was a whiny little child and he interrupted the emersion from what makes the series amazing, the historical side. I am glad they got rid of him and are starting to make the modern not force fed.
This is a perfect description as to how I feel about the game. I have tried playing it 3x and I can't for the life of me. It's the only AC game I can't bring myself to finish because of some of the things u have said. I don't feel like an assassin and I can't play it any other way because of what it's supposed to be. This might be me overstepping but I honestly feel like Ubisoft should remake a lot of the games in the AC franchise and with Unity/Syndicate mechanics as it's base. Even removing the Animus because to me it makes more sense if they just told the story of Assassins vs Templars and have you the player retelling their story, living their lives, being in their shoes until it gets to modern society like the assassin girl in Watch Dogs Legion and through that aspect they could eventually combine both games. Templars, the ones behind Abstergo entertainment and small, shady activist grps working behind the scenes and Assassins as the hackers of DedSec/the Legion. As for Odyssey, it was way out there in terms of being an assassin but I enjoyed the hell out of it. I don't mind the RPG elements to the AC games but I just want it to be done a bit better, because since origins I've been in love with the concept. I still want more AC games like Black Flag, Brotherhood, AC3, Syndicate and even Unity (when it decides to behave). But in my opinion Valhalla ain't it. It doesn't give me that feeling and I find myself going back to older AC games.
They need Animus to make people think that their story doesn't end only in ancient times. The things they need to upgrade a lot is the gameplay directions. I mean they have more resources to make the missions better, but they was too much focusing on repeating endlessly old encounter in a mission. Kill this - go talk to that - do more thing like this and repeat. Rather than having an impact on the mission like what players can and can't do in that mission. Diversity playstyle really help them if they design it to be so.
What do you know? I 'picked up' the game thanks to Ubisoft making it free for the weekend of August 11-14th. I went in with somewhat of a 'negative' perspective/not expecting too much of it after watching some reviews since it came out, and I actually found myself really enjoying it. As I'm writing this comment, I'm debating whether I should buy the base game or not (just the vanilla, I don't really do DLCs) It's currently on sale for 15 USD (around $22 for me due to currency exchange) and I'm, like, 60/40 in favor of doing it I was only able to complete around 43% of the main campaign. It is nothing to write home about and I personally enjoyed the God of War: Ragnarök reimagining of the Norse Mythology way more. Granted, I no longer see the RPG saga as "Assassin's Creed" games but as a simple "Ubisoft turn-your-brain-off" RPGs. With that mindset, I fairly enjoyed the Viking power fantasy. Yes, it is as if not even more bloated than Odyssey and Origins, but I kinda liked it.
I wanted to love Valhalla so badly, especially Cos I’m a huge fan of Norse mythology and Viking history and Viking tv shows but it just was trying to be too many different things. Had it chosen one path and stuck to it I think it would have been perfect
I started playing this game recently and you will start loving this game as story progress.. Even initially I passed this game but after final content update you get always hood on option with few new missions and one of mission that has connection to Mirage this game is awesome.... This game now feels like assassin creed
Great video, I had known about Kassandra and female Eivor being the canon protagonists but didn't know the reason behind the male counterparts being added as options, ridiculous lol. Also that dragon fight really looked like a call to Dark Souls, as you say another attempt to find ideas to find something that works. Future direction of the franchise looks unsteady at best.
As far as I am aware, this also happened to Origins - initially, writers and devs were playing with the idea of Aya being the main protagonist, but were told no by higher ups.
AC: Valhalla is game for me, because I loved every second of it, at least main game. And yes, I played almost all AC games starting from 1. Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla are the best AC games so far.
Yes I loved every minute of it and found myself actually happy playing unlike with Elden Ring which is a masterpiece but I spent more time angry than actually having fun
@@cowel8734 I’ve never seen anyone advertise that they like games with dull features solely because it’s a less harsh experience, I don’t even have any real memorable moments in my head of my over 60+ hour experience in assassins creed Valhalla in comparison to Elden Ring a game that makes you want to explore the world because your character and your skills at the game transform relative to the world, you have to be a risk taker and someone who is willing to die over and over to get skilled enough to make it through, there is no risk in Valhalla or incentive to explore its admittedly visually breathtaking world except for a check list that turns the player back into a linear machine giving you the veneer of an open world.
Excellent critique. This video is extremely high quality I would have assumed you had dozens of videos by now! This game was a welcome escape while my Grandfather was dying of COVID. Hundreds of hours to escape from my own personal hell. Other than that purpose it served, I have no desire to boot it up again, not even for DLC. It was fun but felt soulless. I never felt attached to Eivor like I did with Bayek or Kassandra. That was the biggest thing I noticed from the start.
I am glad that it was an escape and I am sorry that you were put in a position to need it. I appreciate you watching and I am glad that you enjoyed the video
my biggest complain is that they let us choose which eivor we want and then tell us that only one eivor is canon if you want female eivor as your main character ubisoft, do it. It's a coward move to give us a spare eivor if we don't want to play as a female eivor. Imagine if last of us part gave us straight ellie version that make dina a man and jess a woman. Have balls ubisoft
For guys who love history and historical rpgs play Kingdom Come Deliverance... I promise you will never be disappointed but get overwhelmed by its level of immersion and attention to detail... it is one of the most under rated open world games out there where you have things like alchemy bench to brew potions and a grinding stone to sharpen your weapons... this game surpasses the likes of elder scrolls, witcher, red dead, assassin's creed and even fallout new Vegas....
For any newbies Assasins creed Valhalla- 7/10 Pros- Map- England is absolutely stunning, the english wildlife is everywhere, the ancient ruins are incredible, the rivers and hills and roads make traversal fun, as u can choose ur way to ur destination. Combat- u FEEL like a viking, u get an insane amount of special viking abilities such as axe throwing to crush Anglo Saxons skulls, very RPG level based combat, dont travel too far from ur current section cus enemies get tough Main characters- eivor and Sigurd are great protagonists, they are stoic yet fair and kind, the perfect leaders for your camp. The kings u meet are intresting characters and make for some fun scenes, u often give them advice through rpg mechanics. Base building- massive amount of base options such as viking feasts, choosing your allies, picking ur army, expanding your buildings for more resources. The order- u have to face many members of the order and many of them provide a very souls like challenging boss battle if ur into that. Upgrades- theres an erray of armour, loot, materials, progression upgrades, armour Upgrades and special abilities to choose from including ur appearance. Puzzles- finding the keys can be hard but u feel good once u find a way into the treasure Cons- Story- the story can get quite repetitive, often required to raid a castle and help the sections king to gain power. Dont get me wrong some missions are very good and the cut scenes always get a chuckle out of me. U will be required to give answers during cut scenes, sometimes not important and sometimes u will be left genuinely upset by a choice youve made, i accidentally got the wrong person killed and i genuinely felt bad. Gods- whenever it goes into Asgard it looses me, it just goes too far off the rails. Climbing- im glad its in there overall but sometimes i can get stuck trying to climb thru a window for ages. Norway- lets just say u can tell all the budget went into England, Norway is made smaller and its majority just snow and water Overall its a 7/10 game, its a good game, i reccomend it, i personally think critics were way too harsh on it. Its in the same boat as oddessey and origins for me. U will have a great time
This was a very good video bro. After my 140 hour platinum playthrough of the game, it became so hard to go into the dlc because of all the points you mentioned. Why spend more time in a game that is so below par from what they used to produce. Keep it up man
Older ac games are some of my favorite, and I really enjoyed Origins. It’s Odyssey that lost me, I played maybe 150 hrs in that game and I enjoyed the story, but at the same time I’m pretty sure 65% of missions are literally the same mission just a different location. I found my love of stealth games from sly Cooper and funny enough sucker punch went and made my dream AC game except minus any AC stuff. Ghost of Tsushima just seemed to excel in every aspect, stealth was great with many tools, sword combat amazing and bows are equally viable.
Bingo, I felt Odyssey was the beginning of the end for AC, personally. I still enjoyed Valhalla more, yet because they abandoned the NG+ I won't be playing it ever again.
If they had just renamed this game “Shadows of Valhalla” or something like that it would have gained more popularity. Such a good game imo, great music too. You know a game has good soundtracks when you have to go, “wait, I have to look up this song”
31:54 just to add onto this section, as someone from England, the actual world looks nothing like England. Therefore, if you have any familiarity with England, it becomes really jarring to simply exist in the world as it’s really difficult to suspend your disbelief when the geography is laughably unrealistic.
@@toribaker5860 it’s all just very exaggerated and fantasy - looks like the Witcher and it’s very clear they just wanted to make a Norse-themed fantasy game. The topography is quite exaggerated, we don’t really have big mountains, the hills are way too tightly packed together, the colours are very unnatural, we don’t really have distinct climates/biomes as it’s not a big country (some areas are flatter than others & that’s about it), the trees don’t really form like that, etc. The worst area is the north which has more or less the same climate as the rest of England but is portrayed as frozen over in game. It snows maybe once or twice a year in England & generally not very heavily. It might have been colder back then but not to this ludicrous degree, and there would have been little difference with the rest of the country. There are actually some semi-unique biomes in the north in real life that they could have shown such as Heather moors (Google it, they’re pretty) but they didn’t because they wanted it to be a snow biome for some reason.
