Assassin's Creed Valhalla Review

The last Assassin's Creed Cosplay title I played was Assassin's Creed Revelation in 2011. For the most part, I quite enjoyed the Ezio trilogy, even if its final entry was weaker than the two that came before it. At that point, however, I simply 'had my fill' of the franchise and wasn't especially interested in continuing with it despite my enjoyment. I figured I'd just take a break, play it by ear, and see when I would be in the mood to come back. Turns out that break lasted about a decade.

Even when Assassin's Creed shifted to more and more RPG-styled components with Origins, I still wasn't especially eager to return to the franchise. It was obvious that the games were absolutely huge timesinks, and with so many other games to play, I couldn't justify the time commitment and simply never got around to it. But with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, I finally got the itch of curiosity to see, first-hand, what this series had transformed into in 2020. Knowing it was a long, long game, I decided to go it slow and take my time with it. That also why this review is being published months after the release date, to note.

After the game's opening sequences, which see Eivor's parents killed by a rival viking clan, you follow Eivor's brother to England in other to establish a new settlement. Broadly, once you get to England, the premise of Assassin's Creed Valhalla is to create political alliances with the various regions of the country. The world map is separated into more than a dozen sections, and you can head to each one to - in one way or another - earn a pledge of support from the regional seat of power. One has you place a legitimate but shunned boy-king into his rightful throne, another has you prevent an ongoing usurpation attempt, a third has you solving a romantic quarrel, and so on. Not all of these regions have to be completed to reach the end credits, but this is the meat of the game right here.

This means much of the narrative beats of Valhalla are smaller, separated storylines rather than a singular continuous plot - though your brother Sigurd's ambitions do lead the game to its ultimate conflict and conclusion. As an aside, I do find it kind of strange that one of the initial story thrusts - gaining revenge against your parent's murderers - is pushed somewhat off to the side and can be resolved early into the game, leaving most of the rest of the runtime with this focus on political allegiance.

In general, I don't mind a more separated vignette-style narrative presentation, but one problem with Valhalla's regional setup is that the general flow of each region's story roughly falls into a similar routine. Not to say each region's throughline is completely identical to the next, of course, but certain beats are reused commonly. You are introduced to some conflict regarding a seat of power in each region, usually have to investigate in some manner, often followed by an assault on a settlement or fortress. It makes each storyline feel less unique and less likely to stand out, as you generally complete similar tasks for any one of them.

This sort of self-borrowing also finds itself in the open-world structure of the game. In some ways, it feels like Assassin's Creed hasn't changed much at all since the AC2 trilogy. The game map is still absolutely loaded with icons: treasures, mysteries, collectibles, and more. There are lots of checklists to complete and bars to fill if you so choose as you scour the game's gigantic world map.

'Mysteries' are a new experience for me, being effectively mini-quests or puzzles that Eivor can encounter on the map. There are probably more than 100 of these, and it's hard to remember any that leave a lasting impression. Maybe I'm cynical, or perhaps this is as simple as 'Ubisoft games are not for me', but the repetitive, checklist-style collect-them-all nature of these events felt solely like work moreso than being interesting at all. This goes for many of the other collectibles too.

It makes sense there would be some similar content here and there in order to fill such a large map, but it still feels a little too transparent that things too easily get a bit formulaic. I can't help but think less would be more here, in several regards.