Goodbye to the Assassin's Creed series

Man, this game gives me such a mixed feeling. It has every potential to be great from great graphics, likeable protagonist to satisfying story. But Ubisoft simply doesn't understand that sometimes less is more. Without further ado, let's get down to the details.  

 

Maps

In line with AC Origins, AC games now feature the entire country rather than just a few selected cities. It's no different for AC Odyssey, where the map is insanely comprehensive, covering the entire Greek world. With HDR mode turned on, the game can look absolutely gorgeous even by 2021's standard. Even after playing the game for more than 200 hours, the graphics still impress me. Unfortunately, beauty is only skin deep.

The in game map as compared to the real deal.

 

The thing is, real life is boring. I'm sure the real ancient city of Attika is not that different from ancient Phokis or ancient Boeotia. But this is a video game, and to be impactful, a video game map must be a carefully curated experience rather than a pale imitation of real life. Ideally, every part of the map should be distinctive from each other. 

Although the developer did massively scaled down the Greek world, there are still way too much repetition in this unnecessarily big map. Apart from a few unique landmarks, everything else blends into a mush of generic looking cities and countrysides. Without the map, I honestly cannot tell the locations apart. In the end, it's truly a pity as the biggest map in AC history is also the blandest.

 

Missions

There are several tiers of missions in these game, first tier being the main quest, which involve Kassandra's search for her family, defeating the Cult of Kosmos and learning about her true origins. The 2nd tier are side quests related to Kassandra's historical sidekicks like Hippokrates, Herodotus, Sokrates, and Alkibiades. While the 3rd tier are location specific strangers encounters.

In terms of gameplay objectives, most of the missions can feel pretty repetitive after a while. There are many instance of talk to the NPC, escort the NPC, check out that area, kill everyone, do some "investigating", burn some treasure, retrieve some other treasure et cetera et cetera. But what it lacks in variety, most of the missions make up for it with surprising gameplay depth and interesting story.

But then there are"chores", which are random missions with random objectives like- kill a mercenary, kill 5 sharks, destroy 3 ships, and fight in a war or whatever. These missions are truly the weakest part of the game. Not only does it totally lacks any story elements, it is actually infinitely self regenerating, designed to be nothing but busy work for the player. The only reason I did these missions is for the trophy.

Gameplay

The combat is no doubt the best part of this game, as it can continue to dole out surprises even more than 200 hours into the game. Combat is separated into three classes, Assassin, Hunter and Warrior. Each classes comes with their own specific perks. For example, with Hunter perks, your arrow can do more damage, while Warrior perks makes your melee weapons of choice more powerful and Assassin perks makes one hit kill possible on stronger enemy type. To prevent the player from getting too comfortable with one play style, the game will also throw in a curveball from time to time, whether it's in the form of a mythical creature or a super strong mercenary. In doing so, it forces you to explore other weapons in your inventory or even rethink your strategy entirely. 

At the same time, the game also features some fairly interesting combat skills. For example, one skill allows you to teleport behind a faraway enemy for an instant kill, while another one allows you to break the enemy's shield and blow it up, the resulting shrapnel will even do some damage to nearby enemies. My favorite one has to be the Spartan kick that allows you to recreate that famous scene from 300.

Other than combat, the next thing you do most will be talking to NPCs. In true RPG fashion, you get branching dialogue with morality options that allows you to decide how to deal with the situation at hand. There are more than a few occasions where a boss fight can be avoided by simply replying differently, and interestingly, honesty is not always the best policy here. All in all, these conversations are generally pretty well written and well acted, keeping the game entertaining and interesting when sometimes all you do is talk. 

The naval combat also made a comeback, but it's implementation leaves a lot to be desired. There aren't much variety when it comes to the way you can attack an enemy ship. Even when going up against the more powerful enemy ships, mostly you are just trying to wear down their health bar from a distance with arrows or fire arrows. Javelins aren't very useful while ramming leaves your crews exposed to damage. Eventually with the Legacy of the First Blade DLC, your ship will get a flamethrower, but by then it was already too late.

Another well implemented gameplay mechanic is the Mercenary and bounty hunting system, which serve to keep the player cautious and not acting too crazy. If you blindly storms into a military camp and start killing everyone, soon a strong mercenary will be sent out to stop your rampage. To further complicate things, as long as you are wanted, the mercenary will also interrupt you during the main quest. This naturally made some missions harder, giving the player an incentive to kill more stealthily.

 

Story

On every group of islands, there are usually a separate storyline consist of a few strings of missions. Some of the storylines are quite memorable like the revolution-slash-love triangle storyline, the Minotaur storyline, the Olympic games storyline, and the hunger games storyline. While others often devolves into generic fetch quest, go to the burnt farm, kill someone, do some investigation by toggling the detective vision thingy, defend someone, help them do some chores, etc. It's sad to say that this is another aspect of the game where the bad really outnumbers the good.

To add salt to the injury, many of these nuisance quests involve going to the military camps, bandit camps, or huntress camps and don't forget... intricate networks of caves. And there are so many of these locations throughout the map where the objectives are all the same. For an OCD player like myself, I always feel compelled to clear all of these locations before resuming the story mission. But by then, any story momentum these missions have going on, are forever lost to me.

However, unlike the convoluted mess in AC Origins which doesn't make any sense, Odyssey's story is far more simple and straightforward. This actually works in the game's favor as I can actually keep track of the story. Because of that, I actually find the main quest quite enjoyable overall, if not downright satisfying when Kassandra's family is made whole again. 

The overall tone of the story is also more upbeat "happy-go-lucky", making Kassandra one of the more interesting and likeable protagonist in the franchise. Another positive point worth mentioning is the historical figures featured in the game. They are depicted as quite a colourful cast of characters, each with their own unique personality and backstory, making them quite likable, memorable and not just your typical perfunctory background cameo character. This is quite the drastic improvement over the last few entry, where the historical character are just there for the sake of being there.

 

Conclusion

To a long time AC fan like myself, Origins feels like Ubisoft testing the water with RPG elements. And this entry cements it. From what I know, Valhalla is also the same, so that's it, this series can never go back to the classic AC formula.

From this point onwards, there won't be any straightforward chapter based AC games anymore. Every new entry will consist of an entire ancient civilization. And the map will be gigantic but empty and generic. Sure, there will be some sprinkling of goodness bury inside this gigantic in game world designed to sell microtransaction in-game currency. 

But as I grow older, I find that my free time inevitably shrinks, so as long this time wasting formula continues, Odyssey must become my last AC game. Maybe someday in the future, this series will go back to being a chapter based story focused game, but for now, it's time for goodbye. At least Kassandra is an entertaining protagonist, so there's that. 

Final Score: 6/10