Assassin's Creed Odysssey: part grand, technological wonderment, part shallow, hellish chore. It's a lot like the gameplay of an MMORPG without any of the second M nor O and paper-thin RPG. TL;DR at the bottom.
This game is long and I think I can say a lot about it, but I'll try to keep it as brief as one can when discussing something that can offer you well over a hundred hours of content to explore. Because there is so much to Assassin's Creed Odyssey (and simultaneously, so little), I don't think you'll ever read a single review that can tell you everything about it. Much of this ocean of content is only inches deep, and depending on your definition of "fun", this could be a very good or a very disappointing thing.
Right off the bat: if you're only looking for a game that's something "to do", like you just want some sense of accomplishment and love checking off lists, there's no doubt in my mind this game is for you and you'd be hard-pressed to find a better bang for your buck. The world of Ancient Greece is insensibly expansive, with large landmasses, many islands, and an ocean between it all to explore. I don't think I've seen a bigger map than this and it's not as though half the map is featureless flatlands: there's bandit camps, forts, towns, animal caves, tombs, and more littered around frequently. The world is nicely textured, the lighting looks great, and there're more pretty vistas in this game than there probably should be. There's also DLC worlds that expand this absurdity even further.
"Okay," you're saying, "there's stuff, but what's going on?" Well, you're Kassandra (or, if you choose incorrectly, Alexios): a misthios (mercenary) who's determined to make a name for herself in this war-torn land and, if possible, find out as much as she can about her family that was torn apart by fellow Spartans at a young age. Kassandra will start on a small island and eventually command her own ship to take part in the Peloponnesian War, fighting for whichever side she chooses, on her road to self-discovery. Along the way she'll visit otherworldly cities, fight mythic beasts of yore, and take on a cult determined to control the known world. You'll like Kassandra less for what she does and more for how she's portrayed: her voice actress does the heavy lifting in terms of character building because her animations, like everybody's, are comically robotic for the most part. You will enjoy, like all of these games, becoming Death personified as you will be cutting down thousands of Greeks with (hopefully) a single button press. Kassandra will charm you in conversation and slaughter an army back to back and neither required much effort on her part. Also, if you're a gross coomer who loves stiff "romance" sequences in a game, you can easily become Greece's most ridden bicycle in no time. Love pressing the "Let's have sex" button before rigid kissing and fade to black? Play Assassin's Creed Odyssey, you can do this more times than you can count. You can even briefly kiss one of the game's "top baddies" in a very awkward moment.
The mercenary aspect of this game is probably the best part of it and I wish more games had a similar vibe. You hold no allegiances, you do whatever you wanna do and kill whoever you wanna kill. Fight this battle for the Spartans, who're willing to pay you slightly more, or side with the Athenians, whose defensive advantage guarantees an easier payout? Entirely your call and you can always make the other choice another time soon. Maybe you just want to help locals with their bandit problems? Every town has endlessly respawning timed quests. Want to fight at sea instead? Engage in naval battles until your eyeballs bleed, the pirates will always come back. You're a mercenary, this is exactly what you want in life and the quests and battles feel very natural in this setting.
Unfortunately, this is still an Assassin's Creed game, which since its inception has made the poor decision to tie its historical events to current times. The good news is Kassandra's story has as little as possible to do with the "Assassins vs Templars" and her journey is mainly one of family and revenge. However, you will still occasionally be pulled back into the real world to be reminded of the Animus, Abstergo, and whacky, alien-tech, prehistoric assholes. Because this series has to go on forever, you know there's no real point to any of it: small victories, small defeats, and the war will never end because there needs to be another game eventually. The "RPG" elements basically just mean you get to choose which skills you'll be unlocking first and, depending on who survives your odyssey due to your choices, you can land an ending that's "happy", "utterly miserable", or somewhere in the middle. There's optional dialogue for almost every quest that lets you learn a bit more, but since it's unimportant tidbits and you'll be doing this hundreds of times, you'll want to just cut to the chase.
But back to warring: AC: Odyssey doesn't have very good combat. Neither does AC: Valhalla and I'd bet that applies to AC: Origins, too. In fact, here the combat is most fun when it's entirely avoided; ideally, you'll one-hit assassinate all of your targets. You'll get angry at yourself when you screw up and actually have to fight your enemies with a weapon, thankfully you can earn abilities by leveling up that usually kill enemies in one button, getting that "time spent in combat" as close to zero as possible. Unfortunately, these have a cooldown, meaning sometimes you'll actually have to actually engage in the combat so you can end this nonsense and can get back to assassinating the guards in the next room who (thankfully) heard none of this battle. Higher difficulty just makes enemies less likely to die in one stab (annoying) and in combat, they hit harder (also annoying), so while I started on Hard, I eventually lowered it to Normal for a faster pace and far better experience.
