Review: ASSASSIN'S CREED VALHALLA Reaches For The Heavens
Axes, the bitter chilling cold of the north, and brotherhood connections that run deeper than blood are all great things to come from Norse mythology and entertainment. Assassin‘s Creed Valhalla delivers on all these parts with a few unexpected treats and unfortunate mishaps.
Just like God of War did a few years ago, the Assassin‘s Creed franchise has headed north into the snowy tundra of Norse mythology. Between battle axes, drinking contests, and brutal barbarians, players will and can thoroughly enjoy a strong story of Vikings from beginning to end. Our main character, Eivor, is tough, intelligent, and brutal when it comes to physical or mental capacity. She, or he, is a well-rounded character and fun to play as. I think I would’ve enjoyed some stronger personality quirks, which you can have as you choose certain abilities or branching choices, but they just aren’t impactful enough or diverse enough to make Eivor a memorable character.
The open-world is on par what we would expect and want from this frozen, Ubisoft world. Fun and interesting side quests, entertaining mini-games, and challenges are mixed in with NPC’s that have strong personalities and feel more involved in your life than usual. The only problem that I found with this open-world is that I feel like I didn’t do anything revolutionary or mildly diverse from previous entries. Yes, Viking rap-dis battles (as I call them), a cool dice game, and expansive exploration are great, but the formula is getting to be a little predictable. The similarity to other open-world titles doesn’t detract from the game, but it does add to the feeling that I’m playing the same game over and over again with some different weapons, abilities, and characters.
The customization and upgrade system for Eivor probably one of the game’s stronger points. There are three main skill trees that players will upgrade to give your character passive and active abilities and enhancements. I wish that we could see a little farther into these trees so we know in which branches to invest. Points can be reallocated, but it can be time-consuming. I also wish there were more abilities in general; battle combos and stuff like that. Early on, combat can feel a little stale, so more abilities, and getting them a little quicker would have been great for pacing. The three branching trees can be used for stealth, ranged, or melee combat. Why can’t I use skill points to enhance my general stats like movement speed, stamina, and or luck in finding treasure? Yes, we do get some forms of upgrades, but I would have loved a utility branch/tree to allocate my abilities. More diversity in gameplay experience and more impactful choices could’ve come about by a dedicated utility skill tree, instead of all of it being about combat.
The last things to address here are all the issues with Assassin‘s Creed Valhalla. I can say right now that this is a great game. It’s lots of fun, the depth of the story, combat, and world are really engaging, more than previous Assassin’s Creed games have been for me. However, the bugs and general lack of polish eats at the game’s quality. When serious cut scenes have walls popping in and out of place or intense battles are bogged down by people getting caught behind geometry, it can really break the experience. I was never distraught and the aggressive auto-save system never left me very far from where a problem would happen, but there was still more issues than there should be from a title as big as this.
The other main issue that I have with Valhalla is that it feels like this is an extremely vanilla game. As interesting or brutal as the story is or as fun and deep as combat or exploration are, it feels like every other game that I played that has the “open-world” feature slapped onto it. I understand how much of an achievement in gaming this is and how great it is as an experience, but it just feels overdone or almost unnecessary. I know this is an odd complaint, but it feels like reading a book or watching a movie that has the exact same scenes and sequences but with different characters, weapons, and locations.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is everything and a little bit more than you would expect from an Assassin‘s Creed game. So, those who enjoy the franchise will thoroughly enjoy the combat, exploration, and sprawling story. And I’m sure anybody else that picks up the game will have a lot of fun with it, but it just seems to be missing engaging innovations and suffers from a few too many technical snags.
