Been playing through Dawn of Ragnarok a bit. When I first tried it I was very meh on it, both because I had just finished the main game and it takes a bit to hit its stride, but tried it again after a break and it seems pretty fun.
Odin takes a bit to get used to as a character compared to Eivor, but eventually his banter with the dwarfs actually becomes a bit endearing, and some of the boss fights are pretty good.
I feel like my mood on Valhalla in general has softened a bit, its still not as good as Origins or Odyssey, but I don’t think I would solidly disrecommend it for someone that liked those games or likes vikings.
I would say:
Play mirage first. So you know who Basim is and why you should give a shit, and also because its a smoother transition from past AC games.
Play the main game before DLC. I felt like a good bit of why the game felt like it dragged on was from doing seige of paris and wrath of the druids in the middle of it.
Keep things moving. If you are getting to be beyond max level for a region move on, don’t bother with every side quest or collectible.
When you finish with the main story, take a break and do the DLC later. They are all side stories, and are great for when you want a bite sized 10-20 hour bit of game but pad out the game too much to do in the middle and aren’t different enough to feel like much of a break from the main story.
Jealous Deva on
0
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Is there a list of notable sidequests in Valhalla? I have some favorites from Origins and Odyssey, so I am just curious
Its honestly a bit weird in Valhalla because I feel like what would have been a longer sidequest in Origins or Odyssey is generally mandatory to complete the region in Valhalla, which is one reason the game feels so long.
The shorter sidquests are replaced by mysteries, which show up as white dots (among other side activities) There are a few lists out there of worthwhile mysteries out there but honestly I was never greatly impressed by any of the ones I did so I just started ignoring them.
New footage looks decent if expected. The face models on the protagonists look a lot better than the last couple of games, but that could just be a specific cutscene. Other than that it looks like assassins creed in Japan with two protagonists. Which I’m down for! But still it feels like another instalment or incremental step, and not a big leap or something really awe inspiring or new. At least not yet
I feel like I’m always waiting for this series to do something truly amazing with its cities/crowds, like a super densely populated ultra detailed city setting, like Unity but good.
Prohass on
+3
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
New footage looks decent if expected. The face models on the protagonists look a lot better than the last couple of games, but that could just be a specific cutscene. Other than that it looks like assassins creed in Japan with two protagonists. Which I’m down for! But still it feels like another instalment or incremental step, and not a big leap or something really awe inspiring or new. At least not yet
I feel like I’m always waiting for this series to do something truly amazing with its cities/crowds, like a super densely populated ultra detailed city setting, like Unity but good.
It is so funny that in so many ways, unity remains the high water mark on fulfilling the promise of the series; amazing city with great verticality and lots of varied architecture, beautiful vistas, dense as fuck crowds that make chase scenes intense as all hell, great period of history to drop an assassin story line into... the way the lead character moved. The animations on this game were fucking phenomenal. How he navigated crowds, climbed... all of it had a ton of weight and realness to it.
But the weight of whatever you did was completely made pointless by the epilogue (every bit as bad as valhalla), the map was so dense with minor timewasting bullshit that it made it hard to even understand what was actually important, it got tied up in an inclusivity argument around there not being female assassins in the bolt-on multiplayer (which honestly it would have involved a bunch more work for a thing that wasn't that great to begin with) which put a stink on it, and then there were the bugs. The majestic, insane bugs this game had at launch.
Spoilered for cenobite
syndalis on
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
0
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
The thing is, there wouldn't have been more work. The more work excuse was mostly bullshit. That's why they lied about rigging new skeletons. Also, reports were that the team was totally ready to do lady assassins (and also make Elise a main character), but the game director was a piece of shit
Apparently it was just a continuing struggle between the AC developers and main office over several e they wanted to do female main characters and the main office wouldn’t let them or kept making them include “male options”. (Even when it was totally ridiculous like Valhalla. Lets just have an option to make Eivor look exactly like dream flashback Odin even though they are two different characters! That will totally make sense and not be confusing at all!)
Edit- as a side I strongly recommend anyone playing Valhalla go with the “let the animus decide” option. Not only does it make things make a ton more sense and is the canon option, but both the male and female actors do a decent job and it will let you have plenty of time to enjoy both PCs (who again are distinctly different characters with different personalities and don’t make any sense at all looking exactly like each other!)
Jealous Deva on
+2
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
was kind of hoping for some info on any remasters like the rumoured black flag one
0
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited June 11
This one looks good. Last AC I played was Origins which I enjoyed a lot.
