Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a Game for No One 

I completely removed the concept of AC from Valhalla and just played it like a Viking game. That’s where my enjoyment came out of

The old familiar phrase comes to mind. If you try to please everyone, you will please no one

As someone who hasn’t played any AC, this video is still a great examination of why knowing your specific audience is so important in game design. You can’t make a game everything for everyone.

i have to say the music from this game is out of world. sure it doesnt have a significantly mind blowing track like Ezio family but its music library is so huge and the viking vibe/theme is so good that i can listen for hours

I feel like ubisoft games are amazing if you have never played a ubisoft game before. And then the magic wears off after you realize all their games follow the exact same formula.

I think my love for Assassin's Creed died with Desmond Miles. I was kinda hoping for a modern day Assassin Creed where we could play as him after he's a fully trained assassin. When the games lost Desmond they lost what tied the characters from the past together. Now there's no through story to connect the games and characters, so none of the games after the first few feel connected to the main story.

This is one of the most fair reviews ever. I also played the heck out of Valhalla, couple hundred hours, and enjoyed my time, but felt like it was lacking almost all the way through. It’s possible to enjoy flawed games while still recognizing their flaws.

I had so much fun just being a Viking in this game, catching arrows and spears and just chucking them back at enemies. The story and writing is tapwater, but it is at least fun

I was really surprised to see that this is only your third video. You already sound like you have been doing this for years I'm impressed.

It's so hard to go back to AC for me after Ghost Of Tsushima. The combat in that game was just so nuanced and dynamic. It really lead to alot of cool emergent gameplay opportunities and fun physics-based reactions from your ghost abilities and tools. Not to mention that Tsushima doesn't limit you in anyway, no stamina meters or anything like that.

I think the short and sweet explanation would be "Assassin's Creed died with Desmond in 3, but they kept using the name. We didn't know at the time but something else was wearing its clothes after."

As an AC "fan" who hasn't played an AC since unity and hasn't finished one since 4, I literally burst into laughter after your brief summary of valhalla's plot. Ever since killing off desmond in 3, these games have had no arc to their plots at all. It's so obvious that they just put a bunch of cool sounding settings in a hat, pull one out at random, and try to make an AC story out of it. Without the modern day Desmond plot to tie everything together, there's nothing for a fan like me to care about. I have no reason not to just play a better stealth game, or a better action rpg, or a better historical game, or a game with a better narrative, or a game with better dialogue and romance options. These games have no identity, no soul. I'm baffled that people can find anything at all to enjoy about these modern AC games. To me, this series died with desmond in AC3, and should have just ended after revelations. Without Desmond, without the animus, without the ideological war between assassins and templars, without a grounded historical setting, there is no Assassin's Creed.

Finally somebody mentions the "constantly getting knocked out of sprint" issue. That drove me crazy, especially while doing all those (incredibly annoying) flying paper puzzles. The parkour in this game is fucking terrible but they make sure you have to use it in the stupidest way to collect all the garbage.

I've watched a lot of Valhalla critiques over the past couple years and you are mentioning issues that I've never heard anyone talk about. Without a doubt, this is one of, if not the best, most complete and constructive critiques on RU-vid. You get to the heart of nearly every issue in this game and still manage to be relatively concise. Excellent video :)

I love Valhalla. I have over 520 hrs logged (I injured my knee and couldn't walk for a long while) on the normal difficulty and I have restarted now after a break on the hardest settings. Loving it all over again. It's fun to pretend to be a Vikings!

This game was just incredibly painstakingly long, it was a relief to finish so i didnt have to play anymore

Hard to believe Valhalla is from the same team as Origins. Origins is still my personal favorite of the rpg AC's. It had the perfect blend of immersion, stealth and combat. Egypt is one of the most downright gorgeous and mysterious locations AC has ever had.

