Assassin's Creed Odyssey RPG-all

Wow, Ubisoft are some kind of jerks.

I just snagged Origins in a recent 40-50% off Steam sale. That was intended as my hit for the next three or four iterations. Then Ubi reveals this isn't actually another forgettable AC game. It is, in fact, spiritual successor to 2006's Dark Messiah: Combat Kick Simulator.

How about truth in marketing guys. You couldn't have just branded it proper like from the onset. C'mon man, am I supposed to just stick with Origins knowing that, at best, I'll get 1/100 the kicks?

ARGH, looks like my wallet's going on a diet... after.

I’m starting to feel that I MUST have this game now, even though I’m nowhere near finished with Origins. Too many good games and I just don’t have the time to play them all, it’s frustrating.

I've got the preload going now. I liked Origins enough, and got enough time out of it, that once positive reviews came out about this one, I decided it'd be worth the money.

This article breaking down the similarities and differences between Origins and Odyssey kind of sealed the deal. The big one for me is that it allows you to focus more on stealth stuff. Stealth and sniping are my usual jam in these, so the game saying "cool, I can help you with that" is great.

This is my first AC game that I pre-ordered, and bought at full price, because I'm a sucker for ancient Greece. It does look fun.

The dorky Spartan kick really is surprisingly awesome.

The combat system feels much deeper than in Origins.

The main character is ... not a nice person. Like, really, pretty much just a basic murderer/thug/raider. It's a nice change from Bayek's boring do-gooder.

It's a beautiful game, but my general impression is that it's not quite as beautiful as Origins. It's sort of like Syndicate in comparison with Unity, where they dialed back some of their grand ambitions in favor of sharper, tighter gameplay.

Regarding the main character being not a nice person, I've seen a few people on twitter mention that the beginning of the game felt off-putting in several ways, including the tone of the story and main character. It sounds like a game where you need to push through a few hours to get to the good stuff.

Steam says I'm at 14 hours and I just finished the second main story section. Overall, I'm liking it (probably a little bit more than Origins by the same point) but there's a couple quibbles that I have, primarily with the combat.

I was worried about what I had seen of combat coming in and those worries were largely realized. Open combat is just an annoyance. It gets a little better when you get a good feel for the flow of it but it still elicits a heavy sign when I get spotted and have to start fighting. This isn't really a huge deal since I try to stealth everything anyway but, early on, there are quite a few enemies that you cannot instantly assassinate or headshot so you end up forced into combat unless you want to run away a let things reset. I've gotten some abilities that should help with that now but I took until level 12 to get there (side note: leveling feels really slow).

The comments about how much of a dick Kassandra is and about the tone of the opening are interesting. There are plenty of opportunities to not be a dick even though you are a mercenary. Though on thing I did find annoying was that the first romance situation is just you basically saying "hey, wanna f*ck" every other dialogue option. There do seem to be some significant consequences to your decision, which is nice.

Oh 'eff you scenery trailer above... Guess that seals the deal. Seriously, scenery trailer. What am I supposed to do?? You've done licked the envelope; I might as well just slide the check in now.

edit: aaaand pulled the trigger via Steam.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey Review - Destructoid

Assassin's Creed Odyssey - Before You Buy

So if I really disliked other AC games for all the stupid Assassin crap in them (seriously, Black Flag was only good when it was about pirates, not being assassins) and all the AC baggage, will I dislike this one? Is it a significant enough turn to be worth looking into?

edit: I ask because I wanted to love Black Flag. I really, really wanted to love it, but it was so bogged down by the AC baggage that I tossed it mid-way through. And it really sounds like this might truly be it, the AC game that isn't an AC game! I really hope they eventually just move away from the Assassins/Templars stuff entirely. Just have these alt-history/fictional stories with similar mechanics between them with maybe some relation here and there based on events in the others.

I would watch the Before you Buy I posted above. I think it talks about your concerns a bit.

farley3k wrote:

I would watch the Before you Buy I posted above. I think it talks about your concerns a bit.

Those videos definitely made me more interested in it. We'll see!!

This one is by the team that did Black Flag. There are shanties. There are some shanties that only the all-female crews will sing. There are all-female crews, so you can go full amazon.

Chaz wrote:

This one is by the team that did Black Flag. There are shanties. There are some shanties that only the all-female crews will sing. There are all-female crews, so you can go full amazon.

This, along with the assassin stuff being non-existent almost, and the new combat system is mighty enticing...

SHANTIES!

LTTP with this news perhaps, but I just learned that Assassin's Creed 3 Remastered is included with the Odyssey season pass. AC3 is one of my favorites because I love the stoic Conner. Not a fan of the never-ending Haytham intro, but AC3 did introduce a lot of elements that have carried forward to other games in the series.

AC3 remastered drops in March.

Anyone who is playing the game already have any thoughts on this?

Assassin's Creed Odyssey's best feature costs an extra 10 bucks

Not sure why a "power up" is considered a best feature. Although I guess I thought "god mod" in doom was a best feature.

And I am not sure why it is bad to have to pay for what amounts to a cheat. It seems fair.

