Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Perhaps due to the success of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) and desiring a piece of that success too, has Ubisoft introduced more roleplaying elements to their Assassin's Creed franchise. Perk trees, equipment, and combat was made more complex than before, and dialogue choices and story branching were added. Assassin's Creed Origins (2016) had some already, I believe, but it was Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018) that took it even further. What really got me interested in the series again however, was seeing Odyssey's The Fate of Atlantis DLC. It appeared Ubisoft Quebec had gone full fantasy action RPG with the game.

An exhausting odyssey

They didn't quite rewrite history to include actual mythological creatures -- the First Civilization's (Isu, the Precursors) technology was causing that and the adventure in Atlantis is merely a simulation. Although I suppose Atlantis and such more or less did happen in the game's universe, just way before the known history of humans. And things being a simulation doesn't change the fact that AC Odyssey's gameplay is far less grounded in reality compared to something like Assassin's Creed Syndicate -- which is a good change if you ask me.

Odyssey's modern day plot follows Layla Hassan who was first introduced in AC Origins. She and her Assassin associates have extracted DNA of two siblings from the spear of King Leonidas of Sparta. You choose one of the siblings, either Kassandra or Alexios, and in their boots using the Animus technology discover where to find the Staff of Hermes, another Isu artifact.

AC Odyssey takes place during the Peloponnesian War in 451 BC Greece. Kassandra/Alexios is a mercenary, misthios, which conveniently allows the player to switch sides in the war at will. There are three plots to the main story: reuniting your family, hunting down the members of Cult of Kosmos who seek to control the world, and claiming the destiny of your bloodline by hiding Atlantis from unwanted parties. The last one doesn't have much meat to it -- merely finding and killing few boss monsters.

There was no feeling of a real ending for finishing any of the plots. You get a cutscene in each and the game continues without credits ever rolling. I always play these open world games by doing everything else before finishing the main story and I would've preferred for Odyssey too to actually end in some way because there was nothing for me to return to -- nothing non-repeatable anyway.

Funnily enough I guessed the identity of the Cult's leader before I was given a single actual hint. The following paragraph includes spoilers on that so tread carefully, potential reader of this post.

When you arrive to Athens, at the start of chapter 4, you unexpectedly meet Phoibe whom you thought to have been left on the game's starting island of Kephallonia. The girl has made her own way to the city and happens to have been taken in by the very person you are heading to talk to. Phoibe had presented such a talent for getting in trouble earlier that I just had the feeling that her new guardian could be no other than the mastermind behind everything. And then I started gathering evidence as I eliminated the Cult's inner circle -- and everything fit.

The game pretty much follows the same pattern with the rest of the cultists. I sometimes chose to believe a seemingly nice character wasn't a cultist only to see the opposite was once again true. That's why I was able to pick the right person to accuse at one point without 100% certainty -- I had lost a hint earlier due to a choice I had made.

It might be a personal thing but I feel being set in the past, via simulation no less, makes the stories and characters of Assassin's Creed feel indifferent. Everything just feels part of a shallow open world. It could be Ubisoft's writers too.

I don't know how much it really adds to the game to have the characters speak English with a local accent. I mean, they're still speaking English -- Greek accents and few Greek words doesn't change that. Often in the game used malákas was an amusing old acquaintance from my World of Warcraft days. We had few Greeks in our guild and it was fairly common to hear the word in voice coms.

Sokrates was an interesting inclusion, although his interaction with the player tends to be terribly clumsy. For instance, there's absolutely no solid base for any kind of ethical discussion about whose life matters more or when is killing justified when the game makes you kill people all the time. You could ask the player but it is Kassandra who voices the reply. Kassandra, who has a kill count in the hundreds or even thousands.

You also never get more than two dialogue options to answer Sokrates's philosophical inquiries. That is way too limiting. Even increasing the amount of choices doesn't necessarily help if the writer is unable to cover all perspectives. It would be better to just present the dilemmas to the player and leave it at that. I think Sokrates's quest in the post-release content of Lost Tales of Greece was better than any of the originals.