If you took the Assassins Creed out of your mind, and just looked at it as just a game, Valhalla was fun as hell. That seems like the hang up about this game. You can play the game as a stealth game quite a bit. I took quite a few locations without my crew, using stealth, and then signaled the in to help bust open doors and chests. Although I also took some with my crew, because what’s not fun about beaching a long boat blowing a horn, and then storming, monastery with a group of yelling crazy Vikings.
Im new to AC but loved valhalla. It's a big game and real value for money. I feel at times there was not enough story, lots of adhoc tasks to complete in each area to progress the game. I'm an old gamer so never bothered with upgrades,
I always wondered why this the only AC game I didn’t care to finish about half way threw and here’s my answer lol couldn’t put it better myself even after finishing it I was even more upset 😅
I’ve spent 250h in it already so it works for me, gaming community is trying too hard to put things into boxes and give them labels that create too many expectations instead of just enjoying what’s in front of them as is
And I have +150 hrs in AC Unity precisely because I enjoyed what was in front of me, but if anyone provided valid criticism(and trust me, there's so much to criticize Unity for, enough to make the claim that it is NOT A GOOD GAME by any means), I wouldn't try to shut it down just because *I* happen to have enjoyed the game.
*taste is subjective* (which is recurring excuse whenever someone can't cope with seeing criticism towards something they happen to like) doesn't mean jackshit other than "you're entitled to like or dislike things IN SPITE of their quality". Not that quality is relative to each one's preferences. Why? Because, it's the people's individual perception of the media what varies, not the media itself. The latter is always one and the same. When you understand that, you can only come to the realization that a piece of media's quality is not defined by people's personal inherently subjective experiences, it's defined by the media's own reality, as in, what it does(own merits) or what it does not do(lack of merits), which is something that can be measured objectively to a good extent.
As for expectations... Do you actually know anyone who disliked the game and admitted to have had "too many expectations" for this game? I bet you don't know a single one. It's precisely the fact that the expectations weren't high to begin with, and the game still came out below the standards(which for the AC franchise, are already low within the action/adventure genre) what's the real problem here. And in any case, if you take such hits to your ego seeing people criticize something you happen to enjoy, why even bother with looking it up? Why click on a video you can tell it's going to be a negative critique from the title alone? You'd be more convincing with your point if you did not mind the criticism at all and instead kept playing the game in spite of it. But the fact that you "have" to come out and defend it speaks on itself.
@tarnishedpose you wrote an essay but it's all your opinion. None of what u said is actual fact. 🤷🏽♂️ you like the old games we like the new ones, that's fine no need for you to defend 😂
Although I still resent Odyssey for implementing magic and the possibility of having an entire game without assassins, I can see your points for the game (you are actually the first one I hear giving solid and good arguments for the game, so thank you for letting me understand better why people like the game).
Well done Lord Jay. You made a video summarising how I felt the whole time playing ACV. I was so psyched about this because of the premise of Vikings, Mythology and History and it turned out to be meh. You did an excellent job putting to words what was going on in my head and I never ended up finishing the game. I hope your channel blows up.
What I really miss in AC games is the feeling of the parkour actually feeling technical. In the newer AC games you don't even have to give a second thought to climbing anything. You just hold forward until you get to the top of any structure.
I also miss that, that was the coolest thing about the old games. That combined with how the new games have developed huge worlds, ships and different builds would be a flawless game.
"some really ugly character models" lmaooo finally someone says it! what is up with this game, everyone is such an uggo. I struggled to even choose between male and female eivor cause i dont like the look of either of them. love almost all other AC games, origins and odyssey are among my favourites, as are the ezio games, but i am only now grinding to finish valhalla despite pre ordering back in 2020, cause it was just so boring i gave up at the time. want to have the main story of it done before mirage comes out thou, but it's honestly a chore more than a pleasure. Edit: and i gave in and bought a helix store armor set cause all the base game ones were so boring and ugly too
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I think Odyssey is actually my favorite of the entire series. Idk what it was about it, but I just loved it so freakin much and sunk hours upon hours upon hours into it. It's honestly probably up there with some of my favorite games of all time, so I was reaaaally looking forward to Valhalla acting as a continuation, and improvement, of Odyssey, and was pretty damn disappointed with how different it was. It just felt slower overall, I didn't care for the Raids (in fact it felt entirely antithetical to what Assassin's Creed was originally, like at least for Odyssey you could stealth through all of the fortresses) and I found myself going back to replay Odyssey instead haha OR omg I'd actually play Valhalla simply bc I wanted to play Orlog...I spent a lot of hours playing Orlog. Really great, concise video!
Odyssey is in my top three favorite games of all time. And your opinion isn't unpopular because most people loved Odyssey... It was even a nominee for GOTY award going up against God of War.
My biggest issue with this game is that England looks nothing like England. I'm from Yorkshire, and in reality, Yorkshire looks nothing at all like the mountainous icy wilderness that Valhalla claims to be Yorkshire. It was a huge disappointment to me to get to the area I grew up in, and find no rolling hills and meadows of the Peak District and West Yorkshire, but instead a ridiculous mountainous hellscape that looks more like the American Rockies than the north of England.
It took me awhile to come around to it but I really enjoyed my time with Valhalla. The story was pretty interesting (albeit a little too dragged out), it has the best combat out of the RPG trilogy, and I think it’s actually a good looking game. It’s not perfect but it’s not as bad as people like to make it.
I am still waiting for a real viking game. A game like Red dead redemption 2 where choices really effect the story. And the amount of detail rockstar put into the historical wild west is something i wish i could get for the history of my people. There are so many interesting stories to tell from the period. You can do a Vinland saga and focus on the meaningless of war and violence, or you could go into the explorer side of the vikings. They werent only barbarians you know.
Odyssey was my favorite AC tbh, liked the old ones too but something about Odyssey just really spoke to me with its setting and open world. Great video I knew I felt most of this about Valhalla but not precisely until I heard it put into words.
One of my reasons why I don’t like Valhalla and the rpg games. Is because the world is often too big, while often looking beautiful the traversal of the world often ends with some sort of auto traversal. Making me less likely to stop at a point of interest like I would in Ghost of Tsushima.
I'm totally with you. That was a rough one to get through. There's only so many fields of grass or patches of woods you can run through before you get bored. There was none of the locations like past games. The historical sites like Notre dam, the pyramids,spinx, statue of Athena. The story was kind of week. At the end you don't even get to kill the leader of the cult you have been taking out the whole game.
Haven't played Walhall, but have played all games before that. And I tend to agree with you. Despite Odyssey and Origins being different, at least they stuck to their design choices which made for a fluid experience. What you are showing and what I am getting from Walhall, is that they tried to mix old with new and it became a mess. I think the eagle vision is the most clear example of that.
Having just recently actually played through Valhalla, you’re right about gear and loadouts, it’s completely redundant, I played the whole game with Varins axe and the original armour set. Here’s what I’d say about the skill tree: zoom out, never look at it in detail. Don’t grab a new node every time you get a skill point. Let them stack up until you can grab a new ability. The small stat boosts are, as said, pointless, the abilities are the only thing that matters.
i hate it when theres a barred door, and when u finally figure out how to get in, the chest was locked, you need to find the key, then that key has another barred door. its like 4 in 1 task for a trash equipment, this happen to me atleast 10 times during my 130+hr not so rushed playthrough, as a working gamer, i needed a good 2 years to play this on and off, by the time i finish the game, the story and plot didn't hit me anymore because ITS TOO LONG! some characters i don't even remember. this game has potential, but UBISOFT messed it up real bad. stop hiring these bloating, bland, puzzle insane hungry, developers. gosh
This is one of the most level headed reviews of this game that I ever saw and it perfectly encapsulates my feelings towards this game and why I dropped
Eh, it's a game for me. I got it around when it came out, just pirated it, and played it for about a week until I forgot about it. I didn't really focus much on the story, though it seemed substantial and interesting, I was mostly just focused on building up the settlement, raiding the brits and taking supplies, etc. That was all fun for me, the new features and mechanics they added were very fun, and I appreciated the much simpler boat gameplay that was incredibly addictive for me. It's a good game, I don't understand the hate on it
i had a bad feeling about valhalla from the start and i only bought it when it was on a holiday sale with 50% off and on a whim... and even with that, i have serious buyer's remorse, lol
This is the best most spot on review I've ever seen/heard. The parkour, empty world, and cut and paste cities with the same exact stuff in every city are just horrible. How did they manage to build such a massive game with literally nothing in it lol
I think one of the combat things that irks me just a bit is that most of eivor’s finisher animations involve pulling out a completely different smaller axe rather than having more cool ones for your equipped weapon
I completely removed the concept of AC from Valhalla and just played it like a Viking game. That’s where my enjoyment came out of
I do the opposite and just choose to believe Eivor joins the Assassin's before leaving Norway, and everything he does afterwards is to benefit both his clan and the Assassin's
@@cain9851 in origins I got the katana and the stealth armor and now I say bayek is a sand ninja 🤷🏾♂️😭
I played Black Flag under the same pretense. I'd get annoyed whenever my high-seas pirate adventure would get interrupted by the goofy-ass story which is unfortunately the foundation of this series.
