Introduction
Today we are going to look at a game that hits you with a big open world that might just be too big to explore. A game that can give you a burnout with meaningless choices and tedious gameplay. But is this true? I am talking about Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. I have not played an Assassin’s creed game for a long time, I think the last time was when Assassin’s Creed 3 or 4 was released.
What did I think before playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey?
Like I mentioned, it has been a very long time since I played any Assassin’s Creed game. I had no idea what to expect, but after looking around, people mentioned you can play this game without being bogged down by not knowing any of the lore. While I did play this game on the Xbox, I am going to check Steam for information.
The Steam page
https://store.steampowered.com/app/812140/Assassins_Creed_Odyssey/
I can’t stop laughing at the mature content description. Like, who the fuck gives a shit they throw around curse words, right? I mostly try to refrain from using them, but I don’t mind hearing them. Although, I do like the mention of the screen fading to black for sex scenes. Despite that, I really dislike the whole, sex in a game thing unless it is necessary for the plot to move forward. This game takes place in Ancient Greece, and I do love me some Greek Mythology,
Rating
I rated Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with an 8.2 before playing.
You get to fucking murder the shit out of people, see, I can curse too! It seems you can make choices, I wonder how much impact they will have.
Story
You get to choose from two of the main protagonists, and like every other fucking game out there, the other one turns out to be evil. Like, duh, we all saw that coming! The game follows, with my choice, Kasandra, a Demigod with the ability to storm fortresses and slay everyone. You are a mercenary thrust into a war while looking for your lost family.
Rating
I rate the story of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with a 6.9
The story is very slow paced, and the chances are big you get sidetracked by more exciting sidequests.
Gameplay
This game opens up with a small island to explore, as I like to call it, tutorial island. You will learn the basics, but not everything is explained properly. You will figure it out as you go, stealth is not needed, brute force is very useful in this game. If you want to get even stronger you can level up and put skill points in the warrior tree.
While you have, after upgrading your spear with alien technology, eight slots for active skills. The switching in mid-combat is rough and clunky. You also have skills with your bow and arrow, which can dispatch of everyone with ease. There are also engrams to collect by achieving certain feats, these can be used to customize weapons.
Now, something I disliked very much about this game, microtransactions. Yes, you heard that right, even if you pay over 100 dollars for the full game with DLC, you will not get everything you need to play this game. Want a map to find orichalcum? You will have to pay. Need more experience points? Pay up for a permanent booster. Want the best weapons in the game? That is going to cost you a lot of dough!
Now, this orichalcum can be used to randomly buy items. You can get orichalcum without paying for the map by, yes, completing weeklies and dailies. I bought thirty of the fucking random gifts and I got two legendary weapons and the rest was junk. One was a ram for the ship, only cosmetic, and the other was a dude for my ship. Yes, you have a ship, and it features naval combat that mostly acts as a gold and material sink.
There is much more to this game, for example, choices in the war mean nothing. Want to kill Spartans today? Go ahead. Want to kill Athenians the next day? Yeah, no worries at all. Your choices have minimal impact, and the world is far too large and oversaturated with loot and gold. A lot of the world is also empty and just wilderness.
Rating
I rated the gameplay of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with a 6.0
The fact you have to pay for the best engrams, a map to find in game items, and even more is scandalous. Then there is the fact that every fucking camp is the same. There are a million bounty hunters, the gameplay is extremely tedious and dull.
A fun fact, while I played this game, my wife was playing Assassin’s Creed Origins, which looked much better in my opinion, more balanced, and a much better story, but we will get to that review soon.
Sound and Graphics
Graphics
While this game looks breathtaking at first sight, you soon learn all the NPC’s are related. As in, they look the same, many items are reused all over this massive world. The camps and fortresses look the same, even the treasure is in the same place. A lot of the weapons and armor also look the same, except for the armor you need to buy with money.
Sound
The many soundtracks are good in this game, I also did enjoy the voice acting. However, some voice acting sounded hollow or even forced.
Rating
I rated the sound and graphics of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with a 7.0
I liked the assassinations in this game, they looked amazing as fuck.
What did I think after playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey?
While there are many skills to choose from and build your character, you also need to upgrade your spear by hunting down cultists. If you explore the game, you will find them without even trying, except for the quest related ones. I played this game for over 100 hours, but I did not finish it yet, I got bored by clearing the same camp over and over.
The combat turns stale after many hours, you run into a camp, slaughter everyone, and voilà. Bounty hunters show up, you kill them for even more loot and go on to the next camp. After reaching level 50,the exp you need goes up by tenfold, but you will get almost no experience points from killing or quests anymore. While already at a god like level, you want to get stronger but you need to pay.
Rating
I rated Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with a 6.3 after playing.
Even if your choices impact something, you can do nothing about it. Furthermore, when clearing camps in a city, civilians attack you and get in the way. This is annoying, very annoying, since they die.
What are my personal thoughts about Assassin's Creed Odyssey?
While I loved the game in the beginning, it turned sour when everything in the game turned to the same task, fetch, kill, along those lines. Then there is the idea you need to play every day for the dailies, and that in a fucking console game. Not to mention the microtransactions. Or even having the full map unless you pay up.
Rating
My personal Rating of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a 5.5
While I did like this game, I wish there was more variety.
Last Words
Pros
- Some of the sights in this game can be breathtaking
- There is a large open world to explore, too large if you ask me
- Slick killing animations with lots of blood
- Many ways to build your character
Cons
- Your choices have no impact on the story or the war
- Almost every camp you need to clear has the same layout
- The voice acting is hollow
- You need to pay a lot of money to get the full map
- To get the best engrams you will need to pay money
- The game is oversaturated with loot
- The gameplay gets tedious and stale after many hours
- All NPC's are copy pasted, just like the graphical assets
Despite me loving Greek Mythology, this game was a bust and one of the game games I quit before finishing the main story, but I did put in over 100 hours! Man, I should have chosen Egypt over Greece!
The Final Rating
6.9
Please let me know what you think of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in the comments!
I hope you enjoyed reading this review, I hope to see you in the next review!
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I hate Layla’s character so much in the new AC Trilogy. She is unbearable and so Odyssey was a combination of unlikable dual protagonists.
>All NPS’S are copy pasted
A correction here, Sven, it should be ‘NPCs’
Don’t burn me, I am just a human! The typo is fixed.
I also did not like Layla, and Kassandra is way too passive for being a demigod. But then again, so were most demigods in Greek Mythology.
Like you, it’s been too long since I’ve played Assassin’s Creed. I stopped at 2 which was really good. I’m behind and I need to get on with it. This one doesn’t seem to live up to your expectations and I’m disgusted to hear the word ‘microtransaction’ in this game.
Thank you for all these inspiring reviews.
Yeah, the microtransactions are very expensive.
The main attraction for me to this game is the setting. I fell in love with ancient Greece a long time ago and having an RPG set in that world is a dream come true. Too bad it didn’t quite work out.
They should have focused more on developing the game instead of trying to make it a cash grab.
Didn`t like this much too.
I would rate it a little higher, but I understand the weight of the cons.
If only the choices had made a real impact, then it would have gotten a higher rating.
Microtransactions sucks big, i even forgot about whole thing when watching your video..
Good review.
Assassin Creed´s gammeplay became stale several games ago, and now there are microtransactions too? :{
Oooof, my brother played this one and he also ended up abandoning it before finishing the story. The amount of repetitive quests, layouts, faces and voices just got ridiculously boring.
Flashy at first, shallow at core.
Damn right, very shallow, and it could have been so good, I love Greek Mythology!