My first 10 or so hours with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla were promising. The 20 or so that followed were arguably even better as the combat and mechanics evened out and opened the door for some interesting approaches to problems (specifically, there are a few high-level zealot enemies who I beat by luring them to a raid, using my allies to distract them, and whittling down their health as a group). The stories were interesting and engaging, and while there were occasional musical cues and investigation sequences that were reminiscent of The Witcher 3, the inspiration it drew from that game wasn’t anywhere near as blatant as it was in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. The past 20 hours, on the other hand, have undone many of the things that I liked about Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and the Vinland Saga arc is both a perfect encapsulation of these late-game missteps and the most miserable experience I’ve had with the Assassin’s Creed series.

One of the biggest draws of Odyssey and Valhalla is the cultist system that requires you to find clues and follow leads to unmask the enemies who hound you from the shadows, then turn the tables by hunting them down. Some of Odyssey‘s best story moments came as a direct consequence of this system. Valhalla feels a bit pared-down by way of comparison—they’re rarely formidable foes, and often end up being nobodies minding their own business in rural villages—but finding and eliminating them is satisfying nonetheless. That is, until you’re tasked with eliminating Gorm, the son of the villain who you kill in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s prologue. Doing so requires sailing to Vinland and leaving all of your gear behind, and starting anew on a new map with no weapons or equipment is the most tedious of slogs.

You have to sneak into enemy camps and obtain resources, but Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s stealth system is broken. It just is. Enemies regularly see you from ridiculous distances and become hostile in the brief time it takes you to move to a new bush. On multiple occasions, I’ve had enemies spot me while looking in the opposite direction. They have eyes in the back of their heads. Possibly literally. And the system that dictates who is and isn’t hostile is hopelessly random. Sometimes, you can loudly murder someone 15 feet away from their friends and no one will become hostile. In Vinland, one of the million roaming wolves saw me and telepathically revealed my location to an entire camp of enemies who then partnered with the wolves to chase me up a mountain. Seriously. The wolves climbed the mountain to help murder me.

One of the biggest reasons I started liking the combat (which I was initially unsure about) was that I unlocked the ability to dual-wield heavy weapons, allowing me to go crazy and smash shields to splinters using my two giant axes. In Vinland, the only melee options that its vendors were willing to sell me were a knife and a small hammer. Getting used to a smaller attack range and different moveset after ~30 hours isn’t a great adjustment, and having virtually no armor without having to grind out resources makes Vinland a disaster waiting to happen. Every cheap shot that you can shrug off in the normal gameplay is exaggerated when it wipes out a huge chunk of health. The embedded video ends with me dodging behind an ax-throwing enemy, only for him to throw an ax through his body—in the opposite direction of his facing and throwing motion—and kill me. That’s one of a million bugs or quirks to be found here.

And why is Vinland a thing in the first place? Who needed yet another separate map? Who decided that the assassination of one character (who most players will have forgotten by this point) warranted stripping you of the equipment you’ve spent dozens of hours accumulating? Who made axes heat-seeking weapons? I don’t mind Vinland’s smaller map, because that’s a move in a good direction. Odyssey and Valhalla both struggle under the weight of their massive maps, which end up being mostly dead space filled out with uninteresting side content that 99% of players will ignore, and it’d be great for future games to take place on smaller maps like this to reduce how much time is spent slowly trekking to the next quest point. But as the second secondary map in a game already drowning in filler? One filled to the brim with bugs and physics weirdness? I was already exhausted by the repetition, but Vinland dealt the killing blow.

I’m currently 53 hours into Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and after Vinland, I’ve officially entered the “dear god, make it stop” part of the experience that involves skipping through lines of dialog as quickly as possible and rushing toward anything that looks like it might lead to the story’s resolution. It’s a shame, too; a lot of work was put into this game, but the total absence of pacing and near-complete lack of respect for the player’s time make it impossible to enjoy what’s here. Players who regularly move from game to game will be frustrated by Valhalla‘s refusal to end. Players who are comfortable spending months on a single game will tire of the gameplay’s repetition and slowly drift away from it long before the writing can reach a satisfying conclusion. This is the reason why I don’t remember the main story of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and why I’ll inevitably forget all about most of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The endless barrage of stuff—mostly Vinland-bad filler designed to pad out your play time—slowly poisons the experience.

The Assassin’s Creed series needs to get its priorities in order because this is a “the call is coming from inside the house” situation where someone’s bad decisions are sabotaging (mostly) good story content.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s Vinland Saga arc is the least fun I’ve had with the series first appeared on Killa Penguin