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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla - Review Thread

diffusionx

Gold Member


Came to post this. Seems to be a running theme with these games as I felt the same way about ACO (both of them). Great first impressions but after a while it just becomes a horrible slog and the mechanics aren’t good or interesting enough to support them.

But I don’t know if this game looked good to me at any point. It looks like Odyssey’s gameplay copy-pasted with a Witcher 3 rip-off art style yet somehow looks worse despite being 5 years newer.

The guy plays on normal and then moan about the game being easy...with 2 other levels of difficulty available that you can change anytime.

tenor.gif

I played Odyssey on hard, like I play most games, and it didn’t make the game or combat system any more interesting. it just made it more tedious and boring TBH. The combat wasn’t good or fun enough to hold up doing more of it. As a point of comparison, I really like the harder difficulty in Ghost of Tsushima, but then again, I like everything about GoT more than I do nu-AC.
 
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48086

Member
Welp, I had purchased Valhalla on PC and played for about four hours. During that time I ran into numerous bugs. The final straw was a story mission that was bugged and wouldn't let me progress. I requested a refund from Ubisoft. Shame, I was actually having a decent time.
 

GymWolf

Member
Came to post this. Seems to be a running theme with these games as I felt the same way about ACO (both of them). Great first impressions but after a while it just becomes a horrible slog and the mechanics aren’t good or interesting enough to support them.

But I don’t know if this game looked good to me at any point. It looks like Odyssey’s gameplay copy-pasted with a Witcher 3 rip-off art style yet somehow looks worse despite being 5 years newer.



I played Odyssey on hard, like I play most games, and it didn’t make the game or combat system any more interesting. it just made it more tedious and boring TBH. The combat wasn’t good or fun enough to hold up doing more of it. As a point of comparison, I really like the harder difficulty in Ghost of Tsushima, but then again, I like everything about GoT more than I do nu-AC.
He talks about challenge, not mechanics, we all know that ac combat is mostly trash but he moan about dying 2 times in 67 hours because enemies have to hit him 50 times to kill him...maybe try hard or very hard where you are done in 2-3 hits and that even change how you approach to combat.

I never liked this guy, he has a nice way to talk and to explain things but more often than not he say some good ol bullshits.

On the other hand, he piss himself for tsushima, a game where you have to purposely forget about 3/4 of your gear\armour\moves\stealth to get a little bit of challenge in the last level of difficulty, i don't even wanna start thinking how simple the game is on normal...i mean, come the fuck on...

Not saying that ac valhalla is any better than tsushima, just pointing out how ridicolous the guy is...
 
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GymWolf

Member
If your defense of a game is that it isn’t fun on normal mode, the game is shit.
He is talking about challenge dude, have you even watched his review??

This is all i'm pointing out, not saying that valhalla is a good game.

It's absolutely moronic talking about challenge in games when you are not even playing at the hardest difficulty level, i don't know how this can be defended in any way from people with a brain.

Also combat systems on normal in 99% of games are piss easy cakewalk, you don't judge a combat system on normal, horizon combat on normal is trash compared to ultra hard, and that game is my gotg...
Look someone playing dmc 5 on normal and at the latest difficulty level, the gameplay completely change.
 
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GymWolf

Member
I don't think that's the main issue... I mean making it harder would fix that maybe (not that the combat seem involved enough anyway) but then instead of 45 hours of bloat you get more. This being his main complaint would probably make it an even worse experience.
I know it's not the main issues, i have the game, i know how mediocre the combat can be.

But you can avoid talking about challenge when you actually didn't tried the max difficulty level, it's not morally honest, not that i expcet any morality from videogame journalists but still...
 
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jaysius

Banned
Not a bad game this. But I really wish ubi spent 2 extra years with their open world titles, so that they could at least try and compete with the likes of Rockstar. The usual lowest budget tier like stuff from ubi is all there particularly voice acting are as atrocious as ever and of course animations are just hmm...

I liked that investigator mission the most so far, you can tell they tried to take some inspiration from TW3. The graphics aren't that bad either, but its no RDR2.
ACValhalla-plus-2020-11-11-01-08-28-828.png

Well it's an easy answer here, UBI does the bare minimum to get an 80/8 score from the typical sites, they do the bare minimum to make their open world games not feel like the lazy F2P or open world games from early 2010's. They do all this because THEY CAN people keep buying their trash so they never learn their lesson.

Past AC games were great, because at the time that was where Open World games were, but Ubi instead of evolving their design philosophy, they figured out you can stick grindy F2P mechanics into your games and give the minimal effort making quests to make big money. Ubi doesn't care about making good games, they just care about getting your money from their lazy shit every year.

