Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsAssassin's Creed Odyssey: Ubisoft Does It Again! A Worthy Successor to Origins
Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2019
While I played the original Assassin’s Creed game years ago, I never got into it very much and ended up never finishing it. I ended up purchasing Origins when it came out because the location sounded so interesting, and I was blown away by the quality of the game and the graphics. I greatly enjoyed wandering around a beautiful recreation of a country I may never get to visit, during a time I will definitely never visit it in. When I saw the next game was set in Ancient Greece, a location and time period I was even more interested in than Egypt, I pre-ordered it almost immediately. I have not been disappointed.
The graphics and story are equally as amazing as Origins, if not more so. The graphics are incredible, and just as in Origins, the water looks particularly realistic. Taking a little boat out on the lakes and rivers in Egypt was always one of my favorite things to do in Origins, so I am glad there is so much more water in Ancient Greece. Taking your ship sailing is quite fun, and I love “parking” it and going swimming in the deep. You can even see whales! The first time I saw whales I thought the game might be inaccurate, but I was surprised to learn how large the Mediterranean sea actually was in comparison to the lakes of Egypt. So large that many ocean creatures live in it – this is one of the many educational points Ubisoft sneaks into the Assassin’s Creed games, even though it is primarily entertainment. In addition to the water, there are also many beautiful rendered Ancient Greek landscapes and architecture. There was one disappointment, though, and that was when I went to find the Statue of Zeus Olympios. After seeing the statue of George Washington designed after this sculpture in the Smithsonian museums, I couldn’t wait to see this Wonder of the Ancient World, but I was disappointed because the statue wasn’t much different than the statue of Alexander the Great in the Library of Alexandria in Origins (which was just one of several statues exactly like this). I found the massive, if crude, statue of Zeus on the initial island to be much more impressive, and I also found the towering statue of Athena in Athens to be another of my favorite architectural pieces in the game. I feel the Statue of Zeus Olympios should have outshone both of those given that it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. However, other than this slight disappointment, I can’t say enough good things about the quality of the recreation of Ancient Greece that Ubisoft has done here. It is far more massive than Origins’ Egypt was, and it took me far longer to explore everything and go to all the points of interest. Also, there is a quest series near the end of the game you should definitely do which has you going after epic, mythical Greek monsters such as the Cyclops and Medusa. These were very fun quests and battles.
The story was also very interesting and well-written. I like how you can choose to be Alexios or Kassandra, and then the other actually appears in the story as well. I don’t want to give any of the plot away, but there are many surprises as you continue along. The gameplay is also very good. It is similar to Origins but just different enough that I was thrown off at first and kept dying and wasn’t very impressed with the gameplay. However, after getting more used to it the gameplay grew on me. The combat is similar to Origins, except where you had to block a lot of attacks as Bayek, basically trading off between blocking and attacking, you do not have a shield in Odyssey and so Alexios/Kassandra has to dodge and parry between attacks. That said, I have not gone back to test this, but I think even if I knew what I was doing better that progressing would seem harder at first than Origins was. I also purchased an extra drachmae and experience boost from the store for about $10, but I think even if I hadn’t purchased it you could still progress pretty quickly once you got to a high enough level, but it would basically shorten the beginning part where you seem very weak to all enemies. The one other complaint I have about gameplay is that all the regions auto-level. You can adjust the difficulty, and this controls how far below everything you have out-leveled is below you, but they still all change their levels as you level up. I preferred how Origins worked and had all the regions at a set level, and you had the option to go in and set all regions to your level. This made going back and completing bases and other points of interest easy as you grew in level, since lower-ranked regions went very fast. In this game, that isn’t the case, since everything is always your level or only a few under, at least. One last gameplay point to mention is the store. I made the mistake of buying gear from the store early on, and it costs a lot of money and resources to level up gold gear. While by the end of the main story I had a lot saved up, if you want to save a lot of resources and know you want the look and the stats of certain pieces of gear from the store, then you want to wait to buy them later. Note that I specifically said “and” the stats. This is because I ended up saving a lot of resources because I found gear with better or preferable stats as I went through the game and used these, but I still liked the look of the gold gear I had bought around level 5 (the Pegasus armor) and luckily Ubisoft fairly early on added a way to change the look of your armor to other gear, so I put on the armor with the stats I wanted and then changed it to look like my Pegasus gear, an option I would not have had if I had not purchased it. So if you want a look, you can purchase something from the store and just change the look of your armor, but if you want the stats and you buy it very early on, then you will be paying a lot of drachmae and resources to level up your gear.
Lastly, in regards to the season pass and expansion quests, I have not gone very far into that yet, though will update it with more information if I do in the future. I finished the main quests and then started on some of the Lost Tales of Greece quests and stopped there a few months ago. I was not impressed with the two Lost Tales of Greece that I played – they seemed like mostly fetch quests. They had many running around collecting random objects with a thin story-line between. I have not played any of Legacy of the First Blade or Fate of Atlantis quests, though I would imagine and hope they would be more interesting than these Lost Tales of Greece. I am generally a completionist, and while I might go back to finish these, I wouldn’t feel bad about skipping what I have so far seen as very boring Lost Tales of Greece quests. I will update this review if I explore any more of these and find one to be interesting, or if I start on the other two expansions.
Overall, this is a wonderful game and just as good, if not better than, Origins. If you enjoyed Origins then you will definitely enjoy Odyssey. For $60, I think the new Assassin’s Creed games are wonderful ways to explore beautiful recreations of real places many of us may never get to see, and even better they are set during a time all of us will never get to visit those places during. While the games are primarily entertainment, Odyssey continues to spark my imagination about how we may be able to improve education using technology and simulations, as well. I also found the music in Odyssey to be very good, even better than Origins, and encourage you to check out the soundtrack in addition to the game. I highly recommend this game and look forward to the next massive and beautiful Assassin’s Creed game that Ubisoft has in store for us.