Legacy of the First Blade has been panned by fans of the series as a terribly written piece of DLC. In it you meet the first wielder of the hidden assassin blade as well as secure your bloodline. There was bit of a controversy with how the supposedly big on player choice game suddenly forced the player character into a heterosexual relationship. Ubisoft soon changed the DLC slightly, giving you a choice to say you're only doing it for practical reasons. But the bloodline must continue, no matter what.

I don't know if the DLC would feel less forced if you play as Alexios, but as Kassandra I found it ridiculous how she falls head over heels for some wimpy guy who pleads with his sad puppy eyes for her to love him at every turn. He probably cries if you don't pick the flirt choices in dialogue.

Quantity over quality

AC Odyssey's biggest failure is its massive size. It's ultimately the same Ubisoft open world that has been seen dozens of times before. The same enemy camps, strongholds, animal lairs, caves etc. repeated ad nauseam. The biggest offenders in the repeating open world are skill point rewarding tombs. They are incredibly samey and dull to explore, built from a limited number of assets. The preppers' stashes in the last two Far Cry games were ten times more varied and interesting to solve.

Odyssey's procedurally generated quests are unnecessary because there are already plenty of handcrafted ones. Most of the random quests are also timed, only available for a duration before they're gone and new ones are generated at message boards. Like the radiant quests of Skyrim and Fallout 4, doing them feels menial. You're better off ignoring them all and instead just do yellow ones.

Cyan daily and weekly quests are worth doing because they reward you with orichalcum which is a currency used to buy the game's microtransactions without spending more real money. Ubisoft didn't make it too easy though as there are only about two guaranteed items out of many available every week.

Since it happened to be the game's anniversary when I played it, one of the store mounts was free to claim. The nice thing about the horse was that it has wings which negate mounted falling damage, allowing you to ride down mountains without care.

I remember how at release there were complaints that Ubisoft was forcing people to buy experience boosters to keep up with enemy levels. That's probably still the case if you try to rush through the story. (I'm not entirely sure how much the boosters actually help.) I never got to witness that problem with my completionist playstyle. I was way beyond the original level cap of 50 by the end of the main game.

The way enemy levels are tied to their region actually provided a more even experience than The Witcher 3. Unless I accidentally wandered off to a higher level neighboring region, there never were drastic enemy level changes.

Enemies do scale up to match your level but you can adjust how much to a degree. I kept it at default which allows them to fall 2 levels behind but I reckon the setting to keep them at least your level might be better because then no looted gear would be lower level than you. You wouldn't need to upgrade their item level as soon.

I like that upgrading items is a feature; it lets you to hold on to good randomly generated pieces. You shouldn't do upgrading constantly however, for it gets costly. The bonus stats on gear grow in strength every 10 item levels (1, 11, 21, 31...) and that's when you should upgrade if ever.

Legendary armor is also not worth upgrading. Once you've found every piece of a legendary set, its set bonus is gained as an engraving that you can apply to any gear, preferably to an epic piece since they have one more stat than legendaries. Chasing perfect purple pieces (epics) for your build is one of the game's fun aspects.

Unlike with armor, legendary weapons are better than epics. Having higher base damage actually matters (unlike higher armor) and they can have two legendary engravings since they come with one already.

Odyssey also has a transmogrification feature similar to Blizzard's games. You can at will switch a gear piece's appearance to any other you've found previously. Thus it's not worth carrying legendary armor for even fashion reasons. I didn't find many armor sets whose looks were to my liking but there were some. The Amazon legendary set was without a doubt inspired by the Wonder Woman movie; the resemblance is too uncanny to be a coincidence.

The enemy and item levels are a tad gamey, no question. The sole purpose (after some point) is to keep you searching for new gear and spending resources. Currently Odyssey's maximum level is 99. Even though I did everything and some extra, I was only at level 96 or so by the end. Thus you don't normally ever reach a point where things no longer need to be upgraded.

Where the level system faces most criticism from people (based on what I've seen on r/assasssinscreed) is how it applies to assassinations. In AC Odyssey attacking someone from stealth is not a guaranteed kill. You instead deal damage equal to your assassination damage which might not be enough. That's a drastic change for the series. I personally didn't mind it much at all though admittedly sometimes it would've been preferable to not alert a whole fucking camp after a botched assassination attempt.

