{"id":1222,"date":"2021-02-08T23:48:16","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T04:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=1222"},"modified":"2021-02-08T23:48:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T04:48:17","slug":"shelved-it-9-assassins-creed-valhalla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=1222","title":{"rendered":"Shelved It #9 &#8211; Assassin&#8217;s Creed Valhalla"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ubisoft.com\/en-us\/game\/assassins-creed\/valhalla\">More Info From Ubisoft<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: Action RPG<\/li><li><strong>Platform<\/strong>: PS5<\/li><li><strong>Also Available On<\/strong>: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Stadia, Luna<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kotaku has an article called <em><a href=\"https:\/\/kotaku.com\/assassins-creed-valhalla-is-too-damn-long-1846138833\">Assassin&#8217;s Creed Valhalla Is Too Damn Long<\/a><\/em>.  That really is the crux of the problem, but it&#8217;s not that simple.  Yes it&#8217;s too long, but for me a lot of it being too long is that this game didn&#8217;t do anything new.  It&#8217;s the same as Assassin&#8217;s Creedy Origins and Odyssey.  While that isn&#8217;t necessarily a bad thing &#8211; after all <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=548\">I really enjoyed Odyssey<\/a> &#8211; <em>Valhalla<\/em> falls in a place where there&#8217;s been better in the intervening years, and that&#8217;s the biggest thing that caused me to give up.  I put about 30 hours into this one and kind of didn&#8217;t feel like I needed to move on from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Assassins-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Assassins-1024x576.jfif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1223\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Assassins-1024x576.jfif 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Assassins-300x169.jfif 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Assassins-768x432.jfif 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Assassins-1536x864.jfif 1536w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Assassins-2048x1152.jfif 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first problem I ran into is that combat wasn&#8217;t that fun and stealth was systematically nerfed, so I didn&#8217;t feel like I had a gameplay path that really fit anything.  My past tendency in AC games was always to go full stealth &#8211; sneak into places, pick guys off one by one, finish my objective, and sneak on out.  However, a lot of the main storyline in <em>Valhalla<\/em> requires straight combat.  There&#8217;s viking raids that force the entire area into active combat.  There&#8217;s story missions that have AI buddies that cause active combat.  Basically, I spent a lot of time in places that forced me to fight or do some extraordinarily annoying things to get to a point where I could try to stealth while chaos was going on around me.  It actively fought how I wanted to play the game, which is not really something I <em>want<\/em> to be doing in an <em>Assassin&#8217;s Creed<\/em> title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This would be all well and good if combat was fun, but frankly it just wasn&#8217;t.  <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=1105\">Ghost of Tsushima<\/a><\/em> had its combat problems, but it felt like a logical progression in combat in this type of subgenre.  <em>Valhalla<\/em> has a lot of the same core elements, but a couple main things really felt like a step backwards.  For one, the lack of stances made combat feel like it lacked variety.  Beyond some light defensive aspects of some shielded units, the difference between enemy weapon types or trash vs. brutes felt minimal to the point of irrelevance.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, the AI in groups felt like the biggest oddity to me.  Group combat in the <em>AC<\/em> genre has never been that great, and frankly it was the biggest downfall of <em>Ghost of Tsushima<\/em> as well.  However, group AI really feels like it doesn&#8217;t do anything to divvy out who is actively going to attack.  It results in a situation where the group AI feels less opportunistic and planned, and more random happenstance.  Sure it&#8217;s probably more realistic, but it&#8217;s also boring.  Attack avoidance becomes dodge spam as the practical option instead of better parry timing or intelligent target selection.  It&#8217;s effective, but it&#8217;s boring.  The lack of unique duels from <em>Tsushima<\/em> really then pulls away one of my favorite combat setups in that game, so there&#8217;s no real payoff moments, even in big story moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It doesn&#8217;t help that <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=1183\" target=\"_blank\">Immortals: Fenyx Rising<\/a> by Ubisoft was one of my recent played titles, and despite similar combat, was simply more <em>fun<\/em> due to much better grouping tactics for AI, doing one at a time attacks with good tells, instead of seemingly random spam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_London-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_London-1024x576.jfif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_London-1024x576.jfif 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_London-300x169.jfif 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_London-768x432.jfif 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_London-1536x864.jfif 1536w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_London-2048x1152.jfif 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The exploration metagame was also a big disappointment here, and felt like a step back even within the series.  <em>Origin<\/em> and <em>Odyssey<\/em> both had camps and towns with distinct goals &#8211; take out a leader, kill all enemies, eliminate a legendary animal.  <em>Valhalla<\/em> just&#8230;..doesn&#8217;t.  All of the location stuff is there, but without goals it all feels irrelevant.  You&#8217;ll go to your <em>Assassin&#8217;s Creed<\/em> viewpoints and it will find a bunch of stuff, but it&#8217;s scattered everywhere.  Your three main collectibles &#8211; wealth, mysteries (side quests), and artifacts &#8211; are scattered randomly around, so there never feels like a real focus to going to a location and clearing it out.  You can just kind of set your sights in a direction and you&#8217;ll inevitably run into things.  Going into a camp is more of a run to a dot on the map where you can ignore the enemies in the camp.  Mysteries exist as one-off events instead of more interesting side quest chains.  And ya, there&#8217;s longer side quest chains but they feel less present than in the last two titles, which was a big disappointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The collectibles themselves also just have a distinct lack of importance.  Gear isn&#8217;t inherently level-based anymore, so going out and finding new armor isn&#8217;t necessarily helpful.  Once you find your preferred gear and upgrade past a point, going out and finding new materials isn&#8217;t necessarily helpful anymore.  It just puts a drag on the game when you get to the point where you inherently outgear an area, because it doesn&#8217;t scale as smoothly as the past couple of games &#8211; much to <em>Valhalla&#8217;s <\/em>detriment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All of this is <em>also<\/em> not helped by the existence of <em>Immortals<\/em>.  That one did such a good job of integrating cool traversal into exploration that it was simply more fun just to run around.  Happening upon legendary units and animals in that one meant a really fun one on one fight.  Happening upon a shrine meant a really fun puzzle segment or arena segment.  All of the things you ran into in that game felt like a nice change of pace that provided a really good rhythmic flow to running between quest locations.  <em>Valhalla<\/em> on the other hand feels like a huge step back where traversing for the sake of exploration feels like a hassle, and going to places for the hell of it feels like a chore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Boat-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Boat-1024x576.jfif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Boat-1024x576.jfif 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Boat-300x169.jfif 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Boat-768x432.jfif 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Boat-1536x864.jfif 1536w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ACV_Boat-2048x1152.jfif 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Valhalla<\/em> feels like an inflection point for the series overall.  <em>AC3<\/em> felt like a stale experience after the Ezio games, and that led to <em>Black Flag<\/em>.  <em>Unity<\/em> and <em>Syndicate<\/em> felt like games that ran out of ideas, which led to the series reinvention in <em>Origins<\/em>.  This feels similar.  While <em>Valhalla<\/em> is a far better game than either of the last two problem areas, it feels similarly stale.  This is a game that feels like a retread, instead of a game that feels like a step forward.  Other games in the interim have done it far better. <em>Immortals<\/em> did a much better job of making exploration fun.  <em>Ghost of Tsushima<\/em> did a far better job integrating stealth and combat in a way that both paths were interesting and worth playing.  This series is ready for that next step forward, and it&#8217;s got some great examples to look at if they&#8217;re ready to make that push.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Info From Ubisoft Genre: Action RPG Platform: PS5 Also Available On: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Stadia, Luna Kotaku has an article called Assassin&#8217;s Creed Valhalla Is Too Damn Long. That really is the crux of the problem, but it&#8217;s not that simple. Yes it&#8217;s too long, but for me a lot &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=1222\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Shelved It #9 &#8211; Assassin&#8217;s Creed Valhalla&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,234],"tags":[48,34,155,202,133],"class_list":["post-1222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arpg","category-ps5","tag-arpg","tag-assassins-creed","tag-ps5","tag-shelved","tag-ubisoft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1228,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions\/1228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}