I don’t have a dope quote or anything cute like that to start off this review. I’d have to actually scour through all the vapid dialogue to even attempt to find one that would be even remotely neat or memorable.
This is the worst Assassin’s Creed game. It’s honestly not even a competition. This game is borderline worthless and fails at almost everything that it sets out to do.





Are you here for Eivor’s “Raven Saga”? An epic tale of Vikings taking over Medieval England and pacifying it from the clutches of the Saxon King Aelfred? Well, if you think a vapid 60 hours long pseudo political narrative about as deep as a kid’s pool featuring disposable and generic characters that get dropped or killed off at the drop of a hat because that’s how much they matter in the long run, then sure yeah maybe you’ll get what you want here.
Are you here for, you know, “Assassin’s Creed”? Well, I’m very glad to tell you that this game does indeed feature the Hidden Ones, which automatically make this game a “return to roots” according to some. It’s very epic to have Hytham and Basim around, 2 Hidden One companions. The former being a schmuck who doesn’t do anything in the entire game outside of telling Eivor to do literally all his work for him, while the latter is a borderline incomprehensible schizo who’s barely in the game, has absolutely nothing of interesting to say or add and turns out to be maybe the stupidest and most obvious twist villain of all time.
Are you here for a fun video game that feels nice to play and has a very cool open world to explore like Odyssey? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you bro because this game plays like ass, controls like a boulder and has the most uninteresting setting in the series by a colossal margin.


I could legit end the review then and there since I believe it’s already a perfectly understandable summary on why this game is a colossal turd that easily signals the death of this series. I’m not even mad honestly, 11 games that I really like is a great run when you think about it. However, it is impressive how this game’s conclusion leaves no room for any hopes towards the future. Let’s get into it a bit more deeply, shall we? I’m not going spoiler free for once because honestly, I don’t care and you shouldn’t either. This narrative is not worth worrying about spoilers and I want to dissect its utter insanity.


Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the 12th game in the AC series. It’s the final chapter in the RPG Trilogy of games, following up on the events of both AC Origins (Past section takes place after Bayek and Ahmunet forming the Hidden Ones) and AC Odyssey (Present section follows Layla Hassan for one last time as the world begins to collapse like in AC3, forcing her alongside Rebecca and Shawn to find a way to stop the catastrophe once again with the power of the Staff of Hermes passed on by Alexios).


I’m gonna go over some of the overall positives first since there really aren’t many this time.


The leveling system from the previous 2 games has been replaced by the power system. This basically exists to cut down level grinding alongside a revised and more streamlined gear loot cycle. It does indeed work and makes the need for level grinding almost nonexistent while also allowing you to feasibly fight underleveled and still have a fair shot at winning (well most of the time). It’s a good change even if it ultimately led me to pretty much not touching this game’s side-quest offerings. However, the devs were probably aware about that fact since the side-quests in this game were pretty much reduced to few minutes long one-off events instead of the beefier short narratives of the previous 2 games. The writing for those most likely got transferred to the Arc system which I will get into later.
The Bayek letter and the Desmond audio files are easily the best parts of the game. 3 audios that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual story of the game. Speaks volumes but they are beautifully written and voiced acted by Abubakar Salim and Nolan North.
This game is pretty, I cannot deny that.
Some gameplay additions like the slide and action wheel are almost useless but they are still welcome.
I like flyting and fishing, easily the most fun side-activities.

Yea that’s all the nice things I have to say. Let’s get into the meat of it.

The gameplay of this game is awful. It is stiff, janky and just not fun at all. Eivor moves like a fucking boulder even after upgrading her mobility and the combat is a tumor half-breed between Origins and Odyssey that just fucking sucks.
The longboat is easily the worst addition tho, what a tacky gimmick. It’s a glorified horse that you sometimes have to use to traverse the rivers of England. There’s no naval combat or anything interesting involved, it’s just letting that shit travel on autopilot to your destination and taking a piss break ig. Same goes for the horses because the number of times I just let mine go on auto to my destination because that shit was super fucking far away in this bloated ass map while I played a gatcha on my phone or something is actually not even funny.
Climbing and traversal feel even worse than in the previous 2 games somehow, it’s floaty and stiff at the same time somehow shit’s actually awful.
I think the whole mentality of looking at games in bad faith by saying “you’re just doing the same thing over and over again” is pretty dumb because you can legit break any game down like that but GOOD GOD, I have never played a game that made me think about how I’m just wasting my time doing the same fucking formulaic shit over and over again for 50+ hours more than this piece of shit.
TLDR; Gameplay garbage.

What about the story?
To which I respond: WHAT STORY?

This game took me 60 hours and I can confidently say if it was around 5 hours long you could achieve the exact same narrative.

Eivor’s character has next to 0 progression until the final HOUR of the game. The main characters that should drive the narrative like Sigurd or Basim DISAPPEAR FOR OVER 30 HOURS AND THEN COME BACK TO STAY FOR LESS THAN ONE. It is such a fucking achievement in storytelling incompetence that it’s astounding.
To break down this narrative into a sentence: Eivor and her brother Sigurd travel from Norway to England in search of Glory.

That’s literally it. Along the way Sigurd ends up learning about the ancient civilization and becoming obsessed with it while Eivor struggles with her place in this story as someone who seeks glory but is always second fiddle to her brother. They develop a convoluted hostile relationship with time since Sigurd fears that Eivor wants to hog all the glory for her which makes no sense because at no point does she ever try to do that in the whole game. After 58 hours the game has its climax where they just say fuck it and rip-off the ending of the hit visual novel euphoria. Sigurd and Eivor make amends and decide true glory can’t be physically everlasting, what matters is what you leave behind (admittedly the only nice narrative beat of the game which I did get some enjoyment out of). Then after that nice sequence they get confronted by Basim for some reason and you fight the worst final boss in video game history (NARRATIVELY AND IN THE CONTEXT OF GAMEPLAY), concluding the past narrative.
After that in modern day, Layla’s story comes to an end. A story that had absolutely no roadmap or coherence about a character I barely know outside of the OPTIONAL EMAILS AND FILES YOU CAN READ ON HER COMPUTER DURING THE 3 RPG GAMES. About 30 minutes of the most stupid and idiotic sci-fi jargon and bullshit ensue which is legit just not even worth trying to explain because one of the plot points is STRAIGHT OUT OF FUCKING FATE/EXTELLA.
Desmond is alive and is actually a God who keeps the multiverse in balance (I’M NOT FUCKING JOKING), I guess? Layla is now also a God who helps Desmond, I guess? Basim is in modern day now, I guess? Basim is a sage, I guess? Basim is very clearly going to sabotage the modern-day assassins, I guess? Does any of this mean anything? It does, it signals that the series is officially dead.
The shark wasn’t jumped, the shark got launched straight into space. None of this makes any sense and has absolutely no narrative weight or value. Remember when the animus was just a machine that could read the memories of your ancestors? Now we’re on some straight up Matrix Reloaded bullshit that has absolutely no place in this franchise.
And after all that you still have ONE MORE POST-GAME ARC FOR SOME REASON.
Eivor fights King Aelfred with all her allies, he dips off-screen, bunch of Eivor’s buddies get killed off for cheap shock value. Peak storytelling.
Once that’s done you can go kill all the members of the Order of the Ancients if you want which leads to the 4th ending scene of the game where King Aelfred reveals himself as the mastermind of the Order of Ancients who actually manipulated Eivor to destroy them from inside out in order to give birth to the Templars, this would be cool if I cared about any of this ig.

What a fucking shitshow of a story.
And you may be wondering “But Doti there’s literally a 50+ hour long chunk of the game you just glossed over like it doesn’t matter!”

YEAH, BECAUSE IT DOESN’T.

YOU SPEND 90% OF THE STORY COMPLETING THIS GAME’S “STORY ARCS” WHICH ARE LITERALLY GLORIFIED SIDE-QUESTS THAT VARY FROM BAD TO BORING TO DECENT AT BEST. YOU ARE FORCED TO DO ALL OF THEM WHO 98% OF THE TIME DO NOT MOVE THE GRANDER STORY IN ANY WAY. IT’S FUCKING ASS.

Characters? Idk, Eivor is decent and she has her moments of shine during the 2% of the story where they actually give her something to do. Sigurd is fine. I liked Ivarr and Ceolbert for the few hours they were in it. Hytham was there. Basim is the worst antagonist of all time. I think those are my thoughts, idk I’m kinda tired of even talking about them.

Music? I remember like 2 tracks and I swear they literally just played this one track the whole time in the overworld. Main theme is good that’s it.

Setting? Boring and lame, game being pretty doesn’t make up for it. Big open fields of nothing and 0 tree traversal in an Assassin’s Creed game that mostly takes place in the woods.



Idk this game is both a nothing burger and the most egregious piece of shit of all time. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what made Assassin’s Creed work in the first place and above all, just a shitty game in its own right. Easily one of the most worthless games ever made and one I cannot recommend in any capacity. A melancholic way to end this journey but having the 12th game fumble after 11 good runs is definitely still a very commendable legacy.

This is a standard review of the vanilla Valhalla game. For a comprehensive breakdown of the title as a whole, please see:
https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368458/

For the first DLC, Wrath of the Druids, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368450/

For the second DLC, The Siege of Paris, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368452/

For the third DLC, Dawn of Ragnarök, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368455/

For the final story DLC, The Last Chapter, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368457/

In a lot of ways, it’s hard not to see Assassin’s Creed Valhalla as the video game equivalent of The Rise of Skywalker. Both were the final entries in a sequel trilogy attempting to conclude said trilogy’s story whilst redressing complaints fans had had towards their immediate predecessor. With Skywalker, that was of course The Last Jedi, while here it’s AC Odyssey and so, to give some brief thoughts on that game to indicate my originating mindset, I overall enjoyed it and believe it to be a worthy entry of the franchise. While I’ve been with this series since ACII, I do not hold a purist attitude towards the RPG or Ancient (both misnomers FYI+) or whatever you want to call it trio that sprung from the ashes of Unity and Syndicate’s fiscal failures.

That said, there were decisions I definitely did not agree with, but, even if I shared all the views of those pre-Origins detractors, the reality is Ubisoft would not have had to listen to us. Both Origins and Odyssey were, by all reported measures, huge successes, especially in comparison to Rogue, Unity, and Syndicate, and that lucrativeness tends to result in minority criticisms getting ignored, no matter how valid they are.

Yet, to my delight. Ubisoft did the opposite.

I know it’s become popular in casual discourse to trash Ubisoft, however, in this particular area at least, they deserve immense praise for willingly listening to EVERY part of their fanbase WITHOUT needing an external incentive to do so. What do I mean by this? When you look at other properties that have adapted criticism from a sect of their audience, it’s always been due to a financial dip: WWII and Modern Warfare came about because of diminished sales from Infinite Warfare; the aforementioned Rise of Skywalker from Last Jedi making ~$700 million less than Force Awakens; Breath of the Wild from Skyward Sword selling half as many units as Twilight Princess, etc…etc…

In AC’s case, those critiques largely concerned the removal and/or diminishment of social stealth, one-hit KO assassinations, the modern-day, parkour, and Assassins, as well as the inclusion of level-gating, extraneous loot, and repetitive side activities. And guys, it honestly warms my heart to say that Valhalla literally addresses 90% of these. If you were following the development of the game from the get-go this may not have come as a surprise: like I stated earlier, Valhalla was marketed as the end of an era, and to commemorate the occasion, Ubisoft brought back key personnel who had had prior involvement with some of the most popular releases of the OG era, including Creative Director Ashraif Ismail (Black Flag), writer Darby McDevitt (Revelations, Black Flag), composer Jesper Kyd (the Ezio Collection), and many others I’m sure played a large role behind-the-scenes. During the marketing phase, McDevitt asserted the game would act as a “capper” for events of yore, and while Ismail was canned for an adultery scandal, the hype nonetheless soared as demos showcased classic AC gameplay.

Of course, Valhalla couldn’t be a complete return-to-form. The large successes of Origins and Odyssey proved the profitableness of the RPG formula (plus the introduction of numerous new fans), and so the question that remains is how well does the game balance the two systems? Well, if you’ve been on any forums, you’ve no doubt heard a medley of opinions ranging from good to bad, but, as I’m with the former camp, I hope my review does a solid job elucidating why you should agree as well.