The combat being pretty lackluster is especially damning considering it's basically the only thing you're ever going to do. Sometimes there's variation tossed in there, like you escort someone before you murder ambushers, or you hear criminals and their punishers plead their cases before choosing who to slaughter, but in the end? You're going to kill someone(s) 99% of the time. Like one time, I had to decide if I thought a man could ethically steal a horse. Okay, some change, yeah? A moral dilemma? Well, to hear the man's story, I had to kill 5 guards standing around him, so not really. AC: Valhalla would at least toss in some minigames, like the drinking challenges or the Viking-spin on rap battles. Even though that wasn't exactly the most fun in the world, it did add some much-needed spice to things.
So, part of me wants to call this game incredible. Its scope is nothing short of outrageous, it's a beautiful project that's just crammed (and with DLC, overflowing) with content, and really, it's insane that any of this even works. But is this content worth the potential hundreds of hours you can put into it? Is exploring Achaia any more exciting (or even any different) from exploring Messara? If you've emptied one fortress of goodies and guards, haven't you seen them all? Does anybody give a shit who leads the Cult of Kosmos? Remember when there was a time in your life where you weren't playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey? Do those days now blend together into a blur that, try as you may, you can no longer bring into focus? I would argue that while this world is gigantic, the size just makes your echoes in its hollowness even louder. I think it's simply impossible to call this game "great". The game is long and there's lots to look at, but if length was all we cared about in games, JRPGs would be doing Iron Man numbers all day long, baby.
It's wild to me that Ubisoft made a game this massive after another big Assassin's Creed game, then just released Assassin's Creed Valhalla two years later, another world almost as huge. Soon, we can expect another with Assassin's Creed Mirage. Before you can even stop to truly appreciate one of these games, games that probably should be witnessed by everyone who says they like video games, it's "just another Assassin's Creed game" and forgotten in a catalog of far too many titles. It's no surprise Ubisoft is floundering.
Again, it's tough saying whether or not this game is actually worth your time, though I'd lean towards 'barely' or maybe even 'no'. Apparently, it was worth mine, but I just feel like I was hooked on the world's most mediocre drug. Something drove me to see as much as I could stand of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but it wasn't purely enjoyment, I think I just liked how the wheel spun. You will have a largely bug-free and mediocre time with this game and you can count on it to keep delivering exactly what you're getting for a very long time. AC:O is reliably consistent, for better and for worse.
TL;DR Never pay full price for it, but on sale, this is probably worth your time if you've got nothing else going on. But really, if you're just killing time, there's better things to do. Go read "Infinite Jest". You can certainly get a lot of low-level entertainment out of this title, just don't expect anything too memorable from your time with Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I had an alright time, but I'm very happy I'm done with it.
This game is long and I think I can say a lot about it, but I'll try to keep it as brief as one can when discussing something that can offer you well over a hundred hours of content to explore. Because there is so much to Assassin's Creed Odyssey (and simultaneously, so little), I don't think you'll ever read a single review that can tell you everything about it. Much of this ocean of content is only inches deep, and depending on your definition of "fun", this could be a very good or a very disappointing thing.
Right off the bat: if you're only looking for a game that's something "to do", like you just want some sense of accomplishment and love checking off lists, there's no doubt in my mind this game is for you and you'd be hard-pressed to find a better bang for your buck. The world of Ancient Greece is insensibly expansive, with large landmasses, many islands, and an ocean between it all to explore. I don't think I've seen a bigger map than this and it's not as though half the map is featureless flatlands: there's bandit camps, forts, towns, animal caves, tombs, and more littered around frequently. The world is nicely textured, the lighting looks great, and there're more pretty vistas in this game than there probably should be. There's also DLC worlds that expand this absurdity even further.
"Okay," you're saying, "there's stuff, but what's going on?" Well, you're Kassandra (or, if you choose incorrectly, Alexios): a misthios (mercenary) who's determined to make a name for herself in this war-torn land and, if possible, find out as much as she can about her family that was torn apart by fellow Spartans at a young age. Kassandra will start on a small island and eventually command her own ship to take part in the Peloponnesian War, fighting for whichever side she chooses, on her road to self-discovery. Along the way she'll visit otherworldly cities, fight mythic beasts of yore, and take on a cult determined to control the known world. You'll like Kassandra less for what she does and more for how she's portrayed: her voice actress does the heavy lifting in terms of character building because her animations, like everybody's, are comically robotic for the most part. You will enjoy, like all of these games, becoming Death personified as you will be cutting down thousands of Greeks with (hopefully) a single button press. Kassandra will charm you in conversation and slaughter an army back to back and neither required much effort on her part. Also, if you're a gross coomer who loves stiff "romance" sequences in a game, you can easily become Greece's most ridden bicycle in no time. Love pressing the "Let's have sex" button before rigid kissing and fade to black? Play Assassin's Creed Odyssey, you can do this more times than you can count. You can even briefly kiss one of the game's "top baddies" in a very awkward moment.
