“Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” may have four things you love and three things you dislike
After taking a year off from the Assassin’s Creed series and then turning things around with Assassin’s Creed Origins, publisher Ubisoft has returned with another installment that shares a lot of similarities with Origins but takes the game even further from where it was when it launched in 2007. The first video game that lets you pick between a male and female protagonist is Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Kassandra and Alexios are two siblings who live in ancient Greece. I decided to take on the role of Kassandra, the young daughter of a legendary Spartan warrior who must fend for herself as she matures and learns after losing her family at an early age.
Nevertheless, she learns one day that her family is still out there, and her journey begins. The aspects and events that could attract you to the game, as well as those that might drive you away, are all included here, along with a breakdown of the game’s most significant strengths and shortcomings. We’ve done reviews in the past that were more conventional, but I thought this may be a fun experiment. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me.
THINGS YOU MAY LOVE
- Incredible scope and size
I can’t recall the last time I was as taken aback by a video game setting as I am by Greece in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. This intimidatingly enormous map seems planned and thoughtful in every inch. You’ll encounter enough people along the road to fill a whole franchise, and every town is distinctive and every island has its own vibe. By confining you to the relatively small island of Kefalonia before letting you go wild, Odyssey does a fantastic job of timing out your introduction to its massive universe. You should be familiar with all of the game’s fundamental principles by the time you depart Kephallonia. You should also be able to successfully navigate the globe on foot and by horseback. Yet until you eventually have access to a boat and start sailing the broad seas, you can’t really experience what the game has to offer. I could (and will) spend hours just sailing from port to port, exploring each new island I come across, and overcoming everyone (or anything) that stands in my way, even if there were no plot to direct me. Without the degree of detail that the development team was able to produce, I wouldn’t feel this way. The difference between a dull, open world and a colorful one is quite narrow. I’m as enthralled by this depiction of Greece because Ubisoft Quebec dragged Odyssey over the edge. - visceral, powerful conflict
I’ve played practically all of the Assassin’s Creed games to date, and I’ve spent more time avoiding conflict than engaging in it. That was sometimes the idea, but I never felt comfortable with AC’s fighting, at least until Odyssey. I just enjoy this mix of stealth and action, even though some may say that Odyssey’s emphasis on fighting steers it away from what made the Assassin’s Creed franchise distinctive in the first place (more on that later). With a few major (and welcome) tweaks, the fighting system is mechanically comparable to that of Assassin’s Creed Origins. Once more, a wide range of weapons is available, including your go-to bow for long-range encounters, swords, daggers, spears, and staves. Yet the shields are gone. The attacker is knocked back and left vulnerable to damage when Kassandra counters a swing with a well-timed button push as opposed to blocking the strike. This interaction is far more interesting to me than blocking in Origins. Then there is the difficulty that the opponents dispersed over Greece provide. If you don’t battle wisely, even a simple soldier may destroy your character in a matter of seconds, and the more difficult foes can take several minutes to eliminate. Even after spending several hours together, interactions are still thrilling and fulfilling. - A diversity of topics
Odyssey is the largest and most feature-rich Assassin’s Creed game ever created, but it’s also notable for how diverse that content is. Although most missions entail either killing a lot of bad guys, discovering something or someone in a far-off place or having a chat, Odyssey stands out for its attention to detail.Do you want to travel the world? A situation or an opposing camp is seldom more than a few minutes away. Wish to detonate and steal from a few boats? At any time, quickly teleport to your ship and raise the anchor. Do you eliminate foes too quickly? Challenge some of the most formidable fighters Odyssey has to offer by going to the arena in Pephka.
It’s unusual for a game to hold my attention for this long, yet I never feel like I’m forced to do the same thing for an extended period of time.
Several additional distractions are readily available from one end of the map to the other if I ever need to take a break from what I’m doing and mentally refresh. - RPG components amplified to 11.