I liked the chase for a point where an assassination would kill no matter the target. The key for that appeared to be increasing your critical hit chance and critical damage, as an assassination attack is able to crit. The easiest way to reach that point are the stats 'critical chance while at full health' and 'critical damage while at full health' because your health regenerates while out of conflict. Focusing on those two stats does become slightly problematic in active conflict though -- one hit received and a whole lot of your damage output disappears. Healing back to full in combat is not impossible though thanks to the Second Wind ability and the passive gained from upgrading Leonidas's spear.

If you're geared and specialized heavily into assassination, it seems to be wise to spend skill points as soon as possible -- after unlocking Masteries at level 50 -- on the passive that adds a chance to deal 25% assassination damage with melee attacks. The passive maxes out at 5% chance but it's such a huge help when it does trigger. It seems to go off from your parries too which was always hilarious to witness -- a half-health enemy dropping dead from having been blocked.

On Normal difficulty you can probably get by with focusing only on the Assassin skill tree. But you might as well make things easier for yourself and also get skills from Warrior tree that focuses on melee combat. Odyssey forces you into active conflict quite often and that's where having Warrior skills come in handy. There's also Hunter tree for bow skills but since I had just finished two shooter games, I pretty much ignored ranged combat in this one.

Highly entertaining combat

If the repetitive open world is AC Odyssey's low point, its combat is the opposite. There's a lot of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor influence in the game -- which is somewhat an odd thing to say since Odyssey doesn't use the Batman: Arkham style combat, instead having a freer hack and slash style. But so many of the skills are exactly like in Shadow of Mordor and it's great! Odyssey gave me what I yearned for in Syndicate's combat: flash and variety.

Falling damage also doesn't kill you and later it even stops existing. It's so freeing to be able to just jump down from anywhere. Parkour is unchanged from Syndicate however, still being too sticky for my liking.

One feature Odyssey definitely copied from Shadow of Mordor is its Nemesis system. Mercenaries in Odyssey -- that includes you -- are in a ranked order. Killing a mercenary ahead of you moves you up in rank, possibly to a new tier. Each tier gives you a new benefit such as vendor prices discount. You can go kill mercenaries whose identities you know but it is likely they will come to you on their own as committing a crime puts a bounty on your head. The more crimes you commit, the bigger the bounty grows, and the more mercenaries will show up to claim it.

It can get truly hectic if/when you get spotted while clearing a stronghold or such and have a bounty on you. There's usually a mercenary around, casually patrolling the area. Initiating open conflict will aggro the bounty hunter too and possibly summon even more of them. The mercenaries' abilities are randomly generated by the game and some combinations become almost impossible to face in mass fights -- for instance: fire weapons and non-parryable chain attacks. With two such enemies you can't get an opening to counterattack from all the dodging you need to do.

Mercenaries can be found in an opposing army force when you join a conquest battle to aid Athens or Sparta. In those fights the mercenaries do a little introduction speech when found. It's good that it's the only place they do it because it would've quickly gotten old if they interrupted gameplay all the time like the orcs do in Shadow of Mordor.

Ability design in AC Odyssey is great. Almost all the abilities I tried felt really good to use. Some abilities even change depending on which weapon type you are wielding. Overpower Attacks with a dagger or sword launches a multi attack chain on your target while with a heavy weapon you smash and bash multiple enemies around you. There are also staves and spears in the game. I've played third person games with staves before but I think this was the first time there was a spear. Or at least the way you fight with it.

Dagger and sword I liked for their speed and single target damage while spear was my go to weapon for big battles, though due to its excellent reach it also works against a single target. Heavy blunt and blades were a bit too slow for me and staves didn't feel as effective as spears.

As your basic attack you can do a faster light or slower heavy attack that does nominally more damage. I didn't much care about combos until I happened to see a youtube video that showed possibly the most useful attack combos for each weapon type, combining both attack types' fastest moves.

My favorite ability was Ring of Chaos that at max rank throws back everyone around you. It's probably the best ability to have in conquests and I liked how enemies actually react to it with disbelief. Rush Assassination from the Assassin tree is a great ability as well -- one that I took way too late. It's basically Shadow Strike from Shadow of Mordor; chain teleporting you and assassinating up to 4 enemies. Engraving that adds +1 target to the ability is surprisingly useful as it allows you to take out a region leader and their 4 bodyguards without effort.

