Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsDO NOT BUY...yet
Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2020
This is not an Assassin's Creed game. Plain and simple. I was in highschool when the first Assassin's Creed game came out, and it was great. The vast majority of people talked about it positively. It had such a cool story, two stories actually. You had the past story revolving around the Templars and Assassins: the Templars trying to gain control of humanity (for semi-reasonable motives) and the Assassins fighting against them because they thought humanity should have free will no matter what. Then you had the modern day story line which tried to connect the past to the modern, and prevent the events of history from repeating.
Sadly, after Assassin's Creed 3 (which I personally loved but apparently the majority of people disliked), that was essentially the end of the Assassin's Creed series.
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
At the end of Assassin's Creed 3 they kill off modern day story line protagonist (Desmond Miles). This is when the series died/ended for me. After this, every game they made was just a historical game that only had the bare essentials of the previous overall story arcs attached so that they could label it "Assassin's Creed" and sell it to you on name alone.
I haven't played Rogue, so I won't commit on it, but I have played every other main entry besides Rogue.
IV/Black Flag was a fun game, but was it an Assassin's Creed game? Absolutely not. It was just a good looking pirate game.
Unity was "eh" at best. Not horrible, but farrrrrr from good. And again, was it an Assassin's Creed game? Definitely not. Just a below average game set in the backdrop of the French Revolution.
Syndicate was also quite bad. Was it an Assassin's Creed game? Nope. (Are you getting the hint yet?) Just another below average game set during the English Industrial Revolution.
Then comes, "the change". Ubisoft completely overhauls the series and turn it into an RPG starting with Origins. I personally wasn't a fan of the change, because well...Assassin's Creed is not an RPG. But after a decade of making the same style of game and the last 2 games specifically being well below average, I suppose you gotta shake things up to keep the series fresh. Honestly, just don't get me started on Origins. Again, this is just my personal opinion, but I hated it. Not because of the shift to an RPG but because the overall story was just straight trash on fire. Plain and simple. Oh and again...is it an Assassin's Creed game? You should know the answer by this point. A gorgeous game, with decent content after "the change", but with the worst story line in the whole series.
Odyssey comes along and restores things slightly. It's a really fun game. The most fun I've had with an Assassin's Creed game in a long time. Absolutely gorgeous, but wayyyyyyyyy too big. Like omg, they really over did it with this one. If they would have cut about 33% of the base content it would have been fantastic, but it's just overwhelming with the amount of stuff that there is to do. The story was fun though. Is it an Assassin's Creed game? ..........it's a fun game to play.
Finally...Valhalla. At the moment it's not that great. A lot of glitches and broken things currently that will take a couple of patches to get everything running smoothly. They also changed/altered a lot of things that you will have gotten used to in Origins and Odyssey. I personally didn't like these changes and found them to make the game less interactive, but maybe others didn't. I'm really not liking the story so far either. The viking setting (vikings are the new zombies in terms of popularity) and conquering England is cool and interesting, but the story is pretty bad so far. Maybe it will get better by the end. Is it an Assassin's Creed game? Please don't make me say it anymore. Not even close.
Whether you're a long time fan like me or someone who has just recently joined the series since the RPG change, or are thinking about making this your first game in the series...I'd recommend waiting until the game is on sale for a discount. By that time a couple of patches will have come out to fix a lot of the bug/glitches and the first DLC will be close to dropping.
Overall...an average at best viking game that's only worth buying at a discount.