So did Ubisoft
But you paid for ac
The old familiar phrase comes to mind.
If you try to please everyone, you will please no one
Another proverb is: A man cannot serve two masters. It roughly means the same as the metaphor you used especially in Assassins Creed. Ubisoft should either cater to legacy fans or pivot to the new RPG fans.
@@joeclaridy it was the OG fans who bought AC and alloweed ubisoft to make money the RPG fans are just people who came from fallout and witcher they dont care about the assassins or templars because the RPG games dont have any of that
@@joeclaridyIt's from the New Testament. Jesus's words.
Well, it sounds like capitalism. Games are products after all
If they actually finish their games, have good world building, good NPC's, immersion, gameplay, storytelling, etc then they'd please A LOT of people, but they do none of them right.
The games are drawn out, boring, clunky, garbage gameplay, garbage NPC's and it's been like that since AC2.
i have to say the music from this game is out of world. sure it doesnt have a significantly mind blowing track like Ezio family
but its music library is so huge and the viking vibe/theme is so good that i can listen for hours
man this game is my fav ever, the music in the main window is just amazing....replying it now
It has one of my favorite combat tracks in the series
Best soundtrack in the series imo
Many of the tracks were made by Jesper Kyd. The guy that made Ezio's Family
Jesper Kyd and Einar Selvik. Literally a god duo. That said, they kinda wasted the music with their atrocious sound mixing. I turned SFX down to like 25% just so the music would be audible. And the SFX being that low erased stuff like footsteps and soft animal grunts, which badly lessened the experience. All in all, just a sloppy mess of a game.
Hard to believe Valhalla is from the same team as Origins. Origins is still my personal favorite of the rpg AC's. It had the perfect blend of immersion, stealth and combat. Egypt is one of the most downright gorgeous and mysterious locations AC has ever had.
Origins could've used more stealth-encouraging environment design in my opinion, but at least your abilities and the story itself did lend towards practicing the subtle approach.
Valhalla more or less plasters its innate desire to have you simply hack and slash through everything on its sleeve. And the map is oversized and filled with nothing but strings of two minute distractions to check off a list, to put it bluntly. The exp scaling is also pretty horrendous even without time saves...
Would love to see a next gen remake of origins in the next 3-5 years. It would make me finish it another 10 times👍
I rate them "Odyssey, Origins, Valhalla" with Valhalla having fallen far behind the other two. I just liked Kassandra more as a character.
Origins was my last Ubisoft game to date. I grew to hate its guts after being genuinely curious about it at first, since I'm a sucker for everything Ancient Egypt. But Origin's world felt so bland and lifeless, all the side quests so meaningless and the countless copy & paste outposts so tedious that I didn't have any desire left in me to even continue with the main story, which also was stupid af. Bayek swears revenge on a cult for the death of his son WHO HE HIMSELF KILLED?! (Even though by accident, because he's an impulsive idiot. But the fact still remains.) Pathetic how that's all they could come up with in a setting that has so much more potential to give.
Unity was the very last gem from the AC franchise that had some real heart, ambition and care put into it. You can't even compare ANY other AC that has come afterwards with Unity. The drop in quality is palpable. Those are not even games anymore but a huge collection of checkmarks for the most publicly approved features and mechanics. Straight up garbage, year after year after year. And this goes to pretty much all of Ubisoft's franchises. The last decent game I played and thoroughly enjoyed from that publisher was Watch Dogs 2. No matter what someone might think of the game's setting, it was still genuinely innovative, creative and fun. A very well made piece of art that will always have a special place in my heart. That's when I still had respect for Ubisoft for their efforts and endeavors in trying out new stuff and enriching the gaming industry with new franchises and ideas. There was no other publisher out there quite like Ubisoft with such a regular and various output every year.
Fast forward 7 years later and look how deep the mighty have fallen... Corrupted by greed and narcissism of its old fart of a CEO that has lost all touch with reality. Now I actually can't wait until the inevitable happens and this huge toxic exploitative hellhole that this company's become finally shuts down and their IPs - so I hope - go into someone's more competent and capable hands. What an utter disgrace we've been witnessing, folks....
@@sacredsecrecy9620 I really wasn't much for Bayek as a main character. He came across as a patsy being manipulated by the people around him.
It's so hard to go back to AC for me after Ghost Of Tsushima. The combat in that game was just so nuanced and dynamic. It really lead to alot of cool emergent gameplay opportunities and fun physics-based reactions from your ghost abilities and tools. Not to mention that Tsushima doesn't limit you in anyway, no stamina meters or anything like that.
My only issue with Ghost is that once you've got the combat figured out, assuming the role of the Ghost is utterly pointless.
Playing Ghost now and about to go into act 3. I love the game and combat but exploring is not rewarding and nothing you find is valuable or exciting. I love AC games. If they had GoT combat it'd be a lot better. Also not being able to skip scenes sucks. The quests in GoT are inferior. The haikus, fox dens, and baths are just me sitting there and the fun dies pretty quick. I love both games
@@cowel8734 They did a better Job with IKI for Exploration there are more hidden things to find.
@@johnbishop2536 It's not pointless if it's still fun.
@@cowel8734 getting new samurai drip from exploring was enough for me.
This is one of the most fair reviews ever. I also played the heck out of Valhalla, couple hundred hours, and enjoyed my time, but felt like it was lacking almost all the way through. It’s possible to enjoy flawed games while still recognizing their flaws.
Yeah, however Vahalla is flawed in such you never want to play it again.
I just started playing it, maybe they’ve updated it even more because it’s not missing a thing at the current time
Just like Skyrim.
Same for me. I have played it a lot and enjoyed my time with it mostly. But it just left an overall unsatisfying feeling for me. I definetly rate it the worst from the three new gen ACs. The video describes the problems I have with it really well. Also I have not played the DLCs yet but will give them probably a try since I am now back on PC and got them for a deal.
I feel like ubisoft games are amazing if you have never played a ubisoft game before. And then the magic wears off after you realize all their games follow the exact same formula.
I like their formula that they now use for a while, but they often don't execute the formula well
Or you just play 1 Ubisoft game a year and you'll love it. Problem only arises when you play multiple games of the same type too soon.
@@zerotactix5739 1 a year is definitely too much for me.
Far cry being another great example
1. liberate the territory
2. free the prisoners
3. follow the guy
4. sneak into place and get the thing
bonus objective: collect the hidden stuff (0/5)
This is exactly how I felt playing Valhalla, as a former fangirl of the franchise.
Ubisoft's kept _Assassin's Creed_ going for sooo long, they've backed themselves into a corner. They can't innovate further without making AC more unrecognizable from its roots, and they can't fully commit to those roots because they've beaten that formula to death for fifteen years already, so they've settled on Frankenstein-ing the two together.
As a result, for me, Valhalla ended up feeling like a case study of that popular quote: "Appeal to everyone and you'll appeal to no one."
Maybe Ubisoft should take the hint and wrap it up, though in their current state, I have zero expectations of an ending worth sticking around for anyways.
I really don't think I agree with this. They can very easily strip down the formula and do a complete overhaul of gameplay while retaining the core pillars of Assassin's Creed, it's just that they seem to refuse to want to commit to that because they know the money is in familiarity
Totally agree. And ending we can all skip.
Well, it seems confirmed now they have 7 projects in development with the aim of appealing to every splinter demographic of the franchise. Can’t wait to see how poorly this turns out .
They honestly should just reboot the whole franchise and start over. Take what works from each era and try to make something cohesive and that stays true to the pillars of what Assassin’s Creed should be, at the same time that builds up onto a blank slate with new lore and new characters.
@@SebCarrasco 7 projects at the same time...yeah that's not gonna end well
I love it when you said ‘these stat boosts seemingly have no changes to gameplay at all’, because the entire rpg system of this game is fake. You can have +500 attack damage and you will notice zero difference in your actual combat. They’re only there as placebos, including the skill tree. No stats you gain there actually matters.
Wait... the numbers are effectively fake? Surely they have *some* benefit.
Cap
@@AdamOwenBrowningyes they have an effect but due to the enemies being damage sponges you won’t feel stronger. Doing 500 damage more won’t matter if the enemy gets 500 more HP at the same time
@@achmahnsch I like the game, but I stopped after two hours when I found out there's no NG+ and there'll never be one, I'm not going to spend 200 hours just to throw the game away or let it collect dust afterwards, I wanna be able to use all the secret weapons and armor and legendary shxt on NG+ that I spent all that time 100%ing, now that I know there no NG+, I'll be returning the game, fxck that shxt, and fxck Ubisoft!
Uhmm...yeah that's utterly false.
"You may also have noticed that I haven't brought up modern day..." followed by the pause, sniff, and throat clear was a really good and subtle moment of comedy.
I've watched a lot of Valhalla critiques over the past couple years and you are mentioning issues that I've never heard anyone talk about. Without a doubt, this is one of, if not the best, most complete and constructive critiques on UA-cam. You get to the heart of nearly every issue in this game and still manage to be relatively concise. Excellent video :)
Thank you, I had a nearly two hour draft at one point and I realized I had to cut things down so I’m glad it is still cohesive
Moral of the story, “Ubisoft was lazy”.