User interface could use few improvements

Odyssey's action bar solution is limited and annoying to get used to. Ranged skills get their own action bar of 4 slots (which I didn't use) and melee/assassination skills get 8 shared slots. 8 is barely enough and there's a further problem with how they're divided into two 4-slot bars that you need to press a button to switch between. A more elegant solution would've been to have a modifier key, like hold shift. Then you wouldn't need to check every time which action bar you have active and do you need to switch before pressing a key.

The problem probably stems from controller running out of buttons -- there are so many different actions in the game. The usual modifier buttons were probably already taken. Or it's just bad design. I started the game switching between controller and mouse/keyboard until ending up on the latter. I didn't like parry needing both of controller's shoulder buttons. On keyboard parry requires only one button. There's no perfect parry though thus not being able to hit two buttons at the exact same time isn't so crucial. I didn't like basic attacks being right trigger and shoulder buttons either though. And of course mouse look is so much faster and more accurate.

After switching permanently to mouse and keyboard, I at one point started wondering why my ship wasn't turning as fast as it had done in early game. It was a weird realization as it came to me maybe tens of hours after the switch. I picked up my controller again and sure enough, analogue stick turned the Adraste way quicker than WASD. However, it is possible to do quick turns on keyboard too, as I then discovered -- you just have to hold backwards (A) while turning. That made ship combat somewhat easier again although not that much more enjoyable.

Ship combat was first introduced into the Assassin's Creed series in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. (Edit: In Assassin's Creed III, in fact.) I actually tried the game for a couple of hours when Ubisoft gave it away for free. Based on the short while I played it, the ship combat seemed to be exactly the same as in Odyssey, i.e. not very exciting nor fun. The same 2D plane naval (space) battles made me stop playing Rebel Galaxy (a GOG freebie) before getting anywhere. Though what really made me quit Black Flag was its modern day sections' "floating ipad gameplay" as someone put it on reddit.

AC Odyssey suffers from the hold-down-button-to-do-shit plague like too many games do these days. Selling and breaking down items takes way too long thanks to it. The most ridiculous application of it is having to hold down button to save into a slot or load a save. A normal confirmation dialogue would be so much faster and saving into a new slot shouldn't require even that. At least Ubisoft Quebec learned something from Syndicate and grabbing a body is now the action that requires button holding instead of looting and not the other way around. You also loot everything in a radius around you at once, which is a nice quality of life feature.

Instead of a minimap, Odyssey too uses a compass. I feel it may have actually become an industry standard. You don't see many games with minimaps anymore. I approve of this change.

Since my PC was just barely able to run Syndicate maxed (excluding heavy anti-aliasing) at 1080p/60fps, I expected to not get near that in Odyssey. (Admittedly that's starting to be the case in every newish game I play; my hardware is getting hopelessly outdated.) And true enough, the opening scene of Leonidas and his 300 battling against Persians ran between 30 and 50 FPS. I didn't want to play the game in a complete potato mode to get 60 so I made a compromise: I lowered few settings and capped max FPS to 45. Still better than 30 and I didn't need to listen to my PC's fans running at full blast.

From a technical perspective you could probably call Odyssey good looking. Character models and faces are beautifully detailed and often really well animated too I'd say. And there are definitely gorgeous vistas around. But overall I didn't find the game visually as pleasing as Witcher 3.

The environments felt generic, a whole lot of the huge world very samey looking Greece landscape with repeating assets. Daytime weather could've used some variation -- I feel it only ever rained while at sea. The musical score is honestly pretty weak too. The atmosphere wasn't immersive.

To improve the series for the next title, Ubisoft could for a change cut down the repetitive open world activities. The chances for that to happen are pretty slim though. Better writing wouldn't hurt either.

I think the next game hasn't yet been officially announced but will apparently be called AC Ragnarok. (Edit: Turned out to be Valhalla.) It might be interesting but I think I've again had my dose of Assassin's Creed for a while.

Edited 2021-09-19: Added notes about ship combat introduction to the series and the correct name of the following AC game.