Assassin's Creed Valhalla - Empirical Reviews

Introduction

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla takes place in the early middle ages somewhere around the 8th to the 11th century. Exploring, raiding, fighting, and partying are a good summary of how they lived. The fighting, exploration, and add-ons outside the storyline of this game are well worth the 100+ hours it takes some of us to beat.

Assassin’s Creed has a strong history of making great games.

Taking a look at past games release dates we have:

That’s a lot of games.

It wasn’t until Valhalla that I really got into Assassin’s Creed games. Recently, I started to play Odyssey and plan on playing Origins and Black Flag as well. I wanted to get an idea on how much progress they make each game and from my experience, it was significant.

Breakdown –

How The Game Begins
Graphic Quality (non-technical)
Logical Flow of Story
Emotional Pull of Story
Combat
Travel Capabilities
Voice Acting
Replay Value
Closure/How The Game Ends
Future Opportunity for Franchise

How The Game Begins

The game begins in a very Norse style. You are a child (Eivor) at a celebration of the new King. Dancing, mead, games, and food are everywhere. It’s a staged sequence so you can’t explore much but for me, there was so much to look at it didn’t matter.

After giving the King the gift from your family, the celebration abruptly ended in an attack from another clan, and it didn’t go so well for you. Vikings lived their life to die in glory, which is not what Eivor’s father, Varin, did. He sacrificed his life to save his clan but the other end of the bargain wasn’t held up and the entire clan was killed with the exception of a couple who got away, Eivor and Eivor’s brother, Sigurd. I should say that Eivor was adopted by Sigurd’s family. Eivor’s family was killed at the beginning of the game.

As Sigurd helps you escape you fall onto ice where you are attacked by a wolf then the animus starts glitching out so you need to pick the version of Eivor you want to play as, male, female, or let the animus pick. I played through both.

Once you decide the character, the game picks back up some years later where you’re captured by the same guy who killed your father in earlier years. Ironic, right?

In the classic Drengr way, you escape, save your crew, and head back home where the game really begins.

The beginning of the game was a slow burn style. Considering how long it takes to beat this game, the open world setup, and all of the additional play options, it made sense to do this. As I mentioned in God of War I think some of the first parts of the game should be able to be skipped once you beat the game and I hold that opinion here.

Although the beginning is a slower start, I think the time they took to set everything up was well done. You get a strong understanding of what happened over the period of a lot of years and you get an idea of where it’s going to go.

In my God of War review I gave an 8.7 mainly because I really didn’t understand what happened since he left Greece. They also left a lot out when it came to understanding some parts of what’s happening in the current time. But nonetheless it was still excellent. AC Valhalla, on the other hand, made it all crystal clear what has been happening.

9.3 out of 10 for this category.

Graphic Quality (non-technical)

Graphics were an obvious progression compared with past Assassin’s Creed games. Compared to other games that had been released around the same time they were just a little bit behind, but not much. My guess is when you have a game that has the parkour style of movement you have to sacrifice a little of something else to make it happen. Then when you have a game such as Cyber Punk, you want it to be as realistic as possible but the combat is more limited than AC Valhalla.

Honestly, after playing Red Dead Redemption 2 so much before this game, I was tempted to be disappointed at the graphics, especially when it came to exploration on foot and riding the horse. After I put that aside I came to enjoy the graphics and gameplay which is why I spent so much time on this game. I needed to remember how great Red Dead 2 is first.

What I think I’ll do is give a score of these graphics compared to similar style games that came out in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Part of the list would include Ghost of Tsushima, Nioh 2, Horizon Forbidden West, Days Gone, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Death Stranding.

This game didn’t have many glitches that inhibited gameplay. There were a few situations where I saw a glitch (a random character floating across water) which didn’t cause gameplay issues. Twice I got stuck in animations and my character died, also not a huge deal. The parkour gameplay was as smooth as it probably could have been and death animation scenes were good and had a decent variety. It wasn’t anywhere near the worst when it comes to graphics but I can’t say it was the best either.

For this category I’m going to give a 7.8 out of 10 for this category.

Logical Flow of Story

Assassin’s Creed games are hard to put logic in considering the story behind the creed. By logical flow of story I don’t mean “real world” scenarios or anything like that, I’ll just be focused on if the storyline made sense in a logical progression.

