Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

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Created by Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher Ubisoft
Assassins-creed.valhalla official website
Released November 10, 2020
Genre Action RPG, Stealth, Adventure
Two years after Odyssey, a new game is released in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. This time Ubisoft brought gamers into the world of Vikings and the early Middle Ages, so Valhalla became the game’s subtitle. But did the creators manage to wisely spend two years of development or another beautiful grind is waiting for us? Details in the review below.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla tells the story of the Norse Viking Eyvor (or Eyvor if you choose a female character). Together with his brother, they go to distant England to seize new lands. At home, the heroes did not agree with King Harold Fairhair, and in England there are many empty territories. Small kingdoms fight for their control, relations with which it would be desirable to establish. At the same time, it is worth making friends with the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok. They have already walked through the local territories and partially settled.

The hero has to understand all this: to conclude alliances, to wage wars, to attack monasteries, to gradually grow rich and build up power. And then it’s worth going even further – the Vikings are attracted by the lands in the northwest, which would later be called Iceland, Greenland and North America.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla received a serious and almost saggy storyline campaign. Thanks to screenwriter Darby McDevith for it. He has already worked on some of the past parts of the series, including serving as the head writer for the beloved Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.

True, the developers are still trying to make the series role-playing, so there are many dialogues with answer options, and the decisions of the gamer should influence the further game. But in fact, if this happens, it is not noticeable, or the consequences will come out much later.

The variety of cut-scenes immediately catches the eye. In most cases, not two heads communicate here – the scenes are made dynamic, in them the characters are constantly doing something, going somewhere and talking along the way.

In addition to passing the storyline in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, it is worth dealing with world events. There are no side quests in the game that were replaced by these very events. This is not just a change of names, but another type of quest – short atmospheric missions designed to dilute the tough Viking history, relax, sadness or smile. Somewhere you will have to prevent a couple from having sex, in another case, resolve disputes between two families, save a peasant from rats, help a child find a cat, find a comb for a girl, and so on.

These are not all activities in the huge world of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – the player is waiting for hundreds of glowing dots on the map, which have replaced the usual question marks. These “bulbs” are blue, white and yellow. In the first case, world quests, secrets and various loot are available. The second includes collectibles, treasure maps, and cosmetics. And in the third – weapons and equipment, ingots of metals for improvement and books of knowledge that unlock new skills.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla removed the levels of the hero and opponents, but the character now has a power level, which is essentially the same. Power rises for any actions, including improving equipment, and for each level they give two skill points.

They need to be invested in a huge skill tree. Some of them are basic stat improvements – plus so much to a weak or strong attack, to damage in ranged combat, and so on. But in the center of each “funnel” of skills, and there are many of them here, there is a unique perk that also pumps out attacks with different weapons or stealth. In addition, there are ranged and melee abilities. You get them for books of knowledge, which can be found when attacking monasteries or on the yellow dots of the map.

There is not enough equipment in the game, so it is not clogged with rubbish in the inventory. The appearance of a new item or weapon is an event, but not always the found item may be useful to a specific player. Depending on the style of combat, there are short one-handed axes and huge two-handed axes, two-handed spears, flails, shields, and morgensterns. The weapon you like should be improved at the blacksmith, opening new slots for runes in it. The same is true for armor and bow parts.

The combat system of Valhalla differs from Odyssey and is significantly better. The battles have become tougher, body parts fly everywhere and blood is shed, and the hero knows how to do spectacular finishing moves.

But the system of attack and defense is as simple as possible – there are weak and powerful hits, block and dodge. Powerful hits use up a stamina bar, like a dodge block, while weak hits consume it. It will not work just like that to call the enemy, so close combat has become more difficult – it will not be easy even with ordinary opponents, to dodge blows in time, parry and block. As soon as the enemy’s concentration is at zero, we break through the defense and make the final blow. But this is also true for the hero, so you should always be careful.

There are mini-bosses, elite warriors and other dangerous surprises that can be found in the story and just on the map. Defeating them is even more difficult, and at times you will have to start over more than once.

The above is relevant for choosing a style with close combat or going into assassins, but if you swing an archer, then the game becomes much easier. In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the archer is the local imba. If you want to bend everyone, then pump these skills. Each opponent has weak points, marked in red-orange when the string is pulled. This can be a knee, head, arm, or torso. The main thing here is to pump several useful skills for the bow. It is worth taking time dilation when shooting and an enlarged quiver. The rest is to your liking, but there are also incendiary arrows, and a spectacular volley across the area, and fast shooting.

