Assassin's Creed Valhalla

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **Robbo-92** » Thu Mar 04, 2021 1:54 pm

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **Robbo-92** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 9:32 am

Not had much chance to get on this in the last week, just hit the 72 hour mark though, really just going through with the main quest now, hoping that just over 4400 leather, 4000 iron, 26 fabric and 90 titanium will be enough to upgrade most of the Raven clan armour once I’ve got tungsten ingots.

Just about finished the Kent arc, after having a brief trip to Jotunheim.

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **OrangeRKN** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 10:00 am

I'm done with this now, 130+ hours. So of course they just announced an updated adding a few things I would have really wanted (transmog, close camera) :fp:

River Raids were really disappointing, so much wasted potential. Raids are probably the best part of the game, being thematically cohesive and pitching yourself and your crew against monasteries, fortifications and camps. Putting aside the hand-waved justification for river raids alongside the game's plot of gathering allies, or the questions over how they fit (or don't fit) into the open world map, river raids promised a lot. Two of its main systems, of reactive river defenses and raided locations taking time to recover, are in principle very good. That's about as much as I can say for it.

I was unclear going in whether river raids were a full on procedurally generated game mode or a set of hand crafted self-contained river maps. Having played the mode it seems the developers were similarly confused. The rivers are hand-crafted and unchanging, yet almost all of the set locations along them are blatant copy and pastes of each other with repeated names like "small camp". The result is the worst of both worlds - it's like playing a roguelite but only ever being restricted to two specific seeds.

Wasted potential then, which is really how I would summarise the game as a whole. There is a lot I like, or want to like, and it obviously engaged me enough to stick with it over its insanely bloated playtime, but I'm just left wishing for a different game, one with strong direction and a creative vision (and one that knows when less is more). The biggest fault of Valhalla is its design by committee, and there are almost too many examples of that to give.

Kudos though for making the overarching sci-fi plot so integral and the ending as wild, if not wilder (although lacking the surprise) of Asassin's Creed II. Genuinely loved it all falling into place with some crazy plot points recontextualising the whole game.

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **Edd** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 10:17 am

Yeah I've bounced off this. I was enjoying it and will likely get back to it eventually but the thought of having 100+ more hours just puts me off.

Have seen articles the past few days about how Ghost of Tsushima has one of the highest completion rates of any open-world PS game and I hope Ubisoft take notice rather than sticking with their 'bigger = better' mentality. Compared to Odyssey, Valhalla is a step in the right direction but a tight, 30 hour AC game would still be so much better imo.

They'd just have to deal with the people moaning when they charge for 'less game' like Insomniac had to with Miles Morales.

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **Robbo-92** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 10:24 am

Is transmog where you can alter the look of your armour? Won’t lie the second version of the Raven Clan armour looked by far the best (although the 3rd isn’t bad in some regards) but the 4th doesn’t look in keeping from what I’ve seen so that’d be very good to see, when’s that coming? How is the close camera going to be implemented, just when walking around and out of combat? Or most of the time?

I do agree on River Raids too, I’ve played a few of them and just found them very meh overall. It sounds like the ending is definitely worth seeing though (not that I wasn’t going to at least finish the main quests anyway), but I’m not planning on getting anywhere near the 130 hour mark...... The open world just isn’t grabbing me the same as in Skyrim, BoTW or The Witcher 3, in fact in this I just feel more like running from quest objective to quest objective as opposed to the others when I loved taking on any and every side quest, exploring as many of the off the beat areas in BoTW.

I think I’ll be quite happy to return to the Assassins Creed Ezio Trilogy once I’ve finished the story in this, might buy the dlc later in the year if I feel like returning to this.

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **Tafdolphin** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 10:33 am

I've been trying to get back into this over the past few days but christ. I'm 65 hours in and the end is nowhere in sight, even though I've done none of the Asgard stuff. The scale here is ridiculous, and not in a good way.

