It's been a long while when I last did a gaming post but today is the day. Yesterday I finished Assassins Creed Valhalla, yes I know the game is out over a year already. The thing is that I started playing it maybe 2 months ago because mainly I was afraid of starting this game because it's just huge and I pretty much don't have time to play anything else. Only the main story takes about 60 hours to complete. Secondly, I don't want to play a new AAA game right away after it comes out because nowadays these games release so broken, it's a bad trend. I would give it at least a couple of months to sort out the issues.
When I say I completed the game, I mean it. This includes not only the main story about 60hrs but also add the side missions and collectibles. Still not all, I also completed the 3 DLC-s + Discovery tour. In total, I have 143 hours of playtime in AC Valhalla.
When I play games like this I am quite a completionist, not 100% but almost.
Many early AC fans complain that all the past three titles ( Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla ) are shit because they are nothing like the first games. I agree but this is not a bad thing IMO, I like how the franchise is going. People love to complain and there is no way in hell that everybody likes something. I would bet that if AC was still like the second game in the franchise the same people would complain that THERE IS NOTHING NEW, UBISOFT IS FARMING THE SAME GAME IN ANOTHER SKIN.
The story in Valhalla was good, not perfect but good and I consider myself happy playing through it. The only thing I would complain that the mission felt a bit dull sometimes. For most of the main story, your goal is to go to a location, try to form an alliance and repeat with another location. It sounds like crap yeah I know but even if this felt a bit dull, every location you went to form an alliance with others the local questline was awesome and I did not feel bored at all while completing these.
Obviously, there is much more to the story that is really deep, Eivor(the main protagonist ) own mission, present-day story and all. I'm not going to spoil stuff here because maybe some of you are yet to play this.
The world, as always in the AC game was absolutely gorgeous. The game takes place in Norway and mostly in England. The world is colorful with different biomes and level designers have done a really good job with landscapes as you can already see on the photos I have taken in-game along the playthrough. Lighting is also spot on and changes differently in different parts of the map.
The graphics is also gorgeous and getting better with every AC title. I am playing in 4K with maxed-out settings on PC. I am using an RTX 3080TI graphics card, Intel I9 9900K processor and 32 gigs of RAM.
This is seven sisters cliff in southern England.
Sometimes you see some interesting glitches like this. A fish in the middle of the fortress, it was also moving like it's swimming in the water, I lol-ed quite hard.
Here are some more in-game photos I have taken.
This is from a DLC of Wrath of the druids.
One below is from a fictional Viking realm of Asgard.
What I really liked is a quite recent DLC of crossover story with AC Odyssey. There the previous game protagonist Cassandra meets Eivor. These stories are many hundreds of years apart but I am not going to tell how Cassandra was able to be in the Viking time.
It was so good to see her again and do new stuff with her in it.
If I had to compare then I like Cassandra a bit more than Eivor. Cassandra has such a personality and emotions that I did not really see in Eivor.
There was also a new story in AC Odyssey that is part of the crossover DLC so I also went back to this game and completed it.
The following two pictures are from AC Odyssey.
I did also complete the Discovery tour. This is a standalone part of the past 3 games that really educate you of the time period that the game takes place. These are made in collaboration with historians and museums. You walk in a game world and do educational tours and you get loads of information about how life worked in these periods of time, I love it.
I hadn't completed the discovery tour in AC Odyssey so I first completed this one and then went on to start the Valhalla one. In Valhalla the game mode was a little different, they drew in stories this time. I was able to play as an ordinary you Viking how he wanted to succeed in life. Also as an anglo-Saxon Christian monk and King Alfred himself.
Overall I am really pleased with AC Valhalla and all the 140 hours I have played are well-spent.
As it turns out, I am actually not yet done with this game. A couple of days ago new DLC Dawn of Ragnarok was released. This is a huge DLC and Ubisoft says that there are another 30 hours of content, which is quite crazy. I started it yesterday, I am looking forward to what's going to happen in there.