This is exactly how I felt playing Valhalla, as a former fangirl of the franchise. Ubisoft's kept _Assassin's Creed_ going for sooo long, they've backed themselves into a corner. They can't innovate further without making AC more unrecognizable from its roots, and they can't fully commit to those roots because they've beaten that formula to death for fifteen years already, so they've settled on Frankenstein-ing the two together. As a result, for me, Valhalla ended up feeling like a case study of that popular quote: "Appeal to everyone and you'll appeal to no one." Maybe Ubisoft should take the hint and wrap it up, though in their current state, I have zero expectations of an ending worth sticking around for anyways.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag is my favorite game in the entire series. The assassin work and pirate fantasy was a fantastic mix in my opinion, managing your ship and crew was a wonderful experience. The only thing I hated in Black Flag was the hunting at times. But I have a love for most the games, even some of the later ones. It's sad to see what what happened to Valhalla. I hope Mirage can be better.

Given how they handled stuff like social stealth an attempt to relive the feelings of the original games or even parkour as a whole has me concerned that they may also miss the mark with mirage

I love it when you said ‘these stat boosts seemingly have no changes to gameplay at all’, because the entire rpg system of this game is fake. You can have +500 attack damage and you will notice zero difference in your actual combat. They’re only there as placebos, including the skill tree. No stats you gain there actually matters.

In a game called assassin's creed you should always have the option to stealth through an entire game if you want to. That's kind of the point of an assassin after all.

you know, an assassin during this era could have been a really interesting concept. first story idea that comes to mind is that eivor tries their best to be this strong and brave viking, but they're just not strong enough and struggle constantly to live up to their family's reputation (they're known for their prowess and can't be beat....except for eivor). parents finally have had enough and disown eivor out of shame, who is forced to set on their own journey and have to adapt to work with what they have. could have been saved by assassins and joined the brotherhood in search of belonging and a family, and takes on their cause. maybe the main antagonists are a group of very powerful vikings trying to screw over everyone, and are too powerful for even eivor's bio family to take down, so the brotherhood are the only ones able to defeat them due to their "dirty tactics" (can you tell I don't know much about vikings nor this game lmao). not the most original story, but it's one that really lets you play with the concept of sneaky stealthy assassins in an era and area where they're very much frowned upon and enables you to include the assassins in....you know, an assassin's creed game-

Im new to AC but loved valhalla. It's a big game and real value for money. I feel at times there was not enough story, lots of adhoc tasks to complete in each area to progress the game. I'm an old gamer so never bothered with upgrades,

I think the thing that upsets me more is the lack of assassin focus story telling in the newer AC games aside from origins.

The writing in these newer games is god-awful too. In odyssey the characters who talk about Alexios growing up on Kephallonia all mix up the story. Markos says he found him on the street, stealing food and Alexios even says that is how he met Markos to Phiobe but literally 5 mins before that we get a flashback showing Markos finding Alexios on the beach after washing up there 😩 how dumb do you have to be to mess up your own story in less than 5 mins of establishing it

Odyssey is my favorite, great gameplay for both stealth and ruthless combat, beautiful and immersive story and charismatic characters.

Although I still resent Odyssey for implementing magic and the possibility of having an entire game without assassins, I can see your points for the game (you are actually the first one I hear giving solid and good arguments for the game, so thank you for letting me understand better why people like the game).

I would also like to add to the discussion: the downturn of the Animus UI. For some reason, Origins actually has a fantastic in game animus layout, which Ubisoft somehow forgot about with Odyssey, and even more so with Valhalla. Like part of the immersion is the contextual framework that we are playing inside of a high tech, science fiction machine, so the visual and audio design should fit within this. Valhalla more egregiously than Odyssey just said, “nah fam”. Say what you will about AC 3, Unity, and Syndicate, but the UI implementation was amazing!

When I heard an Assassin's Creed game that was based on Norse/viking world, I honestly laughed. I mean it's called Valhalla, a pretty big and I thought well known fact that Vikings believed you'd only go there through bravery and valor but most of all, you died in battle. So to them an assassin is a coward and a weakling, one not worthy of Valhalla. Think about it, an assassin sneaks around, kills people with out them even knowing till it's to late, not giving them a chance to fight therefore not engaging in real combat. It just really didn't make sense for them to have an Assassin's Creed game with Vikings, other than Ubisoft getting EVERY era/society to put in their new game. lol 🤣

I don't know whats going on with resolution quality in this video but other then that, it's like someone much more competent in expressing themselves read my mind on Valhalla and made a video about it. Great job, keep it up!