I own Odyssey and Valhalla but never really got around to playing them cause they looked like more Origins and there was just a lot of other games higher on the priority list.
That said the hook for this one has me pretty interested and even if the series can be paint by the numbers at times I can't say I've ever had a really bad experience with AC so I'll check it out.
At the time that Odyssey was new, I remember saying it was my favorite it series, or at least up there with the best of them. I remember thinking that it could hold its own against the likes of Brotherhood and Black Flag.
Now that some time has passed, I wonder if I still hold that same opinion? I need to go back and replay Odyssey sometime.
Actually, what I really want to do is a massive AC project and replay all of them.
I currently do not own an XBox series X, but my understanding is that those consoles are notably awesome at backwards compatibility. As far as I know, AC1 is the only game not available on PS5 in modern format. But maybe it would be available on the Series X since that console has 360 backwards compatibility? I've been eyeballing getting a Series X ever since this past Sunday's XBox showcase. Being able to play AC1 again would actually add another reason to my growing list of reasons to own an XBox.
I'm still iffy about the dual protagonists set up since they seem to play so differently that I wonder if they entire game will be set to take advantage of that.
The stuff they showed did seem to indicate that but who knows about that holding up for 40 plus hours.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I know it wasn't one of the favorites but I actually liked Syndicate a lot and it also had the dual protagonists thing going on.
I also liked how the brother and sister had a lot of the same assassin moves but were still somewhat unique in their execution.
+4
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Have they mentioned how much of the game you can play as a single character?
At the time that Odyssey was new, I remember saying it was my favorite it series, or at least up there with the best of them. I remember thinking that it could hold its own against the likes of Brotherhood and Black Flag.
Now that some time has passed, I wonder if I still hold that same opinion? I need to go back and replay Odyssey sometime.
Actually, what I really want to do is a massive AC project and replay all of them.
I currently do not own an XBox series X, but my understanding is that those consoles are notably awesome at backwards compatibility. As far as I know, AC1 is the only game not available on PS5 in modern format. But maybe it would be available on the Series X since that console has 360 backwards compatibility? I've been eyeballing getting a Series X ever since this past Sunday's XBox showcase. Being able to play AC1 again would actually add another reason to my growing list of reasons to own an XBox.
I’m playing it right now because I am on an AC kick, I feel like so far it holds up after 10 hours or so.
There’s a LOT of game though, it definitely seems like it falls into that UBISOFT bloat.
I love dual protagonists. My guess is there’ll be a mix of character specific missions and ones where you can do them with either character. I hope there’s some missions where you switch back and forth at certain points even if it’s scripted. I like the idea of one character being mainly stealth and the other mainly combat, I think that’s a good approach
If I play Mirage, is it going to spoil a big reveal or plot twist in Valhalla?
Note: I’m not looking for spoilers. I’m looking for confirmation on if I can safely play Mirage without having any sort of big reveal spoiled in Valhalla.
I’ve got like 200 hours of playtime on Valhalla, but I’ve never finished it. And up to where I’ve gotten in the story in Valhalla, Basim has been barely more than a footnote.
If memory serves it does a bit. At the end it basically depicts something happening with basim that will then eventually lead to the twist in Valhalla. Essentially it’s like the prologue of the twist. If you super don’t want to be spoiled then I’d probably finish Valhalla first
Also honestly the twist in Valhalla is kind of empty and dumb in my opinion, so just play what you wanna play is my advice
If anything honestly I felt like if I had played mirage first then Valhalla’s Basim twist would have made more sense and been less out of nowhere.
I don’t honestly feel like it spoils anything. It gives you information about Basim you wouldn’t know, but it honestly just makes it easier to put the puzzle pieces together.
Also splitting the gameplay focus is a really good reason! this allows me to roleplay stealth and combat more as a reflection of the character than just situational or randomly when I get bored. Like even on the articles own terms I disagree with it
Prohass on
+7
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited June 22
The character designs are the ‘reason’.
Huge bulky guy in samurai armour looks silly running across tight ropes and sneaking up behind people.
Small woman without armour looks silly face tanking a dozen armoured enemies.
Is it something they need to come out and state?
One of the reasons I like swapping armour a lot in Ghost. Swapping to ghost armour for sneaking and samurai if you expect a lot of fighting makes it make more visual sense.