Assassin’s Creed has always toyed with being an RPG (particularly with Origins from 2017), but Odyssey is the definition of an RPG. Even though The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was a fantastic RPG when it was released in 2015, I genuinely believe Odyssey is a superior game. It has better inventory management, better combat, more interesting character-leveling decisions, and, I hate to admit it, a better horse. One of the only reasons Destiny had me for as long as it did was because I’m a sucker for treasure drops. In Odyssey, there’s always a possibility that killing an opponent can result in their dropping armor, a weapon, or resources you can use to enhance your gear. Odyssey, in contrast to Origins, features separate armor parts for your head, chest, arms, waist, and legs. The benefits of common, uncommon, epic, and legendary gear vary (with legendary being the most potent), but each type of gear has a different degree.
Hence, level 20 common armor can be superior to a level 15 legendary breastplate.
Although it’s not for everyone, I like overseeing everything. The growing emphasis on cause and effect is another factor. A significant portion of the discussions you have with other game characters will give you the opportunity to make a decision that will affect how the event (or potentially the remainder of the game) unfolds. This might have its own section. Sometimes it’s as easy as being pushy or patient with someone, and other times you can choose to save a family that may or may not have a sickness that spreads across a whole island and kills thousands of people. In addition to being a fantastic action game, Odyssey is also a fantastic role-playing game that lets you play as you choose, even if it means destroying entire civilizations in the process.
THE THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT LOVE
- an ongoing campaign
It’s probable that you won’t finish Odyssey’s Tale unless you have more than 40 hours to kill. The main campaign lasts a very long time, and because it follows one of the founding principles (sins?) of RPG game design, you frequently have to reach a specific level before you can face the leveled-up monsters in the following sector. For me personally, the length wasn’t as much of an issue as it appears to be for many other people. It might be overwhelming to complete the many missions, sidequests, and long-term goals that the game constantly throws at you. You could celebrate a few birthdays before you finish Odyssey if you prefer to complete all the objectives in games before moving on to the next big event. Odyssey overwhelms players with too many options far too quickly. Similar to when I open Netflix and spend fifteen minutes scrolling through thousands of movies before finally quitting the app without watching anything, Odyssey offers players far too many options, far too quickly. - A disjointed narrative from beginning to end
In Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, there are some really poignant scenes that kept me interested in what would happen next. But when a) the story you’re telling is dozens of hours long and b) the player can effectively avoid the story for hours on end before returning to a moment that might have had an emotional impact if it had happened right after the last story quest, it’s incredibly difficult to maintain any sort of narrative momentum. Although I was eager to learn more about the interaction between Kassandra and her family (both the temporary one she discovers on Kephallonia and the one she lost when she was a child), the voice acting is outstanding, the characters are intriguing, but the plot loses focus much too frequently. - The Assassin’s Creed classic is no more.
If you have always loved the Assassin’s Creed series, you might be surprised to see that Odyssey bears very little resemblance to the original games. With fewer than ten minutes of “real world” current-day plot outside of ancient Greece in the first couple dozen hours of the game, Odyssey pulls the series even further away from its historic origins than Assassin’s Creed Origins did. You might need to adjust your expectations if you’re hoping for information regarding Abstergo and the Animus Project, especially within the first few hours. Odyssey also plays quite differently from an Assassin’s Creed game. As I mentioned earlier, I frequently find this to be to its advantage, but if you like the Assassin’s Creed games’ sneaking about, blending into crowds, jumping across rooftops, and navigating through challenging locations to carry out killings, you won’t find any of it here. In the future, there could be another game similar to that, but this isn’t it.
Summary
Like with any game (or piece of entertainment, for that matter), your experience with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will be highly influenced by your expectations.
It turns out that this is precisely what I wanted—a large action RPG with dozens of hours of content, a refined fighting system, and the option to sail to my heart’s content—as someone who never really connected with the Assassin’s Creed series in its heyday.
One of the most compelling action RPGs I’ve played this generation, even though the plot was sometimes hit or miss for me, was made possible by the game’s strong design.
Providing you aren’t very sentimental about what Assassin’s Creed was.