I've been aching to watch this video ever since I bought Valhalla in a sale. The only AC game I ever attempted to play was the very first one and after that I watched my brother play them and enjoyed the story of Desmond through his gameplays. Still, my brother never finished Valhalla and I got curious and...it's funny, most of the time I craved for the missions to be over so I could go right back to collecting (with mysteries being what I REALLY looked forward too). Some missions were really well written (Villi) but sometimes (especially the main ones) felt really strange. This video really encompasses some of my feelings and it was really enjoyable to watch. All the points are well and nicely explained and ring true, despite be enjoying the grinding section of it. As some others said, it just doesn't feel like an AC game and as such I find the ending of the mainstory really strange and it took me out of the experience even. I was so glad to get back into the Animus haha. Love the video!

I clicked on this video thinking it would be an 100k+ subscriber channel but I'm very impressed by the production quality and formatting of this video, you earned a sub

My main problem is that all 3 of the newer games are much longer, each being longer than the last. Valhalla is fun but im at 140hrs and just now playing the dlc, which now I might not even finish now that I know it doesn't get better only worse. The game drained all the fun I had for it by the 80hr mark and after that it felt like a duty to finish it because of the time I put in it already. Tbh I had the same problem with Odysey so Idk what I expected. As much as I love Valhalla, I just miss being able finish a game without having to take breaks inbetween them because I get bored of them.

Odyssey was my favorite AC tbh, liked the old ones too but something about Odyssey just really spoke to me with its setting and open world. Great video I knew I felt most of this about Valhalla but not precisely until I heard it put into words.

As someone who had 160 hours on this game, I actually enjoyed it a lot, yeah it had its own little problems and animations but overall it was a fun game :)

As a spartan and viking game I think Odyssey and Valhalla were actually pretty good. If Ubisoft had advertised them as such instead of shoving them under the Assassins Creed title I think that they probably would have sold much better and gained a larger fanbase. They didn't though and so in the end they were just setting themselves up for obvious failure. That's just my opinion.

In my opinion biggest mistake Ubisoft made is dropping the Bayek and Aya storyline... AC Origins was such a good settings and had great characters it made me fall in love with this series again, it really gave me that "assassin" feeling from the Altair era, and instead of continuing the story with Aya in Rome they just abandoned it for some reason... I hope Mirage gives me that eastern "Origins" vibe again, because whereas I enjoyed Odyssey and Valhalla it really felt like some random games instead of assassins creed games

This is the best most spot on review I've ever seen/heard. The parkour, empty world, and cut and paste cities with the same exact stuff in every city are just horrible. How did they manage to build such a massive game with literally nothing in it lol

My biggest annoyance with this game is that I decided I wanted to play with bear gear and literally couldn't find anything for the spec for hours, cause it's all locked behind levelled areas. The only stuff I had was the dlc stuff, which is strong, but I wanted to try some new stuff out, and it was just absent from my world. I had plenty of wolf weapons, and raven, but I only had like three bear weapons.

I’m an old school fan, but I loved Odyssey for what it was and spent hundreds of hours running through different builds. Valhalla took most of that away and left us with a very average experience that left me totally unfulfilled

''Ubisoft prefer removing things over improving them'' ... that should be carved in stone, because that's biggest truth bomb I ever heard in any AC video on this platform, thumbs up, and subbed, you earned new fan :)

I never finished the game, i got bored really fast. Btw bro i never watch a video for over 15 mins, but yours kept me engaged the whole 58 mins !

Hey! Great video. I could not play yet another game with a gear score system, so I haven't played played AC in a while. Shame it's in such a state, I always wanted one in feudal Japan when I played the old ones. Also, whats song is playing in the background at 23:10?

My biggest complaint about Valhalla is how little Sigurd and Basim were on screen. That was a relationship I wanted to see more of in the game. Eivor consistently referred to Sigurd as his brother but then you arrive in England and he fucks off for the remainder of the game. I always felt like Sigurd would have been better as the main character and having Basim training him as an assassin would have been a much more interesting character arc than Eivors imo. Eivor was given a hidden blade told to kill Templars and he just took that idea and ran with it. Meanwhile Basim was whispering in Sigurds ear and teaching him the ways of the hidden ones. Ultimately leading him to lose himself and then eventually to relinquish his power as the leader of the raven clan. It felt like it just kind of ended after a certain point. I think Sigurds story would have been better if he was the main character and Eivor was either a side character or removed entirely from the narrative. That’s a much more engaging story imo. Overall it was a very disappointing experience and that bums me out because I played this directly on the heels of Origins which was damn near perfection.

i couldnt get my thoughts together to say why i didnt like valhalla, and this video fell upon me like a silver ring. i watched the rest on your videos and i can really say that they are amazing, i hope you keep going because i know that you will get places!!