-Loki- on
0
Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
thanks to assassins creed, leonardo da vinci is now a Magic The Gathering card
(AC adding real historical people like Cleopatra as MTG cards is just fun to me)
On the question of bloat: I enjoyed Origins until the end but got tired of it during the DLCs. Odyssey I’d had enough of about halfway into the main storyline. Valhalla roughly fell in the middle of the two for me, but that’s probably in no small part because I played that one several years after Odyssey. Right now I have little wish to play either Mirage (even though I like the idea of returning to a city-based AC) or Shadows. Ask me again in 2-3 years.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Way back in the day there was a review of one of the dragon quest games (6 or 7 I think?) that used the phrase “It’s a great 40 hour game that unfortunately takes about 90 hours to complete”, and that is largely how I felt about Odyssey and Valhalla.
+1
BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
Way back in the day there was a review of one of the dragon quest games (6 or 7 I think?) that used the phrase “It’s a great 40 hour game that unfortunately takes about 90 hours to complete”, and that is largely how I felt about Odyssey and Valhalla.
Definitely DQVII. You can bum rush the story ib 30-35 hours with luck during boss fights, but seeing/doing everything takes 120+, primarily from having to grind all the jobs.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
I'd like an AC game that lets you just say that yes, you've played the previous games, and just skip all the early 'this is how you assassinate someone', 'this is how you parkour' and 'this is how you jump 200 feet into a haybale' quests.
Way back in the day there was a review of one of the dragon quest games (6 or 7 I think?) that used the phrase “It’s a great 40 hour game that unfortunately takes about 90 hours to complete”, and that is largely how I felt about Odyssey and Valhalla.
Definitely DQVII. You can bum rush the story ib 30-35 hours with luck during boss fights, but seeing/doing everything takes 120+, primarily from having to grind all the jobs.
Probably, it’s been a long time IIRC 4 and 5 were pretty concise and reasonable, 6 was where they really started including a bunch of mandatory side content, 7 just went nuts with it and was long and meandering as hell, and 8 was when they finally figured out how to make a 100 hour game that felt like it justified being 100 hours.
I really hate mandatory side content in games, whether is is required actions that don’t really progress the story at all or “you must be this tall to ride” gating that is filled up by arbitrarily doing side content. Its the main big problem I have with valhalla, you have all this side story stuff but the game won’t let you progress until you do it.
I feel like games that want to be open/nonlinear should either go one of two ways (or mix these):
1. There is a critical path. Everything linked to the story narrative is on that path. You can step off that path but stepping off that path is never required to finish the game(at least as a hard requirement, there may be something like “we have 25 side quests and we assume the character is going either 15 of them to be an appropriate level or grind some other way” but nothing is required.). Skyrim is basically the exemplar of this, but the principle goes way back.
2. There are different ways you can go and orders you can do things that are required, but they all connect back to your main focus. Bioware does this often in later games. The ur example is ultima 4. IIRC there are something like 20 or so macguffins you ultimately have to find in the game to get to the ending, which you have an enormous amount of freedom to look for. Each one ties back into your main goal. There’s never a point where you go off and do one of the quests for these items or requirements and think “what was that for?”.
Valhalla has a really big counterexample. Theres a point you have a really big plot event. To follow up on it its clear you need to do stuff in southern england. But right when there are big story events happening, the game makes you do the halfdan arc in the north. The halfdan arc isn’t bad, its fine, but it has nothing to do at all with the plot events that just took place. Its like you eat an appetizer and are ready for the main course and someone says “ok now we are going to watch a 3 hour movie and we will serve the main course after”. And it’s required. The game literally will not let you click on the regions to proceed the main story without doing it. There’s no critical item or clue you are trying to find or reason behind it, it is just basically a “BUT THOU MUST” situation.
I am picking on Valhalla, but I could probably name a dozen games that do this, and every time it just sucks the life out of the story.
That's one thing that has always stuck out to me about Fallout 3. The critical path in that story is only like 4 hours long. You can blitz the entire story in an afternoon.
But Fallout 3 is a 60 hour game. 4 of that is critical path story and can be done right away with no barriers of entry. And 56 of that is everything else. That's the way side content should be done in games.
And I fully agree about Valhalla, and that's why I've never finished the game, despite having an insane amount of playtime on it. It's because there's so much content locked behind side stuff, and so much player power locked behind "optional" content, that progressing the main story is impossible without doing countless hours of meandering side stuff. Right now my main story quest is just "do all of the zones." And I have probably another 20 hours (or more) of grinding out content in each of the major regions.
