A game that starts off with so much promise but just left me more and more frustrated as it went on.
The good, the greek gods are well done lots of character to them and the world is very pretty with nice greek statues and frescos.
The puzzles in the world are fine.
Aside from that...very little is coming to mind. The main character I don't care about, I'm unsure if the writers actually want him to be hateable. For a weak never seen combat before hero he often comes across as horridly smug or cocky far too often.
The shrines (sorry I meant vaults, it's not fair to call them shrines, shrines were actually good, varied rewarding in a easily readable way) are probably the worst part of this game, most of them can be summed up as "work out this puzzle"...."now do the exact same thing 8 times for a reward" then that exact puzzle is repeated across at least 5 other vaults with the same pattern of repeating the same idea 8 times. Add to that any fall takes far too long to void out, progress doesn't save and neither can you so no taking a break from that fun hobby you do. Some tasks are so insanely tight in victory goals and there's not any true flexibility in solutions. Completely missing what made shrines so fun again. But why should video games be fun I guess or something. I don't even know why they are there either, the world is chock full of puzzles which are much better ways of doing them. Honestly I think some CEO just told them they had to have shrine clones.
As if that's not bad enough, at the climax of the story they thought right after some truth bombs were dropped and you face the big bad, that's the time to repeat the same puzzles you've already seen so much of in this boring space of the same old least interesting assets in the game. It's a great way to kill narrative pacing tension and hype...have us push round blocks again.
And then it seems at least one of the dlcs is literally just vaults really...the worst part of the experience with an abundance of that type of content already in existence, yet again, I did give it ago but on exiting the first vault the game crashed. I was not repeating the same thing and an taking that as a sign from the gods, so I have not finished any of the dlc nor do I think I ever will look at this game again now I've actually beat the main story. And just the thought of doing the other 2 with brand new characters so probably going through the same vault designs again to power up is nightmare fuel.
On to the story I find it weak but so typical of ubisoft of this era, claim to have a female lead but make it a choice and have a huge amount of marketing for the guy. Plus what's the moral here? We should be forgiving for abusers torturers multiple time assaulters and so much more...because they feel bad at finally being forced to look in a mirror...and even then they barely acknowledge what they've done. Would have been more interesting to have an overthrow ending. Oh and passing mention of queer identities but no real representation of it (some of the gods in game are known for it but as usual they avoid it)
On typical ubisoft nonsense, the menus are loaded of it, forced online features in a single player game, pop ups of tips (no I'm not stuck game I'm literally walking on a flat ground, I can't eject), the UI is poison, all that stuff doesn't enhance the experience just spoils it, especially when it doesn't work so often.
The character progression is garbage too, so many outfits but with only singular benefits that are so situationally that they don't even benefit a particular play style. The more points you spend the more the world levels up everywhere so I didn't really feel much more powerful being maxed out than when I had nothing.
Runs well on steam deck, horrific default control scheme and encountered a few bugs but played through all the main game completed most of the puzzles (frankly awful map discovery system that means who knows what I missed where, nothing I could get end game say to full in the blanks, I'd rather pixel hunt a nineties point and click)
A bad assassins creed odyssey and breath of the wild combined that is so much less than it's parts and inspirations. Certainly not worth the 50 bucks they still ask for it and afaik rarely goes on sale.