What do you know? I 'picked up' the game thanks to Ubisoft making it free for the weekend of August 11-14th. I went in with somewhat of a 'negative' perspective/not expecting too much of it after watching some reviews since it came out, and I actually found myself really enjoying it. As I'm writing this comment, I'm debating whether I should buy the base game or not (just the vanilla, I don't really do DLCs) It's currently on sale for 15 USD (around $22 for me due to currency exchange) and I'm, like, 60/40 in favor of doing it I was only able to complete around 43% of the main campaign. It is nothing to write home about and I personally enjoyed the God of War: Ragnarök reimagining of the Norse Mythology way more. Granted, I no longer see the RPG saga as "Assassin's Creed" games but as a simple "Ubisoft turn-your-brain-off" RPGs. With that mindset, I fairly enjoyed the Viking power fantasy. Yes, it is as if not even more bloated than Odyssey and Origins, but I kinda liked it.

I just learned how to play those AC by removing almost all the HUD, i am only keeping the life bar for my character. And it changes everything. I am using more the crow to search and explore, by not knowing what is going to happen I am always on edge and using more the notes I find in the world and my eyes than the compass and the colouring dots.And the game is more enjoyable this way in my opinion. I really love Valhalla this way.

I was so pumped after the first raid in Valhalla then I needed to upgrade the village and gone through a bunch of raids and spending more time finding keys instead of fighting. I've never felt so miserable in any game

The Supideo mission was paramount to my Odyssey experience; it was the most enjoyable side mission but also demonstrated the balance between light-heartedness and heavy matters throughout the game. It was a beautifully written story. Valhalla feels like it was written by people that have never played a video game or read a book or even watched a movie.

I loved Valhalla, this was my favorite AC game.

There is a guy called Whitelight that does a lot of AC retrospectives and he made a video on the Parkour of AC, this video reminded me of it because all you talked about the game having mechanics that dont work together or had no thought put into them, the Parkour of AC suffered the same problem as well in pretty much every game.

You sir, will go extremely far in the RU-vid world! Your commentary and explanations are so professional and beautifully spoken

I'm a big fan of AC franchise, have been playing it since 2007 when the og game came out and honestly, I have enjoyed every game since, Valhalla is great, very different from the rest, but still an awesome game. I like the RPG style to let the player play as he wants, Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla take part before the classic Assassins Brotherhood was formed as we knew, up until there it still was the Hidden Ones, a very primitive stage of the Assassins, so everything was still taking the form that we learned to love so much, and this opens these games for the players to play as they see fit, want to go full viking and destroy everything that moves? Fine, make a build for that. Preferer stealth? Fine, make a build for that. I know it's a little weird to be an steallthy viking, but then, it was weird for them to connect with different religions back then, but the are many examples of that through history, why not one that goes for a stealthy approach? RPG games are so open that you can create the version you want for the character, and I love that. Since these games take part on the creation of the Assassins and Templars orders, it is totally fine to have a different playstyle in this scenario. Classic AC games were great, but I much prefer the RPG action styled of the most recent nowadays.

I always wondered why this the only AC game I didn’t care to finish about half way threw and here’s my answer lol couldn’t put it better myself even after finishing it I was even more upset 😅

I couldn’t look at Valhalla as an AC game for the longest time but I couldn’t put it into words exactly why. This video outlines it and brings up points I hadn’t considered.

What annoys me is how they nerf the parkour in each new AC game if they kept the Unity parkour every AC game would feel amazing

The first AC game i ever played was Valhalla because i really liked the thematic. And from there on i continued with Odyssey and Origins i really like these new gen assassins because simply i am a person who likes to get overpowered feel like god walking, exploring freely and my choices to have impact.

