One of the main and indisputable advantages of the Assassin’s Creed series is a wide selection of amazing historical eras that we manage to visit thanks to the games of this franchise. In them we fought in the Peloponnesian War, cut the Caribbean under the pirate flag and saw how the guillotine ended the French monarchy. This time it was the turn of the Viking Age. But will Assassin’s Creed Valhalla surprise the audience with something, or is it a simple reskin of Odyssey?
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Burn villages, loot villages, build villages
By the end of the first millennium, the tribes of Scandinavia realized two things. First, that their ships are able to cross not only small rivers, but entire seas. And secondly, that their homeland is very beautiful, but far from the most fertile country for life. Armed with these two conclusions (as well as axes), the Norwegians, Swedes and Danes set off to seek their fortune on foreign shores.
In popular culture, the expansion of the Vikings is usually portrayed as an endless series of raids. Like, wild barbarians sailed on their drakkars, burned villages, robbed monasteries and kidnapped local girls. However, this is not entirely true: sometimes the northerners simply tried to find a place for a peaceful life. It is this motive that drives the main character of Valhalla Eyvor – he seeks to give a new home to his clan. And robbery, arson and abduction in this case is a nice addition.
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Sometimes Assassin’s Creed Valhalla resembles post-apocalypse – here and there in England you can find traces of a bygone civilization
Settlement building is one of the four main activities that Eivor will be involved in. The other three are the conclusion of alliances with neighbors, the elimination of members of the Order of the Ancients (read: Templars) and communication with gods and other mythical creatures, for which you need to drink a decoction of funny herbs. Together, they form something that can be roughly called the main quests of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Alliance missions came closest to being considered the main story. In them, Eyvor chooses one of the regions of England and goes there to fraternize with the local ruler. And if usually the chains of plot quests in games can be compared to a movie, then in the case of Valhalla it is more of an anthology series. This happened due to the fact that quests in different regions are almost not connected with each other, and the main story goes through them somewhere in the background. They can even be taken in almost any order (if the hero’s level allows, of course).
At the same time, the stories themselves turned out to be memorable. Somewhere you need to defeat one king to be replaced by another, more cooperative. In another area, the ruler must first be educated, otherwise there will be little sense from him. In the third settlement, the leader is already ready for an alliance, but gets a knife in the back right before our arrival. There are really many such episodes, and the events of some may even continue in another “series”.
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The art of fluting (Scandinavian rap battles) increases charisma and avoids conflicts, as well as save a little
9th century alcoholic rapper
If you want a solid story with clear boundaries for a dozen hours, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is definitely not for you. The developers make it clear in every possible way that this is a huge game that you can’t just run in a couple of evenings. And the narrative in it, which is divided into separate episodes, also shows that it needs to be passed slowly, constantly breaking off to other activities.
Finished the East Anglia quest chain? Take a break and hunt for the local Templars (who are not Templars yet). The mechanics are similar to those in Odyssey: kill sixes, find clues and gradually clear the entire list of targets.
Dead end on a hunt? Go to the monastery and plunder it together with your team. The resulting materials can be spent on the construction of new houses in the settlement. This will open up additional opportunities and quests, including those related to the very herbs and communication with the gods.
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Some targets can only be eliminated during story missions, but most can be hunted freely
And this is only what can be attributed to the main occupations – those that have a plot background. But in the world of Valhalla, there is also a lot of other content. Traveling around England, you will constantly come across small activities of varying degrees of usefulness and interest.
Treasure is cleverly hidden in one place. You have to break your head a little to get to it. In the neighborhood there is an altar, which requires that they look at it from a special angle. Most notable are “World Events” – small but often very funny side missions. And then there are drinking contests, medieval rap battles, and the chase for collectible tattoo sheets – this, it seems, has not happened since the days of Black Flag.
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The towers are in place, don’t worry
Return to basics, as it were
Valhalla is clearly an attempt to bring back the “spirit of the old assassins.” But nuances are important here. It’s still more of an RPG – the choice of lines (which sometimes even influences something), inventory with loot of various rarities, etc. But this game is much more reminiscent of the parts with Desmond Miles than the previous two.
First, the hidden blade and instant kills have returned, but there is a nuance. The blade kills only ordinary enemies at once. To do the same with elite opponents, you need to learn a special ability and perform a QTE. Or just enable instant kills in the settings.
