Odyssey more fully embraces the franchise's RPG turn following the success of Origins. An element of choice and consequence has been incorporated into the narrative allowing players to influence the story with their decisions. It's not as deep as something you'd get from BioWare on this front when it comes to being able to constantly define your male or female character's personality or radically change where a quest will take you, but you're given the ability to impact key events in meaningful ways and put your own personal touch on the journey.

This is a lot like Skyrim in that no matter where you go you'll always find something to do. The entire picture of what the main storyline is presenting is spread across three separate questlines, and that's in addition to the variety of side-stories and locations with their own checklist of objectives to complete that you'll encounter. There's a hierarchy of mercenaries you can climb through the ranks of, a secret web of cultists to uncover, and an entire ship with a crew to upgrade and collect resources for. There's a lot of flexibility in all of this too, like how you can stay on top of your gear either by upgrading your favorite pieces or ignore that option entirely in favor of just picking the next best choice out of the constant stream of newly acquired loot, and play in the immersive "Exploration mode" which removes waypoints forcing you to really pay attention to directions given by the NPCs. It's amazing how well all of these systems and really everything Odyssey does comes together. Everything except for the graphics that is...

This is far from the prettiest game on the market. That's somewhat understandable given what a MASSIVE world with an increased amount of foliage compared to the deserts of Egypt it's rendering, but it's disappointing how I was never able to be blown away by these sprawling wildernesses due to it all looking like it was made out of clay. I do have some other, more minor complaints. Such as how the romance options are almost exclusively women, uncomfortably playing into that old stereotype of all gamers being either straight dudes or lesbians and severely limiting the choices for gay men and hetero females. The biggest though has got to be the modern day portion of the series. On top of still finding the new characters unlikable, I continue to have no idea what Ubisoft is even doing with it since they killed off Desmond in III and very little actually happens in this entry at all. It looks as though the Fate of Atlantis DLC provides some much needed direction going forward on this front, but given that I couldn't bring myself to make it through the free chapter of it they were nice enough to give away it remains an aspect of the brand they could abandon altogether and I wouldn't care.

The ancient Greece segments which make up the vast majority of the experience however are fantastic. There might not be any mention of the assassin's or templars that along with the inclusion of mythological creatures has begun to make the overall AC lore kind of murky, yet I appreciate the route the property is taking from a gameplay perspective. So much content is here that even after 50+ hours of play there were still areas of the map I hadn't visited, and all of it is varied and interesting enough to justify doing for the many hours it will keep you busy. It makes for an epic adventure I would genuinely say is one of the best RPGs I've ever played and easily my new favorite Assassin's Creed.

9/10