The ONLY way to teach them a LESSON is to STOP BUYING THEIR SHIT.
 

Denton

Member
Looks like they fixed the volumetric clouds this time round at least.

Noticed it myself when I played briefly last night, little to no improvement when going from ultra to high with that setting.
Yeah thanks to HW Unboxed I lowered AA, disabled motion blur and now I finally get 60fps stable. I always thought these post-process AA methods dont really eat any perf, but in this game it does. And since I downsample from 1440 to 1080p anyway, it looks good with AA low.
 

Denton

Member
He talks about challenge, not mechanics, we all know that ac combat is mostly trash but he moan about dying 2 times in 67 hours because enemies have to hit him 50 times to kill him...maybe try hard or very hard where you are done in 2-3 hits and that even change how you approach to combat.
I am playing pathfinder, combat hard, stealth normal, and yeah combat is really hard in places.
Unfortunately though some enemies have so much HP that it it becomes tedious. I spent 10 minutes killing some legendary elk for fuck sake.
 

GymWolf

Member
I am playing pathfinder, combat hard, stealth normal, and yeah combat is really hard in places.
Unfortunately though some enemies have so much HP that it it becomes tedious. I spent 10 minutes killing some legendary elk for fuck sake.
When i find a boss that i can't beat in a reasonable amount of time i just bail out and return when i'm stronger.

Basically what you do in almost any action rpg with levels, from witcher 3 to elex, it's not the game fault, more about the genre.

I'm playing hard but i only have difficulties when there are a lot of enemies, i'm probably gonna switch to very hard in a day or two.
 
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jaysius

Banned
DA:I is a great game my dude

DA:I was a monthly sub away from being a MMO, lazy enemy AI and boring "plays itself" party. Levels of grinding to get only marginally better gear that we wouldn't see again until Ubi learned how to put F2P mechanics into their games, so I guess the game was AHEAD OF IT'S TIME there. That game was fucking awful, huge levels that were empty and poorly designed merely there to pad out the awful fetch quests. The game was hot trash. It was NOTHING compared to Dragon Age 1.
 
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jaysius

Banned
I am playing pathfinder, combat hard, stealth normal, and yeah combat is really hard in places.
Unfortunately though some enemies have so much HP that it it becomes tedious. I spent 10 minutes killing some legendary elk for fuck sake.

Sounds like Odyssey to me.
 

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
Pretty sad that such a fucking generic ass game is the game that kicks of this gen for a lot of people dude,
I don't get it. Play origins play oddyssey fuck play any ubi openworld game.. srsly..

yawn
 

GymWolf

Member
Pretty sad that such a fucking generic ass game is the game that kicks of this gen for a lot of people dude,
I don't get it. Play origins play oddyssey fuck play any ubi openworld game.. srsly..

yawn
I think most people in here bought the game on pc or xbox, people with a ps5 are probably buying demons, morales or bugsnax for their first next gen experience.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
I know it's not the main issues, i have the game, i know how mediocre the combat can be.

But you can avoid talking about challenge when you actually didn't tried the max difficulty level, it's not morally honest, not that i expcet any morality from videogame journalists but still...

I think it’s fair for a reviewer to play the game the way the vast majority of people will play it.

something just seems fundamentally off with the balance/leveling in this game, which maybe explains why they had that shitty scaling in Odyssey.
 
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renzolama

Member
He talks about challenge, not mechanics, we all know that ac combat is mostly trash but he moan about dying 2 times in 67 hours because enemies have to hit him 50 times to kill him...maybe try hard or very hard where you are done in 2-3 hits and that even change how you approach to combat.

I never liked this guy, he has a nice way to talk and to explain things but more often than not he say some good ol bullshits.

On the other hand, he piss himself for tsushima, a game where you have to purposely forget about 3/4 of your gear\armour\moves\stealth to get a little bit of challenge in the last level of difficulty, i don't even wanna start thinking how simple the game is on normal...i mean, come the fuck on...

Not saying that ac valhalla is any better than tsushima, just pointing out how ridicolous the guy is...

I loved his videos years back before he became another hyperbolic bandwagoning youtuber. I knew as soon as I saw the Tsushima video that he would praise it for being basically a generic open world game with extra pretty/style and then make another video dumping on the next AC game for the same reasons. The view counts he gets for his videos where he hyperbolically shits on big tentpole releases are so much higher than when he gives balanced opinions.
 

sendit

Member
He talks about challenge, not mechanics, we all know that ac combat is mostly trash but he moan about dying 2 times in 67 hours because enemies have to hit him 50 times to kill him...maybe try hard or very hard where you are done in 2-3 hits and that even change how you approach to combat.