I've played the AC series from beginning as a teen and my favorites are AC 2, Revelations, Brotherhood, AC 3, Rogue, Odyssey and Origins. Valhalla just felt like a viking game with hidden blade and it took me couple of times to finish it as it kept interrupting my immersion.

this game isn't a game you look back with good thoughts, it's a game that makes your dopamine receptors hyperactive and that's why you come back and keep playing it.

I wanted to love Valhalla so badly, especially Cos I’m a huge fan of Norse mythology and Viking history and Viking tv shows but it just was trying to be too many different things. Had it chosen one path and stuck to it I think it would have been perfect

I'm of the opinion that AC Syndicate is amazing on paper and I'd love to see them try again with all those ideas but with better execution (and one singular protagonist)

I don't know why but I really hate playing a game where you know you are in a totally different location but the internal building or cave feels exactly the same as though it was copy and pasted and you get that alot in Valhalla. You also get it in Odysee though it doesn't feel like that as often. Even Mafia 3 did this. For me it just totally destroys the illusion that you are going somewhere different. Some randomness would be nice rather than navigating exactly the same interior you navigated on the other side of the map.

Assasin's creed went from one of the biggest innovators in gaming to a contender for the laziest uninspired annual release game. One of the best examples for why gaming suffers when its in the hands of people who only see gaming as a cash cow.

I think you hit the nail on why despite really liking Origins and Odyssey i just couldnt get myself to like this one, very good video!

you make your videos easy to understand! love it

If I can say I enjoyed a few things about Valhalla, it would be the pacing of the combat, the soundtrack, and the settings you can visit in the main game and in the DLC. The combat felt like a breath of fresh air to me. It was more thrilling than any other game in the series because of the hitbox system as opposed to the counter and attack system of the older games. Adding a stamina bar only made the combat feel more intense, and the variety of weapons encouraged me to try different weapons out and see which one appealed to the playstyle I was going for. What I don't like, however, is the over the top nature of the abilities in these games. I play the AC games partially for realism and partially to explore settings in the past. While it could never be 100% accurate to how life actually was in the games we play, Valhalla still took my breath away with the way it displayed each locale. Graphics aside, the game was obviously intended to be quite beautiful -- and as much as it shows, it's disproportionate to the way the combat handles at times. I liked the animations, and I liked how combat felt more fluid than ever before. I just didn't like how the combat felt like it was too much for a game like AC. This isn't to say it's a bad system, but it's perhaps overdone. The skill tree seems impossible to complete without putting in hours upon hours of gameplay. And I think 'overdone' is the right way to describe the whole game, really. If we want to say they tried to appeal to both camps of the AC fanbase, then we should also be able to say that what Ubisoft tried to do in either direction was simply too much. Moreover, in games like AC3 or Rogue, it didn't necessarily feel like a chore to do the missions or any of the side content or collectibles. At times, it's been tedious in past games. Who could forget the ridiculous task of finding feathers in AC2 to get a pretty meagre reward? In Valhalla, there's so much to do and see that I just don't want to play it. It's cumbersome to the point of absolute disinterest. This is the main reason why I haven't been able to finish Unity, let alone get all the gear or upgrades. I think Valhalla just overcorrected the series, and in too many ways. I'm over 100 hours into the game and it still feels like I've barely started doing anything with a character level of over 200, and Raventhorpe's renown being fairly high. To be fair, when playing these games, I often prefer to do the side content first, or to at least make it s primary focus. Story missions tend to bog down the experience and I see the collectibles and various side missions in the Valhalla to be part of that experience. My problem is really that the game blows everything out of proportion. What I used to see as a fun and enticing way to play an AC game and make the completionist in me overjoyed, I no longer see -- at least, not in Valhalla. Valhalla is one of the few games in the series in which I actively decided I didn't want to 100% it, something I used to take as a challenge as well as just something to do as I played in prior games.

The biggest sin of this game is truly that it fails to deliver either an assassin experience or a viking experience. Tries to do both and ends up missing the mark for both...the biggest part where i noticed is in raids....Animus wot allow you to kill innocents.....Not a huge deal breaker but an example of how the assassins side of things holds the viking side back and same the other way around

This is a wonderfully deep and concise analysis with great editing and script flow, but the touch I loved the most was the inspired use of "Candyland" as a verb to describe skill tree progression. Excellent writing touch.

