Worth: $15.00
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Cast:
NA
Intro:
...provides an expansive, entertaining adventure that will appeal to series vets and newcomers alike – although not without some reservations.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey follows on from 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins, a game that represented Ubisoft’s attempt to get the long running series back on track after a grim few entries. Origins was good. Not breathtakingly amazing, mind you, but a solid course correction for a franchise in dire need of some fresh concepts. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Odyssey improves on Origins in most aspects, although there are still a number of issues that need ironing out.
First, let’s talk about the story because unlike many recent AC entries, it’s a pretty good one! You, the player, step into the shapely sandals of either Alexios or Kassandra in ancient Greece, in the year 431 BC. It’s kind of weird that the game takes place four hundred years before the entry titled Origins but at this stage of the game, the series has so much narrative baggage it’s a relief to enter a relatively uncluttered timeline.
The game has you trying to restore your family by tracking down the surviving members. What you do when you find them is up to you, to an extent, because Odyssey has added branching narrative elements, similar to those in the Mass Effect series or Telltale Games titles.
This is a smart move and makes the dialogue sections much more intriguing. In fact, the cutscenes in general are a series best, featuring excellent facial animation and voice acting. The world of Ancient Greece is similarly honed to perfection, offering a staggeringly enormous canvas upon which you can paint your story. Want to become a bad arse warrior who takes no shit? You can. Rather play it sneaky and stealthy? That’s an option too. The skill trees in Odyssey are much more meaningful, offering genuinely different skills for enormously different play styles.
Okay, that’s the good news. Now let’s delve into what doesn’t work.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is massive; like, legitimately enormous, which is fine. But it’s also very repetitive. Particularly after about ten hours or so when for some reason the XP is throttled and the game basically insists you take part in Every-Single-Tedious-Fetch-Quest-Offered. Oh sure, you don’t have to do them all, but if you choose not to you’ll be woefully underleveled for basically every main story mission on offer. This happened to an extent in Origins but it feels even more egregious here.
To make matters worse, the online store offers a permanent XP boost for money, basically enforcing the idea that the game is chockers with bullshit busy work that you’d rather skip and they want you to pay for the privilege. Honestly, this is the kind of shonky crap that was meant to be in Ubisoft’s past and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Now for some people, the kind of gamers who want to do every single side quest, it’s likely not a problem. But it’s a bit cheeky to claim the game can be “played your way” and then drip feed XP in a slow, grindy trickle.
Other negatives include floaty combat, frequent (though not game breaking) bugs and a general lack of mission variety. Still and all, the game looks stunning and when it’s not pissfarting about with the sort of nonsense described above it can be almost sublime.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey offers a decent story, great voice acting, improved (though imperfect) combat and meaningful, upgradable skills in a title that provides an expansive, entertaining adventure that will appeal to series vets and newcomers alike – although not without some reservations.