I think the flow was OK. The game sucked me in for the combat and other experiences. I would say the first half had a strong logical flow. Vikings, raids, new territory, pretty straight forward. What I didn’t get was what was happening to the earth and how the ancient animus was actually causing it? Then the ending got real weird with the “being of light” studying all possible calculations for the future of mankind. After the main storyline ended my first thought was “wth did I just see?” I also never fully understood why Basim went bad in the end.

Most of the game made sense from a logical progression. Their homeland was being taken over by one king and they wanted to leave and conquer a new area. This is very much like how Vikings probably were. They traveled to a new land, raided, stole, and built alliances. Very Viking-ish. Even finding and eliminating The Order made sense.

I found most of the conversations and storyline logical. Sigurd going crazy like he did along with Basim turning at the end, then the being of light, and a few other areas were confusing. However, this is coming from someone who is newer to the world of Assassin’s Creed.

Really, there was just a lot going on and it sometimes seemed like too much to care about so I put most of my focus on fighting mercenaries, legendary animals, and obtaining all the armor I could. The Assassins Creed storylines seem to always have a bit of “ the world ending for strange reasons” in them, which seems to be part of their point.

I’ll give this a 7.4 out of 10 for logical flow. It wasn’t bad by any means, there was just a lot going on and some of which wasn’t clear to me in the end.

Emotional Pull of Story

There was a lot going on with this category, right from the start. Seeing your character’s parents being killed in the first 15 minutes was emotional for sure. The game really laid out the reality of how things went back in. You’re celebrating one minute then the next you’re getting attacked. We kind of knew from the start there might be a vengeance part of the story, and there is.

As the game progresses, they build the relationship between Eivor and Sigurd, which was a good fit for this story. The brother’s became strained in their relationship which was an important piece because Sigurd is the Jarl of the clan and Eivor often needs to step in to lead while Sigurd chased after his “divine purpose” which ended up being nothing in the end. Then you have the random romantic relationship pieces throughout the game, which was all realistic considering the story. Each relationship became a strong piece of the story, some more than others of course.

Although this piece was good I didn’t feel the same pull as a game such as God of War or Days Gone. I think the difference was that AC Valhalla had many different relationships while Days Gone really had one, maybe two, main relationships that were focused on during the game. God of War really focused on building the relationship between Kratos and Atreus, with little focus on Faye. Although I do think they could have made an even better pull if they had more focus on Faye and Kratos at various points.

Overall, I like the variety of relationships here, I thought they did a good job in making it realistic.

I’ll give a solid 8 out of 10 for Emotional Pull.

Combat

This combat system was a great experience. There was customization, but not too much. There are various styles of fighting, appropriate upgrades, and the armor and weapons look great. I also really enjoyed playing with Mjolnier and the other rare weapons. At no point did I feel overwhelmed like I did in God of War or Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. The only part that became frustrating was how many resources it took to upgrade the rations pack.

When I started the game I actually thought the combat was a little slow but I was also used to playing faster style games. After learning the mechanics and experiencing harder characters I came to appreciate how they built it.

One part I particularly enjoyed was how smooth the dodge and parry mechanics worked. I thought they did a great job with this especially compared to past Assassin’s Creed games. This system really lets you adopt your own fighting style.

Runes are also helpful with this game. Some games go a little too hard with runes but this game did a good job. I also have to mention the skill tree. There were some players who didn’t particularly like it but I found it to be great, as I did the abilities.

I’m going to give this an 8.3 out of 10.

Travel Capabilities

Traveling across the map in this game could take a while depending on the mission and if you didn’t have a fast travel location setup yet, you just had to wait.

What made the wait easier was the auto-travel options you had on horse or boat. I thought this was well done and allows the player to just enjoy the graphics of the game and views of the geography. One thing I think could have been added is being able to adjust weapons and abilities while in auto-travel.

An area that takes a while are load times in fast travel, going on raid missions, loading the game, switching to Asgard missions, traveling to different lands, or when you flew too far as Sýnin (Eivor’s Raven). Originally I thought it was because my internet is slow (which it is on my PS4) but AC Odyssey had hardly any wait time for me. I understand that AC Valhalla is 4GB larger so there’s more going on.

Overall, I thought the travel in this game was solid. If the load times were a little less lengthy I would have no suggestions on this.