+1
Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
That's one thing that has always stuck out to me about Fallout 3. The critical path in that story is only like 4 hours long. You can blitz the entire story in an afternoon.
But Fallout 3 is a 60 hour game. 4 of that is critical path story and can be done right away with no barriers of entry. And 56 of that is everything else. That's the way side content should be done in games.
And I fully agree about Valhalla, and that's why I've never finished the game, despite having an insane amount of playtime on it. It's because there's so much content locked behind side stuff, and so much player power locked behind "optional" content, that progressing the main story is impossible without doing countless hours of meandering side stuff. Right now my main story quest is just "do all of the zones." And I have probably another 20 hours (or more) of grinding out content in each of the major regions.
Yeah like the side-quest to obtain Excalibur in Valhalla sticks out in my mind. In the end I never did get that sword, the requirements to obtain were just too onerous/repetitive. A shame because I remember my jaw dropping upon discovering the cavern it was in. Like everything about Valhalla, there was just too much bloat. After 120+ hours I had already forgotten the point of what I was doing in the first 60, so I went on YT and just watched the ending instead of playing any further.
Posts
Finally, someone with sense.
(Honestly, everything there besides the Sailor Moon stuff sounds good to me.)
I’m pretty sure I own it but haven’t tried it yet
Odin takes a bit to get used to as a character compared to Eivor, but eventually his banter with the dwarfs actually becomes a bit endearing, and some of the boss fights are pretty good.
I feel like my mood on Valhalla in general has softened a bit, its still not as good as Origins or Odyssey, but I don’t think I would solidly disrecommend it for someone that liked those games or likes vikings.
I would say:
Play mirage first. So you know who Basim is and why you should give a shit, and also because its a smoother transition from past AC games.
Play the main game before DLC. I felt like a good bit of why the game felt like it dragged on was from doing seige of paris and wrath of the druids in the middle of it.
Keep things moving. If you are getting to be beyond max level for a region move on, don’t bother with every side quest or collectible.
When you finish with the main story, take a break and do the DLC later. They are all side stories, and are great for when you want a bite sized 10-20 hour bit of game but pad out the game too much to do in the middle and aren’t different enough to feel like much of a break from the main story.
The shorter sidquests are replaced by mysteries, which show up as white dots (among other side activities) There are a few lists out there of worthwhile mysteries out there but honestly I was never greatly impressed by any of the ones I did so I just started ignoring them.
I feel like I’m always waiting for this series to do something truly amazing with its cities/crowds, like a super densely populated ultra detailed city setting, like Unity but good.
It is so funny that in so many ways, unity remains the high water mark on fulfilling the promise of the series; amazing city with great verticality and lots of varied architecture, beautiful vistas, dense as fuck crowds that make chase scenes intense as all hell, great period of history to drop an assassin story line into... the way the lead character moved. The animations on this game were fucking phenomenal. How he navigated crowds, climbed... all of it had a ton of weight and realness to it.
But the weight of whatever you did was completely made pointless by the epilogue (every bit as bad as valhalla), the map was so dense with minor timewasting bullshit that it made it hard to even understand what was actually important, it got tied up in an inclusivity argument around there not being female assassins in the bolt-on multiplayer (which honestly it would have involved a bunch more work for a thing that wasn't that great to begin with) which put a stink on it, and then there were the bugs. The majestic, insane bugs this game had at launch.
Spoilered for cenobite
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Edit- as a side I strongly recommend anyone playing Valhalla go with the “let the animus decide” option. Not only does it make things make a ton more sense and is the canon option, but both the male and female actors do a decent job and it will let you have plenty of time to enjoy both PCs (who again are distinctly different characters with different personalities and don’t make any sense at all looking exactly like each other!)
The season thing is pretty cool too.
I own Odyssey and Valhalla but never really got around to playing them cause they looked like more Origins and there was just a lot of other games higher on the priority list.
That said the hook for this one has me pretty interested and even if the series can be paint by the numbers at times I can't say I've ever had a really bad experience with AC so I'll check it out.
Now that some time has passed, I wonder if I still hold that same opinion? I need to go back and replay Odyssey sometime.
Actually, what I really want to do is a massive AC project and replay all of them.
I currently do not own an XBox series X, but my understanding is that those consoles are notably awesome at backwards compatibility. As far as I know, AC1 is the only game not available on PS5 in modern format. But maybe it would be available on the Series X since that console has 360 backwards compatibility? I've been eyeballing getting a Series X ever since this past Sunday's XBox showcase. Being able to play AC1 again would actually add another reason to my growing list of reasons to own an XBox.