Odyssey’s present-day left things on an unstable note. Layla had been granted more screen time and characterization at the expense of her morality: in her quest to understand the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, she killed a fellow cell member whilst sparing the life of recent antagonist Otso Berg (whose fate is not ascertained). It’s no secret Layla was never really investable as a protagonist- her inclusion in Origins felt misplaced and intrusive, and having her meddle with Isu Artifacts in Odyssey like an idiot didn’t do much to mend that. As such, there was a lot of pressure on Darby to succeed on several fronts where previous writers had failed: resolve Layla’s qualms, wrap-up her storyline, and, most importantly, make her likable. To do this, McDevitt and his team implemented two initiatives that are honestly quite genius in retrospect. The first is a minor retcon wherein it turns out Layla was being cognitively-influenced by the Caduceus to act out aggressively -- not only did this harken back to Desmond’s stabbing of Lucy in Brotherhood, but it also gave Layla a bit of a Greek tragedy overlay wherein she was being manipulated by the Gods to do their bidding. Victimhood is often a surefire method of garnering immediate sympathy, and I can definitely say I actually felt for Layla whenever she reflected on what transpired before.

The second is bringing back Shaun & Rebecca, two characters I’ve always referred to as the C-3PO and R2-D2 of the franchise due to their buddy relationship and longstanding presence in the games. Layla’s colleagues from Origins and Odyssey weren’t bad by any means, however there’s no denying they lacked the chemistry, humor, and three-dimensionality that Desmond’s group had, which was always going to be detrimental given the short amount of time the MD had to make an impression. That McDevitt naturally inserts Layla into this pre-established duo without breaking up their camaraderie is admirable on its own merits, however, it’s the throwback feel he manages to evoke from assembling them together that deserves real praise. It’s hard to describe, but I honestly couldn’t help feeling nostalgic seeing Layla interact with the two; it brought to mind those times from ACII and Brotherhood wherein you were pulled out of the Animus and had a chance to catch-up with the rest of the gang, usually hearing some hilarious dialogue in the process.

McDevitt further fixes the MD by bringing back its grandiose scope via the inclusion of a new planetary threat. To give some background information for you newbies, after haphazardly wrapping up the original storyline with ACIII, Ubisoft had no idea what to do next in the 21st century: they saw the appeal of the series was in its historical escapades, yet knew the framing device of the MD/Animus was too integral to remove. I fleshed out my thoughts on the decision surrounding Desmond’s fate in my ACIII retrospective, but that notwithstanding, the fallout from it was degrading the modern Brotherhood to essentially glorified treasure hunters over the time-traveling rebels Desmond and co. occupied. In Valhalla, the world-ending stakes are back, and while having yet another Earth-threatening plot device seems lazy ala Force Awakens rehashing the Death Star, there’s more to it than meets the eye (as you’ll see later when you play the game).

The diminishment of the Brotherhood in Origins and Odyssey was, as stated earlier, a major point of contention with fans (understandable - a series called Assassin’s Creed should focus on the Assassins). Luckily I absolutely loved what McDevitt and co. did with them in Valhalla. My favorite AC opening behind Origins’ has always been Black Flag’s due to it showcasing the Assassins as they would appear to an outsider: brooding, stoic, and containing an aura of mystery, and you get that tenfold here with Basim and his acolyte Hytham- he joined Sigurd on his worldly journeys for reasons that don’t seem convincing. From closely advising Sigurd to gifting Eivor the Hidden Blade (amidst protests from Hytham), it’s blatantly clear that Basim is using the Vikings for some greater purpose, and these ulterior motives underlying his actions highlight a secondary facet worth noting - the respect for lore past.

By all accounts, ever since Corey May and Patrice Desilets left Ubisoft, there has not been a real loremaster at the company, leading to artifact inconsistencies (i.e., the Precursor Boxes), mass proliferation of Pieces of Eden, and the admonishment of Assassin morale. While the first two can at least be explained away under some retcon, it’s the latter that has always affected me because a nicety from ACI through Brotherhood was the Assassins retaining a degree of ethical clarity. Yes, they were effectively terrorists, and yes the Templars had a greyness around their own actions, but there was never any doubt that the Assassins were the preferred solution.

Starting with Revelations, things started to tiptoe into an ends justify the means subset that seemed unstable in comparison to before: you had Assassins committing mass murder (Revelations), Assassins working with pirates (Black Flag), Assassins doing favors for imperialists and pedophiles (Unity), and Assassins launching gang wars in the open streets (Syndicate). I do like a good many of those games, however there’s no denying that, by becoming entrenched in sequelitis, Ubisoft missed the mark on the core tenets of the brotherhood.

At the outset, Valhalla had a chance of falling into this same trap. After all, this is a game about bloodthirsty vikings who burn monasteries and want to subjugate England, and having a sect dedicated to the preservation of free will allying themselves with such sordid peoples would’ve come across as odd at best. Thankfully, while Hytham (based on later convos) genuinely believes Eivor’s Clan to be honorable compared to the Order of the Ancients, Basim holding alternative plans gives a valid reason for the Hidden Ones putting aside their moral compass in aiding the Drengr.

Tutorials are interwoven organically into Valhalla’s intro as well (an impressive feat considering these games are meant to appeal to newcomers), which brings us to the gameplay. Assassin’s Creed has always been built on three pillars: combat, stealth, and parkour. Since Unity, there have been multiple attempts at revamping the combat mechanics of the series, and when it came time for the RPG trilogy, an even greater shift was made from paired animations to hitbox- no longer were you worrying about constant counters from enemies, it was now about evading strikes and knocking their health bar down. In Origins, this worked out like standard fencing: the goal was to keep your distance and jab when your opponent left himself open. In Odyssey, courtesy of the (dumb) removal of shields and increased emphasis on abilities, a more hack-and-slash schematic was implemented wherein the goal was to now pummel-and-dodge until your adrenaline meter built-up, allowing a massive attack.

In Valhalla, it’s about overpowering your adversaries through strategic maneuvers, from breaking defenses via heavy blows to shattering exposed weak points with arrows. However, to prevent players from spamming heavy strikes (or endlessly dodge-rolling like before), a stamina meter has been implemented that depletes the more you do either move. The only way to rejuvenate it is to either take a breather or successfully gore a thug with a light attack, meaning you now have an incentive to use lighter strikes over heavier ones besides their superior speed. Abilities are back (much more-grounded this time around), and similar to Odyssey, there is an encouragement on growing your stamina to utilize them in a hairy situation; however, they’re never necessary for succeeding, turning them into a tool more than anything (and yes, that’s a good thing).

Of the three games’ combat systems, I probably had the most fun with Valhalla’s- not only do you have a good balance between light/heavy/parrying/dodge, but the bosses, in particular, come from the Dark Souls school of requiring smarts over simple lacerations. That said, there are two big flaws: one, regular enemies (which make up most encounters) become quite easy to chop down once your power level is sufficiently high (to be fair, I suppose that’s a standard for most RPGs), and two, there isn’t a cap on archery -- it’s so easy to simply gain some distance and spam arrows/longe range abilities in the middle of a fight, meaning tougher archetypes like the Goliaths, Zealots and majority of minibosses are rendered less effective. Having bowing deplete stamina instead of rejuvenating it would’ve resolved this easily.

When it comes to stealth, it should be noted that, upon release, Valhalla had a broken apparatus apparently akin to ACIII’s. In the months following, two patches were sent-out that, based on my experience, have alleviated those qualms, though from what I understand, the patches were either never released to PC ports or were ultimately ineffective. So Master Race adherents, please keep that in mind.

For fellow console peasants, stealth is pretty fun. In the wild, you’ve got heaps of grass patches to skulk around in, whistle, and snipe from afar. One change I appreciated is hitting an enemy amongst a group doesn’t immediately highlight your presence like it did in Origins, so long as you get back into cover. The largest drawback to the stealth is that, going off what I stated earlier, tools have been completely replaced with abilities- if you want to poison someone, set something ablaze, distract with your raven, or place a far-off explosive, you’re going to have to waste stamina doing it, which takes away from the Assassin portion for sure.

As noted in the introduction, Valhalla made waves for two things: bringing back the one-hit KO Hidden Blade (accomplished via a minigame or menu change if you’re a scrub), as well as social stealth. This might be controversial to say, however I genuinely think this version of social stealth is the third best in the franchise behind Brotherhood and Syndicate, even being utilized better than the entirety of the Kenway Saga. You’ll frequently enter cities and communities dubbed “mistrust zones” which Eivor will cloak himself in, but that cloak doesn’t make you invisible unless you happen to find some monks. It’s a lot like ACI in that, one, you can’t blend in with everyone, and two, that guards have detection meters that set-off depending on how close you are to them/if you’re acting out-of-line: walk like a normal human being (helped by the garment deliberately slowing your speed) and they won’t pay you much attention; dart or climb about and you’ll get some stares. Blending activities are strewn throughout these scapes to allow in-plain-sight hiding as soldiers walk by you, and plenty of drunks somber about to manipulate as distractions. The one thing that would’ve really improved Valhalla is if they added more assassination takedowns. Maybe I’m spoiled by ACIII and Unity, which had these in abundance, but it gets kind of tiring seeing Eivor perform the same 2-3 knifings every murder. Considering all the distinct hiding spots, it would’ve been cool to be able to do a unique takedown in place of a standard stab.

Parkour is, sadly, pretty garbage. It’s no secret Ubisoft moved to an inferior system in Origins out of a desire to emphasize open world exploration over traversable cities, but with Valhalla, it’s bizarre because they’ve actually reverted to the old design style, yet complimented it with what is arguably the worst parkour in the history of the franchise. See, places like Lunden, Jorvik, and Wincestre are built like classic AC metropolises, with interconnected buildings and direct pathways for Eivor to dash about on, and when it’s working right the traceuring (horizontal-wise at least) is smooth. But they’ve made this weird push-button assignment that both feels needlessly complicated and prevents you from mastering progressment the way you could in past AC games -- you click the joystick to run, push the joystick to freerun, hold A to parkour/climb/auto-leap short distances, and double tap A to jump. Perhaps they were attempting to emulate the Ezio versions, which had dedicated digital prompts for jumping, running, and parkour (compared to the Kenway Saga, wherein things were simplified to two buttons), however, there were only three there compared to the four here, and it was also more ergonomic (clicking the joystick in Valhalla just isn’t as functional as pressing a tab).

Still, I would’ve been able to tolerate this had the parkour algorithm been consistent with what it recognizes as pure freerun vs. ascension, but you’ll often find yourself accidentally clambering-up columns or other installations that you would’ve thought traversable with the standard A button.

Vertical movement is worse. Once Eivor has begun his shimmying he turns into glue, unable to detach, drop down, or manually climb-leap to the top (an inconsistent one technically exists, but you’ll see why it’s inconsistent when you play). Your sole recourse is to either finish your trek or auto-descent netherward until you’re within range for a drop-off. Valhalla, to its credit, does retain the side lunge from Unity, as well as a standard back eject (the latter only if you have another structure in range), and I did appreciate them giving Eivor’s model weight akin to Arno, but these are ultimately small potatoes against an inherently-downgraded system.

Besides the pillars, a semi-staple of the series sees its resuscitation in Valhalla: the settlement. To elucidate the history for you newbies, settlements have been a recurrent aspect of AC, albeit one not as stringent as hardcore fans would lead you to believe. Yes, every AC game save Origins featured a home base of some type, but the vast majority were never used for anything substantive: Alamut Castle was a simple set with nothing inside; the Villa Auditore a glorified armory; Tiber Island a place only for Assassin ceremonies; Black Flag’s Great Inagua and Rogue’s Fort Arsenal utterly meaningless; Revelations’s bureaus, Unity’s Cafe Theater, Syndicate’s Train a spawn point for missions; and the Adrestia just a ship.

You’ll notice I omitted one entry, and that was of course the Davenport Homestead from ACIII. It was the first time an Assassin HQ actually felt like a real, lived-in place: you had tons of NPCs, plenty of missions/optional dialogue based around their presence, in-game challenges, and an economic boon via trade convoys. It formulated a template I’m saddened none of its sequels expanded upon.