The mercenary aspect of this game is probably the best part of it and I wish more games had a similar vibe. You hold no allegiances, you do whatever you wanna do and kill whoever you wanna kill. Fight this battle for the Spartans, who're willing to pay you slightly more, or side with the Athenians, whose defensive advantage guarantees an easier payout? Entirely your call and you can always make the other choice another time soon. Maybe you just want to help locals with their bandit problems? Every town has endlessly respawning timed quests. Want to fight at sea instead? Engage in naval battles until your eyeballs bleed, the pirates will always come back. You're a mercenary, this is exactly what you want in life and the quests and battles feel very natural in this setting.
Unfortunately, this is still an Assassin's Creed game, which since its inception has made the poor decision to tie its historical events to current times. The good news is Kassandra's story has as little as possible to do with the "Assassins vs Templars" and her journey is mainly one of family and revenge. However, you will still occasionally be pulled back into the real world to be reminded of the Animus, Abstergo, and whacky, alien-tech, prehistoric assholes. Because this series has to go on forever, you know there's no real point to any of it: small victories, small defeats, and the war will never end because there needs to be another game eventually. The "RPG" elements basically just mean you get to choose which skills you'll be unlocking first and, depending on who survives your odyssey due to your choices, you can land an ending that's "happy", "utterly miserable", or somewhere in the middle. There's optional dialogue for almost every quest that lets you learn a bit more, but since it's unimportant tidbits and you'll be doing this hundreds of times, you'll want to just cut to the chase.
But back to warring: AC: Odyssey doesn't have very good combat. Neither does AC: Valhalla and I'd bet that applies to AC: Origins, too. In fact, here the combat is most fun when it's entirely avoided; ideally, you'll one-hit assassinate all of your targets. You'll get angry at yourself when you screw up and actually have to fight your enemies with a weapon, thankfully you can earn abilities by leveling up that usually kill enemies in one button, getting that "time spent in combat" as close to zero as possible. Unfortunately, these have a cooldown, meaning sometimes you'll actually have to actually engage in the combat so you can end this nonsense and can get back to assassinating the guards in the next room who (thankfully) heard none of this battle. Higher difficulty just makes enemies less likely to die in one stab (annoying) and in combat, they hit harder (also annoying), so while I started on Hard, I eventually lowered it to Normal for a faster pace and far better experience.
The combat being pretty lackluster is especially damning considering it's basically the only thing you're ever going to do. Sometimes there's variation tossed in there, like you escort someone before you murder ambushers, or you hear criminals and their punishers plead their cases before choosing who to slaughter, but in the end? You're going to kill someone(s) 99% of the time. Like one time, I had to decide if I thought a man could ethically steal a horse. Okay, some change, yeah? A moral dilemma? Well, to hear the man's story, I had to kill 5 guards standing around him, so not really. AC: Valhalla would at least toss in some minigames, like the drinking challenges or the Viking-spin on rap battles. Even though that wasn't exactly the most fun in the world, it did add some much-needed spice to things.
So, part of me wants to call this game incredible. Its scope is nothing short of outrageous, it's a beautiful project that's just crammed (and with DLC, overflowing) with content, and really, it's insane that any of this even works. But is this content worth the potential hundreds of hours you can put into it? Is exploring Achaia any more exciting (or even any different) from exploring Messara? If you've emptied one fortress of goodies and guards, haven't you seen them all? Does anybody give a shit who leads the Cult of Kosmos? Remember when there was a time in your life where you weren't playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey? Do those days now blend together into a blur that, try as you may, you can no longer bring into focus? I would argue that while this world is gigantic, the size just makes your echoes in its hollowness even louder. I think it's simply impossible to call this game "great". The game is long and there's lots to look at, but if length was all we cared about in games, JRPGs would be doing Iron Man numbers all day long, baby.
It's wild to me that Ubisoft made a game this massive after another big Assassin's Creed game, then just released Assassin's Creed Valhalla two years later, another world almost as huge. Soon, we can expect another with Assassin's Creed Mirage. Before you can even stop to truly appreciate one of these games, games that probably should be witnessed by everyone who says they like video games, it's "just another Assassin's Creed game" and forgotten in a catalog of far too many titles. It's no surprise Ubisoft is floundering.
Again, it's tough saying whether or not this game is actually worth your time, though I'd lean towards 'barely' or maybe even 'no'. Apparently, it was worth mine, but I just feel like I was hooked on the world's most mediocre drug. Something drove me to see as much as I could stand of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but it wasn't purely enjoyment, I think I just liked how the wheel spun. You will have a largely bug-free and mediocre time with this game and you can count on it to keep delivering exactly what you're getting for a very long time. AC:O is reliably consistent, for better and for worse.
TL;DR Never pay full price for it, but on sale, this is probably worth your time if you've got nothing else going on. But really, if you're just killing time, there's better things to do. Go read "Infinite Jest". You can certainly get a lot of low-level entertainment out of this title, just don't expect anything too memorable from your time with Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I had an alright time, but I'm very happy I'm done with it.