Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Review: The First 30 Hours
Why I waited to buy
I’m a huge fan of the Assassin’s Creed series. The premise is interesting enough. You play as one of several different Assassins throughout history, interacting with historical figures and events, killing those that oppose free will (the Templars.)
Typically, when a new game comes out, I usually wait until it goes on sale around the holiday season to pick it up unless it’s a title I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. When Valhalla was announced, it looked interesting enough but appeared as though it was following in the same footsteps of the past two entries, Origins and Odyssey.
Normally, game publishers release titles in early to late fall just in time for the holiday season and discount them the week of Thanksgiving or on Black Friday. When Odyssey came out in October, I waited and picked up a copy a month later on Black Friday for $27, $33 less than the original $60 asking price.
The latest entry into the series was released a couple of weeks before Black Friday, and, surprisingly, it didn’t go on sale. The Holiday 2020 featured games were kind of weak and disappointing, and I was more focused on getting my hands on Cyberpunk 2077 (a decision I regretted later, much like the rest of the world.)
The past two entries changed up the series to make it more role-playing focused and I wasn’t too happy about it. The combat was weird and difficult to grasp at first, there were boss fights, items of varying shades of color that denoted their rarity, and it didn’t feel like the Assassin’s Creed I once knew.
Luckily for me, Amazon Prime Day happened a couple of weeks ago, and I managed to snag a copy of Valhalla for $23. I was curious to see what this game had to offer and completed a little over 30 hours of the main story. Let’s dive in.
The story
You play as a Viking named Eivor, which can be male, female, or gender fluid; you can change Eivor’s gender at any time in your playthrough. I chose to stick to the male version as I played as Kassandra instead of Alexios in the previous title, Odyssey.
Dissatisfied with the change in rulership over Norway by King Harald, Eivor is tasked with colonizing the British Isles, starting his clan over on a new piece of land he names Ravensthorpe. He has his run-ins with two members of the Assasins Brotherhood, who gift him the iconic hidden blade of the franchise.
Eivor is unwilling to make the sacrifice of his ring finger for the blade, states his intentions are always obvious when he’s raiding, and straps the hidden blade on top of his arm instead of underneath it. He ends up fighting Templars, referred to in this game as The Order of the Ancients, and deals with the typical conflicts associated with building political alliances with surrounding villages and cities.
The gameplay (minor spoilers ahead)
There’s a surprising amount of things to do in Valhalla. To upgrade your settlement, you participate in raids where you and your Viking crew decimate whatever local monastery happens to be nearby, looting their Christian valuables and dismembering the armed guards.
In traditional Assassin’s Creed gameplay, you climb to high places to synchronize viewpoints that reveal more of the map, including treasures, mysteries, and quest opportunities. You can explore England via foot, horseback, or your trusty Viking longship.
There are a large number of various temples, historical sites, and villages to loot, but some of them can get frustrating at times. At numerous points in my playthrough, I had to Google how to get to a specific treasure or how to solve an environmental puzzle. Some of the videos I viewed had anywhere between 250k to over 1 million views, and if that isn’t a symptom of poor game design, I don’t know what is.
Since this game reflects the recent RPG renovation on the series, you’re given dialogue options that affect the course of the story. You can choose whether a person lives, dies, or gets exiled, how to settle an argument or even romance certain characters. Each dialogue option may or may not have dire consequences on the game’s overarching narrative, and I once again found myself Googling the “correct” choices to make.
What I didn’t like
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has been out for roughly 8 months now and has had its fair share of software patches and updates. You’d figure at this point most of the major glitches would be fixed, but, in my experience, they weren’t.
The first thing I noticed was the small audio glitches that would occur during conversations. A character would speak and pause in the middle of a sentence for a second or two and the animations would still play out, only for the rest of their audio to appear at the same time as another character who had moved on in the conversation.
Issues ranged in severity after the audio glitches, from an ax being permanently stuck to one of Eivor’s hands to the game randomly throwing my character into the sky, far away from where I was standing, only to die from the following fall.
Load times are abysmal in this game. I used to think my Skyrim experience on my old PlayStation 3 was bad, but, from booting up Valhalla to actually being able to play it, it takes a solid 6 minutes on my PS4 Pro (I timed it just to be sure I wasn’t imagining things.) Additionally, you have to wait between 15–20 seconds to access a shopowner’s inventory after asking to see their wares.
I’ve discussed ludonarrative dissonance in a previous review, the disconnect between a game’s narrative as told through the story and the narrative told through the gameplay, and the concept rears its ugly head again in this game.
As a Viking, you raid places. You set fire to cottages. You steal valuables. You kill and maim countless armed guards. But, if you happen to kill two or three civilians, you get “desynchronized,” which is this game’s version of dying or the “Game Over” screen.
At one point in the game, you get to see another Viking perform a literal blood eagle execution method on another person (if you don’t know what it is and aren’t squeamish, look it up.) But, God forbid, you kill a civilian as a Viking. That just won’t do.
What I liked/final thoughts
The overarching narrative in Valhalla is surprisingly decent, considering what the series had to offer in Origins and Odyssey. Some of the side characters you meet end up being well-developed, and others you couldn’t care less about.
Upgrading your gear in the game has a discernable effect on the damage output of your weapons, the protection your armor offers, and the aesthetics of each. By the time I had upgraded my gear to “Superior” status, I caught myself admiring how good Eivor looked in his improved armor and the improved craftsmanship of each item.
While the combat became slowly repetitive, there was something about exploring a massive world, forging alliances with people of different backgrounds, and gradually upgrading my armor and weapons that kept me coming back.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a game that I actively looked forward to getting back into, like some earlier titles like Brotherhood, Revelations, and Black Flag, but for $23, you’re getting a massive game.
While reading threads online about Valhalla, I found some users say it took them between 110 and 130 hours to complete the main story. That’s a lot of gameplay for what you’re paying; not many triple-A studios can say they offer that much content in one package.
Would I buy this game for $60? Absolutely not. But, if you’re looking for a world to dive into and lop off a few arms, legs, and heads with a giant two-handed sword, pick up a copy when it goes on sale again this holiday season. It’s not the greatest game, but there’s enough to keep you interested.
