One of the most charming games of all time. Everything about its aesthetic and general vibe makes me smile. The soundtrack is also fantastic. Gameplay could be a bit more polished. It mostly feels good but you’ll run into occasional moments of jank. This is another game that’s greater than the sum of its parts however. It’s hard not to love something that’s so creative, stylish, and unabashedly specific in its design. All of this elevates something that would otherwise be merely a fun romp into something unforgettable and truly special.

Random note: this game also has the humorous honor of having a tutorial that’s probably harder to beat than any normal level in the game. The tutorial is thankfully not required to progress. You’ll see what I mean if you try to get the steam achievement for beating it.

A good game for all the reasons you’ve probably heard. My only complaint is about the length required to beat the game and do most of the side content. As I’ve gotten older the prospect of a game that I can sink close to 200 hours into has gotten less and less attractive. When a game is that long, I tend to become more and more critical of whether or not the game is truly worth my time. The main campaign definitely is. I’d probably suggest limiting yourself to only doing some if any of the side content. If you try to do all of it you’ll start to realize that a good portion of it is pretty repetitive and boring. The rest of the game is a quality experience so you definitely don’t want to burn yourself out on lesser side content and end up shelving it.

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.