The stuff they showed did seem to indicate that but who knows about that holding up for 40 plus hours.
I also liked how the brother and sister had a lot of the same assassin moves but were still somewhat unique in their execution.
I’m playing it right now because I am on an AC kick, I feel like so far it holds up after 10 hours or so.
There’s a LOT of game though, it definitely seems like it falls into that UBISOFT bloat.
I think they said you can choose for most of it, but there were a few missions where you had to use a specific one
Note: I’m not looking for spoilers. I’m looking for confirmation on if I can safely play Mirage without having any sort of big reveal spoiled in Valhalla.
I’ve got like 200 hours of playtime on Valhalla, but I’ve never finished it. And up to where I’ve gotten in the story in Valhalla, Basim has been barely more than a footnote.
Also honestly the twist in Valhalla is kind of empty and dumb in my opinion, so just play what you wanna play is my advice
I don’t honestly feel like it spoils anything. It gives you information about Basim you wouldn’t know, but it honestly just makes it easier to put the puzzle pieces together.
And I’m like, because it’s fun? Why does it need a reason? Games with one protagonist don’t need a reason?
AC has been doing it for awhile!
Huge bulky guy in samurai armour looks silly running across tight ropes and sneaking up behind people.
Small woman without armour looks silly face tanking a dozen armoured enemies.
Is it something they need to come out and state?
One of the reasons I like swapping armour a lot in Ghost. Swapping to ghost armour for sneaking and samurai if you expect a lot of fighting makes it make more visual sense.
(AC adding real historical people like Cleopatra as MTG cards is just fun to me)
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Definitely DQVII. You can bum rush the story ib 30-35 hours with luck during boss fights, but seeing/doing everything takes 120+, primarily from having to grind all the jobs.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
It starts a lot faster than Valhalla, certainly
Probably, it’s been a long time IIRC 4 and 5 were pretty concise and reasonable, 6 was where they really started including a bunch of mandatory side content, 7 just went nuts with it and was long and meandering as hell, and 8 was when they finally figured out how to make a 100 hour game that felt like it justified being 100 hours.
I really hate mandatory side content in games, whether is is required actions that don’t really progress the story at all or “you must be this tall to ride” gating that is filled up by arbitrarily doing side content. Its the main big problem I have with valhalla, you have all this side story stuff but the game won’t let you progress until you do it.
I feel like games that want to be open/nonlinear should either go one of two ways (or mix these):
1. There is a critical path. Everything linked to the story narrative is on that path. You can step off that path but stepping off that path is never required to finish the game(at least as a hard requirement, there may be something like “we have 25 side quests and we assume the character is going either 15 of them to be an appropriate level or grind some other way” but nothing is required.). Skyrim is basically the exemplar of this, but the principle goes way back.
2. There are different ways you can go and orders you can do things that are required, but they all connect back to your main focus. Bioware does this often in later games. The ur example is ultima 4. IIRC there are something like 20 or so macguffins you ultimately have to find in the game to get to the ending, which you have an enormous amount of freedom to look for. Each one ties back into your main goal. There’s never a point where you go off and do one of the quests for these items or requirements and think “what was that for?”.
Valhalla has a really big counterexample. Theres a point you have a really big plot event. To follow up on it its clear you need to do stuff in southern england. But right when there are big story events happening, the game makes you do the halfdan arc in the north. The halfdan arc isn’t bad, its fine, but it has nothing to do at all with the plot events that just took place. Its like you eat an appetizer and are ready for the main course and someone says “ok now we are going to watch a 3 hour movie and we will serve the main course after”. And it’s required. The game literally will not let you click on the regions to proceed the main story without doing it. There’s no critical item or clue you are trying to find or reason behind it, it is just basically a “BUT THOU MUST” situation.
I am picking on Valhalla, but I could probably name a dozen games that do this, and every time it just sucks the life out of the story.
But Fallout 3 is a 60 hour game. 4 of that is critical path story and can be done right away with no barriers of entry. And 56 of that is everything else. That's the way side content should be done in games.
And I fully agree about Valhalla, and that's why I've never finished the game, despite having an insane amount of playtime on it. It's because there's so much content locked behind side stuff, and so much player power locked behind "optional" content, that progressing the main story is impossible without doing countless hours of meandering side stuff. Right now my main story quest is just "do all of the zones." And I have probably another 20 hours (or more) of grinding out content in each of the major regions.