Secondly, social stealth has reappeared – a killer feature of the first Assassin’s Creed. Certain areas of the world are not that closed to us, but nevertheless the appearance of Eyvor there is undesirable. In other words, the guards will not hit right away, but if you poke their eyes, a fight cannot be avoided. In this case, you can mix with the crowd, pretend that you are sculpting pies, or mimic in another way.
The expediency of this is another question. Personally, I almost never did stealth. Partly because the mechanics are weak and the opponents are dull. Partly because hide and seek in the bushes somehow does not fit in my understanding with the life of a Viking. Because of this, there was a minimum in my passage of hidden episodes, since stealth is not imposed anywhere, and the battles in Valhalla are spectacular and interesting.
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Eyvor does not handle the hidden blade as gracefully as other assassins, but this does not bother him
Chopping off heads and other fitness tips from the Vikings
Basically, the combat system of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla remained similar to Origins and Odyssey – it is a combination of light / heavy strikes with blocks and dodges. But her delivery and mechanics took a step forward.
Opponents now have a Defense stat. If you reduce it to zero, then Eivor will be able to perform a very powerful attack that instantly kills ordinary enemies and inflicts great damage on bosses. Thanks to this, it is much more important not just to wave weapons, but to repulse attacks in time – it is the ideal blocks that best hit the enemy’s defense.
However, it all depends on the specific opponent. Some are quicker to kill with normal attacks, while others are unlikely to even be able to parry their attacks. In general, the number of enemies in Valhalla has increased significantly. They even made a bestiary with a description of the recommended tactics.
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At first glance, the enemies are the same, but they need different tactics
This, by the way, is not the only thing in which the new Assassin’s Creed began to resemble The Witcher 3. Take finishing moves: in Odyssey they were sterile – they were formally present, but were completely faded. Here they feel juicy, bloody and wild. They show that we are no longer a highly cultured Greek, but a reckless Viking. Even normal attacks often end in severed limbs and fountains of blood.
The variety also affected the protagonist’s arsenal, each weapon in which significantly changes the gameplay. For example, a flail can quickly deliver a large number of blows, but it needs a short time to “charge”, and this must be taken into account. If you want to hit without delay – take an ax, its length is not enough – turn to a spear, etc. In addition, players have access to the possibilities of combining weapons – an ax and a shield, two swords, an ax and a flail, two shields, etc. each option has its own characteristics.
Despite the new possibilities of using the weapon, it has become much smaller. Now items of equipment can only be bought, found in special chests, or received as a reward for a quest. They won’t be scattered around the world, as is usually the case in RPGs. It is quite possible that you will complete the whole game in the starting equipment, since it can be improved.
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Killing enemies with their own weapons is Eyvor’s main entertainment
Time to scold Ubisoft
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has only two main problems; almost everything else can be attributed to taste preferences. Fans of large open worlds, for example, will be delighted with every aspect of the game that is terrifying to fans of chamber titles.
First, the sheer scale of Valhalla has led to the emergence of grind walls. Some areas are almost impossible to get through if you don’t level up to the right level. Basically, this does not cause problems, since there is a sea of other content in the game. But those who want to go through exclusively the main quests, without being distracted by anything, may be faced with the need to grind or lower the difficulty.
Secondly, there are many bugs in the pre-release version, both visual and leading to critical errors. I would like to believe that the patch of the first day will fix everything, but this spoiled the impression. Otherwise, this is Ubisoft’s benchmark open-world game – with all the ups and downs of the genre.
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Another not very pleasant moment is pumping. It looks nice, but there is no way to know the perks in advance, so the process is blind
Gamers love to scold Ubisoft and especially the Assassin’s Creed series – grindilka, towers, “what do the assassins have to do with it?” They simultaneously accuse the franchise of being a conveyor belt and at the same time spit at every innovation. But in reality, this discontent is more of a superficial stereotype. After all, if everyone in the world didn’t love this franchise so much, it would have ceased to exist long ago.
Ubisoft games are like Marvel movies. Can they boast of depth and complexity? Definitely not. Do they suffer from self-copying? And how. Did they revolutionize their genre? I strongly doubt it. But this does not mean that they are bad. These games and movies are big, richly staged, beautiful and impressive. But most importantly, they do not forget that their main task is to entertain, and they cope with it with a bang.
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