3.5/5 ★ – ClintDriftwood's review of Assassin's Creed: Valhalla.

That quality over quantity mantra, Ubisoft need to adhere to it. Desperately. Odyssey was the first AC game I've played since Revelations, where I dropped off hard because there was just too fucking much shit to do. I was enthused by the refreshed format, until about 20 hours of doing the same shit over & over again. Ubisoft games are huge, beautiful worlds and 9th Century England is no different. But man, you just do the same thing in every Ubisoft game and I'm sick of their shit. I really enjoyed the combat here, the aesthetic, the world. The story started fine and really ramped up during parts with Alfred and in the big cities. Viking age England has always been fascinating to me, maybe it's because I live literally right next to an Old Roman Fort on Hadrian's Wall I invested more time into this. I am a history postgraduate after all. But it was FAR too long. Eivor was great. Female Eivor was acted brilliantly. But the whole Sigurd/Raanvi story was punctuated by bizarre writing and a total lack of chemistry. The rest of the characterisation was great, particularly Fulke, Alfred and the Ragnarsson's. Take this combat system and the world out of Ubisoft's shit-stained hands. They are a reprehensible company at the very top and the reason as to why their games continually suffer. Take the AC name off this thing, take the boring-ass modern day shit out of it, and take some of your disgusting business practices out too - from insisting on refusing to have a female protagonist alone, to hiding all these boosts to be added to the game 3 weeks after release. Aside from all this, I still enjoyed large parts of my time with the game, especially the combat & abilities - which was a huge upgrade on Odyssey's constant blocking/defensive one.