I never liked this guy, he has a nice way to talk and to explain things but more often than not he say some good ol bullshits.

On the other hand, he piss himself for tsushima, a game where you have to purposely forget about 3/4 of your gear\armour\moves\stealth to get a little bit of challenge in the last level of difficulty, i don't even wanna start thinking how simple the game is on normal...i mean, come the fuck on...

Not saying that ac valhalla is any better than tsushima, just pointing out how ridicolous the guy is...

Different strokes for different folks. I’m currently playing Valhalla (enjoying it btw). However, I greatly prefer Ghost of Tsushima’s presentation, story, graphics, and combat. It’s a better Assassins game.

With that said, Valhalla is the better RPG. The world is also absolutely massive in comparison.
 
If your defense of a game is that it isn’t fun on normal mode, the game is shit.
Nonsense, normal has been scaled back for years and now essentially represents story or scenic mode in most AAA games these days. I haven’t played on normal in years because it’s effectively been a neutered version of the game. It’s cool, but I certainly wouldn’t base my review on it. Real issue is that these reviewers want to rush through the game and hit publish for clicks, but have done a disservice to gamers and the game itself as a result.
 
Wow. The Jury is out on this one. It has crashed on me (PS4) version a couple times and sometimes the main quest icon goes away in the map. I want to love it like I do all the others.

Still upset about Origins being a grindfest half way in.
 

oagboghi2

Member
Nonsense, normal has been scaled back for years and now essentially represents story or scenic mode in most AAA games these days. I haven’t played on normal in years because it’s effectively been a neutered version of the game. It’s cool, but I certainly wouldn’t base my review on it. Real issue is that these reviewers want to rush through the game and hit publish for clicks, but have done a disservice to gamers and the game itself as a result.
watch his review. The problem with the game has nothing to do with the difficulty. Artificially padding the hp of enemies (which is all hard mode is. It doesn't drastically change the game) won't fix boring quests, a broken leveling up system, a broken combat system, and apparently an underwhelming story.

I loved his videos years back before he became another hyperbolic bandwagoning youtuber. I knew as soon as I saw the Tsushima video that he would praise it for being basically a generic open world game with extra pretty/style and then make another video dumping on the next AC game for the same reasons. The view counts he gets for his videos where he hyperbolically shits on big tentpole releases are so much higher than when he gives balanced opinions.
:pie_eyeroll: okay here we go. Now I see what the real problem is
 
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scalman

Member
nothing was boring in this game so far, compare to kinda stupid same all same odyssey side quests like kills all sharks or kill all bandits... thats not here. its all pretty good , even more freedom for you to do what you want. again in first part of game at least. so its great. for someone who didint liked it , why you even played it , thats main problem, dont take it dont buy it dont play it and dont complain. its same AC games as most AC games same as last games just some diff some better for some ppl, but its still same game, so dont play it if you dont like this kind of thing.
fights are like best thing for me. like animations , like movements, like that its not easy. not so arcady as before. so thats great. and vikings... love that.
 

MastAndo

Member
I'm not sure if anyone posted this, but in the PC version, you can disable the start up videos and messages and load right into the title screen;

Rename or delete:
  • <Valhalla Install Dir>/videos/ANVIL_Logo.webm
  • <Valhalla Install Dir>/videos/PC_AMD_Ryzen.webm
  • <Valhalla Install Dir>/videos/UbisoftLogo.webm
  • <Valhalla Install Dir>/videos/<your language>*/Epilepsy.webm
  • <Valhalla Install Dir>/videos/<your language>/PC_WarningSaving.webm
  • <Valhalla Install Dir>/videos/<your language>/warning_disclaimer.webm
It loads much faster. It's a joy to be in-game in like, 30 seconds after starting it up.

Also, if you heavy attack right before you hit the ground, you can jump from high up without taking fall damage. I don't know if there's a skill later on that covers this, but it had been pretty annoying early on having to be so careful scaling down a mountain since there's no health regen if you do end up falling.
 

Madflavor

Member
It's a real shame. I haven't played an AC in years. Since AC2 honestly. I was ready to dive into the series with Valhalla, but I think I'll pass now.
 

TMLT

Member
About 10 hrs in now and still happy with it. For all the accusations of Ubisoft games not having atmosphere ive gotta say im digging it in this one. Norway has an eerie dreamlike vibe to it, while England is totally different, its very verdant and feels quite a bit like Witcher (Skellige not included).
 

