I didn’t expect to be covering Assassin’s Creed Valhalla right now since the original plan was to spend most of the month with Cyberpunk 2077, but the self-destruction of the latter opened the door to focus on something else, and I have to say that I’m glad that things worked out this way despite the fact that I didn’t care much for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Actually, it may be more accurate to say that I very much enjoyed a very small part of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and was let down by the lack of focus that was missing outside of those smaller story detours. I’m still not too far into Assassin’s Creed Valhalla—because 10 hours and some change is still barely scratching the surface in these games—but I’ve found the pacing and storytelling to be far more like the parts of Odyssey that I enjoyed than those I didn’t. Some of the underlying gameplay plays a bit worse thanks to the introduction of stamina and the seeming absence of the spartan kick move, and there’s plenty of time left for the writing to go downhill, but I’ve enjoyed the past 10 hours with Valhalla far more than I did my first 10 in Odyssey and feel cautiously optimistic.

First, a disclaimer since I used one last time I covered this series

I actually requested and received a review copy for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Before, I was avoiding requesting anything from Ubisoft because they used a form that seemed to mandate previous “hype” coverage as a consideration, and I didn’t care for that at all. That form has since been replaced with something more standard. And as always, receiving a review key doesn’t translate to better coverage. I once gave out four 5/10s in a row for games that I received keys for. That was a weirdly disappointing month. Point being, I’ll burn all of the bridges in the world if Valhalla ends up being a giant waste of time.

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Getting Assassin’s Creed Valhalla up and running was much easier than in the last game for some reason

Whereas Assassin’s Creed Odyssey annoyed me right off the bat by requiring a long process of trying out different settings to find a combination of settings that worked for me (many of which required restarting the game), Assassin’s Creed Valhalla defaulted to my native resolution of 4K on high settings with the render resolution at 50%, which gave me great performance without having to tweak a single setting. I’ve been switching between ~70% and 100% render resolution ever since, depending on whether I need smooth performance (for recording a video or getting through a tricky encounter) or great-looking screenshots. I survived the frame rates of the Nintendo 64 era. I can play through games at ~20 FPS.

Still, I’m impressed overall with how Valhalla runs given that I’m using the same GPU as back when I played Odyssey. I’m hesitant to give too much credit to the game given that I’ve since upgraded my CPU, which was an area that was undoubtedly bottlenecking my system back in 2018, but the game runs better than I expected it to. Especially for a game soon releasing onto the Xbox Series X/S and Playstation 5.

It’s still 2020 for a week and a half, so let’s start with negativity

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s combat feels decent overall. Many enemies have lunging attacks that carry a Golden Axe-esque “0 to 60” vibe, making them difficult to dodge adequately, but they also have weak points that you can shoot with your bow to prime them for a finisher. During fights against enemies of a similar level, these two things more or less even out. It’s the fights against bosses and cultist-protecting “zealots” (who seem to have taken the place of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey‘s mercenaries) where things start to become terrible thanks to the introduction of an ill-advised stamina system that impacts everything.

Every dodge and attack eats into your stamina, which regenerates at a moderate pace, and running out of stamina leaves you unable to dodge until the entire bar refills. I find myself running out of stamina after around 4 dodges, and even fewer than that if I’ve recently attacked. Now picture bosses who throw more than that many projectiles at you and you can start to see the problem. The same goes for high-level enemies who can kill you in two hits and lunge unpredictably. Whereas in Odyssey you felt like a nimble David going up against countless sponge-like Goliaths, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla leaves you feeling more like an asthmatic in a marathon. Luckily, normal enemies only require a few hits to best, and your stamina tends to regenerate while looking for your next opponent, making stamina a non-factor in most fights against normal opponents. But I worry that this is a problem that’ll snowball as enemies become tougher.

I’m trying to play through this without killing non-boss animals

There’s a scene in Parks and Recreation where April Ludgate-Dwyer, played to perfection by the inimitable Aubrey Plaza, mentions that animals should be rewarded for not being people because she hates people. That’s pretty much my mindset at all times, which is why the mandatory dog-killing in parts of Ghost of Tsushima bothered me so much. The same goes for most other animals, too, though I can stomach killing wolves (which I love) in most games for reasons that defy explanation. Anyway, I decided to play through Assassin’s Creed Valhalla while avoiding as much intentional animal-related violence as possible, and it’s been going well. I’ve run into a few birds in flight while on my horse—I’m not sure why it’s possible to hit them in midair like you would in a car—and a sidequest had some mandatory wolf enemies, but I had companions with me at the time who handled that while I climbed away, trying to figure out if standing idly by was better or worse from a moral perspective. I also killed an elk early on, but I thought the icon meant it was magical or something. Turns out it was some kind of trophy hunt boss. Blah. No more of that.

For the most part, though, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and I seem like we’re on the same wavelength; there are dogs wandering around the home village you build several hours into the game, and these have a cute animation where they put their paw up on you. It’s really sweet and great. I love me a good doggo. I’ve run into deer and other wildlife while on my horse and avoided harming any of them, too. One thing that kind of bugs me is that you can shoot horses, though, which makes it hard to avoid horse casualties when using abilities that launch lots of arrows. But that’s only happened once, and reloading fixed that right up.

De-emphasizing sidequests has a positive effect on the pacing

One of the major problems with Odyssey was that you were more or less required to engage with the copious amounts of meaningless side content in order to level up and keep up with the rising enemy levels in main story missions. In my 10 hours with the game, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has gone in an entirely different direction. There are still sidequests, but they show up on the map as green dots that you can seek out if you’re so inclined rather than bombarding you with tasks, and these sidequests sometimes outlevel you, incentivizing you to play through main missions to level up in preparation for side content instead of the other way around. That makes a major difference to the pacing by emphasizing the most important parts of the game rather than the least important parts. The sidequests have truly been optional.

Whether they remain that way is an open question, of course, and it’s not like this is a brisk game (again, 10 hours in and just barely starting to get into it) even with better pacing. My main priority tends to be the storytelling of games, though, and that’s another aspect that I feel Valhalla has improved on since Odyssey. I still remember the island quest chain with Kyra (whose name I recalled from memory) in the last game because telling a mini-story with fascinating characters whose struggles are informed by the assassin/cultist-templar conflict rather than directly tying into that overarching struggle helped to keep the scale small enough that everyone was afforded the opportunity to be memorable in some way. Right now in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, a quest chain centered around obtaining the friendship and alliance of some nearby fighters has spiraled into a tale centered on four characters, one of whom is supposedly a betrayer.

By focusing on smaller areas one at a time and delving deeper into the stories of those connected to those areas—those whose influence would never warrant a game built entirely around them but are fascinating when zoomed in on—Valhalla is starting to feel like the game I wanted Odyssey to be. Again, it remains to be seen whether this kind of thing will continue, and I’m not sure that this smaller story will be quite as memorable as the island where you meet Kyra and her rebels, but it’s always good to see a series lean into what works while pushing aside the things that didn’t work. The Assassin’s Creed series seems to excel when it focuses on the stories of those caught up in its long-running conflict rather than the conflict itself.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla impressions – Good doggies and bad bosses first appeared on Killa Penguin