@@magnanimae5408 moral of the story "don't waste your time or money on this crap"
I had so much fun just being a Viking in this game, catching arrows and spears and just chucking them back at enemies.
The story and writing is tapwater, but it is at least fun
I’m glad someone enjoyed this game but to me it was more of the same AC rpg, with boring combat mechanics. It doesn’t even matter to me whether the story is good, since my favorite ac is unity, but it’s just not fun for me. Co op is the single best gameplay decision Ubisoft ever made and it’s sad they never brought it back. Valhalla doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, nor doesn’t it expand on existing mechanics like with what GOW ragnorok did. It’s just the exact same
Lmao tap water. Couldn’t have said it better. The story is quite dismal, that’s the majority of why I play games at all
You play games for gameplay dude. Open a book if you want story. Story is secondary@@OneNidim
it was fun to you, I got bored in 3 hours and uninstalled
@@eladrio2311 I like the game, but I stopped after two hours when I found out there's no NG+ and there'll never be one, I'm not going to spend 200 hours just to throw the game away or let it collect dust afterwards, I wanna be able to use all the secret weapons and armor and legendary shxt on NG+ that I spent all that time 100%ing, now that I know there no NG+, I'll be returning the game, fxck that shxt, and fxck Ubisoft!
I think the thing that upsets me more is the lack of assassin focus story telling in the newer AC games aside from origins.
Its basically just become a series of generic themed games with a splash of AC added to it.
Origins doesn't have an Assassin focus either. It's a pretty standard revenge story with some superficial Assassin storytelling in the final arc.
I would also like to add to the discussion: the downturn of the Animus UI. For some reason, Origins actually has a fantastic in game animus layout, which Ubisoft somehow forgot about with Odyssey, and even more so with Valhalla. Like part of the immersion is the contextual framework that we are playing inside of a high tech, science fiction machine, so the visual and audio design should fit within this. Valhalla more egregiously than Odyssey just said, “nah fam”.
Say what you will about AC 3, Unity, and Syndicate, but the UI implementation was amazing!
They are just selling ”Assassins creed” logo.
In my opinion biggest mistake Ubisoft made is dropping the Bayek and Aya storyline...
AC Origins was such a good settings and had great characters it made me fall in love with this series again, it really gave me that "assassin" feeling from the Altair era, and instead of continuing the story with Aya in Rome they just abandoned it for some reason...
I hope Mirage gives me that eastern "Origins" vibe again, because whereas I enjoyed Odyssey and Valhalla it really felt like some random games instead of assassins creed games
Yeah ac origins was good but atleast they are trying their hardest to return assassins creed to its former glory since they are losing millions now crazy how it took them this long to get it right 😅
I enjoyed Odyssey more than Origins, but even I thought it was stupid to do another prequel after Origins. I was really hoping the game after Origins would show the Brotherhood start to grow and expand.
They abandoned it cos no one wanted to play as her stfu
The thing that bothered me with origins is Aya saying she lost her love for bayek when their son died even though there was absolutely nothing up to that point showing that. Felt like I got M. Night Shyamaland.
@@ryanhays429 Aya was going to be the player character originally but one of the misogynistic scumbags at Ubisoft (not naming him in case his defenders find this) forced them to change her into a side character. same with kassandra in Odyssey.
My biggest complaint about Valhalla is how little Sigurd and Basim were on screen. That was a relationship I wanted to see more of in the game. Eivor consistently referred to Sigurd as his brother but then you arrive in England and he fucks off for the remainder of the game. I always felt like Sigurd would have been better as the main character and having Basim training him as an assassin would have been a much more interesting character arc than Eivors imo. Eivor was given a hidden blade told to kill Templars and he just took that idea and ran with it. Meanwhile Basim was whispering in Sigurds ear and teaching him the ways of the hidden ones. Ultimately leading him to lose himself and then eventually to relinquish his power as the leader of the raven clan. It felt like it just kind of ended after a certain point. I think Sigurds story would have been better if he was the main character and Eivor was either a side character or removed entirely from the narrative. That’s a much more engaging story imo. Overall it was a very disappointing experience and that bums me out because I played this directly on the heels of Origins which was damn near perfection.
this should be it eivor character design is so oof the chart
When basim isn’t on screen everyone should be wondering “where’s basim?”
It's a Viking game. Not AC
@@arturius9715what's the title of the game no brain
Should've just cut out Eivor and gave us Sigurd as the protagonist being indoctrined into the Hidden ones by Basim.
you know, an assassin during this era could have been a really interesting concept. first story idea that comes to mind is that eivor tries their best to be this strong and brave viking, but they're just not strong enough and struggle constantly to live up to their family's reputation (they're known for their prowess and can't be beat....except for eivor). parents finally have had enough and disown eivor out of shame, who is forced to set on their own journey and have to adapt to work with what they have. could have been saved by assassins and joined the brotherhood in search of belonging and a family, and takes on their cause. maybe the main antagonists are a group of very powerful vikings trying to screw over everyone, and are too powerful for even eivor's bio family to take down, so the brotherhood are the only ones able to defeat them due to their "dirty tactics" (can you tell I don't know much about vikings nor this game lmao). not the most original story, but it's one that really lets you play with the concept of sneaky stealthy assassins in an era and area where they're very much frowned upon and enables you to include the assassins in....you know, an assassin's creed game-
Not them. HIM. WOMEN HAVE NEVER BEEN AND WILL NEVER BE WARRIORS
@@albnoelthere’s countless women warriors in history, not just viking history, Joan of Arc, Captain Kidd, Night Bomber Regiment 588 and Boudica just to name a few
@@scyobiempire4450comment you replied to is dumb but it still is pretty ridiculous the only two canon women other than Aveline and Evie are a Greek soldier and a viking. There's like 3 known instances of women being Vikings ever and none at all recorded about Greek soldiers. Also absolutely no one wants to play a viking game where you don't have a beard. Like playing a Yakuza game where you don't have tattoos.
@@Hangme248 both aivors can get a beard, canon A with an oversight with the siege of paris dlc
@@scyobiempire4450 if u wanna be a circus bearded lady go for it
I clicked on this video thinking it would be an 100k+ subscriber channel but I'm very impressed by the production quality and formatting of this video, you earned a sub
I appreciate that, thank you
I’m an old school fan, but I loved Odyssey for what it was and spent hundreds of hours running through different builds. Valhalla took most of that away and left us with a very average experience that left me totally unfulfilled
Played odyssey 2500 hours....valhalla I gave up after 120 hours is too boring.
Played AC1 and 2 in before 2012 or recently?
@@iurysaraiva3411 I've played all the assassins and I find them quite boring....the most impressive is A.C odyssey and it's actually one of the most favorite games in my life...well done UBISOFT.
@@zicuvalentin2251 so ... Played before 2012 or recently?.. when played recently fist, obviously the old one is mediocre .. same with Dragon Age..
@@zicuvalentin2251 Halo, Saints Row, F.Horizon , Cod, etc... companies bring new players stepping on the old ones.. the new ones finance thinking the "soul" of the game was meant to be like this.
I love Valhalla. I have over 520 hrs logged (I injured my knee and couldn't walk for a long while) on the normal difficulty and I have restarted now after a break on the hardest settings. Loving it all over again. It's fun to pretend to be a Vikings!
but 520h isn't normal, most players play for 3 hours per week at best
@xdrastig_4207 I understand that. I said I had an injured leg while this was happening. I like a lot of content. It seems silly to complain that they gave us too much to do in a game.
@@joeharris9426 That's one of the dumbest things I have ever read. 50-100 hours of quality writing is infinitely better then 500 hours of garbage. I won't ever tell someone they can't enjoy something but you most certainly can have too much of something.
@Entreped That's one of the dumbest things that you have ever read? Clearly you don't spend much time reading. I like the quality of the content just fine. I have played other games that are shorter, and it is always disappointing when the game is over a few weeks after it starts. Just another grown ass adult crying about a video game.
Valhalla is a great game & idc what anyone says 😎
My main problem is that all 3 of the newer games are much longer, each being longer than the last. Valhalla is fun but im at 140hrs and just now playing the dlc, which now I might not even finish now that I know it doesn't get better only worse. The game drained all the fun I had for it by the 80hr mark and after that it felt like a duty to finish it because of the time I put in it already. Tbh I had the same problem with Odysey so Idk what I expected. As much as I love Valhalla, I just miss being able finish a game without having to take breaks inbetween them because I get bored of them.
Haven’t even finished the game yet , still on that 60+ hours mark and I left it, felt like a chore to finish that game
I am in the middle of playing. Brother bought for me a year ago even though Origins felt laborious to me. I really liked this game for 80 hours. Hate most moments after. I am 155 hours in and feel like I still have another 100(at least) to go. Way too bloated. Also, I am at level 310. Playing regions of 160-190, it is just too easy and unfulfilling. Hopefully they keep games to 70-100 hours going forward. Great value to those looking for it I guess.
I got about 100 hours in and said I was done and never came back. It's a shame because it'd be a good game if it was condensed even a little bit at all. It's so ridiculously big that it seems like they did it as a joke.
