controllertalk

[controllertalk]

Assassins Creed Valhalla, is there such a thing as a game being too long?

First and foremost, welcome to my blog. I am happy to have you hear for this first review, and I cannot wait to connect with you and have your input!

Now, onto the review.

Assassins Creed... Like it, hate it, or fall somewhere in between?

For me, I have constantly fallen on the side of LOVE IT. Legitimately, I believe Assassins Creed 2, 3, Unity and Syndicate are amazing games. I love the more traditional Assassins Creed Games more than the most recent three. However, I still did enjoy Origins and Odyssey.

I say all this because I am just not on board with Valhalla.

Valhalla was a game I was fairly hyped about. I wanted to purchase it with my PS5 purchase but I ended up not doing it at the time, and instead got the game as a Christmas present.

I was so excited to finally get to dive in. Seeing things like the town/outpost and being able to build it up, and some of the viking settings just looked so cool.

However, almost immediately there was this weight hanging over me. I had heard a lot about the length of this game. And let me tell you, the length is absurd. Now don't get me wrong, I am all for extra content, and making sure you get your moneys worth. However, there comes a time in some games, when it just feels like you are doing the same task repeatedly for no reason.

Valhalla, unfortunately, comes off this way. While there are the odd good story beats from time to time, and the characters can be somewhat interesting (Randvi is a favorite of mine) there are far too many moments when it feels like they ran out of ideas, and they just stuck filler content in the game so that they could boast a larger hour count.

(On a side note HLTB (How Long to Beat) clocks in the average play through of this game at 54 hours for only the main story, with a whopping 130 hours if you want to complete everything)

This game just really lost me about 30 hours in. I began to lose interest in the story, and I began to find myself not connecting with Eivor anymore. I felt like Eivor was just a bystander in this story. And maybe that was the point, maybe Ubisoft wanted to make the story not about you and just have you kind of be there. But it just felt boring and not interesting. I felt like conflict with Dag in particular was really out of nowhere. I understand it carries a story point a bit later that will have consequences but it just was not even remotely believable.

And that takes me to the majority of this game. While I love the Assassins Creed games as a whole, I felt like there was little to no Assassin left in this game. Origins and Odyssey definitely didn't have much either, but for some reason (the setting possibly as I am a huge fan of Greek mythology, and Egyptian settings) I just found this one to be even more lacking.

One thing that I will say, is that I had just beaten Ghost of Tsushima which was a perfect game (review to follow soon) and I felt like that game had stealth that more matched the original Assassins Creed games while also having an amazingly tactile and fun combat system.

Overall, my feelings on the game are as follows:

Graphics: 5 out of 5

The game looks gorgeous there is no doubt. With amazingly detailed figures and landscapes

Story: 2 out of 5

While I have experienced worse stories, this one just doesn't have any depth or heart to it

Combat: 3 out of 5

This is for sure, not the worst combat of all time, but it feels fairly button mashy without much depth

Replay-ability: 0 out of 5

I can't see how anyone would have the time to replay this game, but also, the game is just so bland as a whole that it feels pointless to even restart it once you finish it.

Overall Score: 10 out of 20

This game is not the worst game of all time, but that is about all it has going for it (outside of amazing graphics)