3/5 ★ – SirCazz's review of Assassin's Creed: Valhalla.

I have A LOT to say about this game and the rebooted RPG AC trilogy as a whole. It’s totally nuts to me how each of the three fails in some areas where the others succeed, and vice versa. Starting with a surge of positives because I did mostly enjoy my time playing Valhalla. The combat combines the best mechanics from Origins & Odyssey, and is tons of fun. The shield is back. Enemy heath is reasonable again. And it’s neat to see Odyssey’s abilities return. The skills system is so simple and totally fixes the long-standing issue I encounter in RPGs of having perks available for purchase that I have no interest in. The world/level design team at Ubisoft Montreal should be very proud of their work. I have long criticised what they did with Egypt in Origins. I thought it was pretty bland and repetitive. Odyssey was more of an aesthetic improvement, over a fundamental design one. In Valhalla, the open world is both gorgeous and engaging to explore. Each area feels distinct and dense with detail. And of course it’s views are gorgeous. Plus, the soundtrack is the best in the series. Unfortunately in my opinion the story is a mess. I understand what they’re going for, and appreciate that old school AC fans are very satisfied with the way in which all aspects of series lore were tied up here. But a combination of its execution throwing all semblance of traditional story structure out the window, and my long standing hatred of all modern day segments, meant I was left largely baffled and unsatisfied. I liked the character transformation Eivor has on his/her journey. The dialogue is very well written, and there are some powerful scenes here and there. The problem is you spend 80% of your time running around England playing through mandatory quest lines which don’t contribute to this, or any other overarching plot other than “We’re Vikings. Vikings conquer England”. There’s zero sense that the story is building to anything, thus it feeling meandering should come as no surprise. Why am I travelling across the country for 45 hours securing alliances? Because one day we MAY OR MAY NOT need their help for some vague unknown climactic battle. The compelling elements are hidden within the start and end of this bloated game. WHY DOES IT HAVE 53 ENDINGS?! And it’s never clear which is the “REAL” ending. Every time I had to Google “okay... so am I done now, or what”. Each serves a role, but all are anticlimactic and ordered in such a way that is plain confusing. Turns out for the game’s narrative to make any sense you either have to play it for 80+ hours doing optional side content. Or resort to YouTube videos explaining the information in a manner which is comprehensible. I don’t think Valhalla is a plain bad video game at all. I was just disappointed to find that while there are so many great improvements here, a much better paced and structured plot could have done justice to its strengths and, more importantly, respected my time.