This is probably the most pointlessly bloated and bland AAA game ive ever played. It’s offensively bloated. After playing it I felt duped by a game that did not respect my time. I felt like an asshole. I don’t have any other words for it. This game made me feel like an absolute asshole for wasting any of my time on it.
ADDENDUM: Vindicating to see how infamous the bloat in this game has become since its release. Even people who like it seem to acknowledge that it’s too big for its own good. Absolutely hilarious to me that Ubisoft kept updating this game with live events, free side quests, and massive paid DLC campaigns, which caused the completion time to balloon an unprecedented 200+ hours. Add to this the fact that the new content has substantially increased the size of the already absurd 300+ level skill tree where each level up allows you to pick from stuff like +0.25% light attack or +0.25% assassination strength. Funniest shit I’ve ever seen. I’d like to say that the people at Ubisoft are fools for thinking anyone would want to sink that much time into such a tedious game but they correctly anticipated that people would eat this shit up despite it being so tedious - myself included. If there’s any bright side to this, Valhalla at least prompted me (and seemingly other people as well) to be a bit more discerning about what games are worth our time and effort.
Is this the straw that breaks the camels back for Ubisoft’s terrible open world design? The release of Mirage might lead one to think so, but I highly doubt it. I think it’ll take something even worse than Valhalla - something that actually flops spectacularly - to make them actually change their open world design philosophy.
ADDENDUM: Vindicating to see how infamous the bloat in this game has become since its release. Even people who like it seem to acknowledge that it’s too big for its own good. Absolutely hilarious to me that Ubisoft kept updating this game with live events, free side quests, and massive paid DLC campaigns, which caused the completion time to balloon an unprecedented 200+ hours. Add to this the fact that the new content has substantially increased the size of the already absurd 300+ level skill tree where each level up allows you to pick from stuff like +0.25% light attack or +0.25% assassination strength. Funniest shit I’ve ever seen. I’d like to say that the people at Ubisoft are fools for thinking anyone would want to sink that much time into such a tedious game but they correctly anticipated that people would eat this shit up despite it being so tedious - myself included. If there’s any bright side to this, Valhalla at least prompted me (and seemingly other people as well) to be a bit more discerning about what games are worth our time and effort.
Is this the straw that breaks the camels back for Ubisoft’s terrible open world design? The release of Mirage might lead one to think so, but I highly doubt it. I think it’ll take something even worse than Valhalla - something that actually flops spectacularly - to make them actually change their open world design philosophy.