I think if the core mechanics, exploration, fighting, leveling up, were more involved then I could see it through. But everything seems so perfunctory. I've got a spear and axe combo that eats everything alive, I've gotten all the upgrades on the tree that actually seem useful and the story itself has hit a lull where I don't really give a gooseberry fool any more. Just finished the Scropeshire arc which was especially frustrating

Could they have made it any more obvious that Ivarr killed Ceolbert and not the Britons? I was absolutely raging that there was no peaceful conclusion to it all, and no way for Eivor to point out the incredibly obvious. Throughout the entire final siege I was wondering if the game was ever going to let Eivor twig what was going on. Having the Blood Eagle torture appear here of all places just added to the frustration.

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **OrangeRKN** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 10:36 am

Yeah transmog is changing armour appearance while keeping the stats/bonuses of another set. Baffling that it wasn't in the game from launch considering it was in Odyssey and it was in Immortals: Fenyx Rising.

Good luck completing the game in a lot less than 130 hours anyway :lol:

I was no where near 100%, that took my girlfriend 160+ hours. After the "ending" (you never get a credits roll so it isn't well defined) there is still the hamtunscire arc and then a final conclusion for completing the order which I think is necessary to close out the story. There is also then the classic hidden truth video from completing all the anomalies, but I just watched than on youtube. It's very interesting though and clears up some questions!

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **Robbo-92** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 10:49 am

When is transmog coming into the game? Hopefully sooner rather than later!

Also 130 hours isn’t 100% :dread:

I’ll class finished as all areas main arc completed and maybe the order tree if there isn’t loads left after the main quest line! Are the anomalies what you get for free running in the sky over England to get data packets? I’ve even been leaving the world events recently, this is one of the few games where it’s obscenely big and to to the detriment of the game, I really hope their open world Star Wars game doesn’t follow a similar bigger=better concept

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **rinks** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 10:57 am

Robbo-92 wrote:When is transmog coming into the game? Hopefully sooner rather than later!

In about an hour!

The (optional) close camera zooms out during combat.

We’re also getting an Easter-themed festival, Ostara, which includes egg hunts. Starts on Thursday. I liked the Christmas one, as a nice little undemanding diversion

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **OrangeRKN** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 11:00 am

Yeah anomalies are the data packets. A cool little thing actually happens with them if you haven't completed them all before the main story ending, so its worth doing like one after the ending at least. I maybe did half of them, of those I did the one on the Isle of Wight is the best if you're looking to prioritise!

The update is out today. Here is a summary: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2021/03/16 ... ppearance/

It's not all good though - apparently foxes spawning in Lunden was a bug and they've fixed it? I thought urban foxes was a deliberate thing for Lunden :lol:

rinks wrote:The (optional) close camera zooms out during combat.

We’re also getting an Easter-themed festival, Ostara, which includes egg hunts. Starts on Thursday. I liked the Christmas one, as a nice little undemanding diversion

The camera zooming back out during combat counters the point somewhat, doesn't it? :fp:

I didn't mind the Christmas event but I think it's silly to have seasonal events in an offline singleplayer game. It was also very annoying having the bug where you would load into the game drunk, so you'd hope nothing similar will happen due to the Easter event! I also didn't like how Ravensthorpe was caught in a bubble of snow for the event, it was jarring.

The seasons (and flow of time in general) are very weird in Valhalla. In dialogue characters will mention the passage of weeks, months or even years, while each area of the map is permanently stuck in its own season matching the story arc within it (other than Ravensthorpe for these seasonal events, but then it defaults back to Autumn). It's another demonstration I think of where being open world actually harms the game. If each region had been a separate, smaller open world and you visited them in a set order the flow of time and seasons would have made a lot more sense.

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **Robbo-92** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 11:01 am

rinks wrote:
Robbo-92 wrote:When is transmog coming into the game? Hopefully sooner rather than later!

In about an hour!

The (optional) close camera zooms out during combat.