The territories of Valhalla and their opponents were divided into levels of influence – the higher it is, the more inveterate enemies are here. But this does not mean that it is better not to meddle in there, otherwise they will kill with one poke. It will just be harder and longer to fight, but the reward at the end will be sweeter.

There are also peaceful pursuits. Eyvor will have to develop the Viking settlement, build new buildings, call residents and increase influence. Building special rooms requires resources from raiding monasteries. The player has access to a brewery, a building for the Order of the Invisibles, which help the heroes and teach the skills of the assassins, a fisherman’s hut, a stable, a shipyard, and more. Each building provides useful, but not necessary, bonuses and expands the gameplay. You can teach a horse to swim, change the hairstyle and appearance of equipment, get rare items for fish or shot game, trade with merchants, resolve the dispute of local residents and do a lot of other things.

Adds complexity and diplomacy, which also has to be dealt with, but almost always according to the plot. Influence is expanded with the help of alliances, and they must be concluded with all neighbors and the more, the better. But each ruler has his own disposition and problems, so someone needs to listen and support, someone to help by force, advice or a full-fledged detective investigation.

All this abundance of activities is absolutely not necessary for the passage of the plot. For once, a game from Ubisoft does not require constant grinding, but offers a choice. Here everyone is free to do things to their liking: devote time to the main tasks, upgrade the Viking village, look for secret places on the map with artifacts and resources, move along the quest line for assassins, or just sail on a drakkar in search of adventure.

True, it is worthwhile to understand that even one direction will take a lot of time, and if you deal with several or all, then you can delete a couple of tens of hours from life. And in this we have before us the classic Assassin’s Creed of recent years – a huge world where you need to spend a couple of weeks to achieve at least something or just complete the game.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is beautiful and picturesque, but the graphics are strange. Of course, the picture was cut on the consoles of the current generation, so that this case looks more spectacular on the nextgen. Therefore, the graphics are adequate, but stuck in time. Things are better on PC, but it requires some serious build.

There were tons of bugs in the pre-release version of Valhalla that I went through. Perhaps they will be fixed with a patch of the first day or over time, but at the time of the passage they were not mine alone. A couple of times the game crashed, sometimes the characters floated in the air or just got stuck in each other. Sometimes I couldn’t complete tasks because the NPCs would glitch. We had to start the save again so that they would be released and they could issue the quest, finish it, or help advance further. Several times, mission targets would suddenly appear on a rooftop or on a closet. So we had to wait until they get off or fall, or something else happens.

The music in the game is adequate and even with claims to be launched in the player. It seems that the melody is familiar and epic, and the singing with beautiful female voices is in the style of Skyrim and The Witcher, but it is not remembered completely, obviously imitating them, but not at a sufficient level. It listens well to the background, but in the playlist I would rather listen to the melodies from the above games.

And that’s how Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has a lot. It seems that everything is ok, and the plot tasks have tightened up, and there are fewer side quests, and more small interesting missions have been made, the beautiful world has been washed down, we have gone deep into the Scandinavian setting, worked out the style and design, removed unnecessary details and added pleasant novelties, adequately complicated the combat system and so on and so forth.

But there are technical problems described above, which, most likely, will be fixed later, and the game is also constantly compared with The Witcher 3, Ghost of Tsushima and the same Skyrim. Of course, she loses to all of them, although she tries to imitate qualitatively. At the same time, Valhalla copies its own past parts, devoting more time to assassins and stealth. Here you can put on a raincoat and walk the streets, distract the guards and kill even more powerful opponents secretly with one blow. But this does not work well with the immobility of archers and bright battles in close combat, so you almost don’t want to close up with a stealth, as before.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla tries to please everyone: fans of stealth and RPG, action and adventure, historical setting and mythology. Naturally, sitting the fifth point on so many stools does not work, so we have a prettier, improved and addictive version of the not very solid last two parts of the franchise. The game will appeal to everyone who has visited Origins and Odyssey, and will even be able to attract a new audience with its elaborate world of the harsh people of the north. It will attract fans of sandboxes and weak grinds, fans of the Vikings series, Tolkienists and other fans of historical reenactments. This is the best game in the series in recent years, and it is quite suitable for purchase even at the start, and it will be as prettier as possible at a discount. We have too few viking games to ignore this not perfect, but solid AAA project.