Assassin's Creed Valhalla RPG Catch-All

Balthezor wrote:

I am enjoying the hell out of this game. I think the story is much better than Odyssey. I never finished Odyssey, but put in probably 60 hours total which included me starting over.

I want to keep playing just for the story. And just tried out dual greatswords. Kind of cool! Dumb question, why is Eivor so much shorter than the other characters? LOL

A fellow person who wasn't a fan of Odyssey's story! My people! Eivor's shortness is mentioned a few times and it's very funny to me. I think the actual reason is that male & female Eivor share the same dimensions so if they made a normal sized Eivor, then everyone would comment on how tall a lady she is. By keeping Eivor short, just need to throw in a few comments as a short man isn't that unusual.

Balthezor wrote:

I am level 90, but still using the Raven armor from the very beginning. Any recommendations for someone that likes to melee and around my level?

The Raven armour is a very solid set. Honestly, just play around with the armour and upgrades. The early upgrades are very cheap. Eventually I found a set I liked and stuck with it. The Galloglach and Brigandine sets offer a base increase of melee damage for their full set bonus.

Patch 1.2.1 is out today.

I made it to Cent, and I'm enjoying the arc there a bit more than the previous one.

When I started this, I made a couple decisions: I was going to play slowly rather than binging it, and I was going to dive into a more aggressive playstyle. The idea was to prevent burnout, since I was still feeling kind of tired from finishing all of Odyssey's DLC.

The new playstayle has been a lot of fun, but I think going through it slowly has been something of a mistake. I end up forgetting exactly what's going on (narratively and mechanically), and if I'm stuck in an arc I don't enjoy as much, it makes it harder to go back in and finish it up. Every time I do load back in, I'm reminded again just how beautiful the game is.

So, probably gonna spend the next week or so focusing on this game. I certainly don't expect to finish it in that time, but I'd like to really immerse myself in it and feel more investment in the narrative.

Finished Cent AND Vinland! Vinland was a nice change of pace, and didn't outstay its welcome. I'm a little bummed I couldn't carry over the gear somehow from there, but it was a memorable few hours there regardless.

Next up is Jotunheim. Hoping it stands out a bit more compared to Asgard!

beanman101283 wrote:

Finished Cent AND Vinland! Vinland was a nice change of pace, and didn't outstay its welcome. I'm a little bummed I couldn't carry over the gear somehow from there, but it was a memorable few hours there regardless.

Next up is Jotunheim. Hoping it stands out a bit more compared to Asgard!

I've burned out a bit, but this is around where I am. Have done 2 of the Asgard quest lines, and think I'm in Essexe currently (Vinland being the last major arc I finished).

It was probably a mistake for me to jump right from Odyssey to Valhalla, as I definitely have open world fatigue at the moment. Still playing at least once a week to progress a little bit.

I also really like Vinland as a change of pace, and it felt fairly quick! Even 100% exploring that map felt like a quick jaunt.

I am still trying to figure out why I am repeatedly bouncing off of this game. I loaded up Horizon Zero Dawn (HZD) and find myself enjoying starting over again in that one. The only thing that I can think of is that the story and characters in HZD are what makes the difference. I devoured Fenyx rising and the story/narration was, I think, a big part of my enjoyment.

JC wrote:

I am still trying to figure out why I am repeatedly bouncing off of this game. I loaded up Horizon Zero Dawn (HZD) and find myself enjoying starting over again in that one. The only thing that I can think of is that the story and characters in HZD are what makes the difference. I devoured Fenyx rising and the story/narration was, I think, a big part of my enjoyment.

These were my 1 (HZD) and 2 (AC: Valhalla) last year. HZD is a much more polished game with a completely different focus. While it's setting and combat are unique it's not as ambitious as Valhalla. HZD does a fantastic job of constantly pushing you through the next area and story beat with a firm integration between everything. Valhalla is much more mechanical and separates out it's story into a series of episodes. So Valhalla's momentum is up to you and if an episode isn't connecting, you just have to slog through it and make the decision if the next one is worth seeing. Valhalla is also extremely unbalanced and if you do all the side stuff, you're overpowered about 40% of the way through the game while HZD doesn't experience that for a quite a while.

It's nice that any one story arc doesn't last more than a few hours, but there have definitely been times where I wait longer than normal to come back to the game because an arc is particularly uninteresting or unpleasant. If you could have multiple arcs going at once you could at least take a break from one to push forward another. If Eivor were a more compelling character that would carry me through those moments better, but so far I don't really have a sense for what motivates her. There were a few role playing opportunities early on in the dialog responses, but I don't recall any that stand out recently. I liked the structure of Vinland's arc, but it fell completely flat as a character moment since I could barely remember who this guy was we were hunting down. In fact I just looked him up to remind myself. Part of that's on me: I'm playing slowly, and it's been literally months since I last saw him. But even if I had remembered, the moment of victory was itself anticlimactic.

I do like this game a lot, but there is something about it that keeps me at a remove from it. After three of these games in this style, I really think Origins is going to end up being the one I look back at with the fondest memory.

beanman101283 wrote:

It's nice that any one story arc doesn't last more than a few hours, but there have definitely been times where I wait longer than normal to come back to the game because an arc is particularly uninteresting or unpleasant. If you could have multiple arcs going at once you could at least take a break from one to push forward another. If Eivor were a more compelling character that would carry me through those moments better, but so far I don't really have a sense for what motivates her. There were a few role playing opportunities early on in the dialog responses, but I don't recall any that stand out recently. I liked the structure of Vinland's arc, but it fell completely flat as a character moment since I could barely remember who this guy was we were hunting down. In fact I just looked him up to remind myself. Part of that's on me: I'm playing slowly, and it's been literally months since I last saw him. But even if I had remembered, the moment of victory was itself anticlimactic.

I do like this game a lot, but there is something about it that keeps me at a remove from it. After three of these games in this style, I really think Origins is going to end up being the one I look back at with the fondest memory.

I need to go back to Origins. I bounced off of it because it seemed to be all sand... Which we all know is course and rough and gets everywhere.
But now that I'm through two other ones I may take to it better.

Origins is my favourite in the entire series. I actually love the sand as it contrasts extremely well with the blue sky and ocean then the white stone of Alexandria. Becomes quite striking when Bayek gets to the marshlands area.

I'm pretty much done with Valhalla for the foreseeable future. I think I made it about 2/3 of the way through England, and I was very close to max level. Never went back to see Norway. After recently playing Odyssey's Atlantis DLC, the Odin story lines left me cold. None of the quest lines interested me, so I never went back.

Vinland is a nice change of pace, I believe you can use the gear for transmog if you want to keep the appearance.

I'm a little disappointed, but I have no shortage of things to play.

Ubisoft really doesn't want me to actually play this game. I downloaded the dlc this morning to play it now. Good plan, right?
Nope, here's a 12.5 gig update. And it's PS4 so the download is slow as hell.

While I enjoyed playing this I'm still finding that I enjoyed (loved) Odyssey more but don't have an easy answer as to why. Maybe it's a mix of small things? The protagonist being less interesting? All the king making missions having similar objectives? Ancient Greece seeming more exotic? The lack of medusas and minotours etc. It just feels like Odyssey felt more epic and pretty.

Don't regret playing Valhalla though.

strangederby wrote:

While I enjoyed playing this I'm still finding that I enjoyed (loved) Odyssey more but don't have an easy answer as to why. Maybe it's a mix of small things? The protagonist being less interesting? All the king making missions having similar objectives? Ancient Greece seeming more exotic? The lack of medusas and minotours etc. It just feels like Odyssey felt more epic and pretty.

Don't regret playing Valhalla though.

Yeah, same here, enjoyed Odyssey more. It just felt like it had more variety, and I liked the world better. Valhalla's world all looks very same-y with snowy areas being the one variation. It's a pretty boring world to explore IMO. Though, here I am playing the DLC, honestly because I've not much else to play at the moment and it fills the time. Still feel ridiculously OP with my double greatswords. I should probably up the combat difficulty but I'm too lazy. I do really like that they added armor visual customization since I last played.

Is the Valhalla dlc as cool as the Odyssey dlc was?

Only one out so too early to tell. I got the season pass on uplay as it was 25% off but I got another 20% off for 100 U points, so £20. Not sure if that is still the case

Thanks for pointing out the sale. I'd intended on waiting to pick up the season pass but went ahead and grabbed it. Since a kind gwjer here gifted me the game, dropping $30 on the season pass still feels like a good deal.

Well, finished the DLC and overall it was fairly disappointing. I was expecting some weirder stuff out of these druids, and aside from one encounter, they were pretty basic, just regular guys wearing weird masks hanging out waiting to be killed like every other enemy in the game. The trade system was an OK way to get access to a couple new armor sets, but they really didn't seem worth the materials to level them up, so ok for transmog purposes I guess. The trade/level-up Dublin mechanic doesn't last very long either before you've seen all it has to offer. All in all just about 10-12 hours of "more of the same," nothing here will suprise you but if you're bored enough like me it's worth playing to fill some time.

Finished Jotunheim and enjoyed it a lot more than Asgard. The more overtly fantastical nature of the setting and characters was fun, and the illusion magic added a fun wrinkle to the exploration.

Off to Essex next!

Originally bought this from EPIC. I was getting back into this. Playing the DLC etc.

Then my game stopped saving. Ubisoft started to insist that I enter a cd key before I would be allowed to play.

So now I can confidently support my opinion that this is the worst of the new AC games, stop wasting time and go play Tombe Raider instead.

Hi AC fans. Checking in to see what the current thought is on Valhalla. I played about 30ish hours of Odyssey and got burnt out. I stopped playing several months ago. I may go back to Odyssey but, before I do, I thought I would check with the GWJ crew for current thoughts on Valhalla. I've played all the AC games and, while I like the current RPG evolution, I do miss being able to finish an AC game in 20ish hours. If I do try Valhalla ($30 on sale) my plan is to play until burnout. Enough differences from Odyssey to get 15-30 hours out of it before burnout? Better to go back to Odyssey? I found even with the XP boost in Odyssey I had to grind more than I preferred to do so I probably have to add $10 to Valhalla for the pass.

Thank you for any thoughts from my fellow AC fans.

Chad

I’ve put around 70 hours into Valhalla and haven’t finished the original game yet, never mind the DLC. The presentation feels different, and the game is structured in a more bite size way, where you commit to doing one zone’s story at the expense at any others. They also built mythical zones into the base game rather than leaving it for DLC. The combat is more fun IMO than Odyssey’s. But at the end of the day it’s still in the same vein as Origins and Odyssey. Massive world, rpg skill tree, flashy combat. I would recommend that if you went one particular route in the previous games as far as sneaky/archery/full out combat, pick a different route in this one. It’ll spice up the experience.

Thank you. Same vein but some differences? New systems/activities like raids and settlement building?
For $30 it sounds like enough fresh, at least for a bit, AC experience. I just need to give myself grace to stop playing at some point.

Yeah pretty much. Raids are short but fun. They tie heavily into the settlement building, an aspect I enjoyed. I enjoyed getting to know everyone.

Minor structural spoiler for the first few hours of the game:

Spoiler:

You spend the opening hours in Norway, and you can spend quite a lot of time there before ever getting to England. Just push through the main story if you get bored with the icy landscape.

I enjoyed, way back in the day, the town building aspect of AC 2 or whatever one that addition was introduced. Thanks for the tip under spolier.

I enjoyed Ireland, but have been underwhelmed with France.
As others have said, it's a new coat of paint on the last two games. Some improvements but not as colorful. Story is a bit full of itself.
I think I'm also just burnt out on the formula.

I felt it was a better story than Odyssey and told in a more successful way but really lacks closure and fumbles the spiritual aspect hard. Origins is by far my favourite of this trilogy but it’s also one of my favourite games of all time.

This discussion made me think that maybe I want to give Mad Max a try for an open world fix. I bought that ages ago for $5. I looked up how long to beat and 20 hours for the main story and 39 for everything. Hmm.

chooka1 wrote:

This discussion made me think that maybe I want to give Mad Max a try for an open world fix. I bought that ages ago for $5. I looked up how long to beat and 20 hours for the main story and 39 for everything. Hmm.

I liked it for the car parts. The melee stuff was fine. Story was good, but didn't quite stick the landing.
For $5, well worth it.

I really really liked Mad Max almost entirely for the car combat and exploration. It's rare but there are a few really cool non-combat areas to explore that are great.