[h1] The Odyssey I Have Been Waiting For! [/h1]
Assassin's Creed Odyssey takes you on a grandiose adventure during the conflict of Athens and Spartans at Greece. The game takes you to many places with the immersiveness of its culture, beliefs, and many beautiful architecture. With perfect setting, a rookie mercenary helping everyone in need and fighting everyone indeed to climb your way up to become the best of the best while also solving the mystery lurking in the shadow and repairing personal affair. Me, roleplaying as Kassandra, riding the wave of Poseidon's Sea, climbing the mountain with Heracles might, fighting the horde for drachmae with the fury of God of War, partying left-and-right with Dionysus mind, and loving everyone with Aphrodite's heart, creating the perfect entertainment upon the game. This game is amazing.
Are you that kind of person where if the quest takes place in Attika, you would explore the whole Point of Interest of it, discovering its secret, and 20 hours later, you forgot why the quest takes place in Attika? That's me. This game is perfect for explorations. Hold on now, despite amazingness of it, it can be repetitive. At its core, every point-of-interest at every place are the same, just different scale. Albeit fortress, camps, and leader house, the game really wants you to polish your skills instead of experiencing new thing. Big BUTS, the enjoyment of raiding the camp, fortress, and leader house are never been so fun since my playthrough in Cyberpunk 2077. The freedom of approach, the tools you get, the abilities you can use are so varied you can do however you want. One of the amazing part of it is that if you've raid the place, you can get quest item, and you might take quest around that area, there may be a case where you've already have the items and your character be like, "You mean this item?", and then mission succeed. Amazing. It is a bit inconsistent there may be case where the place are empty but a quest later, you're supposed to go there to retrieve items and somehow the items spawned there, i'll give it a pass.
Oh my Gods the immersiveness of the culture and beliefs are amazing. I love everything about Greek Mythology. The statue of them, the sanctuary built for them, and the atmosphere of it, it's like I was there! There are many characters that have high-beliefs in Gods like Barnabas, the Daughter of Artemis, and when people took it to far like Followers of Ares that create this dynamic of enemies, personality, and immersion. You might not meet the actual Gods but you might meet the incarnation of them like Hecate, the witch of crossroads where the NPC that brew potions and really cunning.
Now, if it's just exploration and being immersive, it can be boring. That's why there's quest. Some of them are pretty memorable, funny, and can bring hefty consequencess, some of them can be super boring like "Carry this guy to here" and it's 500 meters away. Yes some are just fetch quest, bring this, kill that, but if it's intertwined with the exploration, it's like killing two birds with one stone, both are done. I do hate that every NPC you meet are romanceable. I don't know why they do this, I'd love for them to just make four characters romanceable like Cyberpunk 2077 did or like Witcher 3 did or like Kingdom Come Deliverance did because in the end, you can see the inspiration, similarity, and of course, they're on the same genre. The amazing one are when we have to deal with big bosses and I don't want to spoil it, but they're challenging, fun, and the story within the quest are really good.
I would say the biggest declining of fun is the gameplay. I just wish there's more ability to unlock instead of upgrading them to the max level. When I upgraded my favorite ability to the maximum, and by the way, it's still in mid game, there's nothing new to try that surpasses that abillity. In the end, there's only like four buttons I have to press and it's just the same thing over and over again. I somehow dislike the armor/weapon clasification like Hunter, Assassin, and Warrior. It held back the freedom of my gameplay because why can't it be universal, why the stats can not be more generic like strength, crit chance, or defense, like Dark Souls or maybe Nioh that despite I wear everything, I can still deal damage and potentially experiment every possible combo. The comparison might be far-fetched but even Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 fails on these customization armor set, because those 2 doesn't have the best combat.
There's something I wish to be more and that is the character design. They're forgettable. I can name everyone that's memorable due to their fun quest like Daphnae, Sokkrates, Hippokrates, Alkibiades, Xenia, Aspasia, Kleon, Barnabas, Herodotos, and their influence in the game, but they all look familiar to any other lookalike NPCs. I know they're going for the realism and grounded approach, but there's just not many distinct design like accessories and clothes that made them stand out more. The only noticeable is their personality and the performance of VA, they're pretty good. Not Deimos though, this character is way too cartoonish.
I really enjoyed the story. The setting is just way too good. It journey started slow, lighthearted, and surely goes deeper from revenge, war, discovery, sacrifice, annihilation, and enventually love. But what's the problem? I respect that the game really wants you to experience everything in this game. You go to war, you go to sail, jail, infiltrating cult, having funny moment, you compete in event, duel with everyone, having love, partying, crying, and becoming the better person, but with so many things, you can notice they're running out of time. Not many events are comitted for better immersion, there's this amazing Olympic event that I'm looking forward to, but I just participated in one event. There's loss in this game, but the build-up is so poor that despite their death, I don't feel as sad as Kassandra because this character barely show up and there's no intimacy with them for me to care. This character Brasidas somehow so important in the story I don't even know why they made him so important, because there's not many quest with him or side-quest like with Barnabas. If I have to pick, the best development and build-up is Nikolaos. The other amazing conflict is the cult. The cult always got me going. To explore, to help everyone, just to know who's the cult is. People might be dissapointed with the big reveal, but for me, it's well executed. Not to mention the best armor set they get for defeating them. The ending of the game is really good too, it's cliche like, "The journey is the reward", and I love it.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey is way too fun and It's coming from someone who doesn't play Assassin's Creed franchise. The combat is fun, the writing is fun, the world building is fun, and it live up as an odyssey. Granted, many of the aspect are rushed, silly, and repetitive. I promise you, when the game start talking about the Assasin's Creed, something like Asassins vs Templar, it gets way too boring, so I'm thankful it doesn't go that way. Instead, the game is about exploration, Greek Mythology, and so much more than being Assasin's Creed. I give Odyssey 8/10.
