3.5/5 ★ – elmodonnell's review of Assassin's Creed: Valhalla - The Siege of Paris.

Honestly surprised by how much I enjoyed this one, it was essentially 'more of the same' but with a slightly higher level of detail and polish put in than any of the main game stories/regions. It does have the usual level of bloat (you couldn't pay me to do any of those grindy resistance missions), and the story is extremely prolonged, but the underlying themes and characterizations are relatively strong here. It almost gave Eivor some decent characterization, and allowed the player to really define 'their' character as a war-hungry hound or a decent person looking for peace; I'm sure most of the choices/dialogues ended up with the same results, but the illusion of choice was decent. Charles, Richardis and Odo are all pretty compelling here, even if the viking side of things aren't quite as strong (nor is Eivor's reasoning for being there to be honest). Having to actually wrestle with the vikings' blood-lust and the consequences of storming a city was nice, even if it wasn't delved into with quite enough depth as it could've been; Siegfred (?) slaughters a church full of civilians, and Eivor basically just shrugs it off. They also kind of brushed over this nearly year-long siege as being over in a day essentially, but I get it; I'd have expected the siege itself to have constituted most of the DLC, rather than the preparations, but I can see how that would've been restrictive narratively. There's some really satisfying mission design in here and subtle guidance to make the open-world sections feel more 'linear'; lighting the signal fires during the siege was really fun, and there are some neat puzzles. The assassinations harkened back to Unity as really simplified but satisfying versions of Hitman levels, though they could've at least had Eivor conversing and co-operating with the actual assassins/hidden ones who were present. Paris itself is small (as it actually was at the time I'm sure), but presents plenty of satisfying parkour routes that are mostly missing from the main game; the slums really harkened back to the earlier games, and it didn't feel nearly as randomly thrown-together as the main map. Having said all that I did play this pretty much entirely over a free Ubisoft+ trial and have no intention of paying for it to retain any of the content in the main game. It felt very much like a 'break' from the core storyline that I've taken years to get through, and not an essential experience. I feel like I've seen all the map has to offer, and I'll probably grab a few short swords/scythes in the rotating store, so other than some half-decent armors, I'm not missing much.