We’re also getting an Easter-themed festival, Ostara, which includes egg hunts. Starts on Thursday. I liked the Christmas one, as a nice little undemanding diversion

After the Easter stuff in the other AC game (Animal Crossing), I won’t be doing that :lol:

last thing I need is Zipper T jumping around Ravensthorpe! I’ll have to reload it this afternoon to update it and change a few bits of armour back then!

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **rinks** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 11:04 am

OrangeRKN wrote:It's not all good though - apparently foxes spawning in Lunden was a bug and they've fixed it? I thought urban foxes was a deliberate thing for Lunden

But more cats makes up for it.

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **rinks** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 3:28 pm

Update is live now (Xbox, at least), for anybody waiting to kick off the download.

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **Robbo-92** » Tue Mar 16, 2021 4:55 pm

Just loaded it up after installing the update and already had a glitch, seems to have frozen while it was auto saving :dread:

at least it’ll have cloud saves to back up from it it’s corrupted! Not a chance would I be playing through the 74 hours again :lol:

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **Robbo-92** » Sun Mar 21, 2021 8:07 am

Put a few more hours into this, completed the Jorvik arc and spent a chunk of time running the length of Hadrian’s Wall which made for some amazing views looking back over England. Now onto the Snotinghamscire arc, still need to go back to Asgard again too. Is the Suthsexe arc the last main one story wise? Around 86 hours in now as well but still feels like I’ve got a large chunk of the game to go with Snotinghamscire, Suthsexe, Glowecestrescire, Wincestre, Hamtunscire and then I presume a return to Norway? It’s kind of ridiculous how much content this game has and I really don’t think it’s all needed, I don’t know if this is a common thought but the insane amount of loot/points of interest on the map are really off putting, I still love picking a spot in the distance and going to explore it much like in BoTW though so it’s not all bad.

Also I can’t believe how many of the various materials you need to upgrade stuff to the max level, suppose one good thing now is you can get your stuff back by downgrading it at your blacksmith should you want to change your armour and weapons rather than needing to constantly grind for materials. I thought 150 titanium would get all the Raven Clan gear from level 7 to 10 but I’m about 55 short :fp:

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **BOR** » Sun Mar 21, 2021 8:19 am

I've also returned to this and I have just completed Lincolnshire.

Gloucestershire is the next place to visit.

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **Robbo-92** » Sun Mar 21, 2021 9:11 am

Just out of interest, how many hours have you put into it? Just want to see if my 86 hours could be seen as rushing it or not :lol:

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **SEP** » Sun Mar 21, 2021 9:14 am

Robbo-92 wrote:Just out of interest, how many hours have you put into it? Just want to see if my 86 hours could be seen as rushing it or not

I finished the story and the order at 74 hours.

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **BOR** » Sun Mar 21, 2021 9:18 am

Robbo-92 wrote:Just out of interest, how many hours have you put into it? Just want to see if my 86 hours could be seen as rushing it or not

94 hours.

Every region is 100% so far though.

PostRe: Assassin's Creed Valhalla by **Robbo-92** » Sun Mar 21, 2021 9:44 am

Somebody Else's Presents wrote:
Robbo-92 wrote:Just out of interest, how many hours have you put into it? Just want to see if my 86 hours could be seen as rushing it or not

I finished the story and the order at 74 hours.

Did you do much in the way of side content? Won’t lie, 70 ish hours is the kind of playtime I was hoping to polish it off in! I’ll be seeing how far I’m off finishing the order when I’ve finished the main quest to see if I can be bothered to finish it or not.

BOR wrote:
Robbo-92 wrote:Just out of interest, how many hours have you put into it? Just want to see if my 86 hours could be seen as rushing it or not

94 hours.

Every region is 100% so far though.

I more or less finished each region till I started hitting the power 160 ones, then I massively lost interest in basically ticking off the loot and world events, mainly just doing the story missions now.

Edit, the free Altair’s free outfit is a letdown too, why not just let it be a cosmetic skin and you keep the full stats of your currently equipped armour underneath?

Assassin's Creed Valhalla

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