This is one of those games where the term "love/hate" really exemplifies what I felt playing through it, it's not bad but it's also certainly no good, at least for me. So many ideas, some a step forward, others two steps back and there's parts of the game that while being good are locked behind a tedious amount of strechness that in the end leave you wonder if it' was really worth sinking your time in getting there. I have to give you kudos in finding the time to debate and engage with your audience, but do be sure to take your own time to rest; sadly some people don't know the difference between a rant and a discussion. This video surely gained a subscriber and I can't wait other game analyses from your part, cheers from Spain!

Being 56yrs old (i know, I know lol) I have been playing them since the first came out, as I love history it seemed the perfect blend of history and gaming. Assassin's Creed Valhalla is probably the most beautiful in the way the landscape is done, gameplay tho is a joke, especially the monastery looting ffs. Just sitting at the side of a river as the sun came up, fishing rod in hand looked pretty darn good. I'm just not getting the urge for Mirage tho for some reason, maybe give it a little more time in the oven (it is from Ubisoft after all) and probably pick it up at some point. You earned a sub btw, keep up the good work and a big hello from Scotland.

This long form content is amazing. I love how you actual put thought and effort into your videos. I hope you end up doing reviews of all the games in this series. Very impressive

My solution to the Assassin's Creed identity crisis that it seems to be having... Is to alternate. Since it's been so long, have Ubisoft Montreal make one a game in the spirit of old school Assasins Creed, like Unity. Mostly because is the HD iteration, Unity captures the spirit of the original games best. Then while this game is being played by fans, and being Updated regularly by Montreal, another game can being in the works by another studio, like Quebec. This game will be one of the more modern Witcher 3 style games. This why everyone gets what they want without having to sacrifice quality with a jack of all trades game. It's not a new idea, it's something that Activision used to do with Modern Warfare and Black Ops, and nobody I ever met complained about that.

I love AC because I love history it was honestly kind of a relief when they scaled back some of the stealth requirements for though. last one I played before I bought all 3 of the new ones one weekend was 3.

I'm totally with you. That was a rough one to get through. There's only so many fields of grass or patches of woods you can run through before you get bored. There was none of the locations like past games. The historical sites like Notre dam, the pyramids,spinx, statue of Athena. The story was kind of week. At the end you don't even get to kill the leader of the cult you have been taking out the whole game.

This is a perfect description as to how I feel about the game. I have tried playing it 3x and I can't for the life of me. It's the only AC game I can't bring myself to finish because of some of the things u have said. I don't feel like an assassin and I can't play it any other way because of what it's supposed to be. This might be me overstepping but I honestly feel like Ubisoft should remake a lot of the games in the AC franchise and with Unity/Syndicate mechanics as it's base. Even removing the Animus because to me it makes more sense if they just told the story of Assassins vs Templars and have you the player retelling their story, living their lives, being in their shoes until it gets to modern society like the assassin girl in Watch Dogs Legion and through that aspect they could eventually combine both games. Templars, the ones behind Abstergo entertainment and small, shady activist grps working behind the scenes and Assassins as the hackers of DedSec/the Legion. As for Odyssey, it was way out there in terms of being an assassin but I enjoyed the hell out of it. I don't mind the RPG elements to the AC games but I just want it to be done a bit better, because since origins I've been in love with the concept. I still want more AC games like Black Flag, Brotherhood, AC3, Syndicate and even Unity (when it decides to behave). But in my opinion Valhalla ain't it. It doesn't give me that feeling and I find myself going back to older AC games.

I wanted to enjoy Valhalla. I really tried but at the end of the day it felt like playing it was a chore more than anything fun and engaging

If you took the Assassins Creed out of your mind, and just looked at it as just a game, Valhalla was fun as hell. That seems like the hang up about this game. You can play the game as a stealth game quite a bit. I took quite a few locations without my crew, using stealth, and then signaled the in to help bust open doors and chests. Although I also took some with my crew, because what’s not fun about beaching a long boat blowing a horn, and then storming, monastery with a group of yelling crazy Vikings.