I learned to play for a few days completing a 'territory', then take a break. Obviously after the initial 'wow response' wore off after 20 or so hours. I knew I was in for a long game and the landscape of Briton is a pain in the butt. When the overall story and areas became stale, I'd do a DLC or just run around mindlessly seeing the game without a quest marker. Games of this size seem to have a problem with the story endings never being up to expectations after so many hours of player involvement.
Yep taking me about 4+ weeks playing this game. I played it for 2 weeks straight 9am-5pm and I still didn’t get anywhere.. I took breaks my 3rd n 4th week playing but god damn.. IM STILL NOT FINISHED WITH EXPLORING all the islands 😭😭😭 on Odyssey.. everytime I go to a “?” Im begging it isn’t a bandit camp or fort
I think Ubisoft realized that Monolith with Shadow Of Mordor took what Assassins Creed had laid out and shook it up enough to keep it interesting, and made big open battles doable, with non-stealth CQC being a very viable option in SoM if you'd rather it to stealth. And Ubisoft took that, and the example of peak RPG gameplay laid out by Witcher 3 and tried to jam Assassins creed into that formula and it just doesnt work.
Assassins creed has always been rigidly objective based, you are an assassin, your goal is to assassinate targets, and the story progresses and unfolds organically around that.
Making it fully open world is a really difficult thing to do without very very big considerations into how that would keep the player on track. They utilized the "hero for hire" element of The Witcher, which makes sense for a character like Geralt, a literal monster hunter for hire by definition, but it becomes alot less believable that a character like Bayek, even being a sort of peoples protector, would just be dropping everything to help a random stranger who asked politely, especially when the problem was trivial or unrelated to his greater goal (avenging his sons death).
I think Ubisoft (whichever studio under their umbrella is making these games) is stuck in the box of wanting to make a fun fantasy Action RPG, but being forced by the big investors and higher-ups to continue to slap assassins creed atop these games when they don't need to.
These more recent AC games feel like they're chasing the dragon and forcing themselves to adapt to the changing fads of modern gaming seeing it as their only option to be like The Witcher, or Shadow of Mordor, or Dark Souls, or Ghost of Tsushima or Red Dead Redemption, when literally all people want is a game that tries to be like Assassins Creed!!!
I hope they realize this at some point and return to the style of the older games, black flag (and rogue) were the last two that felt like they really worked, Unity and Syndicate were fine but they weren't even close to as fantastic as the games that preceded them.
A good metaphor is to compare them to the Halo franchise:
Assassins Creed is Marathon (the game that preceded halo)
Assassins creed 2 through revelations is Halo 1-3
AC3 is ODST (not everyone's favourite but a good game in retrospect)
Black Flag (and Rogue) is Halo Reach (peak mechanical gameplay and impactful new storytelling)
AC Unity and Syndicate are Halo 4 and Halo 5 respectively (things feel unsteady, it's clear the devs are missing a certain je ne sais quoi)
And the new games are the Destiny of the Assassins Creed games (a great concept, poorly executed due to oversight problems from financiers and rushed development/late stage changes)
The Supideo mission was paramount to my Odyssey experience; it was the most enjoyable side mission but also demonstrated the balance between light-heartedness and heavy matters throughout the game. It was a beautifully written story. Valhalla feels like it was written by people that have never played a video game or read a book or even watched a movie.
The missions, characters and quest stories are so ridiculous in Odyseey which is what makes them so great.
You described the ubisoft writers
valhalla feels like it was written by racist seppos masturbating over my heritage.
Valhalla is not a bad game, but why having a Viking game so focused in England instead of their homeland. I think the game would have been a lot better if we actually stayed there and not leave after the prologue. I felt a lot more immersed during the first 2 hours, felt like a real Viking.
Also the main story is kinda boring, compared to Origins and Odyssey where you really feel for Bayek and Alexios / Cassandra
Really, I’m the opposite. I couldn’t wait to get out of the beginning section. I loved seeing AC England, it was perfect.
Not leave? Do you not know anything about Vikings? Being a Viking was a profession you took as a Norse warrior to trade or plunder in foreign territory, in this case the Viking invasion of England in the 9th century. A Viking game like Valhalla wouldn’t be a Viking game if the game didn’t let you invade England, a key part of the game’s whole story.
I thought vikings are tied with england, didnt they invade it or something?
viking is basically a group of pirates who left their original country. Their life was about sailing to other countries and plunder. Those who remained in norway were not vikings
What annoys me is how they nerf the parkour in each new AC game if they kept the Unity parkour every AC game would feel amazing
Unity is when the nerf started
When you realize the last 4 games have been role playing games in the AC universe, you start to enjoy the games from a new perspective
I was so pumped after the first raid in Valhalla then I needed to upgrade the village and gone through a bunch of raids and spending more time finding keys instead of fighting. I've never felt so miserable in any game
choose a viking era as a theme for AC is a huge mistake. viking warriors are known for their raw power and brutality, which is why stealth and parkour are not working in this game. it just doesn't feel right
Personally I think any era could make for a good Assassin's Creed game, and Valhalla would have been especially interesting if they committed to having to be discreet in Anglo Saxon towns. What we got, unfortunately, hit neither the viking fantasy nor the Assassin fantasy in my opinion.
To me thats why this game somewhat works we are not a assassin at most we are allied to them we are still apart of the ac world but are no longer limited to being and playing as a assassin.
As someone who had 160 hours on this game, I actually enjoyed it a lot, yeah it had its own little problems and animations but overall it was a fun game :)
I see it as the witcher 3 changed the landscape of these type of games abs starting with origins ubisoft tried to copy it.
I enjoy it I approach them as witcher clones in the assassins creed universe.
I couldn’t look at Valhalla as an AC game for the longest time but I couldn’t put it into words exactly why. This video outlines it and brings up points I hadn’t considered.
I wanted to enjoy Valhalla. I really tried but at the end of the day it felt like playing it was a chore more than anything fun and engaging
The Witcher was a better Viking game with the skellige isles
You sir, will go extremely far in the UA-cam world! Your commentary and explanations are so professional and beautifully spoken
Thank you Kenner Jendall, I appreciate that a lot
this game isn't a game you look back with good thoughts, it's a game that makes your dopamine receptors hyperactive and that's why you come back and keep playing it.
Yeah I played 60 hours in a short time. That was years ago tho and haven't has any desire to play it again
Man by the time I wrapped up my 75 hour playthrough year's ago I couldn't wait for it to be over so I could play Ghost of Tsushima again lol I even tried playing it again recently and I just can't get back into it, and to be honest I hated this game even on my first playthrough.
Na, if this game gets your dopamine receptors popping off a lot after even more then 10 hours, you need better taste in games lmao
You should get your brain checked if you think it's a dopamine receptor game.
@Lum1n Otryc lol nah foreal 😂, matter of fact, during my playthrough the thought of not playing the game anymore made my dopamine receptors hyperactive.
Valhalla was the first Assassin's Creed game I didn't finish. There was just too little incentive to move forward. The main plot was non-existent, it's just like you said - it simply felt like doing disconnected side quests in every region. And the setting was kinda meh, with all the regions feeling very similar to each other. The game just couldn't keep me invested.
I feel the same I didn’t feel pulled in and feel empty
The biggest sin of this game is truly that it fails to deliver either an assassin experience or a viking experience. Tries to do both and ends up missing the mark for both...the biggest part where i noticed is in raids....Animus wot allow you to kill innocents.....Not a huge deal breaker but an example of how the assassins side of things holds the viking side back and same the other way around
Vikings actually didnt kill peasants etc
Sometimes they killed one or two for example but the rest of the people have been captured and sold to slavery
Human was one of the most valuable trade item in the medieval times
@@maciejpolak2458 That's fair. But you can't engage in slavery in Valhalla either, so it's not like they are accurately reflecting the "Viking" experience in that way.
I've been playing AC for 14 years and valhalla is hands down my favorite
I agree with just about everything you're saying. 1/2 way through "Valhalla", I just couldn't wait for it to end. It was just so dull. "Odyssey" had that a couple times but then I'd discover some new thing or place that renewed my interest. "Odyssey" was long but by the time I finished it, I really felt like I'd accomplished something. "Valhalla" I never looked back. Had no desire to buy the DLC.
I enjoyed fighting the bounty hunters in "Odyssey". They were tough but fair. In Valhalla they were always way above my level. It was tiring to shave off a little heath with each hit and getting one-shotted when I missed a dodge.
I can't think of anything that Valhalla did that was better than "Origins" or "Odyssey"
Played odyssey 2500 hours....valhalla I gave up after 120 hours is too boring.
bounty hunters in valhalla? did you even play the game atleast an hour?
@@rocktheconqueror6903 played valhalla 150 hours and is about ZEALOT not bounty honters and is most boring game I ever played...this game is too easy on difficulty nightmare....
@@zicuvalentin2251 zealots are not as same as mercenaries or bounty hunters. They're like boss fights.
You may think it's easy in nightmare difficulty because of shitty odyssey and origins combat. But I'd say it's better in valhalla cuz unlike odyssey and origins there is no button smashing or enemies who are damage sponges in valhalla. Also there is no level system in valhalla so that you can finally be stealthy without having to worry about alerting enemies .