Well, on the plus side Ravensthorpe is a valiant attempt at crafting a meaningful estate, even if it never reaches its greatest potential. It combines the renovation system from Brotherhood, civilian presence of ACIII, and mission generating of the Cafe Theater into a single hacienda. You start and finish all your story missions here, construct/upgrade new buildings to unlock sidequests, and can even activate a feast buff to temporarily boost your attributes. Despite these facets, I can’t say I got particularly attached to Ravensthorpe, and that has to do with a couple of reasons: one, because it’s more of a springboard for your adventures, you don’t spend much time in the actual area; and two, it ails from Unity problem of repetitive AI. What I mean is, every time you enter the place, you’ll see the exact same animations play-out: the same kids running up to you, the same crew members marching from the docks, the same animals lolling about, etc….and that’s ultimately immersion-killing. As much as people hate the Almanac of the Common Man from ACIII, it at least underlined an amazing feat from that game, which was the radiant-esque AI of the homesteaders, and I wish a similar coding had been programmed here.

Anyway, it’s high time we spoke on the story. Valhalla’s main campaign may be confusing to some because it adopts a method of storytelling new to the AC franchise (and mainstream titles as a whole): arcs. Prior games operated on a modus I refer to as “Acts” which, to quote my ACII review, are similar to Arcs in that they’re set around a new threat, but differ in terms of not being standalone. That’s not to say that Valhalla’s arcs are completely unrelated to the other (in fact, several continue/reference events from prior ones); however, they definitively have a beginning, middle, and end, allowing you to complete them without feeling like you’re ending on a cliffhanger. The process generally follows as depicted: Eivor will consult Sigurd’s wife Randvi about a territory, learn of its predicaments/politics, pledge to obtain their allegiance, resolve whatever qualms exist, and then return and confirm with Randvi that the deed is done. Rinse and repeat.

Now, this format has led to accusations that Valhalla is full of filler, and it’s one of those things I both agree and disagree with, though even my agreements are laced with provisos. If we were to condense the arcs under themes, Valhalla has four overarching storylines: Kingmaker, Order of the Ancients, Asgard, and Sigurd. Kingmaker has you running all over England forging those aforestated alliances, Order eliminating members of the proto-Templars, Asgard reliving memories of the Norse Gods (more on that later), and Sigurd’s a combination of all three, albeit one which trails continuously throughout Valhalla’s runtime.

In fictional storytelling, especially AAA releases, audiences are used to conventional chronicling wherein event A goes to B to C to D ad nauseam. Because of this mindset, it’s my theory that conventional gamers appropriated the Sigurd thread as Valhalla’s primary campaign, and I don’t blame them: Sigurd was a major figure in the intro and the whole reason Eivor departed to England in the first place. Eivor’s purpose is to serve his adopted sibling, and given the recurring nature of the man in the story, at first glance it would appear Ubisoft agreed.

However, upon closer inspection, I do think Valhalla is more experimental than that given that progressment, even in Sigurd’s sections, is primarily reliant on the formation of those dutiful liaisons since Eivor utilizes them to aid his sibling (more on that later). The reason I consider this approach experimental is because, in mainstream releases, you usually get the opposite. Think about it: in other games, the A plot is a singular strand which lasts uninterrupted whilst side content occupies shorter bursts of self-contained tales; in Valhalla, though, the self-contained tales pull double-duty as autonomous contes AND building blocks for the development of Eivor and Sigurd’s relationship.

But that begs the earlier inquiry of is this filler? If the player has to do these elongated set pieces to advance the A plot, did Valhalla’s writers fall prey to the scourge of shōnen anime? Again, not to dodge the question, but the answer is somewhere in the middle. For me, if I’m going to label something as filler, it needs to contain two components: one, have no importance to the macro, and two, not be referenced in postliminary scenarios. I theorize the reason critics have championed this accusation is because Valhalla’s non-Sigurd arcs are largely deficient in the latter, which is what most people look for when gauging continuity. However, it is not zero sum, and, more importantly, contains the former in spades. We’ve already established that Sigurd’s storyline, itself, is not completely independent due to it being tied to the Raven Clan’s confederacies/the brothers’ connections to the Old Gods. As such, by having dedicated individualized chapters to both those threads, you avoid falling into filler territory by my definition.

Still, I am sympathetic to the quibbles, and definitely agree that more connecting tissue should’ve been implemented to guide players from arc-to-arc, and I honestly feel these problems derive from Valhalla’s wish to be open-ended. This is a game that wants you to do certain beats in a certain order whilst concurrently providing a freedomic approach towards said objectives a la A Link to the Past. Unfortunately, in a story-driven enterprise with recurrent characters, you can’t exactly have that because it interrupts the flow, which is the dilemma gamers no doubt faced here. Thus, to alleviate this for future players, my suggestion is to do what I did, which is, well, role-play. Imagine why Eivor would want to embark on Y next as opposed to Z. Trust me when I say it’ll go a long way towards making your experience a lot more enjoyable. Valhalla is a ROLE-PLAYING game, so technically such a tactic isn’t out of the left field. However, I understand this isn’t a legitimate answer to the qualm of the arcs not being strongly-tied together, which is why I said the answer is ultimately muddled.

Tl;dr, I don’t think the absence of narratorial links make the non-Sigurd arcs filler, but it definitely hurts the pacing unless you do some imagineatory gymnastics on your part.

With regards to the quality of the story itself, I did enjoy the majority of arcs, but I can’t deny Valhalla falls very hard in terms of concocting satisfying finales for the bulk of its aforementioned story threads: of them, only the MD and Order of the Ancients get fulfilling conclusions, while the Sigurd, Kingmaker, and Asgard slices are left wholly anticlimactic, and it’s a shame, because if they had nailed those sections, this might have gone down as my favorite AC: the breaks between arcs allow you to pace yourself at will, the world gorgeous (more on that later), and the side activities enjoyable.

I’d actually like to speak on the Order of the Ancients subplot, both because it relates to the overarching Assassin/Templar conflict of the series, and because it’s something you should complete after beating the other threads (lest you risk incurring a bug). Valhalla semi-models this questline after the Cult of Kosmos from Odyssey wherein you have to hunt down members across England. Odyssey had 42 individuals: here you’ve got 45, divided into 15 zealots, 29 adherents, and 1 Grand Maegester. In Odyssey, I found the cult system to be rather basic, consisting of you doing very arbitrary tasks that somehow added up to uncovering a persona’s identity, and unfortunately that same framework has been carried over to Valhalla (a shame considering a mini-sleuth subplot involving actual detective work could be intriguing if Ubisoft ever dedicated more time to fleshing out the parameters).

Alas, we have to deal with the reality in our stead, and the system here has, at least, been slightly improved upon. For starters, 13 of the members are encountered during the various arcs, and no clues are required to deduce the Zealots, meaning only 16 have to be tracked down separately. Secondly, there are three checkboxes per member, compared to Odyssey where it was around 5 (IIRC), making it much easier to finish (England being smaller than Europe doesn’t hurt either). Finally, and this is admittedly more of an aesthetic change than anything, but every single Order individual (including the Zealots) has a Confession scene, which, at least for me, gave an extra incentive to hunt them down. Confessions have of course been a tradition of the series (save Unity and Odyssey), and while the non-story members don’t have the same production value as their narratorial counterparts, it was still nice being able to witness an inner dialogue between them and Eivor.

Years after the base game came out, Ubisoft finally sent everyone The Last Chapter, a free DLC meant to provide proper closure to Eivor’s storyline (that was personally overseen by Darby compared to the other expansions). Obviously see my link at the top of this review to hear my comprehensive thoughts, but in short I’ll say it’s fine for what it was -- a free low-budget expansion cobbled together by Ubisoft to officially cap Valhalla’s years of post-launch support (more on that later). It addresses several problems I had with the finales, but also leaves a lot to be desired.

As you have all of England at your fingertips, so too are you provided hours-upon-hours of excursions to partake in. First up is your conventional treasure hunting that has accompanied AC games since the flags of yesteryear: Valhalla has notably done away with the looter shooter schematic of Origins and Odyssey in favor of unique outfits and weapons. Upgrading these requires resources, from precious metals to your standard materials, and all three caches are located in chests peppered across the map. One of the more unique things Valhalla does is hide these crates behind obstacles, requiring you to solve a mini-puzzle of sorts to acquire them. Now, I’ve heard a lot of complaints regarding this system, stating that it adds unnecessary redundancy to the scavenging, and I generally disagree. For starters, it makes sense that goodies would actually be hidden (and beats the post-ACII system of simply placing guards everywhere). Secondly, while some of them are needlessly elongated in the sense that the solution is to simply dart around the side of the building ala TLOU2, the majority are actually pretty dang clever and require proper reconnaissance. They do get repetitive in the sense that the same barrier schemes are redone ad nauseam (i.e., the same bars, same explodable walls, etc…), but because it isn’t necessary to constantly upgrade armor the way it was in the prior RPG games (more on that later), you never have to force yourself to find them anyway.

Artifacts are the second type of collectible and they’re generally unconcealed compared to treasure, though a number of pieces do lie behind similar barricades. There are five variants: hoard maps, which display chests in the vicinity; Roman masks, which can be traded in for settlement cosmetics; flying tattoo papers, which, like the Almanac Pages and shanties from prior entries, need to be chased down a parkour course; Rigsogur Fragments, or generic lore entries, and finally Cursed Sites, the most disappointing substance in the game. At first glance they seem cool- you enter an area, hear some rumblings, and finally your screen gets all shadowy like the Black Suit shimmering in Spider-Man 3. You’re told the place is haunted and asked to end the curse; sounds thrilling right? Well, you’ll quickly realize that nothing bad happens while you’re on this hallowed ground, the sensorial stimuli being surface-level effects and the grand solution merely to destroy a single relic. A letdown for sure.

Overall, the artifacts are fine. Minus the R Fragments and Cursed Sites, I appreciated how each of them actually provided some tangible benefit to the player (a significant upgrade from previous games’ odds-and-ends that relied more-so on intrinsic motivation). Nonetheless, it’s the “Mysteries” you’ll be spending most of your time finishing, and I do have to commend Ubisoft here for trying to variegate these activities. Not since ACIII has an Assassin’s Creed title cooked-up such a batch of diverse side content, and given the sheer amount of time you’ll be spending in the game, they clearly planned things out well. That said, the quality is up for debate, with a number of these excursions privy to debate amongst the AC fan base (World Events and Cairns being the most notorious), so plot your expectations accordingly.

Helping with the pacing of side activities is the fact that Valhalla does away with the conventional confetti system that’s blotted Ubisoft minimaps since the days of Brotherhood, replacing them with light orbs: blue for mysteries, gold for loot, and white for artifacts. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like such a change would matter since the undertakings are unveiled upon entering their vicinity anyway, but you’d be surprised how much of a difference it makes to not be distracted by a minimap. This is the first AC game I played without one, and I found the experience to be so beneficial I hope future entries never revert to the old style.

Besides the above, Valhalla has a plethora of extra stuff to partake in, beginning with Raids. Raids are basically the epitome of the Viking fantasy, involving you reliving the infamous Lindisfarne Tragedy on repeat as you and your crew attack coastal monasteries for resources. Given that few settlement constructions are required for story progression, you’re basically allowed to conduct these at your own volition, which goes a ways away towards making them fun since they’re never needed for grinding purposes. What I really appreciated was how they don’t fully whitewash what you’re doing- yeah, you can’t kill civilians (which I liken to Achilles sparing the Trojan Priests in Troy) and there’s certainly no carrying back citizens to the longship for enslavement; however, you are explicitly a menace. People run around screaming, huts are set ablaze, all wealth is sacked -- when all’s said and done, it’s clear this place has been ruined for the foreseeable future. Gameplay-wise, I wish the developers had implemented some form of strategy as, while entertaining, they’re pretty blatantly easy due to your crew being unable to die (when struck down, you merely have to hold down a button to “revive” them, allowing infinite hounding of stronger guards). A system wherein you could allocate who attacks where and force a retreat if too many of your guys were wounded would’ve done wonders.

Orlog, a dice minigame, gained a notable amount of traction following Valhalla’s release (to the point of inspiring a real-life tie-in), and though it has innumerable enthusiasts, unfortunately I don’t count myself among them. I’m generally a big fan of dice games in titles (Liar’s Dice in RDR, Dice Poker in The Witcher 1), but my problem with Orlog is that it’s unchallenging. You’re given arguably the best Totem from the get-go ala Thor’s Strike, and the only legitimate tactic forward is to build-up tokens to unleash your God Favor. Sure, the occasional wrench is thrown at you, but 9 times out of 10, you’ll have the advantage over your opponent courtesy of Thor’s Strike being OP. If they had introduced variations like being able to call God Favors without sacrificing pawns (that had consequences), then things may have gotten spiced up, but as it stands, the game gets repetitive due to every competitor’s strategy being indifferent from the other.