One thing I loved Odyssey is its skill system. Though the game has issues with sponge enemies, you can try different builds. As you mentioned, a player can experiment in the game with stealth. archer, warrior and 100% crit chance builds with different weapon and armor combinations. I think they could have improved this system in Valhalla with reasonable player levels. I was disappointed to see in Valhalla's skill system that have been down compared to Odyssey.

I can sum it up this way. I've 100% completed Black Flag 3 times and it's still fun. I haven't been able to finish Valhalla's first DLC (I finished the main story before DLC began, I just can't force myself to gruel through the game more than about 15 minutes now before I shut it down and look at RU-vid videos instead).

Great video, I had known about Kassandra and female Eivor being the canon protagonists but didn't know the reason behind the male counterparts being added as options, ridiculous lol. Also that dragon fight really looked like a call to Dark Souls, as you say another attempt to find ideas to find something that works. Future direction of the franchise looks unsteady at best.

Very good video, probably the best evaluation on Valhalla, for me I'm very mixed on this game there's bits i enjoyed and bits I didn't. The main thing i didn't like was just how long the game is, just felt it was never-ending at times and felt disconnected with the main story as you pledge with different allegiances that have nothing to do with the main story. Towards the end i just gave up on completing all the side missions as there just the same and was very happy when i finished the game after so long playing it.

Excellent critique. This video is extremely high quality I would have assumed you had dozens of videos by now! This game was a welcome escape while my Grandfather was dying of COVID. Hundreds of hours to escape from my own personal hell. Other than that purpose it served, I have no desire to boot it up again, not even for DLC. It was fun but felt soulless. I never felt attached to Eivor like I did with Bayek or Kassandra. That was the biggest thing I noticed from the start.

I personally sunk about 300 hours into Odyssey, loved that game and I would definitely play it again. Took quite a while to collect all the different glowing Isu armours due to the random type drop. Having a massive map to play on was one of my favourite parts of the game itself. Facing mythical beasts was cool too. Atlantis was also beatifully done.

In all honestly, I really like the game. I love norse mythology and vikings and all the activities and story are literally perfect for me. Plus if I want to do a bit of the "assassin stuff", i just hang out with Basim. But I've got to be honest, out of all the 3 playthroughs where I've spent at least 50 hours in each one, I've never completed the main story. Not even once. Recently I've set myself on completing all of the main AC games including the RPGs which means that the final cherry on top will be me coming back to Valhalla, this time with the intention to actually complete it no matter what. I really wonder how I'm gonna feel after replaying it this year, if I'm gonna change my mind and start seeing the issues now that I can compare it with the previous games still fresh in my memory, or if I'll still love it as I do now. The RPG games are a very hard topic to discuss in the AC community. I like them both, but don't appreciate the divide that it brought among the community. In a perfect world, I'd love to see everyone like all the games.

I platinumed the game on PS4 right after release with ~180h after them fixing bugs 2-3 month after release. I was just burned out of it and I never went back to play the two DLC despite me owning them through the deluxe edition. When I got my PS5 and I didn't know what to play I was like well let's get the platinum for it on PS5 as well. And after 3-4 hours I had the Platinum Trophy and I thought to myself why not jsut play the two DLCs. Well I got 3 hours into druids DLC till I closed the game and deleted it from the SSD. And I swore then and there that I won't ever install it again and that I look at gameplay of any game from Ubisoft they releases before buying it (that saved me from getting FC6). Two month after my 2nd Valhalla attempt I got my platinum on Origins and Odyssey. Both game I owned before Valhalla but because I had so many games at the time I never had the time to actually finish the close to 100%. And oh boy are those game leagues ahead compared to Valhalla. Origins in terms of story and Odyssey how it handels the RPG elements. And both Egypt and Greek are way prettier than England in my eye. But that is mainly because when I leave my house I have close to the same scenery as I see in Valhalla. And I personally like side quests that have nothing to do with the main plot and are more than 30 minuites long. Thus I absolutely hate what Valhalla did with it. The average time for a side objective in Valhalla is less than 3 minutes... That's just bad world design, and that was from the same team that gave us AC Origins. Overall Valhalla is my second least favorite (mainline) AC game out there after AC Liberation.