Combat is definitely one of the good thing in valhalla
It's long yes, boring sometimes but overall it's a good game but that's just me.
@@rocktheconqueror6903 Combat in Valhalla sucks. and there is a level system in valhalla. its just not called one.
I realized a few weeks ago that I spent $120 on this game as a birthday present for myself and that in total, if you wanted the complete experience, with every gear set and DLC, you would spend upwards of $500 dollars. That is criminal. I've played Valhalla for 150 hours total, playing Wrath of the Druids right now, and I just finished God of War (2018). Good Lord the whiplash, I think I'm just gonna stick to other games
As an AC "fan" who hasn't played an AC since unity and hasn't finished one since 4, I literally burst into laughter after your brief summary of valhalla's plot. Ever since killing off desmond in 3, these games have had no arc to their plots at all. It's so obvious that they just put a bunch of cool sounding settings in a hat, pull one out at random, and try to make an AC story out of it. Without the modern day Desmond plot to tie everything together, there's nothing for a fan like me to care about. I have no reason not to just play a better stealth game, or a better action rpg, or a better historical game, or a game with a better narrative, or a game with better dialogue and romance options. These games have no identity, no soul. I'm baffled that people can find anything at all to enjoy about these modern AC games. To me, this series died with desmond in AC3, and should have just ended after revelations. Without Desmond, without the animus, without the ideological war between assassins and templars, without a grounded historical setting, there is no Assassin's Creed.
YUP
Assasin's creed went from one of the biggest innovators in gaming to a contender for the laziest uninspired annual release game. One of the best examples for why gaming suffers when its in the hands of people who only see gaming as a cash cow.
Yes. If your original combat system is getting very stale, that would be a pretty good signal that the series should end. One does not simply change a thing so integral to the franchise to something totally different. Especially if the replacement is just a subpar imitation of what's popular at the moment.
I loved Valhalla, this was my favorite AC game.
Good for you
Same.
I think you hit the nail on why despite really liking Origins and Odyssey i just couldnt get myself to like this one, very good video!
I got into the series with AC4 and later played Ezio games so i seen both sides of the franchise, Valhalla just isnt a very good game...
Same I loved the those two but I hated Valhalla it felt like a game without a soul
@@Lysuko😅😅😅😅😅🥴
This, after finishing it I basically Uninstalled Ubi after.
I can sum it up this way. I've 100% completed Black Flag 3 times and it's still fun. I haven't been able to finish Valhalla's first DLC (I finished the main story before DLC began, I just can't force myself to gruel through the game more than about 15 minutes now before I shut it down and look at UA-cam videos instead).
9:30 A painfully slow (choke?) animation that lasts almost 10 seconds and ends with your character standing over them and doing a cringe shout for about 3 seconds, then slowly turning around, is the opposite of fun or cool.
"i enjoyed it, but it never hooked me" is the perfect encapsulation of how that game made me feel. I very rarely drop games, but i dropped it after over 40 hours.
This long form content is amazing. I love how you actual put thought and effort into your videos. I hope you end up doing reviews of all the games in this series. Very impressive
That means a lot, thank you. Hopefully I can do videos on all of them in the future
I have NEVER really enjoyed stealth in video games I usually just instantly go loud or just tolerate forced stealth but assassins creed odyssey stealth was very fun
I think the short and sweet explanation would be "Assassin's Creed died with Desmond in 3, but they kept using the name. We didn't know at the time but something else was wearing its clothes after."
Nah...its truly died after Syndicate. Sure that black flag make you spend more time on sea and ships but the core of AC still there, pakour, stealthy, cool story and twisted history. Rogue may not be about brotherhood but the moral and questionable motive of brotherhood is really good aspect too, unity is full of bugs for sure, story is plain, but the mechanics were there and even the best still this day. Syndicate may not be well know, being shadow by other game in the franchise but still, a AC game from the core to the core. Only thing change from origin. From origin, ac fanbase plit into two group of mindset. One really really love the rpg, other prefer stealthy and adventure. As some one who like AC stealthy, enjoy the franchise since AC2 upto Unity (those my first AC is black flag). I found Valhalla is charming in it own way, just wished it wasn't publish as AC. And all the assassin appear to be crossover contents or easter eggs like what they done with watchdog. Valhalla is a very good RPG game recently release after many failed. It didn't exceed in any but also neither bad in any aspect. It was long game so does other RPG. Grinding as much as other RPG, i see no real downside in valhalla if you really want or need an rpg. But i know, it's frustrating when it under AC's franchise. I hate it as alway, will never touch origin or odyssey for that matter. Doubt i will touch valhalla if i wasn't interested in Norse myth.
I never liked Desmond.
If you actually gave the games a chance, you have to admit the gameplay only gets better as you go.
Odyssey and Valhalla are by far the best games in history.
Unity and Black Flag are up there with them.
anything prior is too janky to go back to and believe me I have tried.
Completed them all in release order and tried to replay them on PS4 and Switch.
@@ak-nt2trDesmond was the main character of the original AC. The whole story was based on him becoming an Assassin and saving the world, until new developers came in and wanted to take the game in new directions and expand the universe therefore killing him off.
@@ak-nt2tr it's why every main Assassin character tend to have hints of Altair, Ezio and Desmond in their faces. It's the bloodline.
@@kylegardner6272 Desmond was a whiny little child and he interrupted the emersion from what makes the series amazing, the historical side. I am glad they got rid of him and are starting to make the modern not force fed.
This is a perfect description as to how I feel about the game. I have tried playing it 3x and I can't for the life of me. It's the only AC game I can't bring myself to finish because of some of the things u have said. I don't feel like an assassin and I can't play it any other way because of what it's supposed to be. This might be me overstepping but I honestly feel like Ubisoft should remake a lot of the games in the AC franchise and with Unity/Syndicate mechanics as it's base. Even removing the Animus because to me it makes more sense if they just told the story of Assassins vs Templars and have you the player retelling their story, living their lives, being in their shoes until it gets to modern society like the assassin girl in Watch Dogs Legion and through that aspect they could eventually combine both games. Templars, the ones behind Abstergo entertainment and small, shady activist grps working behind the scenes and Assassins as the hackers of DedSec/the Legion. As for Odyssey, it was way out there in terms of being an assassin but I enjoyed the hell out of it. I don't mind the RPG elements to the AC games but I just want it to be done a bit better, because since origins I've been in love with the concept. I still want more AC games like Black Flag, Brotherhood, AC3, Syndicate and even Unity (when it decides to behave). But in my opinion Valhalla ain't it. It doesn't give me that feeling and I find myself going back to older AC games.
They need Animus to make people think that their story doesn't end only in ancient times. The things they need to upgrade a lot is the gameplay directions. I mean they have more resources to make the missions better, but they was too much focusing on repeating endlessly old encounter in a mission. Kill this - go talk to that - do more thing like this and repeat. Rather than having an impact on the mission like what players can and can't do in that mission. Diversity playstyle really help them if they design it to be so.
What do you know? I 'picked up' the game thanks to Ubisoft making it free for the weekend of August 11-14th.
I went in with somewhat of a 'negative' perspective/not expecting too much of it after watching some reviews since it came out, and I actually found myself really enjoying it.
As I'm writing this comment, I'm debating whether I should buy the base game or not (just the vanilla, I don't really do DLCs)
It's currently on sale for 15 USD (around $22 for me due to currency exchange) and I'm, like, 60/40 in favor of doing it
I was only able to complete around 43% of the main campaign.
It is nothing to write home about and I personally enjoyed the God of War: Ragnarök reimagining of the Norse Mythology way more.
Granted, I no longer see the RPG saga as "Assassin's Creed" games but as a simple "Ubisoft turn-your-brain-off" RPGs.
With that mindset, I fairly enjoyed the Viking power fantasy.
Yes, it is as if not even more bloated than Odyssey and Origins, but I kinda liked it.
Get it on a cd site key for even lower. I got the complete edition for about 30 bucks. It's an enjoyable game to waste time on.
I wanted to love Valhalla so badly, especially Cos I’m a huge fan of Norse mythology and Viking history and Viking tv shows but it just was trying to be too many different things. Had it chosen one path and stuck to it I think it would have been perfect
Yeah somehow what I'm looking at here doesn't align very much at all with Viking history or Norse Mythology.
Probably why you didn’t like it lmao not very accurate at all
I started playing this game recently and you will start loving this game as story progress.. Even initially I passed this game but after final content update you get always hood on option with few new missions and one of mission that has connection to Mirage this game is awesome.... This game now feels like assassin creed
@@VS_Gamer84 The game is so fire fr
@@VS_Gamer84 You know...if it took years for the game to get good, maybe it wasn't a good game?
Great video, I had known about Kassandra and female Eivor being the canon protagonists but didn't know the reason behind the male counterparts being added as options, ridiculous lol. Also that dragon fight really looked like a call to Dark Souls, as you say another attempt to find ideas to find something that works. Future direction of the franchise looks unsteady at best.
As far as I am aware, this also happened to Origins - initially, writers and devs were playing with the idea of Aya being the main protagonist, but were told no by higher ups.