That said, I’ll take Orlog any day of the week over drinking contests wherein you literally press one prompt on repeat with the intermittent joystick toggle to prevent stumbling. Utterly banal (it’s telling that Watch_Dogs of all releases had a better drinking game) and thankfully unmarked for completionists to avoid. And on the topic of banality, we’ve got a continuation of the lame hunting system this series had literally failed to innovate on since ACIII. If anything, it’s been made grindier here since you cannot purchase animal parts from stores anymore, nor swing your sword from horseback (Eivor instead kicks and punches), the latter preventing you from mass killing prey during chasedowns.

Accompanying this is fishing, which is a barren hodgepodge of boring mechanics: you throw your bait out, wait for a nibble, and then mash A to reel it in. You’re technically given the option to use a bow-and-arrow, but it’s evident the developers wanted you to wield the rod due to a number of reasons: Synin doesn’t recover your arrows, Odin’s Sight marks fish for a measly five seconds, and discharging a bolt scares away the other water critters. Outside of size, there’s no way of telling what kind of fish you’re getting either, meaning the endeavor isn’t even a reliable source of income.

Contrary to popular belief, there are side missions, and while the bulk were added post-release, they're still a welcome addition (I further anticipate readers of this review will be engaging with the Complete Edition of Valhalla that includes all extra content). Most of the quests are initiated from Ravensthorpe and involve either members of your Clan or outsiders requesting Eivor’s aide. They’re a lot like Odyssey’s in that YMMV, but they do exist and offer their own elongated narratives; plus, I can personally vouch that two of the more popular ones, Beowulf and the crossover with Odyssey, are excellent.

Regarding post-launch content, Valhalla was Ubisoft’s first attempt at turning Assassin’s Creed into a live service game. Numerous free updates were thrown in to keep players engaged in the hopes of coaxing them into purchasing MTXs. Unfortunately, the non-permanent ones have long been removed, meaning I cannot speak on such activities as the holiday festivals. The additions that have remained, though, I will gladly describe, commencing with Tombs of the Fallen. These are five vaults to excavate at your discretion, and while we’ve had tombs in the franchise before, this marks the first time they’re puzzle oriented. I haven’t found all of them at the time of this review’s publication, but the ones I did were definitely fun - nothing too challenging, but miles above the versions we got in the Tomb Raider reboot.

Next-up are River Raids. As the name suggests, they’re basically a mode built around the monastery blitzes from the base game, featuring multiple rivers full of goodies to reap: villages have rations to heal your crew, military posts supplies, and forts/monasteries unique loot. Some changes were implemented to no doubt address criticisms of the vanilla version and make the ordeal a bit more tactical. For example, your crew members (called Jomsvikings), can go down permanently if you don’t revive them with rations, and continuously attacking the same area increases local defenses. River Raids are fine enough, but the problem is not enough was done to diversify things- you’re ultimately conducting the same types of assaults ad nauseam, with the same configuration of posts. And once you scavenge the special drops, there’s no real reason to continue forward with the process unless you’re one of those completionists who wants all the new items in the new store (which, lo and behold, require a special currency you can ONLY earn from River Raiding!). If that weren’t enough, be warned that there is a grindy aspect courtesy of the developers requiring you to upgrade your Longship’s hold to increase its capacity. Several other pet peeves of mine include the broken stealth, emptying of your ration pouch each time you launch a raid, and the inability to uncover a location’s identity unless you leave your ship to walk within its radius (sailing by the harbor should’ve been more than enough!).

Last is The Forgotten Saga, a roguelite mode set in the past wherein you control Havi attempting to rescue his son Baldr from the Goddess Hel. Again, I haven’t done much of it at the time of this review, but what I did play was actually pretty enjoyable. The realms are beautifully-designed, each run is different courtesy of the RNG items, and you do feel like you’re getting stronger. The option to stealth your way through certain parts with the one-hit KO assassination significantly aids in the completion of areas, and combined with there being an actual Isu story, I’d say it’s worth attempting. Just keep in mind that it’s still fundamentally the same gameplay loop as the River Raids in that you’re either fighting or killing.

It’s time to address the technical facets of Valhalla. The first thing I texted my brother when I booted up this game was how it might be the best-looking title I’ve ever played, and I proudly stand by that claim over 60 hours later. The new Ubisoft Anvil engine has completely done away with texture streaming, giving you fully-furnished environments from the get-go no matter where you travel, and trust me when I say that that’s a noteworthy facet considering the diversity and seamlessness of the world. This is the first AC game to indulge in the biome schematic, and while I’ve never considered such biogeographical units necessary for free roam variation, I can’t deny it prevents a sense of déjà vu during your many excursions across England. The frigid mountains of Northumbria, seasonal spice of Mercia, mistiness of East Anglia, and springtime tide of Wessex all converge into a community worth touring. This is probably my favorite map in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and considering the prior beauties, I don’t say that lightly. From the desolate Roman ruins and mythical structures to the sights of warfare and working-class hobbles, there’s a real feeling of a past life wherever you amble, and such vibes go a long way towards maintaining an immersive bubble- you’re just another part in a long history overlaying this land.

For those who don’t know, Odyssey and Valhalla employed an algorithm to render body and countenance expressions so that Ubisoft didn’t have to spend money on motion capture for every cutscene. That’s perfectly fine, and I don’t condemn them for it- it’s an expensive procedure, other companies have employed similar tactics, and if it works out it works out. And contrary to public opinion, I actually do think it’s worked out for the most part- minus Eivor feeling the constant need to cross his arms every minute, his movements never feel unnatural (Valhalla’s regression to “talking heads”, on the other hand, is a point of contention, but more on that later).

Character models are a bit of a step down from Odyssey- I didn’t detect as much detail in Valhalla’s physiognomies as I did in its predecessor’s, though thankfully that’s made up for by the lack of stilty-ness that rendered Odyssey’s figures uncanny at times. Cheekbones and eyebrows, in particular, move a lot more naturally, even as you slather them with body paint. It’s the textiles, however, that deserve the most praise as the precision that has gone into their assemblage is a sight to behold. Leather, cloth, fur, it matters not -- all look intricately stitched as they fold around Eivor’s chassis. I was especially impressed anytime light refracted off metallic pieces, providing an authentic sheen that shifts with your movements accordingly.

The lighting overlay, in general, is fantastic, being another rendition of the dynamic system Origins pioneered. I’ve always been a sucker for the sight of streaming sunshine through forested enclaves, and as you can imagine, Valhalla has that in abundance. Combined with the day/night positioning of the sun and varied environmental hues, and you get a motley of aesthetics that ayont the worlds. Unfortunately, there are some downsides to this refulgence, specifically the game’s indulgence in filters. These were clearly done in a bid to either amplify the lambency or diminish overcasting, but the end result can’t help but make certain areas appear artificially lit. In snowy scapes, for example, you get a white cover; foggy ones blue; fiery ones red; and underwater light blue. I feel the game would’ve been better off utilizing a more natural source for the majority of its lighting during these parts, though YMMV.

Besides that, there were a number of defects I encountered playing on my Xbox Series X: clipping between sheathed weapons and clothing (predominantly on horseback), draw distance generation issues for foliage and flora; occasional framerate drops; bird wings lagging while synchronizing, Eivor getting stuck during parkour animations; and your classic AC pathfinding quandaries with NPCs. Nothing is game-breaking, but it’s evident this was a title held back by its dual-gen release, and should be approached accordingly.

Other miscellaneous graphical plights include the lack of footprints when trudging in frost, shoddy animations for animal finishers (good concept, but should’ve been axed since they weren’t ready), comically-exaggerated splash effects, rainfall being surface-level impact points over a genuine environmental component, and fire looking incredibly dated (your torch is fine enough, but set a blaze or bushfire and you’ll witness combustion that wouldn’t look out-of-place in the original Gothic).

Performance aside, I think my biggest problem with Valhalla’s presentation is its reversion to the “talking heads” dilemma that plagued Unity through Origins. Talking heads, to elucidate, is a term my boy GManLives coined in his Skyrim review, referring to a lack of cinematicity during dialogue. You know, those instances wherein your character and another are technically having a conversation, but don’t appear to be engaged with the other due to the placement of the camera. Yeah, they’re standing opposite the other, however, you inherently lose interest since they’re not framed in a way that conveys they’re the centerpiece of attention. It solely happens in non-mocapped scenes in which the developers simply had the actors record the lines and processed their bustle through an animation algorithm, which, to reiterate, would’ve been fine had they preserved some sense of dynamism in the convos. But no, you often have to move the camera yourself to better enunciate things. If Valhalla had come out after Origins, it wouldn’t have been all bad given the precedent; unfortunately, Odyssey actually alleviated this by adopting a Mass Effect-framing, and while you do get that in the story, the vast majority of your side content is hampered by talking heads.

Further infringing the side stuff is the voice acting. I don’t know what it is about the English accent, but everytime Ubisoft has utilized it for generic civilians, it always sounds mediocre, as though they hired low-effort thespians to save money, and that continues to be the case here. To avoid an absolute, of course not everyone sounds bad, but it’s saying something when Oblivion and its cast of three had better portrayals than the more eclectic assembly here (you even get this recurring mismatch wherein an older-sounding lady voices younger lasses).

Thankfully, the main line is great, with Magnus Bruun and Carlo Rota, in particular, giving standout performances as Eivor and Basim respectively. I was really impressed with Bruun’s ability to distinguish between Eivor and Odin, lacing them with a masterfully concurrent similarity and dissimilarity. With regards to his female counterpart, Cecilie Stenspil, the parts I’ve heard on YouTube indicate her to be terrific as well, and anyone who claims she’s significantly inferior to Magnus is lying- your choice should come down purely to gender preference. That said, there was one person I wasn’t a big fan of, and that was Gudmundr Thorvaldsson as Sigurd. His acting itself is top-notch, but all too often his timbre came across as garbled.

The SFX has its pros and cons. On the plus side, this is the first time I was able to distinguish individualized beats for right & left footsteps in an AC Game, and considering the sheer amount of traveling you’ll be doing, it’s quite splendid to hear (expressly for horses!). Valhalla is also the first AC title to exhibit dismemberment and decapitation, and discerning such grisly cleavings via standard combat executions never gets old. The splintering of castle doors, clinking of loose metal on garments, bending of air around Sýnin and more are all signs of polished handiwork from Ubisoft’s artisans.

Sadly, these are partly counterbalanced by deficiencies, beginning with the sheer amount of rehashed dins from the prior RPG games: shattering pots, dragging barricades, crunching snow, whistling, stock animal growls, sail unmasting, fire burning, and others I’m sure I’m missing were blatantly transposed from Origins and Odyssey. And look, I know there’s only so much differentiation you can do with certain noises, but my point is that no initiative was made to even change them-up. Then again, maybe that was for the better as some of the fresh inclusions were not that good. For example, looting massive chests and completing raids produces this hooting that literally sounds like the chorus from Who Let the Dogs Out on steroids. Opening those coffers, in general, never feels invigorating courtesy of the lid removal having a generic sliding sound that’s not even properly-synchronized. Over and above that, atmospheric conditions are significantly diminished by ear: minus scripted sequences, elements like wind, snowfall, conflagrations, and rain come off as unnaturally-muted, which does hurt their visceralness. Like most AAA releases, Valhalla doesn’t feature any aural blemishes that’ll take you out of the game, but it definitely wasn’t as fortitive as it should have been.

I wish I could say the music atones for things, yet this was another area of disappointment for me. As you guys know, Valhalla marks Jesper Kyd’s grand return to the franchise after nine years, and there’s a reason that news generated a ton of hype: the Ezio scores are regarded as a high water mark for the series and his magnum opus as a whole. But it wasn’t just Jesper’s homecoming that was noteworthy: Sarah Schachner, who weaved the wonderful Origins OST, was announced as a co-composer, meaning nothing short of a masterpiece was expected from the duo.