I’ll give this a 8.6 out of 10.

Voice Acting

I played as both male and female Eivor and in my opinion, I think the male version was better done. The female Eivor just sounded like Cecilie Stenspil was trying too hard. It was obvious to me the same voice actor was Male Eivor, Varin, and Odin. I think Odin should have sounded less like Eivor because at one point I was wondering if Eivor becomes Odin at some point. They sounded and looked similar. Then when you went to Asgard you played as Odin in the same skin as Eivor in the main game. That part was confusing to me but not enough to take away from the experience in the game.

As soon as I went to Asgard I noticed Loki and Basim had the same voice. As you progress in Asgard, Loki becomes a traitor (which is true to his character). When this happened my first thought was “I bet Basim turns bad in the end” and it kind of gave it away. This could have been intentional since the same voice actor played as Sigurd and Tyr who both end up losing an arm.

The conversations were well done and they flowed naturally. They also did a great job with the response choices and kept the comments toward Eivor gender neutral so it didn’t seem off if you were playing as male Eivor and they called him a female or vice versa.

Overall, they did a great job with the accents, natural flow of conversations, and voice acting in general. The one consideration would be, as I mentioned above, to have had more variety in the main characters.

I’ll give a 9 out of 10.

Replay Value

This game offers a lot of add-ons and optional gameplay but not so much a new game plus or added benefits of replaying from the beginning. I think the game does have some replay value as you switch the main character type. With a game like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla there’ s so much meat to the game if you 100% it will take over 100 hours, easily.

Taking out the DLC’s and length of the game, I would say the game doesn’t have much in terms of anything new in the replay. I can’t compare to past AC games because I have not finished any of them yet. I enjoyed replaying the game, there just wasn’t anything new.

I’ll give this category a 6 out of 10.

Closure/How The Game Ends

The ending of this game is a mind bender. There’s really two endings. The ending of Eivor’s rule as Jarl, and why they used the animus in the first place.

Eivor ending up being the Jarl made sense. Sigurd went a little crazy during the game which caused his clan to not trust him…..and it was all for a machine to put him in a false reality.

The actual ending really seemed like a possible wrap-up to the entire Assassin’s Creed franchise. The other main character chooses to stay in the animus with the being of light to try and save the world. Endless calculations.

Bent my mind, yes. What I didn’t understand is why Basim is back in current day. What purpose could he possibly have 1,000 years later? All I could guess is he will try to bring his family back, maybe go to Disney World?

Had I played the remaining AC games I probably would have understood the ending a little more clearly. From what I understand of the AC franchise this was a huge ending, and well done.

However, as I will explain in the next category, they can continue the franchise a few ways but it has to change considering how this game ended.

8.4 out of 10 here.

Future Opportunity for Franchise

The AC franchise could have either screwed up this ending or set the stage for something much bigger. The end of Valhalla really looked like an end to the franchise. However, we have to consider how games have been evolving.

Could they make another stand alone game? Sure, but it would be a new beginning. You may have heard the rumors that they are looking to make a huge online world called “Assassin’s Creed Infinity”. Here’s a great YouTube video talking about it.

I like the idea of Infinity being a massive online evolving game. It kind of makes sense. Rather than just piecing together random places throughout time, they are making it more interactive and interesting.

I think this is where most games will go. This may be a disappointment to some players who just like a game. I remember in high school when the Final Fantasy franchise launched a game that was 100% online. Very few people had the ability to do that then and even those who did would have said most of the games were clunky.

For me, I’m not sure how much I’ll play Infinity. I never really got into the online multiplayer deals. Call of Duty was fun for a while but I like a beginning and an end-point when it comes to games and movies.

Overall, I think this is a good move for the franchise but they may lose a lot of fans. They still could launch individual games but I doubt they would do that for a while as they would want to put their resources into making Infinity successful.

7.8 out of 10 for this category.

Final Rating (1-100)

How The Game Begins – 9.3

Graphic Quality (non-technical) – 7.8

Logical Flow of Story – 7.4

Emotional Pull of Story – 8

Combat – 8.3

Travel Capabilities – 8.6

Voice Acting – 9

Replay Value – 6

Closure/How The Game Ends – 8.4

Future Opportunity for Franchise – 7.8

80.6 out of 100

This is my personal view on this game.

Happy Gaming!

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla