Assassin's Creed: Valhalla Review
If anyone asks you what Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is like, you could tell them that it’s a gorgeous open-world action RPG featuring stealth and parkour elements set in a time of Norse expansion into the British Isles with a crossover story into modern times uncovering the mysteries of an ancient struggle through time between two orders vying for control, or… you could just say it’s Assassin’s Creed II but with Vikings.
Bump in the Road
Before I even begin playing, I’m asked if I want to play online and create a Ubisoft account to enjoy some cross-device benefits, and I say ”no thanks”, but it won’t let me play the game at all... Why try to convince me to create an account if I don’t have an actual choice? Ubisoft should list ”playing the game” as a perk for creating an account. The account login screen looks awful, like a low-resolution BIOS screen iframed over the game menu. Alright, with half my rights signed away, time to get into this game.
Starting Off
I haven’t played an Assassin’s Creed game in a while but the Norse mythology aspect has me intrigued; I can start back in the middle of the series, right? As it turns out: yes, yes I can.
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla feels like the original Assassin’s Creed with a different backdrop: same stealth, same parkour, same map style, different era. Parkour has the same weird quirks that I remember, like trying to climb a ladder the proper way is impossible: you just climb the wall next to it and hang from the roof like an uncivilized baboon.
Playing as a Viking jarl(skona) named Eivor for the majority of the game, the main story revolves around helping stepbrother Sigurd conquer England. After a 5-minute animation of the skill tree, it’s obvious that the play style support is very diverse; be an assassin, a marksman, a melee powerhouse, or just pick random shit that seems fun at the time; you can respec any time for no cost.
The brash pillage-y Viking atmosphere is glorious. Eivor commands a longship of raiders which you can take out on the rivers to ransack and pillage to your heart’s content. Drinking games abound. Gambling with dice in Orlog is a great time. Brutal combat and gore are also central to the experience. For the Viking aspect of the game, it was nearly everything I could ask for.
Stealth is still a viable play style despite the Viking setting; however, it’s not a particularly fun one given the alternative. Enemies seem to have randomized timing on their patrolling, so you may need to wait a while for opportunities. There aren’t many things to stealth behind in certain areas. Ally NPCs that follow you seem to be entirely invisible. All of which would be fine if the combat were actually difficult; you just press the Raid button and watch the place clear out like a stampede.
Combat
At first, while learning the controls, the combat seemed challenging: enemies hit hard, can’t heal often, blocking is a thing. What I discovered with parrying, though, was that you don’t need to time anything; just spam L1 when you see an enemy start to attack, the parry connects, and you slaughter them. No skill required.
Despite the cheese-parry technique, the combat in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is still challenging. There seem to be two types of enemies: the ones you’re supposed to kill now, and the ones you’re not; the ones you’re supposed to kill now are super easy, while the ones you’re not are dozens of times more difficult with almost nothing in between. The same enemies with seemingly the same equipment arbitrarily take less damage and deal more damage in higher-level areas; in contrast, in games like Elden Ring, enemies change between areas, so the difficulty increase makes sense.
Features
Each raid is a short sprint of beheading foes and burning houses to the ground in search of supplies and treasure. Raiders seem to pull their weight, so your role in the raid is quite flexible, which I think is well done. There’s even a side part of the game to exclusively raid if that’s your thing. There’s a customizable Jomsviking which can be made to assist with raids, and there’s a social sharing aspect to it where your created character can visit other worlds and you can hire other player’s Jomsvikings. So far, I haven’t needed to utilize that.
Gathering is a system in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Mainly, you pick up food which heals you and can only carry a few at a time. There are some ore deposits to farm, but with the meager yield and the time it takes to dismount and swing an ax, it’s far faster to simply win a single drinking game and buy hundreds from the local shopkeep. Skål!
Conclusion
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is great fun if you enjoy drunkenly pillaging settlements in a Viking raid; however, it feels like the core of the series hasn’t innovated much since Assassin’s Creed II. The story is well-written, the presentation is immersive, all of the side quests and games are interesting, and there’s a whole lot of content to explore. AC Valhalla is definitely a fine game, just not quite as good as Elden Ring which I still haven’t finished.
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