Unfortunately, while you’ll no doubt find many fans who enjoyed their collaboration on Valhalla, I couldn’t help but feel letdown. The issue is Dark Age settings are inherently associated with symphonic orchestras: we’ve all listened to medieval tracks tinged with flute harmonies, brass fanfare, and of course string solos, and the fact of the matter is that none of those matched up with either musician’s prior arrangements (Jesper’s specialty being synths, Schachner’s electric instruments). Now of course, these are artists with longstanding resumes, and it’s very possible they’ve written music reminiscent of the Middle Age period that I’m simply not aware of but, regardless, their work in Valhalla felt very unnatural and subsequently non-enticing, often engaging in these heavy vocal and French Horn melodies, the former of which should’ve been up Jesper’s alley given his previous experience with choral music, but that ends up faltering due to it not resembling either monophonic chants or his famous carols. Nothing builds up to anything, instead occupying background harmonies that momentarily add a new leitmotif before returning to the shadows (the worst offender of this being the Raid strain, which sounds more like the accompaniment for a group of friars going horse cart racing than the bloody scene of their land being pillaged). Viewpoint tunes are a significant drop from Odyssey; the main theme is so forgettable, I literally had to look it up prior to typing this sentence (an absolute crime for an AC game); and, worst of all, Jesper’s revised version Ezio’s Family (aided by Einar Selvik) is relegated to the freakin’ credits, which, for the record, are a menu option and not mandatory). It’s really sad that Unity incorporated it better than its own maestro.

Obviously, not everything is dispiriting- some of the ambient tracks auxiliary to exploration are top notch, the Ravensthorpe theme is fantastic, and the shanties from your crewmen are the best the franchise has seen (though I suspect these were more Selvik’s creation). But considering everybody’s past body of work, Valhalla truly is a damp squib in this department. Reportedly, gamers were experiencing sound bugs that outright suppressed the music, and it pains me to say that those folks didn’t miss out on much.

On the note (no pun intended) of shanties, I’ll briefly go over the naval component of Valhalla as, unlike Black Flag, Rogue, and Odyssey, it’s not about maritime combat; theoretically, the purpose of the longboat is to merely transport you and your horde from place-to-place. However, the fact of the matter is you have mounts that do the exact same thing (aided by them being able to swim), making this apparent reasoning all but naught.

No, the sole intention behind the longboat was clearly to allow players to relive the Viking fantasy of coastal assaults, and the reality is that’s very shallow as, once you’re done plundering the abbeys, there is no other grounds for its existence. Sure, you can call your crew against the occasional camp scattered along the seaboard, but 9 times out of 10 it’s usually quicker to just solo it yourself. And listen, I would have no problem with this being a simple option for players, but the reason I’m complaining is because all those waterways they sculpted into the map make ground-based traversal between regions unnecessarily hamperful. While it’s not extraneous by any means, having to waste time paddling across tributaries whilst tracking down an orb gets tiring -- it reminded me too much of Venice from ACII, which suffered from similar qualms. I get that these rivers are probably historically accurate, but adding more bridges would’ve gone a long way towards making the amphibious transition more palatable. And speaking of bridges, I absolutely hate this instance during sailing wherein, everytime your boat approaches an overpass, your crew has to waste time slowing down and collapsing the mast (often causing it to clip with your tailpiece)- why not avoid the whole shebang and just make the structures taller? They already took a ton of creative liberty with the art assets anyway (as AskHistorians astutely assessed). And for those few of you who insist on traveling by sea, be prepared to get stuck on shorelines frequently (especially during turns) as your crew of @ssholes berate you.

The last major gameplay element is, of course, the skill tree, and it’s pretty bog standard insofar as RPGs go. Instead of levelling-up, you’re granted two points you can invest into one of three branching nodes representing combat, stealth, and archery, and thanks to the level cap not increasing between levels the way it typically does in other RPGs, you’re actually able to gather points at a reasonable pace without having to grind. In addition, Valhalla does away with Odyssey’s convoluted damage system in favor of consolidating everything into a singular “power level” that increases by two every time you invest in a slot, making it an enjoyable framework.

Now, I understand, there are some downsides to this more simplistic approach, mainly that gear boosts and builds don’t matter, but given that AC was never a hardcore role-playing series to begin with, I honestly didn’t mind the “return to roots” format, and it’s not like you’re less-incentivized to go loot scouring (avatar customization is an aesthetics-first enterprise after all).

Look, despite my intermittent rants, Valhalla actually ranks in my top 5 AC games of all time. It does a lot right for the franchise in terms of pioneering a better open world format, implementing balanced RPG mechanics, and (it goes without saying) fixing the modern-day after six entries of scattershot mediocrity. Eivor is another great protagonist, and given the sheer amount of hours of time you’ll be spending with him/her, it’s reassuring to know Ubisoft succeeded on this front. Yes there are a few botherations in the gameplay and narrative design you’ll have to contend with should you decide to embark on a long journey with the Vikingr, but as long as you know what you’re getting into, you’ll ultimately enjoy the ride. After 191 hours, I was saddened to be leaving Eivor and company behind, and you don’t experience that if the endeavor wasn’t worthwhile.


Notes
+The RPG elements began with Unity’s character customization/skillpoint acquisition and was further evolved in Syndicate outright having a leveling system. And both Egypt and England were not in their “ancient” status by historical standards.

-You’ve probably heard that Valhalla doesn’t have cloth physics, and the answer is both yes and no: there are animations for when you’re moving, but absolutely none for the elements (wind, in particular).

valhalla pecou por muitas coisas, mas a principal, sua duração.

só o conteúdo base garante pelo menos 100 horas de história, fazendo o básico do básico, precisa de muita paciência e tempo livre pra fazer o 100% de TUDO. isso seria ok, se o conteúdo não fosse tão cansativo.

além disso, o parkour e a necessidade de completar todos os arcos da inglaterra pra ver o final do jogo quebram totalmente a imersão, já que o arco principal e a história de sigurd é digna de um game of thrones!!.... que vc tem que ficar 40 horas sem ver pq vc é obrigado a terminar um monte de conteúdo filler....

mas enfim, tirando esses fatos, valhalla é o melhor AC de "RPG" da trilogia, melhorou em TODOS os aspectos e trouxe uma história sensacional pra franquia.

seu único pecado é não ter conseguido superar o charme da kassandra. eivor eu te amo, mas... faltou carisma e a sensação de liberdade do odyssey.

Eu queria dar mais pro jogo, mas essa obrigatoriedade dele de fazer arcos por cima de arcos que claramente são histórias secundárias e dividir o final em planos sequências diferentes (são 4 finais principais pra entender o todo) me quebra muito pq o jogo é muito grande!

Muitos acertos, muitos erros fazem esse título! Desde o Origins a Ubi vem tentando estabelecer esse gênero dentro dos AC e acho que esse é o que mais tem motivos para chatear os fãs da franquia!

Ubi tem um problema com protagonistas, nos Far Crys durante muito tempo ele tinha o mesmo peso de uma porta, aqui eles fazem uma confusão, pedem pra escolher o gênero do personagem sendo que ambos co-existem na história. Existe a opção de gênero fluido que ao meu ver é a melhor em questão de lore só que isso não fica claro pro jogador na hora da escolha (não irei dizer os motivos pra n spoilar);

Ambientação, como sempre, oque a ubi faz de melhor, incrível Inglaterra, Noruega, Asgard e mais mapas! Dessa vez existem mapas descontínuos, da américa, a europa a Asgard, tudo muito positivo pra mim pq os mapas são suficientemente diferentes!

Jogabilidade pra mim ficou a desejar, foram inseridas mecâncias de assassinos que não se utilizam ao mesmo tempo que retiram mecânicas de assassinato (ouso dizer que é o AC que menos tem mecâncias de assassinato desde o AC1, um total retrocesso). Isso seguido do Odissey que invadir os fortes nele pelo stealth é uma delícia!

História é aqui que o jogo chora e a mãe não vê! O jogo possui uma campanha principal e ela tem muita lore de AC, okaye os elogios acabam aí porque ela é mitigada em horas e horas e horas de missões e histórias do mundo viking, o jogo tem uma qualidade de principal mas parece muito um spin off dos AC pq eles fazem apenas ligações! O pior é que você não consegue zerar o jogo fazendo apenas a campanha principal, tem que fazer os arcos secundários porque o jogo diz serem principais, arcos esses que deveriam ser opcionais!

O jogo me divertiu demais, com 80 horas fiz os 4 finais principais e ainda devo jogar pra fazer alguns objetivos secundários!

Tenha e mente que vai jogar um jogo de vikings e não de AC q é diversão garantida

Nota 7

É o melhor mundo aberto da ubi, esse papo de mundo morto é pura balela, vc pode achar o mundo chato mas é uma ótima representação da noruega e inglaterra. Não vejo ngm reclamar que Death Stranding tem um mundo morto!

Review enorme, pelo jogo ser enorme então vou separar por tópicos

-HISTÓRIA

A história tem pontos altos, mas alguns bem abaixo, eu diria que metade das quests desse jogo são bem "irrelevantes", vários personagens que não da pra ligar muito, várias missões iguais, vários plots iguais, tu vai num território, conhece o saxão mais cabaço do reino e descobre que ele é o favorito ao poder, mas pra isso acontecer você tem que derrubar o rei tirano de alguma forma, tem pelo menos umas 5,6 quests dessa exata forma, de longe o melhor arco do jogo é o de Vinlândia, onde você vai para terras norte americanas em busca de um membro da ordem dos anciões para mata-lo, nesse arco perdemos a arma, a armadura e só temos a Hidden Blade em nossa posse, o melhor arco do jogo fácil, resgata muito o sentimento de AC que esse jogo perdeu um pouco, que é basicamente andar no stealth, assassinar com a hidden (que eu sim ativei a hidden blade como hitkill nas opções, afinal não existe uma hidden blade nao tirar quase nada de dano do inimigo) e foi o arco que mais me pregou no jogo, até chegar no arco final que de longe é o mais bonito dos ultimos AC's, Sigurd e Basim são personagens absurdos, e é aqui que entro em outro ponto, os personagens, muitos deles são praticamente pedaços vazios de um codigo escrito por um dev francês, falta personalidade em uns 80% de personagens desse jogo, tu liga pra muito pouco personagem e é o maior defeito do jogo, um jogo de 80h de campanha com personagens bem abaixo da média, só os principais tem algum tipo de ligação com o jogador, o eivor mesmo só funciona como homem pra mim, tentei jogar com a eivor mulher e simplesmente foi irritante aquele VA dela, os personagens tbm pareciam não combinar muito com a eivor mulher, e sabe o foda? a Eivor mulher é canon KKKKKKKKK, mesmo o jogo fazendo marketing com O Eivor, e falando do eivor, o personagem mais inocente da saga de longe, parece que todos enganam ele de alguma forma e só depois de um tempo ele percebe que não dava pra confiar naquela pessoa, e isso se repete inumeras vezes na campanha, toda quest o eivor vai ser enganado por alguem e só perceber depois que ele tá sendo usado pra algo maior, não seria irritante essa inocência, mas conhecendo a saga e os inumeros protagonistas incriveis que tivemos nela, o eivor parece de longe o mais burro (falando em masculino pois joguei com ele homem)

JOGABILIDADE:

Padrão de todo AC RPG, tem as habilidades, tem a jogabilidade RPG, finalmente temos uma opção de jogar com a hidden blade sendo hitkill <3, o jogo não é dificil, morri poucas vezes durante a jogatina, não sei se eu sou o mais pica de todos que matava trocentos boss com parry, ou se o jogo é mais facil mesmo, só sei que eu fui bem pra caralho nesse jogo
O Parkour desse jogo aqui de longe é o pior da saga, mesmo não sendo necessario muitas das vezes, mas quando é necessário, meu santo deus, o eivor parece pesado, o parkour buga trocentas vezes, voce acaba indo em um lugar que nao pulou, é estranho demais, espero demais que em mirage não tenha um parkour tão porco assim
O Combate é legal e divertido, as aptidões são bem postas no combate, joguei o jogo inteiro com aptidão de lançar machados e me ajudou demais em varias lutas, não é o melhor combate da história, mas é bem melhor que o de seu antecessor (Odyssey)
As raids são bem divertidas, me peguei jogando por horas só pra liberar a armadura de são jorge que eu acho a mais bonita do jogo, muito bom esse modo
Incursões são divertidas de fazer tambem, mas chega um momento que tu enjoa do tanto de incursão espalhada pelo mapa e nada de muito novo, só serve pra upar teu acampamento que tu nem fica direito nele depois de um tempo de jogo
O Mapa é um absurdo visual, a inglaterra, noruega, ilhas skye, vinlandia, tudo isso é simplesmente absurdo demais visualmente, não existe um lugar feio nesse jogo, não mesmo, Asgard aqui é simplesmente perfeita visualmente, fiquei apaixonado pelo visual dos mapas desse jogo, e sim os mapas tem até um bom level design, gostei demais de tudo o que eu vi