Permanent XP Boost changes that. Not only does your level rise faster, you also unlock dramatically more powerful assassination moves earlier in the campaign. Which is to say, using the $10 option makes Alexios or Kassandra more likely to be the same level as their target, and gives your character stronger moves to deal a lethal blow rather than a torpid poke. You’re paying for Ubisoft to make you feel like the hero you should be in this sort of game.
farley3k wrote:

Not sure why a "power up" is considered a best feature. Although I guess I thought "god mod" in doom was a best feature.

And I am not sure why it is bad to have to pay for what amounts to a cheat. It seems fair.

Permanent XP Boost changes that. Not only does your level rise faster, you also unlock dramatically more powerful assassination moves earlier in the campaign. Which is to say, using the $10 option makes Alexios or Kassandra more likely to be the same level as their target, and gives your character stronger moves to deal a lethal blow rather than a torpid poke. You’re paying for Ubisoft to make you feel like the hero you should be in this sort of game.

Certainly an different move.. you pay $10 for essentially an easier mode to the base game.. that with the $40 Season Pass makes me more and more convinced that this is the new norm.. $50-$60 just really buys you into a base vanilla game.

I read that Polygon article, and I'm not convinced it's a for real problem yet. Here's my why, caveat that I haven't played the game yet:

- It's a journo, probably playing it as quickly as possible, like jorunos tend to, trying to get all the way through so they're able to talk about it front to back when it releases. That leads to mainlining the story missions, mostly. Which totally isn't how I play, and probably isn't how most people play.
- I don't know how many, if any, side stuff they did before the "six hour" stretch it took them to go from level 15 > 17 like the game required them to. I don't know if they did almost none, and if they'd done some, if they would've been the level 17 the game wanted them to be. I don't know if they did a ton of side stuff, but it still wasn't enough.
- It makes the assumption that their experience means that the devs were definitely pushing them to buy the XP boost, which is a pretty big leap to make.

Now, it's totally possible that they were doing a reasonable amount of side stuff, and that level stretch is built into the game. I don't know, I'm not there yet. But I'm willing to bet that they just built their leveling curve with the expectation that to stay on it, you do at least some side stuff. That seems like a pretty reasonable expectation to me, in a giant open world game like this.

So I don't know, it's possible that those worries will turn out to be true. If they are, I'll be a little sad. I'm honestly not super worried, because I play this kind of game pretty completionist. In AC Origins, I was vastly over leveled by about 25% of the way through because I did all the side stuff, and I was fine with that. So I guess it's wait and see, but given the click-baity history of Polygon and Forbes contributor columns, I'm not really worried.

Like I said in my previous post, leveling does feel slower than Origins. Being Ubisoft, I wouldn't be shocked if they intentionally scaled back xp so you'd be tempted to buy this. They are a sh*t company. But, all the xp boost is going to do is give you abilities faster. It's not really going to make the game easier since the enemies mostly scale with you. I'm currently level 13 and any elite level 13 enemies (fort captains and such) aren't killable via assassination unless it's a critical assassination which requires an adrenaline charge. Headshots don't even kill some normal enemies so I need to use the controllable arrow ability on them which also requires a charge. You only have four charges without engaging in combat to refill adrenaline. Leveling faster isn't going to fix that. It's just going to give you more abilities to waste charges on to kill enemies that you should be able to one-shot anyway.

The sh*tty combat design may be wearing me down.

TheGameguru wrote:

Certainly an different move.. you pay $10 for essentially an easier mode to the base game.. that with the $40 Season Pass makes me more and more convinced that this is the new norm.. $50-$60 just really buys you into a base vanilla game.

Yeah, they're trying really hard to move customers off of the $60 price point.

I don't like it, but this time I bit because there was an offer for $100 MS gift cards for $85, the remastered versions of AC III and Liberation were nice sweeteners, and finally, I've felt a particularly urgent need to lose myself in a virtual world recently.

I did resent the way the base game of AC:Origins felt curiously incomplete.

All this does is cement my decision to stop day 1 purchases. Waiting for dlc drops gives time for the kinks to get patched out and some of these issues to be addressed before I play.

I'm really not even convinced that it's an issue yet. We'll see as more people get to the end, but as far as sources of takes go, Polygon and Forbes contributors are way down my list of credible sources.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

The sh*tty combat design may be wearing me down.

I should say that, despite my bitterness about the combat, I’m still really enjoying the game. That’s quite the accomplishment.

Just discovered you can climb everything in this game! No more crappy parkour mechanics that had me endlessly fudging simple manuevers because the game decided I wanted to go somewhere I didn't.... getting hard to avoid this game!

iaintgotnopants wrote:

I should say that, despite my bitterness about the combat, I’m still really enjoying the game. That’s quite the accomplishment.

As someone that really disliked the combat of the old AC games, how should I feel about this game coming from other action adventure games, like Dark Souls or Monster Hunter?

The combat is definitely improved from earlier AC games. More fluid, less holding block and wait to hit counter. In old AC games, I'd do everything to avoid getting in a fight and run if I did because fighting was no fun. In Origins, I still tried to stay stealthy, but I felt fine about actually fighting it out if things went loud.