It was french monster hunter
je suis monte
AC: Valhalla is game for me, because I loved every second of it, at least main game. And yes, I played almost all AC games starting from 1. Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla are the best AC games so far.
It's a game for me though...thoroughly enjoyed the main campaign and still enjoying it 2 year's later
Yes I loved every minute of it and found myself actually happy playing unlike with Elden Ring which is a masterpiece but I spent more time angry than actually having fun
Did you enjoy The Phantom Menace too?
@@ebucehil9757 no why?
@@mrwalker6026 Ignore him, probably still stuck in 1999
@@cowel8734 I’ve never seen anyone advertise that they like games with dull features solely because it’s a less harsh experience, I don’t even have any real memorable moments in my head of my over 60+ hour experience in assassins creed Valhalla in comparison to Elden Ring a game that makes you want to explore the world because your character and your skills at the game transform relative to the world, you have to be a risk taker and someone who is willing to die over and over to get skilled enough to make it through, there is no risk in Valhalla or incentive to explore its admittedly visually breathtaking world except for a check list that turns the player back into a linear machine giving you the veneer of an open world.
Excellent critique. This video is extremely high quality I would have assumed you had dozens of videos by now!
This game was a welcome escape while my Grandfather was dying of COVID. Hundreds of hours to escape from my own personal hell. Other than that purpose it served, I have no desire to boot it up again, not even for DLC. It was fun but felt soulless. I never felt attached to Eivor like I did with Bayek or Kassandra. That was the biggest thing I noticed from the start.
I am glad that it was an escape and I am sorry that you were put in a position to need it. I appreciate you watching and I am glad that you enjoyed the video
my biggest complain is that they let us choose which eivor we want and then tell us that only one eivor is canon
if you want female eivor as your main character ubisoft, do it. It's a coward move to give us a spare eivor if we don't want to play as a female eivor.
Imagine if last of us part gave us straight ellie version that make dina a man and jess a woman.
Have balls ubisoft
For guys who love history and historical rpgs play Kingdom Come Deliverance... I promise you will never be disappointed but get overwhelmed by its level of immersion and attention to detail... it is one of the most under rated open world games out there where you have things like alchemy bench to brew potions and a grinding stone to sharpen your weapons... this game surpasses the likes of elder scrolls, witcher, red dead, assassin's creed and even fallout new Vegas....
Nope
I spent 2 hours just trying to open a lock so I quit the game
That game is a little to janky for my liking.
@@PinHeadThePopeOfHell skill issue let me guess console play the game on pc thats the way its meant to be
@@pascalstrijker3985 Only have an Acer Chromebook can't afford a gaming PC unfortunately
For any newbies Assasins creed Valhalla- 7/10
Pros-
Map- England is absolutely stunning, the english wildlife is everywhere, the ancient ruins are incredible, the rivers and hills and roads make traversal fun, as u can choose ur way to ur destination.
Combat- u FEEL like a viking, u get an insane amount of special viking abilities such as axe throwing to crush Anglo Saxons skulls, very RPG level based combat, dont travel too far from ur current section cus enemies get tough
Main characters- eivor and Sigurd are great protagonists, they are stoic yet fair and kind, the perfect leaders for your camp. The kings u meet are intresting characters and make for some fun scenes, u often give them advice through rpg mechanics.
Base building- massive amount of base options such as viking feasts, choosing your allies, picking ur army, expanding your buildings for more resources.
The order- u have to face many members of the order and many of them provide a very souls like challenging boss battle if ur into that.
Upgrades- theres an erray of armour, loot, materials, progression upgrades, armour Upgrades and special abilities to choose from including ur appearance.
Puzzles- finding the keys can be hard but u feel good once u find a way into the treasure
Cons-
Story- the story can get quite repetitive, often required to raid a castle and help the sections king to gain power. Dont get me wrong some missions are very good and the cut scenes always get a chuckle out of me. U will be required to give answers during cut scenes, sometimes not important and sometimes u will be left genuinely upset by a choice youve made, i accidentally got the wrong person killed and i genuinely felt bad.
Gods- whenever it goes into Asgard it looses me, it just goes too far off the rails.
Climbing- im glad its in there overall but sometimes i can get stuck trying to climb thru a window for ages.
Norway- lets just say u can tell all the budget went into England, Norway is made smaller and its majority just snow and water
Overall its a 7/10 game, its a good game, i reccomend it, i personally think critics were way too harsh on it. Its in the same boat as oddessey and origins for me. U will have a great time
I would rate it higher but well said
@georgekantartzis I'm still playing through it 9 months later and It might be an 8/10 now. I really can't go higher than that tho
This was a very good video bro. After my 140 hour platinum playthrough of the game, it became so hard to go into the dlc because of all the points you mentioned. Why spend more time in a game that is so below par from what they used to produce. Keep it up man
Every assassin's Creed game is missing 20% of the game that it wants to be
Older ac games are some of my favorite, and I really enjoyed Origins. It’s Odyssey that lost me, I played maybe 150 hrs in that game and I enjoyed the story, but at the same time I’m pretty sure 65% of missions are literally the same mission just a different location. I found my love of stealth games from sly Cooper and funny enough sucker punch went and made my dream AC game except minus any AC stuff. Ghost of Tsushima just seemed to excel in every aspect, stealth was great with many tools, sword combat amazing and bows are equally viable.
lol i played 150 hours in odyssey as well
Bingo, I felt Odyssey was the beginning of the end for AC, personally. I still enjoyed Valhalla more, yet because they abandoned the NG+ I won't be playing it ever again.
If they had just renamed this game “Shadows of Valhalla” or something like that it would have gained more popularity. Such a good game imo, great music too. You know a game has good soundtracks when you have to go, “wait, I have to look up this song”
31:54 just to add onto this section, as someone from England, the actual world looks nothing like England. Therefore, if you have any familiarity with England, it becomes really jarring to simply exist in the world as it’s really difficult to suspend your disbelief when the geography is laughably unrealistic.
What could they have done better? (not English)
Unrealistic how ? It is set in 873 AC so unless your expecting to see an Aldi or chippy......
@@toribaker5860 it’s all just very exaggerated and fantasy - looks like the Witcher and it’s very clear they just wanted to make a Norse-themed fantasy game. The topography is quite exaggerated, we don’t really have big mountains, the hills are way too tightly packed together, the colours are very unnatural, we don’t really have distinct climates/biomes as it’s not a big country (some areas are flatter than others & that’s about it), the trees don’t really form like that, etc. The worst area is the north which has more or less the same climate as the rest of England but is portrayed as frozen over in game. It snows maybe once or twice a year in England & generally not very heavily. It might have been colder back then but not to this ludicrous degree, and there would have been little difference with the rest of the country. There are actually some semi-unique biomes in the north in real life that they could have shown such as Heather moors (Google it, they’re pretty) but they didn’t because they wanted it to be a snow biome for some reason.
@@markwalch6065 I’m referring to the natural environment…
@@Littlebigun99 Ha! Forgive me, I jest! But it makea me curious. The series The last kingdom is set in England yet filmed in Hungary.
After playing Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla. Odyssey is really something special.
Played odyssey 2500 hours....valhalla I gave up after 120 hours is too boring.
Odyssey is incredible and doesn't deserve its fate of being held down by being an Assassin's Creed game.
out of the 3 odyssey is the only one i just dont like and never want to play again
If you took the Assassins Creed out of your mind, and just looked at it as just a game, Valhalla was fun as hell. That seems like the hang up about this game. You can play the game as a stealth game quite a bit. I took quite a few locations without my crew, using stealth, and then signaled the in to help bust open doors and chests. Although I also took some with my crew, because what’s not fun about beaching a long boat blowing a horn, and then storming, monastery with a group of yelling crazy Vikings.
This was a fantastic critique. Good job. I definitely look forward to more stuff from you!
Im new to AC but loved valhalla. It's a big game and real value for money. I feel at times there was not enough story, lots of adhoc tasks to complete in each area to progress the game. I'm an old gamer so never bothered with upgrades,
I always wondered why this the only AC game I didn’t care to finish about half way threw and here’s my answer lol couldn’t put it better myself even after finishing it I was even more upset 😅
I’ve spent 250h in it already so it works for me, gaming community is trying too hard to put things into boxes and give them labels that create too many expectations instead of just enjoying what’s in front of them as is
THANK YOU!!! VERY WELL SAID!
And I have +150 hrs in AC Unity precisely because I enjoyed what was in front of me, but if anyone provided valid criticism(and trust me, there's so much to criticize Unity for, enough to make the claim that it is NOT A GOOD GAME by any means), I wouldn't try to shut it down just because *I* happen to have enjoyed the game.
*taste is subjective* (which is recurring excuse whenever someone can't cope with seeing criticism towards something they happen to like) doesn't mean jackshit other than "you're entitled to like or dislike things IN SPITE of their quality". Not that quality is relative to each one's preferences.
Why?
Because, it's the people's individual perception of the media what varies, not the media itself. The latter is always one and the same.
When you understand that, you can only come to the realization that a piece of media's quality is not defined by people's personal inherently subjective experiences, it's defined by the media's own reality, as in, what it does(own merits) or what it does not do(lack of merits), which is something that can be measured objectively to a good extent.
