honestly the only thing worth it in this game is the orlog minigame, which is SO good. you could just play it without the whole thing attached tho.
sure, there are some missions that are good and well written, some interesting characters and some puzzles that were really nice to solve.
the dlcs are good, too, and served as a nice reprieve from the slog that was the main campaign.
HOWEVER:
1. the main story sucks. im sorry, its just so bad. the characters are annoying and dont make me want to engage with them. the story choices are very vague and veiled in a way that makes playing this without a guide obnoxious sometimes.
1.1 i was hoping sigurd would spontaneously explode and die gruesomely most of my playthrough. i hate him. and then i pitied him. and then after his story is kind of concluded HE DOESNT EVEN MATTER. YOU CANT EVEN REALLY TALK TO HIM ANYMORE. HE JUST HAUNTS THE SETTLEMENT WITH A PITIFUL FACE DOING NOTHING. its bad writing. its bad writing. if i hated him and it MATTERED, this would be okay. if they made me hate him ON PURPOSE, it would be fine, great even. thats not what the game does.
2. it deserves its own bullet point: THIS RUINED MIRAGE. mirage is such a great, well contained game. basim is a lovable, wonderful character. i played mirage before valhalla and seeing him here acting completely opposite mirage is not only uncomfortable, but it does go into bad writing. there isnt enough sense of progression in the stories to make this change understandable at all and this sucks. the asgard+jotunheim arc make it a little better to understand the characters but it honestly seems like different teams wrote basim for every single arc and its really annoying.
3. why include romance if youll make it boring as ♥♥♥♥???? none of it matters and honeslty it would just be better to not have the option if its not gonna lead anywhere.
4. its bloated but we all expected it. still, kinda sucks sometimes.
5. side characters die in the last arc without much fanfare or something you could do. the game makes you make stupid choices in a stupid story and then kills your friends for it. it sucks. it doesnt feel sad, it feels unfair. all of this sucks, man, im tired. like, for real, its a lot better for these characters if they had never ran into eivor at all. this game made me regret playing certain missions, because the only benefit i got was watching a character i liked die and it not matter at all. its awful. like why did the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ polar bear die?????? all i got was the dudes face in my boat. IT ISNT WORTH IT. it almost feels like the game is punishing you for liking characters or wanting to play the story and meet them. it feels like the game is making you kill them by meeting them at all. it feels bad. it feels really really bad. its not sad because someone dying is sad (although it is too), it also fills me with rage because the game gives me no choice in that - except for the choice of meeting these people at all. that means that the moment i chose to meet them, i killed them, and there was never any avoiding it. but they are side characters and we dont spend all that long with them and their deaths dont even matter beside one or two lines of dialogue that you can skip easily: this is not tragic storytelling, its a bad game. ITS PUNISHING ME FOR PLAYING IT. and i still do, but im very upset about it.
6. STOP PUTTING CUTSCENES IN THE MIDDLE OF BOSS FIGHTS IT RUINS THE FLOW SERVES NOTHING AND NO ONE AND MAKES IT REALLY HARD TO CARE. ITS ALWAYS FRUSTRATING AND ALWAYS ANNOYING. if the only moment you have to tell the story is in the middle of the boss fight, its bad level design.
7. THE ANIMUS PUZZLE SEQUENCES. it may be good level design, i just personally hate it. it feels very on brand for an ac game, with the focus on parkour, but having to see layla (or deal with reminders of the terrible, terrible story of this game after certain events) is terrible. idk i just really dislike it.
8. the jotunheim map sucks and frustrates you and the enemies there respawn too quickly in ways that dont make sense. its a beautiful map and i even like the story of the arc, but the mechanics are so weird and frustrating and not well explained by the game, so you have to keep on guessing the entire time. its not even very consistent. a bitter note on an otherwise enjoyable arc.
9. i do play these games because i like having options and getting to explore and pick and choose what i want to do. i do, i swear. but if you have all the dlcs, this game's beginning is a confusing mess and explodes at you with options that make no sense for you to explore. this story really could have used some more linearity to it. having options doesnt mean that its good for the player to have them all at once, especially not at the beginning of the game.
10. this is petty: "youre in the end game now" achievement when you reach 280 in power level. in in almost 500 power level and have SO MUCH to do yet its not even funny. honestly this game is probably better enjoyed by someone who doesnt care about completing everything. i, however, have to die in the trenches of valhalla, i guess.
11. the world mysteries: mostly they are just bloat. once or twice they are interesting or add something to the scenery and history and whatnot. there is NO EXCUSE for the amount of them. NONE. they are mostly used to fill vast stretches of the map where nothing happens, i guess. im not even gonna point out how thats a problem in itself, i think its obvious. it feels a LOT worse than odyssey in the bloating sense, even though odyssey is egregious in that as well.
12. eivor is stupid and the game doesnt provide opportunities for eivor to rectify that. its frustrating. i love eivor, but at every point in the story it feels like it is keeping eivor stupid on purpose. i can almost see in my minds eye the lyrical eivor straining against the metaphorical shackles of bad character writing.
13. having extra content made some things meaningless, like armor progression. i used the same armor from beginning to end because it was op. maybe thats on me, but it still irks me the pay to win of these games.
14. a lot of the missions with escorts or allies are almost impossible to do stealthily.
15. the foxes and seals and many other animals in this game make really upsetting sounds when you kill them or even get near them at all, but there are missions that force you to kill them. sadistic. i would put that aside as realism and it would even be a good point for immersion, but at this point it just feels like one more thing the game does because it hates you, so.
tl:dr play origins, then play mirage. if you want to spend 200h doing the same things over and over and completing dumb requests, odyssey is a much better choice. youre better off skipping this entry entirely and im not even joking. i regret buying this game and playing it bc now ill have to force myself to finish it and platinum it bc thats the kind of dumb gamer i am. dont make the mistakes i did. play origins, then play mirage. play odyssey if youd like to spend 200h on something. dont play this.
"what about black flag resync? what about shadows?" idk man ill let you know once i start them. im holding out a lot of hope and also anticipation and love for hexe. valhalla just seems like a rotten apple in the franchise so far.
