[h1]A Beautiful World Stretched Too Thin[/h1]
I finished Assassin's Creed Odyssey after ~120 hours, including the 3 main Odyssey storylines and the Korfu epilogue. My experience is positive, but only mildly so.
This is a very good-looking, pleasant game with enormous production values, a likeable protagonist, and a wonderful setting. But there's not enough gameplay depth or variety to sustain its own size.
[h1]120 Hours of "Samey Samey"[/h1]
The main problem is repetition.
Odyssey has many systems : stealth, combat, mercenaries, conquest battles, naval combat, equipment, skills, cultists, bounties, forts, dialogue choices, regional leaders, etc. But most of these systems coexist rather than meaningfully interact.
Taking a fort can be great fun. Sneaking around, eliminating guards 1 by 1 and planning your route is satisfying. There are even nice little touches, such as breaking weapon racks so sleeping soldiers cannot arm themselves properly when alerted.
But these interactions rarely go much further.
After dozens of hours, you are still clearing forts, killing captains, burning supplies, opening chests and assassinating targets in almost exactly the same way.
The game is enormous, but its gameplay vocabulary is too small.
The environments suffer from the same problem. Greece is gorgeous, but most regions are functionally very similar. You basically get sea, cities, plains and mountains. There are no major environmental changes that force you to rethink how you move or fight.
[h1]RPG-lite without real Progression[/h1]
The RPG-lite progression is one of the weakest parts.
I played on difficulty 3 out of 4. At level 50, 2 bears could still destroy me in seconds. At level 65, sharks could still kill me in 2 hits.
Because enemies scale with you, gaining levels often changes little. Worse, your equipment does not automatically level with you, so leveling can effectively make you weaker until you upgrade your gear again.
You gain abilities and some of them are useful, especially for handling groups of enemies, but many skill points do not translate into a strong sense of increased power.
A good RPG normally makes you feel increasingly powerful as you progress. Odyssey often feels like running on a treadmill : the numbers go up, but the world goes up with you.
[h1]Kassandra Carries the Game[/h1]
Kassandra is easily one of the strongest parts of Odyssey.
She is beautiful, charismatic, physically convincing as a mercenary, strong without feeling absurdly stylized, and can be funny, warm, brutal or compassionate depending on how you play her.
Melissanthi Mahut did an excellent job incarnating her.
After 120 hours, I was far more attached to Kassandra than to the actual story.
[spoiler]I also watched scenes with Kassandra as Deimos, and she works much better there than Alexios does. With the same dialogue, she comes across as dangerous and unstable, while Alexios often feels strangely slow, primitive and overly theatrical.[/spoiler]
Even as the player character, Alexios speaks oddly enough that I would strongly recommend choosing Kassandra if you are going to spend 100+ hours with one of them.
[h1]A Weak Main Story[/h1]
The family storyline is not particularly interesting, and the pacing is far too slow. The few emotional beats are spread thin over gameplay so the tension disappears between major scenes.
The supposedly best family ending is also somewhat misleading in the wider canon, because Kassandra does not simply settle down and live happily ever after with everyone.
The Korfu quest, "A Great Escape", finally gives the game a proper goodbye : it felt much more like the ending Kassandra deserved.
[h1]The Cult: Great Idea, Too Much Busywork[/h1]
The Cult of Kosmos looks like an investigation system, but in practice there is very little actual investigation.
Most of the loop is simply :
- find clue ( = open the correct chest or whatnot)
- reveal target ( = click the "reveal" button)
- travel there
- kill target
And there are far too many cultists.
The whole system would have been much stronger with perhaps half as many targets, but each one requiring more actual deduction, infiltration or unique gameplay.
[h1]Mercenaries: Mostly Annoying[/h1]
The mercenary system produces a couple of fun situations when they attack us at 1st, but after, it's just a nuisance.
The designers apparently knew this, because you can pay off your bounty almost anytime for a small amount of money and make them go away.
[h1]Athens vs Sparta: Good Setup, Little Consequence[/h1]
Weakening regions is actually one of the better-connected systems in the game.
Killing soldiers, burning supplies and stealing the treasury weakens the region and allows you to attack the leader more easily. This gives those activities a purpose and makes them feel connected.
Unfortunately, the wider war itself barely matters.
Regions change hands, but there are no meaningful long-term consequences. You are supposedly operating in the middle of the Peloponnesian War, but the world largely resets around you.
[h1]Dialogue Choices Are Fine[/h1]
The dialogue choices are less consequential than in deeper RPGs, but here this is not a problem. You can play Kassandra as kind, greedy, bloodthirsty, sarcastic or pragmatic, and a few major choices have real consequences. Given the enormous amount of voiced dialogue, I think this part works reasonably well.
[h1]Ancient Greece Is Wonderful[/h1]
Despite all my criticism, exploring Ancient Greece is truly special. The world is beautiful, and encountering historical figures is often great fun. Socrates in particular is excellent.
The setting adds a lot of value that the raw gameplay alone would not have.
Many secondary quests are also surprisingly good and sometimes better written than the main story, even if they are naturally much shorter.
[h1]Avoid the Tertiary Quests[/h1]
I strongly recommend ignoring the endlessly generated timed quests, especially those with real-world 24h timers. This awkward MMO design adds almost nothing except more repetition.
Some quests rewarding Orichalcum are worth doing, and many proper secondary quests are really enjoyable, but the tertiary filler should mostly be avoided.
[h1]The Chicken[/h1]
After 120 hours, my 1st lasting memory will probably be how beautiful Ancient Greece looked. My 2nd may genuinely be the moment a chicken attacked me ; it was very funny. But it is perhaps not ideal when one of the most memorable gameplay moments in a gigantic AAA production is being assaulted by poultry.
[h1]Final Verdict[/h1]
Odyssey is not a bad game. Quite the opposite.
Its graphics are excellent, the core gameplay is enjoyable, Kassandra is a fantastic protagonist, and exploring Ancient Greece can be wonderful. But it feels like an excellent 40~60h game stretched into a 120h one. There are enormous resources on display here, but not enough overall gameplay vision to turn them into something truly exceptional and unforgettable.
The game is mature in presentation, with plenty of violence and sexual references, but it rarely has the systemic depth I would expect from a truly mature game design. Too few mechanics meaningfully interact, too little emergent gameplay develops, and too much of the experience remains superficial.
I enjoyed my time with Odyssey overall, but I wish I had spent 60 intense hours with it rather than 120 mildly enjoyable ones.
[h1]Pros[/h1]
- Beautiful recreation of Ancient Greece
- Kassandra is an excellent protagonist
- Fort infiltration is consistently enjoyable
- Pleasant combat
- Good historical cameos, especially Socrates
- Huge amount of content
[h1]Cons[/h1]
- Very repetitive over its full length
- Most systems barely interact
- Level scaling makes leveling feel mostly pointless
- Main story is slow and not very interesting
- Mercenaries are more irritating than exciting
- Timed tertiary quests feel like unwanted MMO design
