Assassin's Creed Valhalla RPG Catch-All

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.

Oh yeah, try that out and save some money. Odyssey is still there when you get the itch, and Valhalla will only get cheaper with time.

Mad Max is an underrated Gem and I'm convinced that critics were having a bad day when they reviewed it. Valhalla was ok. It was fun but personally, I thought the story and setting of Odyssey was leagues better.

Also I'm still sore that a bug has stopped me from being able to complete the Valhalla DLC.

strangederby wrote:

Mad Max is an underrated Gem and I'm convinced that critics were having a bad day when they reviewed it. Valhalla was ok. It was fun but personally, I thought the story and setting of Odyssey was leagues better.

Also I'm still sore that a bug has stopped me from being able to complete the Valhalla DLC.

I think the majority of reviewers are right in that they tend to play so many open world games they get fatigued. Mad Max doesn't do a tonne unique other than the car stuff, the story is pretty slapped together, and the game has a pretty limited and drab colour palette.

Valhalla was a much greater time sink than the others. I have 50 hours for Origins including DLC, 120 for Odyssey including 1 DLC and 130 hours for Valhalla with no DLC.

You are not going to get through Valhalla in under 50 hours, it's quite a unique main quest route and you will be underpowered quite quickly.

Yeah, picking a zone at a time to complete makes it feel more approachable and focused, but at the end of the day you're still spending 100+ hours in the game

Personally while I really liked the 'gameplay loop' of Mad Max, it was a little on the repetitive side, and to be honest I found a lot of the little lore items and things found that reference the gradual ecological collapse of the world to be supremely depressing in a way most "post apocalyptic" games are (probably because it's a lot more plausible than most) and I couldn't finish it.

Valhalla wise - still to finish Ireland or buy the France. Saving that for the next time I'm in the mood for some AC I guess. Personally Odyssey is still my favourite because of the mythology (and Kassandra).

I noticed it right away, but it keeps getting reinforced. Eivor (m or f) is no where near as good as Kassandra, and not even as good as Kassandra's brother (no one knows or cares what his name is).

I continue to disagree with all of you in regards to Odyssey.

Vector wrote:

I continue to disagree with all of you in regards to Odyssey.

Vector, we can hang out in our "Origins was the best" camp. Nestled nicely on top of a pyramid.

I acknowledge I haven't finish Origins. I should sometime once the AC open world burn out has lessened.

I spent my lunch break fishing today. Gathered a bunch for some of the Altars that require offerings, along with Eels for one of the side quests. Filled out some of the fishing deliveries as well. I hadn't really taken the time to just chill, sail down the rivers, and enjoy the scenery. It was nice.

Title Update 1.4.0 is out today. Patch notes here.

Besides bug fixes, new content includes Tombs of the Fallen, which are some kind of puzzle tombs that sound reminiscent of the ones from AC2, as well as the new Oskoreia Festival seasonal event.

I'm devoting more time to the story, finally, and I just finished the mythical portion:

Spoiler:

Fenrir has been bound, and visions of Ragnarok were seen.

Compared to Origins' and Odyssey's mythical stuff, Valhalla's left me feeling pretty cold. Rather than centering it on your character, it just seems to be a straight retelling of the Norse myths and since I have no real familiarity with those, I struggled to understand, much less care about, what was going on.

I'm curious if there's something I missed, or if anyone who's more familiar with Norse mythology enjoyed it more. Or maybe it does tie into the main story eventually?

As far as the main story goes, I just rescued

Spoiler:

Sigurd

and the aftermath is pretty depressing. Now I'm hunting cultists in Jorvik, which has been enjoyable so far.

I found the Ragnarok storyline, in Valhalla, to be very bad and the worst part of the game. And I really like Valhalla. There was so much potential for fun deviation and otherwordly landscapes but they really didn't go in that direction. They showed in Origins and it's DLC how amazing that could be handled. Odyssey did a good job of keeping that to a minimum as the mythic boss battles were some of my favourite parts of the game. I didn't play the Odyssey DLC and I'm pretty sure there's more in there.

Yeah, the Odyssey DLC in the mythic zones was pretty fantastic for the most part (if you ever want to revisit Odyssey it's worth picking up). I really enjoyed Origins' as well. So I was expecting/hoping for a similar level of fun and quality storytelling. Instead it's just a dour, overly-serious slog, and the two zones for the storyline aren't visually memorable compared to the previous games.

I was disappointed in the mythic parts of Odyssey as well. I really should dive into this again to see if EA have fixed whatever was stopping me from being able to play the DLC.

strangederby wrote:

I was disappointed in the mythic parts of Odyssey as well. I really should dive into this again to see if EA have fixed whatever was stopping me from being able to play the DLC.

Unfortunately, I don’t think EA can help since it’s a Ubisoft game.

Eh. Hard to tell them apart to be honest.

I just finished Asgard, still have to go to Jotunheim. Absolutely hated Asgard, and almost quit the game over it. Unsurprised to find that this is a common perspective!

I was running through Suthsexe, filling in the map and cleaning up icons. When zeroing in on a Wealth icon, I came across a hut with a locked chest in it. I assumed the key was nearby but didn't see it anywhere. Then I noticed a note from a disturbed monk talking about "judging" the Danes. I took a look outside the hut and noticed a path leading away into the woods, and followed it. That took me to a Cursed Item icon where the same monk had apparently been killing and dumping the bodies of Danes. Once I cleared the curse, I continued to follow the path which led me to a World Event, and a tomb. Though I couldn't see him, the monk started ranting to me, talking about how many of his brothers he had buried, and how he wanted vengeance for the sacking of an abbey at some point in the past. There was also a key to the chest I found that started this whole detour. When I left the tomb the monk finally appeared and attacked me. I made my way back to the locked chest, then looked at the map afterwards and noticed the aforementioned abbey and made my way there. It was abandoned and overgrown, but I found an ability upgrade there.

While I've enjoyed most of the world events in the moment, I've forgotten the vast majority of them. But this whole sequence was pretty memorable. I suppose in one of the other games this would have been a whole side quest chain, but here it starts as just an icon on the map like any order, and you can encounter any of the pieces in any order. It still makes sense as you start piecing it together. Maybe I've missed others like this, but I wish there was a bit more of this kind of thing overall.

TheHipGamer wrote:

I just finished Asgard, still have to go to Jotunheim. Absolutely hated Asgard, and almost quit the game over it. Unsurprised to find that this is a common perspective!

After you finish Jotunheim, the next part in the quest chain sends you back to Asgard. I put it off for a while because I assumed it was another story segment as long as the previous two sections. However it's actually quite short with only a boss fight and some cutscenes, so it's easy to knock it out and (seemingly) fully wrap up that storyline.

Nope. Still crashing. One more attempt at trouble shooting and then I'm done.

The last time I played, I was walking around a shack when I was suddenly yeeted off the game map. When I tried reloading a save, it refused to do so. Think I’ll take another break until I’m in the mood to figure it out.

I'm never in the mood to figure buggy games out.

Well, I loaded up my most recent save and it seemed to work just fine. I’m solving a Samhain mystery now and enjoy the spooky vibes.

After tweaking some .ini files, deleting a cache and lowering some settings it's back to working order for me.

Aaaaand crashed again.

Got it working again. I'm finding the Paris missions a lot more fun than the Irish ones.

I finished the Glowecestrescire area and in terms of aesthetics it's one of my favorites. The Samhaim stuff, the dark forests, the hobbit town, the pagan vs Christian ideas, it's what I was hoping for when the game was first announced and previewed.

I think I've only got 4 or 5 zones left to do, then we can call the base game done. I've been keeping up with the Order assassinations so it won't take me long to wrap those up either. Then it's time for another break until I get the urge to dive into Ireland and France.