CONCLUSÃO

AC Valhalla entrega um jogo ok, eu sou fã da saga e tive que jogar esse jogo por estar hypadissimo pra AC Mirage, queria conhecer o Basim e esse objetivo me foi servido, pois é simplesmente otimo o personagem e me hypou mais ainda pro Mirage, ainda mais devido ao final do jogo, mas mesmo com esse objetivo, eu me senti preso a esse jogo pra completar ele logo, porque antes do final, teve 80h de uma campanha que sinceramente, que se foda, não é boa uma campanha tão extensa te entregar personagens que você não se importa em 80% do tempo, entregar quests tão chatas que voce fica revoltado com algumas coisas (exemplo: tem literalmente uma quest que você tem que sequestrar a noiva de um rei por ordem deles 2 pois o rei não gosta mais da noiva e ta interessado em um romance de infância que mora na mesma terra dele, ela não quer mais saber dele e quer voltar pra frança, então voce finge um sequestro, vai na pqp atras dessa mulher que ele ta afim e essa quest parece não ter fim de TÃO DESINTERESSANTE QUE ELA É PQP) e isso me fez odiar o jogo diversas vezes, e eu juro que se não fosse pelo final, a nota seria muito menor, mas o fim carrega muito todo o sentimento seu de que "valeu um pouco a pena essa tortura né?", pois o final é simplesmente maravilhoso, ainda mais se você jogou o odyssey

Valhalla não é um jogo ruim, mas dificil chamar o jogo de bom quando é 80h de jogo e só algumas horas valem a pena, o que me deixou muito no jogo foi toda a mitologia nordica que é bem respeitada aqui, uma pena que os vilões do jogo (a ordem) não é lá tão boa, são bem futeis pra falar a verdade, varios personagens cheio de frases de efeito merdas, a pior cena de execução ja feita na saga, jesus. E eu abri esse ponto pq se os vilões fossem bons, o jeito que a mitologia é trabalhada no jogo seria ótimo, pois seria realmente uma guerra entre nordicos e saxões bem escrita, mas poucos embates entre os saxões e o nordico nesse jogo tem algum peso mesmo, acho que o da fulke é o melhor, mas é incrivel como uma catolica magricela da trabalho pro eivor, pqp kkkkkkkkkk
Recomendo valhalla a quem gostar muito da temática e quiser saber um pouco mais do próximo AC, mas pros fãs de AC mesmo, jogue se quiser, perto dos outros jogos da saga, esse aqui pra mim só fica acima de Odyssey que eu detestei, então vai um sincero 6/10, se não fosse o fim do jogo era uns 4 no minimo, mas é porque eu tenho muito gosto pela saga e sei dos jogos incriveis que ela teve, e em comparação a eles, esse jogo aqui me decepciona legal, se alguem mais casual jogar ele, com certeza vai gostar mais do que eu

enfim, posso desinstalar e seguir minha vida em paz, parece que suguei minha alma jogando AC Valhalla por 87h como consta na minha uplay k

Halfway through my like 10th... 11th... Maybe 12th? Fuck if I know man.

Halfway through my [NUMBER TOO MANY]th attempt to get through this game's bloated back half, my throat seized up and I struggled to breathe. I hit the floor like a wet sack of bricks, crawling towards my inhaler like I was trapped in the final QTE for a 2010 shooter that people on Reddit insist "wasn't that bad" - if you ignore the racism.

When I got back on my feet, and managed to breathe in clean air, I realized that choking to death was the most I'd felt across the like 100 hours I've sank into this game. By all rights, parts of this game should spark some feeling in me, albeit primarily negative feelings. Whether it's the wooden Odyssey 2 gameplay, the unexamined Viking veneration that reads as distinctly fascist, the thinly veiled antisemitism, the uncritical and blind depiction of the colonized as weak cravens who need a guiding hand and the colonizers as noble cultured warriors without fault, the staggeringly bad open world design or the relatively uninspired and predictable plot this game has something to piss one off.

Not me, though.

0/10 Cystic Fibrosis is better.

I reviewed this game with a free code provided by the publisher.

Excerpt: Valhalla hits almost every note correct and finds a way to hone in on the best elements of its gameplay while downplaying the parts we've grown tired of. The Ancient Order bounties are a replacement for the cult system from Odyssey and are streamlined to feel even easier to pursue. The daily quests return as well, with relatively low prices for some excellent gear. Investigating mysteries is quicker and more rewarding, finding new places feels natural and exciting, and the feeling of going 'a viking is thrilling. I only became more excited to continue playing with each hour that passed - something I can't say about the previous two entries in the series. I recommend all fans of open world RPGs and especially fans of Origins and Odyssey pick up Assassin's Creed Valhalla this fall, especially if you're breaking in a next-generation console.

Read the full review here: https://techraptor.net/gaming/reviews/assassins-creed-valhalla-review

Se você assistiu ao meu último decodificando, me viu falar sobre histórias, personagens e um aspecto mais emocional dos jogos. Essa ligação emocional é algo inerente ao ser humano. (spiritfarer)

É comum nos emocionarmos, rirmos, chorarmos, entrarmos em conflito e nos vermos sendo levados por essas narrativas. E toda essa carga emocional nos faz criar laços afetivos muito fortes com alguns personagens e franquias. (gris)

No final de 2007 eu comprei meu playstation 3. Custando um rim e duas córneas, como o jovem adulto fudido que eu era, fiz um empréstimo no banco e levei pra casa aquele belo monolito com acabamento black piano que sujava só de olhar. (surgeon simulator 2)

Mas como já é sabido, o início de uma geração é sempre mais lento. A quantidade de jogos não era das maiores e obviamente qualquer dinheiro que eu pudesse ter sobrando já era consumido pelas parcelas do empréstimo, então a escolha dos jogos que iriam me acompanhar deveria ser muito bem pensada. (motorstorm)

Fight Night 3, Motorstorm e Assassin´s Creed foram os escolhidos, e mal sabia eu que a história de Altair e seu clã de assassinos iria gerar uma das maiores franquias da atualidade. (Assassin´s Creed)

O meu nome é Thiago Lopes, e a minha relação com Assassin´s Creed se alterou ao longo do tempo entre o amor e o ódio. Mas Valhalla, apesar dos seus defeitos, mais acerta do que erra, e se converteu em uma das melhores experiências que eu tive esse ano. (Valhalla)

Existem mais Assassin´s Creed do que seria possível contar no dedos das mãos, por isso, acho que antes de iniciar qualquer análise seria bom eu posicionar o meu gosto com relação a franquia. Eu adoro os primeiros jogos da franquia. Altair e Ezio são excelentes personagens e toda a construção daquele universo é muito bem feita.

Além disso, a furtividade é normalmente o caminho que eu escolho quando jogos me dão essa opção, e Assassin´s Creed ditou muito do que foi feito com o gênero Stealth a partir dali. (Revelations)

Por isso que quando o jogo começou a se afastar da furtividade a partir de Assassin´s Creed 3 a franquia começou a me perder. A idéia do barco era legal? Era! Mas na real, apesar de Black Flag ser um ótimo jogo foi nele que a essência dos primeiros jogos acabou jogada pra escanteio. (Black Flag)

A partir daí, o meu interesse pela série foi desaparecendo, e hoje, eu diria que o último AC que eu realmente gostei foi o Revelations, o último que eu terminei foi o Black Flag e o último que eu me dei ao trabalho de comprar foi o Syndicate. (Syndicate)

Por isso, quando Valhalla foi anunciado eu confesso que nem dei muita bola, ao ponto de que originalmente, quem iria fazer essa análise seria o Leandro. Mas a temática viking é algo que sempre me atraiu, então quando o jogo foi lançado eu acabei ficando dividido.


De um lado, uma temática que eu adoro e o potencial pra ótimas histórias, do outro uma franquia que perdeu meu interesse há muito tempo e com muita coisa que costuma me afastar desses jogos.

Mas acabei assistindo alguns vídeos, vendo o pessoal falar, me empolguei, peguei o jogo e encontrei uma grata surpresa que me consumiu nas últimas semanas.

Pros novatos na série, nos jogos da franquia controlamos um personagem que auxiliado por uma tecnologia chamada Animus é capaz de reviver as memórias dos seus antepassados. É dessa forma que vemos justificada a possibilidade de explorarmos desde roma ou constantinopla até o egito e a inglaterra vitoriana.

Valhalla conta a história de Eivor, uma lenda Viking que acompanhado de seu irmão Sigurd segue em direção à inglaterra em busca de terras mais férteis e climas mais amenos.

A ambientação como sempre é digna de nota. Apesar dos picos gelados da Noruega e os charcos da inglaterra não representarem um cenário tão interessante como o antigo egito ou a grécia antiga eles ainda são capazes de gerar belas paisagens e é inegável o quanto esse jogo é bonito.

Após uma breve introdução ao jogo (breve pros padrões assassins creed, claro) chegamos a inglaterra, onde Eivor e Sigurd buscam por aliados que possam ajudá-los a explorar todo o potencial que terras mais férteis podem oferecer.

O combate, apesar de não poder ser considerado excelente conseguiu me manter entretido. É divertido comandar sua tripulação enquanto saqueia e queima vilas e monastérios. Os controles respondem bem, e a variedade de armas é relativamente grande, inclusive com a opção de utilizá-las como preferir, seja com o combo espada e escudo, duas machadinhas ou até mesmo dois escudos ou dois machados de duas mãos.

A movimentação é fluída, e a exploração é muito bem recompensada. Escalar continua sendo muito prazeroso e é possível chegar na maioria dos lugares, se você consegue ver, provavelmente consegue chegar e será recompensado por isso. E esse é um aspecto que realmente me agradou.

A história também merece um destaque, as quests principais são muito bem escritas, com personagens cativantes, uma dublagem de boa qualidade e uma narrativa que faz o jogador sentir que está fazendo alguma diferença naquele mundo.

Não sei dizer se em Origins ou Odissey já era desse jeito, mas eu realmente acabei me perdendo naquele universo, me senti relevante e pude presenciar a consequência das escolhas que eu fiz.

Valhalla é um excelente jogo e se eu dissesse que não gostei eu estaria mentindo. Mas sabe aquele seu amigo que não sabe beber? Aquele cara que depois de bêbado quer agradar todo mundo o tempo todo? Se Valhalla fosse uma pessoa, com certeza seria esse cara.

Na minha análise de Ghost of Tsushima comentei sobre a chance de um jogo se tornar enjoativo. No vídeo eu comento que no jogo você se pega fazendo a mesma coisa várias e várias vezes, mas que acabei não me importando porque tudo que eu estava fazendo ali era uma delícia.

Então, Valhalla tá bem longe de possuir um grau de refinamento tão grande quanto o de Tsushima. Seu combate é ok, não é um combate ruim mas está anos luz do combate de Tsushima.

O jogo possui uma quantidade gigantesca de animações bizarras e bugs. Golpes que deveriam pegar passam direto, enquanto o jogador é arremessado por um personagem que nem ali está.

A dificuldade é quase inexistente nos inimigos comuns, mas escala de forma absurda nos inimigos mais fortes, mas não por querer que você aprenda e se torne melhor como Sekiro. Ela acaba só existindo por conta do sistema de level que faz com que o dano causado e o dano recebido possuam uma diferença enorme apenas por conta dessa diferença de nível.

A hitbox dos inimigos é bem bizarra, o momento do parry é alterado de acordo com o FPS e em alguns momentos é perceptível o quanto o jogo se beneficiaria de um desenvolvimento menos inchado.

E esse inchaço é o que mais me incomoda no jogo todo. Mesmo com todos os problemas, Valhalla tem tudo pra ser uma ótima experiência mais curta. Eu teria jogado entre 30 e 40 horas dele amarradão e terminaria o jogo muito satisfeito. Mas depois de já estar levemente enjoado, o jogo ainda se arrastou por quase 30 horas.

E eu entendo o argumento de quem investe no jogo e quer tirar o máximo dele, mas é diferente quando jogo tem coisas opcionais pra você fazer e permite que mesmo assim você ignore aquilo completamente e quando ele tem coisas com um nível “opcional” de refino mas que na verdade não são tão opcionais assim.

O jogo permite que você vá direto ao ponto. Mas esse caminho vai ser tão excruciantemente difícil e tortuoso que você vai levar praticamente o mesmo tempo que você levaria se apenas se rendesse aos “opcionais”.