Denton

Member
When i find a boss that i can't beat in a reasonable amount of time i just bail out and return when i'm stronger.
Normally I agree, but...when I see I do damage and defeating is doable, I just do it. I loved Gothic at this, where if I went into forest and met shadowbeast, it just killed me no questions asked. There was no chance of beating it. Instant respect. Here I can beat it, it's just tedious, but I do it because I can do it.
 

GHG

Member
About 3 and a half hours in so far and although it's early days I'm enjoying this FAR more than Odyssey.

It's closer in feel to Origins IMO which is a good thing. Got absolutely wrecked by erik loyalskull. I will return.
 
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dorkimoe

Member
Why is one of the first quests take your boat 500 miles to a level 280 city?

lol oh. I was in a prologue basically lol
 
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sobaka770

Banned
I am playing pathfinder, combat hard, stealth normal, and yeah combat is really hard in places.
Unfortunately though some enemies have so much HP that it it becomes tedious. I spent 10 minutes killing some legendary elk for fuck sake.

I put everything on ultra hard and the optional encounter early on in the cave was like a Dark Souls boss level of hard. Spent a good part of an hour practicing and dying until I got timings right.

I sincerely so far do not understand the issues some reviewers are raising. Especially about the game being easy when you have 3 different settings you can finetune depending on the experience you want to have.

Thank God for the designers who realised that endless loot is boring and having 20 overpowered abilities that make you a superman/woman does not make combat great and is frankly not what AC is about. Yes, it's not perfect, there are lingering bugs here and there and combat isn't as refined as DS but I am having a lot of fun being stealthy and roleplaying in this cause at highest level you better be good at combat and stealthy assassinate people.
 
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Azurro

Banned
When i find a boss that i can't beat in a reasonable amount of time i just bail out and return when i'm stronger.

Basically what you do in almost any action rpg with levels, from witcher 3 to elex, it's not the game fault, more about the genre.

I'm playing hard but i only have difficulties when there are a lot of enemies, i'm probably gonna switch to very hard in a day or two.

AC is an action game that tries to disguise itself as an RPG. I liked Odyssey, but the legendary hunts really display how tedious the combat system is. Even if you are very skilled and can dodge perfectly, it takes absolutely forever to kill any of them to the point that it gets tedious.
 
I’m enjoying the hell out of the game but I’m having screen tearing like crazy! I wish they’d give us a 1080p performance mode. I’m not sure if that would fix it but screen tearing is even worse than frame drops to me.

It is also buggy as shit. Seems the most buggy AC I’ve played since Unity.
 
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diffusionx

Gold Member
So does Valhalla fix some of the problems Odyssey had?

Judging by reviews, it seems like it fixes some and introduces other ones, probably a wash overall, but with less polish. If you like nu-AC you'll probably like this, if not don't bother.
 
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GymWolf

Member
AC is an action game that tries to disguise itself as an RPG. I liked Odyssey, but the legendary hunts really display how tedious the combat system is. Even if you are very skilled and can dodge perfectly, it takes absolutely forever to kill any of them to the point that it gets tedious.
That's why i return later when i'm stronger.
 

GymWolf

Member
Normally I agree, but...when I see I do damage and defeating is doable, I just do it. I loved Gothic at this, where if I went into forest and met shadowbeast, it just killed me no questions asked. There was no chance of beating it. Instant respect. Here I can beat it, it's just tedious, but I do it because I can do it.
If i can do noticeable damage i give the boss a try, yesterday i beated the first legendary animal in 5 min, it was a fun battle.
 

DonJorginho

Banned
I’m enjoying the hell out of the game but I’m having screen tearing like crazy! I wish they’d give us a 1080p performance mode. I’m not sure if that would fix it but screen tearing is even worse than frame drops to me.

It is also buggy as shit. Seems the most buggy AC I’ve played since Unity.
What you playing on bro?
 

Azurro

Banned
That's why i return later when i'm stronger.

It's not about the stats, the fighting system tself was clunky and doesn't support a fight being that long. It's hardly Dark Souls or anything like that, it's focused on looking good rather than playing well.
 

GymWolf

Member
It's not about the stats, the fighting system tself was clunky and doesn't support a fight being that long. It's hardly Dark Souls or anything like that, it's focused on looking good rather than playing well.
The fun part is that odissey doesn't even look remotely good with these glitchy and weightless animations :ROFLMAO:
Valhalla seems a bit better tho.
 
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