As for expectations... Do you actually know anyone who disliked the game and admitted to have had "too many expectations" for this game? I bet you don't know a single one.
It's precisely the fact that the expectations weren't high to begin with, and the game still came out below the standards(which for the AC franchise, are already low within the action/adventure genre) what's the real problem here.
And in any case, if you take such hits to your ego seeing people criticize something you happen to enjoy, why even bother with looking it up? Why click on a video you can tell it's going to be a negative critique from the title alone? You'd be more convincing with your point if you did not mind the criticism at all and instead kept playing the game in spite of it. But the fact that you "have" to come out and defend it speaks on itself.
@tarnishedpose you wrote an essay but it's all your opinion. None of what u said is actual fact. 🤷🏽♂️ you like the old games we like the new ones, that's fine no need for you to defend 😂
Although I still resent Odyssey for implementing magic and the possibility of having an entire game without assassins, I can see your points for the game (you are actually the first one I hear giving solid and good arguments for the game, so thank you for letting me understand better why people like the game).
As an OG Assassin's Creed fan, this game wasn't for me, that at least has been made abundantly clear
Well done Lord Jay. You made a video summarising how I felt the whole time playing ACV. I was so psyched about this because of the premise of Vikings, Mythology and History and it turned out to be meh. You did an excellent job putting to words what was going on in my head and I never ended up finishing the game. I hope your channel blows up.
It was a shame how many issues I had with the game, but thank you for watching and I am glad you enjoyed the video
Odyssey is my favorite, great gameplay for both stealth and ruthless combat, beautiful and immersive story and charismatic characters.
What I really miss in AC games is the feeling of the parkour actually feeling technical.
In the newer AC games you don't even have to give a second thought to climbing anything. You just hold forward until you get to the top of any structure.
I loved leaping off things i didn't mean to, or climbing something I didn't want to.
I also miss that, that was the coolest thing about the old games. That combined with how the new games have developed huge worlds, ships and different builds would be a flawless game.
@@minbari73 that was never an issue maybe you just I dunno sucked?
@@degoose2447 Maybe, a bit like you and punctuation.
@@minbari73 Why would I care about punctuation if I’m on youtube? You’re criticising something and nothing
"some really ugly character models" lmaooo finally someone says it! what is up with this game, everyone is such an uggo. I struggled to even choose between male and female eivor cause i dont like the look of either of them. love almost all other AC games, origins and odyssey are among my favourites, as are the ezio games, but i am only now grinding to finish valhalla despite pre ordering back in 2020, cause it was just so boring i gave up at the time. want to have the main story of it done before mirage comes out thou, but it's honestly a chore more than a pleasure.
Edit: and i gave in and bought a helix store armor set cause all the base game ones were so boring and ugly too
I can agree about the character models except male Eivor. He has a great design and his voice actor's performance is one of my favorite in the series.
In Valhalla, the actual Assassins Creed part was basically reduced to a side mission. Without a doubt, Black Flag was the best of the series.
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I think Odyssey is actually my favorite of the entire series. Idk what it was about it, but I just loved it so freakin much and sunk hours upon hours upon hours into it. It's honestly probably up there with some of my favorite games of all time, so I was reaaaally looking forward to Valhalla acting as a continuation, and improvement, of Odyssey, and was pretty damn disappointed with how different it was. It just felt slower overall, I didn't care for the Raids (in fact it felt entirely antithetical to what Assassin's Creed was originally, like at least for Odyssey you could stealth through all of the fortresses) and I found myself going back to replay Odyssey instead haha OR omg I'd actually play Valhalla simply bc I wanted to play Orlog...I spent a lot of hours playing Orlog.
Really great, concise video!
Odyssey was the best man..
Odyssey is in my top three favorite games of all time. And your opinion isn't unpopular because most people loved Odyssey... It was even a nominee for GOTY award going up against God of War.
Odyssey is the best one. IMO. It's definitely one of my favourite all time games.
My biggest issue with this game is that England looks nothing like England. I'm from Yorkshire, and in reality, Yorkshire looks nothing at all like the mountainous icy wilderness that Valhalla claims to be Yorkshire. It was a huge disappointment to me to get to the area I grew up in, and find no rolling hills and meadows of the Peak District and West Yorkshire, but instead a ridiculous mountainous hellscape that looks more like the American Rockies than the north of England.
As someone who hasn't really played any prior ac games and absolutely loves vikings, I had so much fun with this game. I'd say it's a game for me.
if u really LOVE Vikings then ull know that game not for u with tons of historical inaccurate details
@@brandoking412 you can love something whilst still accepting that fictional works based on it don't have to always be accurate
It took me awhile to come around to it but I really enjoyed my time with Valhalla. The story was pretty interesting (albeit a little too dragged out), it has the best combat out of the RPG trilogy, and I think it’s actually a good looking game. It’s not perfect but it’s not as bad as people like to make it.
Very true. Its a 7/10 good game, no other way to put it
I am still waiting for a real viking game. A game like Red dead redemption 2 where choices really effect the story. And the amount of detail rockstar put into the historical wild west is something i wish i could get for the history of my people. There are so many interesting stories to tell from the period. You can do a Vinland saga and focus on the meaningless of war and violence, or you could go into the explorer side of the vikings. They werent only barbarians you know.
Odyssey was my favorite AC tbh, liked the old ones too but something about Odyssey just really spoke to me with its setting and open world. Great video I knew I felt most of this about Valhalla but not precisely until I heard it put into words.
One of my reasons why I don’t like Valhalla and the rpg games. Is because the world is often too big, while often looking beautiful the traversal of the world often ends with some sort of auto traversal. Making me less likely to stop at a point of interest like I would in Ghost of Tsushima.
I'm totally with you. That was a rough one to get through. There's only so many fields of grass or patches of woods you can run through before you get bored. There was none of the locations like past games. The historical sites like Notre dam, the pyramids,spinx, statue of Athena. The story was kind of week. At the end you don't even get to kill the leader of the cult you have been taking out the whole game.
Haven't played Walhall, but have played all games before that. And I tend to agree with you.
Despite Odyssey and Origins being different, at least they stuck to their design choices which made for a fluid experience.
What you are showing and what I am getting from Walhall, is that they tried to mix old with new and it became a mess. I think the eagle vision is the most clear example of that.
My first 50 or so hours of this game were great. Then I realized I’d be doing the same exact shit for 100+ more hours
I got bad news for ya, you’ve been playing the same boring game for over when the first one come out? 15-20 years?
@@bobhope4949 they 2 completely different genres dummy
@@schafandbake3044 aren’t you just repeating what I said in a dumber way yet you call me dumb?
Having just recently actually played through Valhalla, you’re right about gear and loadouts, it’s completely redundant, I played the whole game with Varins axe and the original armour set.
Here’s what I’d say about the skill tree: zoom out, never look at it in detail.
Don’t grab a new node every time you get a skill point. Let them stack up until you can grab a new ability.
The small stat boosts are, as said, pointless, the abilities are the only thing that matters.
You summed up pretty much all my gripes about Valhalla and nailed almost all my praises for Odyssey.
i hate it when theres a barred door, and when u finally figure out how to get in, the chest was locked, you need to find the key, then that key has another barred door. its like 4 in 1 task for a trash equipment, this happen to me atleast 10 times during my 130+hr not so rushed playthrough, as a working gamer, i needed a good 2 years to play this on and off, by the time i finish the game, the story and plot didn't hit me anymore because ITS TOO LONG! some characters i don't even remember. this game has potential, but UBISOFT messed it up real bad. stop hiring these bloating, bland, puzzle insane hungry, developers. gosh
People who hate this game are stuck in the past. Play it as it is, for what it is without comparing it to past titles.
Why would they make it an assassin's creed game if they didn't want you to associate it with assassin's creed?
This is one of the most level headed reviews of this game that I ever saw and it perfectly encapsulates my feelings towards this game and why I dropped
Eh, it's a game for me. I got it around when it came out, just pirated it, and played it for about a week until I forgot about it. I didn't really focus much on the story, though it seemed substantial and interesting, I was mostly just focused on building up the settlement, raiding the brits and taking supplies, etc. That was all fun for me, the new features and mechanics they added were very fun, and I appreciated the much simpler boat gameplay that was incredibly addictive for me. It's a good game, I don't understand the hate on it
I may be one of the few but I think Origins is their best game
I think that is a solid take, I’ve heard a lot of people say that. Generally AC2, Black Flag, and Origins are the ones I usually see at the top.
I love AC Valhalla it's to me fun and so much u can do, long story many killings side quests etc love love love
i had a bad feeling about valhalla from the start and i only bought it when it was on a holiday sale with 50% off and on a whim... and even with that, i have serious buyer's remorse, lol
It is a game for me. Big RPG viking game with tons of weapons, abilities, powers and world to explore. It is good RPG game.
This is the best most spot on review I've ever seen/heard. The parkour, empty world, and cut and paste cities with the same exact stuff in every city are just horrible. How did they manage to build such a massive game with literally nothing in it lol
I think one of the combat things that irks me just a bit is that most of eivor’s finisher animations involve pulling out a completely different smaller axe rather than having more cool ones for your equipped weapon