I see your points and agree with them but I really enjoy this game and I have been having a great time with it but anyways great video man keep up the good work also first comment of the video

I agree with just about everything you're saying. 1/2 way through "Valhalla", I just couldn't wait for it to end. It was just so dull. "Odyssey" had that a couple times but then I'd discover some new thing or place that renewed my interest. "Odyssey" was long but by the time I finished it, I really felt like I'd accomplished something. "Valhalla" I never looked back. Had no desire to buy the DLC. I enjoyed fighting the bounty hunters in "Odyssey". They were tough but fair. In Valhalla they were always way above my level. It was tiring to shave off a little heath with each hit and getting one-shotted when I missed a dodge. I can't think of anything that Valhalla did that was better than "Origins" or "Odyssey"

I really loved this game's gameplay and setting but the freaking technical issues made it unplayable for me. In my PC the game has been crashing non stop.

Maybe I was just bad at it, but the combat of Valhalla infuriated me, I seemed to fight really well in all the other AC games but I could never get a proper combat flow in Valhalla. It sort of felt like I was synthetically forced into a turn based fight. I really tried to get into stealth as well but it's like the game actively was fighting against me on that. I also had always thought the detection system was busted.

I really like valhalla. It was just very long and enemies can spot you to easily. Other than that great. But i am really looking for more stealth in the next ones

Honestly my biggest problem with the RPG games is I'll play them for like 25 hours, realize I'm only like 7% done, and just give up cause I've stopped caring. I've done this in all 3, meanwhile I've beat Syndicate multiple times cause it just pulls you in immediately

I think that each protagonist has different levels of agility and 'tankiness'. Eivor is on the tanky end and doesn't really need to sneak around (e.g. like Arno or young Ezio), and doesn't need gimmicks from the loot. It is still far from the relative realism of the first games, but I'm not super worried about the lack of 'super socks of backstabbing' or similar. The different character types have different degrees and types of engagement with plot elements, e.g. with some being very into the assassin group (e.g. Altair and Ezio) and others less so (e.g. Edward and Eivor), though they exist in the same world. It isn't really surprising that a 'viking' isn't as crash hot at stealth as someone that grew up in a metropolis. Kassandra was quite different in that she could be anything, and you could even switch out your equipment and playstyle if you broke off combat. That game's plot was also pretty goofy and took a step away from the realism in the other games (with kinda Hercules/Xena Warrior Princess vibes - the whole ongoing Mysthios thing didn't really gel with the end of the main plotline), though I did enjoy it a lot as well in a different way. Valhalla was kind of its own beast as a 'viking' simulator, while black flag was a good pirate simulator. They are all quite different and I am glad that they haven't given up on the franchise, and that they have stopped trying to turn a new one out every year.

My mom liked it.

This was a very good video bro. After my 140 hour platinum playthrough of the game, it became so hard to go into the dlc because of all the points you mentioned. Why spend more time in a game that is so below par from what they used to produce. Keep it up man

I'm in my late 20s, and I've been gaming for at least 20 years, so I've definitely played many games with Bully and The Godfather being among my favourites. My older brother who had been gaming longer than I had really enjoyed the older AC games, but I didn't really like them because of the long ship sailing. But playing Odyssey blew my mind, and because I'm a big history buff, seeing Socrates and actually having a conversation with him was easily one of my best moments in gaming. So I was really happy to play the next Assasins Creed game, being Valhalla, which was something I was looking forward to. But after buying it, I played it like 5 times and I can't remember a game as boring as Valhalla

It's cringe how Ubisoft believes that in order to make a boss look like a boss they have to stretch out their height. Just leave them with normal height with the HP and battle moves of a boss.

tbh, I would put Black Flag in the same category of most recent RPG style AC games because of how vast and huge the map in Black Flag is. older AC games are small, contained and dense small city maps. Black Flag, Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla are basically huge countries you get to explore.

I realized a few weeks ago that I spent $120 on this game as a birthday present for myself and that in total, if you wanted the complete experience, with every gear set and DLC, you would spend upwards of $500 dollars. That is criminal. I've played Valhalla for 150 hours total, playing Wrath of the Druids right now, and I just finished God of War (2018). Good Lord the whiplash, I think I'm just gonna stick to other games

This vid is great. Nobody really makes videos this comprehensive without dissing odyssey so seeing this perspective from someone who also loves odyssey is great. Perfectly summarized my feelings on a great number of things in Valhalla.