Outro ponto de atenção que infelizmente me gerou um incômodo maior do que precisava é a forma como Eivor é retratado. Teoricamente, Eivor não é definido como homem ou mulher. Se trata de uma lenda, o que justifica a possibilidade de trocarmos ao longo do jogo entre a sua versão masculina e a feminina.

Mas também é possível deixar que o Animus determine o sexo do personagem conforme a melhor representação dessa memória, e apesar de eu considerar uma boa idéia, isso gera alguns problemas que na minha opinião ficaram muito mal resolvidos.

A real é, claramente existe uma linha narrativa a ser seguida, existe uma escolha “certa” nesse aspecto, mas faltou a coragem pra empresa assumir isso. Se você quer ter a experiência como foi pensada pelos desenvolvedores, a melhor forma é deixar que o Animus decida a versão do seu personagem de acordo com as memórias.

Nessa opção, jogamos a maior parte do tempo com a versão feminina de Eivor, enquanto a masculina é utilizada apenas em alguns pontos específicos. E na boa, eu não veria problema nenhum nisso.

O problema é, comecei nessa opção e por quase 10 horas o jogo não trocou nenhuma vez. Existe uma justificativa pra isso, essa foi a forma como o jogo foi pensado, mas como eu preciso analisar o jogo eu quis ver como seria a versão masculina e ai fui surpreendido novamente.

Considero o design de personagem da versão feminina de Eivor algo realmente incrível. Mas até esse ponto eu não conseguia me conectar com ela. Sei que ela é uma viking fodona, no meio de uma cacetada de viking fodão, mas a dublagem dela é tão forçada que acabava me tirando do jogo.

Mas ao trocar pra versão masculina o personagem finalmente clicou e eu entendi o que me incomodava nela. O Eivor masculino é muito mais “gostável”, ele possui um tom mais calmo, as frases encaixam melhor nele.

E foi aí que eu entendi o que me incomodava, a Eivor não é uma mulher, ela não age como mulher, ela não fala como mulher, ela é simplesmente um homem, com todos os trejeitos de um homem com uma skin feminina. E isso enfraquece muito a personagem.

“Quer dizer então que mulher tem que ser frágil, quer dizer que não pode ser forte e você não quer uma mulher protagonista seu machista?”

Pelo contrário, mas o meu ponto é que mulheres podem ser tão fortes, altivas e destemidas quanto qualquer homem, mas elas não “precisam”, e a ênfase aqui é no verbo “precisar”, elas não precisam emular um homem pra isso.

Randvi, a esposa de Sigurd é uma mulher forte. Ela controla o acampamento, e apesar de algumas decisões bem controversas do meio pro final do jogo, ela é provavelmente o meu personagem preferido. O design dela é irado e ela tem muita personalidade. É uma mulher poderosa mas que não precisa ficar engrossando a voz pra parecer fodona.

Especulando rapidamente aqui, e eu quero deixar bem claro que estou especulando, mas eu pergunto, será que conhecendo o seu público e sabendo que provavelmente a grande maioria iria escolher a versão masculina, o cuidado com a voz dele não foi maior do que com a dela?

Será que se só existisse a opção do Animus escolher os momentos em que ela seria homem e mulher, a sua versão feminina ainda me passaria a impressão de um homem com skin de mulher? Será que essa caracterização seria tão mal feita?

O que me traz a mais um problema. Essa falta de definição do personagem gera situações com pesos totalmente diferentes dependendo da sua escolha. Frases e momentos que podem ser poderosíssimos vindos de uma mulher se tornam estranhos ao partirem de um homem, assim como momentos que poderiam efetivamente significar algo diferente com a versão feminina perdem completamente o peso com a versão masculina.

Do meu ponto de vista faltou coragem para tomar um decisão e se comprometer com ela causando essa dissonância entre o personagem em tela e o que ele representa.

Mas no geral Valhalla me agradou muito mais do que eu esperava, é um jogo bem escrito, divertido, bem ambientado e com mais altos do que baixos. Ele poderia ser muito mais, não tenho dúvidas, mas no geral, saio dele com um saldo tão positivo que posso colocar ele facilmente no meu top 3 como um dos melhores assassin´s creed já feito.

I have an assassin's Creed problem. I know this is an over large, and entirely unoriginal game, BUT, it's digital tourism,with a tremendous sense of place and scale, and frankly no one else is trying to do it like the AC franchise is. I love these games, even when they are bad, even when the history is dodgy, and even after the gameplay loop goes stale after hour 30 (or before), because more often than not, I'm simply having a great time walking around. Sorry to the haters and losers who love to get mad at this franchise

Currently feeling very angry at how this game ends. Genuinely feel like I've wasted 80 hours of my life to reach a non-conclusion.

Once I completed the final region of the game, I got a little pop-up that says "You've now completed every region, but you have plenty more to do..." and it lists a long list of side shit I've not done. Apparently once I do this, I'll unlock The Last Chapter - the game's actual ending. What the fuck is this game design? I've given it 80+ hours and completed all major tasks, I don't want to spend another 50 hours hunting down every Order member, completing every nonsensical magic trip, and I certainly don't want to spend any more time in freaking Asgard.

Treat your audience's time with respect. I'm done with this, I'll just watch The Last Chapter on YouTube.

Ok, well, the drive AC Valhalla was installed on died and I Can Not be bothered to re-download 150 gigs for this fuckin' game so I guess it's time to try and sum up my thoughts on this one, huh. Spoiler alert: I think it's bad!

I like to indulge in some big dumb open world game from time to time and have put many many hours into both AC Origins and Odyssey, so I was actually looking forward to Valhalla! Another one of these big dumb games for me to use to stave off depression but this time it's got a vikings and Norse mythology coat of paint? Sure! Sign me up! But! Alas! It sucks!

This game is so chock full of design choices that I think are potentially very interesting or compelling but then they only ever commit halfway to them which results in this largely frictionless and uninteresting game. A big example of this is how they've structured the main plot of the game. They give you a choice in which region's questline you'll do next. At first I thought this meant that you would pick one region to ally yourself with and that would result in another region becoming an enemy and then there'd be some conflict later but, no, it's just literally the order you do them in because you will end up doing all of them eventually! And also! The individual regions don't really matter because there is zero interaction between any of them. People of one region really have no thoughts or feelings about the guy who just took over the region next door? Really? Nothing at all? Yeah, okay, sure Valhalla, whatever you say.

Speaking of those individual regions: they make the main plot of the game mostly feel like this collection of short stories. Which, again, I think is potentially interesting! Getting to learn about the core cast of characters by putting them in a variety of Situations is very compelling! But all the short stories suck ass and have zero interesting things going on and Eivor doesn't really do or say anything particularly notable. It's all just the most boring version of this idea!

And Eivor... I need to talk about Eivor. If you know me then you'd probably expect me to feel Very Normal about Eivor. I adored Kassandra and Eivor at first seemed like she might be another run at that character type. Strong powerful woman in kind of a mainstream generic hero way... like, sure it's kind of basic but also I can be kind of a basic bitch. But Eivor is so boring! She's supposed to be the quiet, stoic badass but it means she just sort of ends up standing around in every cutscene and occasionally grunting. If that's how your protagonist is going to be then you need to have some good characters around her to bounce off of. And unfortunately! The main plot does not have that! The absolute best of Eivor is in the dlc(?) add-on when Eivor heads to some island and meets up with Kassandra because Kassandra keeps trying to be her charismatic, jokey self but Eivor is always no-selling her attempts at humor and the dynamic works really well! But after four or five hours, that island is done and Kassandra leaves forever and it's back to Eivor and her boring viking pals all being dull and wooden together and it makes every cutscene a fucking slog.

(That bit when Kassandra comes back is fun. Sure, it's partially because I love her but also I think it's fun to have a functionally immortal character that could pop up anywhere in your big dumb franchise! What a goofy thing to add in a series chock full of goofy shit.)

The world is SO big and SO empty!! The majority of things are densely packed into the handful of cities and so most of the landmass is just empty fields and forest. I use the horse auto-pilot mechanic waaay more in this game than in AC:O or AC:O. I had frequent stretches of just riding across hillsides for, like, two minutes where nothing happens. No interesting terrain or landmarks, no combat, no collectable to grab. No nothing! It's so big and empty and boring!

And the thing is, this kind of feels like it's the developers trying to respond to the criticism/memes about "Ubisoft open world game map icon vomit". Like, they want the map to not be so cluttered with icons and so if there's big stretches of empty land, that technically addresses the issue but not in a good or satisfying way! There's still tons of shit to do it's just all concentrated in a handful of smaller areas. Why bother with such a big world!!

(There's also another aspect that feels like them trying to address that criticism and missing the mark: The icons are (partially) gone! They show up as a little colored dot that is kinda hard to see until you get close to it and then it reveals the icon. It's just annoying! Let me know what dumb collectible I'm heading towards before I get there! Why make this more tedious when this isn't going to actually make people happy!

But maybe none of that matters because most of the stuff you pick up is worthless! I ended up with way more of every material type than I could reasonable use (to the point that I started upgrading whatever extra armor or weapons just to unlock their higher level forms as cosmetics). So there came a point where I just started ignoring most of the icons on the map because I didn't need anything from them.

The Ireland DLC was pretty good! I think the added set of mechanics around capturing resource generators and then trading those resources for stuff is neat! It really feels like they're testing things and exploring possible mechanics for other/future AC games and I think that's alright. The rewards you get for trading things aren't particularly useful (some armor but mostly boat cosmetics) but I think because the materials are passively generated while you're off doing video game bullshit, it makes the lack of meaningful reward feel not as bad. The story is at least better than the main game's (a low bar, but still worth noting) mostly because they have some characters that are actually mildly compelling. I am not Irish but I have a feeling that the representation of Ireland and of Irish people that is presented here is probably not great!

And then there's the mythology DLC. I think between Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, Odyssey really struck a sweet spot with balancing history and mythology. There's enough of it spread out through that game that it feels ever-present but there's never too much to be oversaturated with it. But with Valhalla they seem to have gone back closer to Origin where there isn't a whole lot of it (until you get to the DLC that is entirely mythology). So for a lot of the game it's just boring old historical(ish) England.

I am a long time Norse mythology enjoyer (not in a weird way, I promise!! I just think mythology is cool!!) but the DLC really didn't land with me. It mostly just feels like More but with a new coat of paint. More maps to run around, more enemies to kill, more resources to gather. More more more. They do add another unique mechanic here: Eivor can now suck off enemies to gain special abilities! It's used for some puzzle solving and can theoretically be used for traversal or combat but I never found myself ever really thinking about it or using it very much. The puzzles are either dead simple and obvious or way too obtuse with very little in between. The combat isn't really something I needed any more tools for because the ability list is already so vast. And the world isn't so much different from any other location that being able to move around it different is very meaningful. It's just way too much of a new coat of paint on a game that there is already Way Too Much of!

I didn't get a chance to check out the France DLC because by the time I was high enough level to do it, I was feeling very burnt out on the game and was trying to focus on the main story but didn't even manage to finish that all the way through!

TOO MUCH VIDEO GAME. I was just over 100 hours in and wasn't even done with the main story! I probably had at least a dozen more hours to go!! What the hell! Maybe someday I'll go back and see the last chunk of story and go "wow this wasn't worth it" and then I'll treat myself to murdering a bunch of French people. But for now I'm done with this game. And, y'know what? I think this might've cured me of my "Ubisoft open world enjoyer" disease. I know there's another AC out at this point and I don't know that I'm really interested in checking it out at all! It'd be nice if it were good but I'm just not sure I have faith that it would be!

155 hours. That's how much of my life I've put into Assassin's Creed Valhalla and I still haven't seen end credits. I've finished the main story and completed the HUNDREDS of side quests and all of the other activities and this bloody thing still won't END.

It's a good game, don't get me wrong. I've enjoyed my time with it, it's just that there's so bloody MUCH of it. Ubisoft have made a game that's four times the size a game like this should be and absolutely nobody asked them to do it. They could have released a 40 hour cracker and AC fans and non-fans would've lapped it up. Instead, they spent so much money and so much effort to make a big hairy wank of a thing that nobody really needs. I spent a year playing this. A year, mate. Wind yer neck in, Ubisoft.

Solid. Has some improvements over Odyssey, has some negatives that game doesn't. Probably not going to finish this but I've had fun with what I played. Combat is relatively good, feels meaty and you have lots of options. I was glad they included a setting for lethal assassinations. Eivor is a pretty fun personify protagonist, especially female. Her meeting Kassandra is probably quite fun, haven't played that DLC though. As usual, the "real world" story is boring as sin. Why they can't come up with new contexts other than "a person in 20XX is using an animus" is beyond me. Parkour is good, if pretty underused due to the rarity of towns. While I didn't get more than 30 hours in, the story is actually pretty good. The writing on the individual areas and the characters in each is above what I expected and the central plot seems appealing. The game's focus on the supernatural aspects of Norse culture is pretty cool and Eivor's visions are fun. The missions that actually play with reality are some of the best in the game, like the white horse hallucination. Raiding towns is fun.

There's not really anything that's reinventing the wheel that Origins and Odyssey built but Eivor is an enjoyable central figure in a story that's more engaging than I expected with the same quality of pseudo-RPG combat in this trilogy of games. Recommended for a straightforward good time.

Flecks and glimmers of something that could've been great sprinkled throughout Valhalla, but ultimately culminates in one of those most bloated and empty games in the franchise and a real sign of the times for modern open-world gaming as a whole. Valhalla does try and remedy the tried and true Ubisoft formula with some small tweaks and changes, more dynamic gameplay puzzles, a non-linear story arc structure, and the return of the upgradeable hub base.

For the positives, I enjoyed the story arc structure for the most part and thought it was a decent switch-up for an otherwise bog-standard Ubisoft open-world type game. I also believe that the overhaul of sidequests to becoming dynamic events you discover in the game world akin to something like Red Dead Redemption 2 was compelling. I also thought the slew of collectibles, and being able to customize Eivor and Raventhorpe to be adequate and engaging collectible design.

However,
The nature of Valhalla being an RPG, and Ubisoft leaning more into this vast, hundred-hour RPG epic with dialogue choices, results in Eivor becoming a blank slate for the most part. In an otherwise character-driven series, Eivor is an empty husk for the player and no amount of character dialogue choice is sufficient to deepen them as such. The glimpses we see of Eivor in cutscenes and being, I don't know, a character is something I wish we saw more of. A warrior living in the shadow of his jarl slash blood brother is a good starting concept. The fixer for the real "protagonist" of these characters' stories. Unfortunately, the game just can't help but get in the way of itself and have these ultimately meaningless wannabe Witcher 3 dialogue choices that have very little consequence to the story.

The gameplay is standard. It's a slower Odyssey, with more of an emphasis on chunky finisher animations. This is where I encountered Valhalla's most bizarre issue: The Audio. I don't believe I have ever played a game with audio this compressed where I can physically hear the bitrate. In the Year of Our Lord, Present Day, I cannot understand the development choices that resulted in such abornally godawful sound quality in a really fucking expensive video game.

Additionally, for the narrative, its choice to use non-linear and story arc structured narrative kinda fell flat? Alot of the stories you follow are vastly the same. A young man, destined to be Jarl, doesnt want to be a Jarl and Eivor says hey you should be Jarl, and they're like only if you fight in this big battle for me and then he's like "okie dokie I'll do that for you, pal" and then you do it and the arc is over and you report back to do another one. There are some that are legitimately fun or engaging, one that comes to mind is dressing up as a pagan Halloween creature and solving a murder (to find who will be the next Jarl, mind you).

Finally, i have a gripe with your gear. Gear is no longer a droppable item, its something that you must attain from a shop or from looting the world map. Because of this, I felt like the loot pool was just really small, and I would rock the same outfit and weapons for a large majority of the game. I would have to go out of my way to try out different weapons in hopes of not becoming bored. Why would I swap around and "experiment" when I can just have the thing that does the most damage? It's not like there is any depth to the combat or anything.

In the end, Valhalla is a bigger and worse version of Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I don't understand how Ubisoft pulled off Odyssey, and why I enjoyed that game so much, but I felt like Valhalla exacerbates the glaring problems with Odyssey and dials it up to 11. These RPG games are here to stay, unfortunately, and I hope Ubi learns their lessons from this one because I just cannot see myself spending this amount of time in a game like this again. Shrink the map, dial it back on the RPG-ness, and just have some characters that can make their own decisions. Sometimes I don't want to choose things, I want you to do it for me!

Ok, I think that's the fastest I've dropped a game. From the shit audio, the shit intro cg, and the shit combat. It just sucks. I got this dogshit for free with my cpu last year and I still feel cheated.

(This section was written before I actually got to any combat)
Holy fucking shit. What the hell is this audio. Seriously what the fuck is this. This has lower quality audio than some PS2 games I've emulated. Did they not think people would use headphones when playing this game? I'm using SRH1840s, I know what good sounding audio is and this is not it. This is offensively bad audio quality. It's also horribly mixed too. Fucking astonishing, what a fucking joke.

Oh boy, right when you think Assassin’s Creed can’t get any bigger or better. Valhalla is by far the best game in the series, but it does still have many problems that have plagued the series in the last few entries. Over the 70 hours I spent in the game, I felt satisfied and had a lot of fun in the game, and never was it boring, but there are parts that still feel like a chore and the game is still very bloated despite the fat trimming from Odyssey.

If you couldn’t guess already, Valhalla is set around when the Vikings invaded England and tried to take down the Anglo-Saxons and their Christian faith. The game thankfully has unique characters again, interesting dialog, and a plot to actually care about, well minus the real-world stuff with Layla. You play as either a male or female Eivor who is your hero in this game and is set to build up the village of Ravensthorpe, stop The Order of the Ancients, as well as a plot revolving around your brother Sigurd being sucked into the Christian craziness as he thinks he’s a God.


The main gameplay loop in Valhalla is an alliance map that allows you to pledge yourself to territories throughout England to gain their trust to eventually take down the evil King Alfred. There are about a dozen territories to conquer, but each has a mini-sub plot in which you have to deal with that kingdom’s troubles. The characters are rather interesting and I grew to care about them thanks to the sharper writing over Odyssey’s dull cookie-cutter banter and annoying accents. Getting to pledge to these kingdoms usually ends in storming a keep or castle and putting that king back in power or helping him hold it. One plot involved a murder mystery, and another involved a king’s son who didn’t want to step up to the throne, and some of the kings are dying and you must secure the throne. It may sound repetitive, but actually, with each area being different with a unique plot I always looked forward to the next one.

Of course, while that’s the larger scope of the objective of this game, and it’s a welcome new breath of fresh air for the series, you also have the smaller gameplay loops within such as of course the RPG elements that have been scaled back and also seem pointless. Now instead of actual levels, you have a power level that increases and gives you two skills points every time you level up. There is a new skill tree/web that gives you stat increases and unlocks some new abilities, but the auto-assign works just fine here as the level cap is 340 and by the time you get there you will have unlocked pretty much every important skill. On top of this, the loot system is now gone in favor of unique armors, weapons, and abilities that must be found in the world and are hidden. While this does feel more Assassin’s Creed-like it’s still a chore to go around finding these dozens of armors and weapons throughout the world. They usually aren’t too hard to find, and some of them can be fun, like the Assassins Bureus that are back.

The only way to do other things like customize your ship, upgrade your armor and weapons, etc, is to find chests throughout the world called Wealth and these give you supplies to upgrade your own village. You use this to unlock new facilities. This can also feel like a grind, but over the first twenty hours, you will eventually unlock all the important buildings. Traveling around England is done by horseback mostly and sailing on rivers, more on that later. Just like any AC game exploring the world is a lot of fun. The world is about one-third the size of Odyssey so it’s less overwhelming, but still too big honestly. AC worlds have become too large and bloated for their own good and it just ends up being mostly padding and filler, however, completing the main story and finding all of the Order members isn’t as much of a chore as in Odyssey. Sure, there are power levels set in each area, but I was able to complete these underpowered if I kept my armor and weapons upgraded. Thankfully that’s what is great about the armor and weapons being unique. You can technically stick with the default stuff and just upgrade it over time and ignore everything in the game. Even upgrading your village is mostly optional.


When it comes to combat the game shines and feels great. The combat system is the same as Odyssey, but tweaked and feels better this time around with some brutal combat. Beheadings, slicing off arms, exploding bodies, etc. While the death animations get old fast, each weapon has a few unique one of its own. At least you get the hidden blade in this game and can one-hit assassinate guards regardless of power level. This is a huge positive change as stealth in Odyseey took a back seat. Any guard that is more powerful you get a quick-time event that determines whether you can one-hit kill them or not. This can also be turned off in the options so every enemy is a one-hit kill just like good ‘ol Assassin’s Creed game should be. This allows the satisfying leapfrogging and double assassinations of enemies around camps and makes clearing some out faster.

Finally, sailing has taken a backseat and ship battles are now gone. Instead, you get river raids which allow you to sail around the rivers and basically raid villages for wealth that is used to upgrade your village, again these are completely optional. They are fun for a while and are fairly easy to get some resources. There are various other activities in the world like aligning runes, stacking stones, and Mysteries which are mini-side events that happen in the world that can be completed in seconds or minutes and they can be pretty entertaining. They also give you XP so it’s a great way to level up if you want to complete the Order story tree. Over time you will naturally level up by completing territory pledges in the game to around level 280 which is recommended for the ending. After this and up to 340 is optional to complete the Order tree as there is one Zealot that is level 340 and I was able to beat him at 315 with ease by the end of the game.

The game itself looks fantastic despite the Anvil engine being poorly optimized and requiring too high of system requirements for what is seen. There’s no ray-tracing or DLSS and yet the game requires a 3000 series Nvidia GPU? It looks slightly better than Odyssey so I don’t understand this. On my overclocked 2080 I still had FPS drops on the Very High settings. On my 1660ti I had to keep everything around High and still dropped below 30 FPS in some areas. It’s just an engine that needs an overhaul and needs to run better. I also ran into crashes and glitches even almost a year after release. Despite all of this, the game’s art style captures medieval England and each area looks beautiful with sweeping vistas and mountains. The soundtrack is also one of the best in the series to date and I regularly listen to it outside of the game. It’s just amazing and well put together.


This game won’t change your mind if you hate Assassin’s Creed, but if you’ve been on the fence for a while I suggest jumping in here. It strips down the RPG elements a lot and feels more like a traditional AC game just bigger and with most things being optional. I had a lot of fun hunting down the Order members and finding gear and weapons. However, the real-world stuff with Layla just needs to go. Outside of the beginning scene you only go back towards the end of the game and it’s just so uninteresting and there’s so little of this that you forget what happened in the previous game. The endings that involve “ancient high-tech” and the Animus should just go away as we only care about the historical parts of the game. I even noticed that the scenes with Layla look extremely dated like they were made a decade ago with the last low-resolution textures that should be on an Xbox 360 with lower poly models and worse lighting effects. It seemed tacked on or just planned years ahead of time and they clipped it into this game to make it fit the story.

Overall, Valhalla is a fun game and a well-made AC game. It does feel bloated with too much optional stuff to find around the world, but it’s just optional and you aren’t forced to find it like in Odyssey. I was able to complete both main storylines easily and the RPG elements scale nicely with the story and can even be turned off. The game looks and sounds amazing despite the poorly optimized engine, and the story was actually good with well-written dialog and characters I cared about. There were unique assassinations even! However, the series still needs to scale back and just go back to the way AC was in the past. One single story had a beginning and end with some optional content thrown in. It takes 50 hours just to complete the main story after completing all pledges, and then another 20 hours to level up enough to finish the Order storyline. Over 100 hours in to actually get 100% completion, possibly even 120, and that doesn’t include the DLC that can take 15-20 hours to easily 100% those! It’s stupidly bloated and feels insane, but thankfully it’s just optional. AC in general just doesn’t have the interesting gameplay loop for grinding and it was never supposed to be an RPG. These elements feel shoehorned in as an excuse to make the world bigger and extend gameplay time. The series has never needed any of these.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a big, bold, and ridiculously beautiful entry to the series that finally delivers on the much-requested era of the Viking and the messy, political melting pot of England’s Dark Ages. It walks a fine line between historical tourism, top-shelf conspiracy theory, and veiled mysticism against the backdrop of a grounded and focused story. Fresh takes on several of the series’ established loot and quest systems help to keep the things fluid and nuanced, though progression could use refinement. There’s also a bigger than usual horde of bugs and blemishes to contend with from start to finish. But while it may not be the most stylish or polished, its rugged and brutal look at the muddy business of Scandanavian expansion is as memorable and dense as an Assassin’s Creed has ever been, and it makes great use of the new consoles.