This is going to be critical so for those of you with weak constitutions exit to left. Remember my opinions. So don't take it personally.

Just finished the newest festival garbage and very lack luster. I haven't been playing Valhalla hardly at all since I finally trudged through the weak paid story dlcs. There is just so much wrong with this being an assassins creed game just like odyssey wasn't. Odyssey was an ok game at best but a terrible assassins creed and Valhalla is even worse of an assassins creed game which I didn't think was possible but ubisoft pulled it off. I swear they lost all there talented devs years ago.

Combat is still just boring and drawn out as it can be, yes I'm talking about the forced combat finishers that trigger every other kill( for me at least) it breaks the already clunky and slow combat flow even more(why don't we have an OPTION to disable these yet?) Saw posts from a year ago about this request.

That's another problem why is social media dictating what gets addressed and fixed or changed when this ultimately is the companies decision which use to be pretty good but since more and more companies are utilizing these tactics for "support" game quality has dropped very far and players get this mixed genre of games in one package which has no identity what so ever what it wants to be anymore.

The whole assassin element feels like an after thought in production...again. I won't apologize for liking the older combat and stealth because it worked.

The mastery challenge update is a joke and beyond broken. I've completely disregarded them as content. I can not fathom that it works as intended. A lot of the game still doesn't work well or as expected maybe but then it'd be confusing why that would be intended game play mechanics in the first place.

Why is live service elements being forced into a lot of single player games? There is no excuse why you need a ubisoft account to play a single player game or a constant internet connection because the slow and sluggish ubiconnect requires it(why exactly?) especially if there on console. I personally don't care about there live events or there ridiculous helix store or access to the reda wannabe in game store of weekly cosmetics. Cosmetics only make the game more shallow then it already it is, which saying something.

This game is so boring despite the fact I put well over 350 plus hours into it trying to get the full experience of what I paid for and the verdict is I over paid(at any price) for this broken buggy NOT assassins creed game. I have not been impressed or happy with any recent purchases over the past few years and I say no more. I will happily replay the older games before I dish out any more money to this or any company like ubisoft.

Remember directed towards devs! not community.

@karmachaositgp Kinda funny since the horrid ubi support tells everyone to post on the forums to get the devs attention yet the only way they would listen is if your 12, have a you tube stream and tweet something every 5 seconds like a dodo bird then they give you there attention. Just another reason this method is garbage.

@karmachaositgp I don't understand :
1 - you played 350h in a game you don't like ? Also, you paid too much for 350h when some AAA games are 15h long at the same price ?
2 - my opinion is you CAN go stealth in Valhala, because I do, until I got spoted, then I fight or run. I miss the smoke bombs, caltrops and other stealth gadgets though, but they are not very "viking-ish".

@lospoyos
1.I can't speak for the OP but when Valhalla works it is not a bad game per se but I'd hesitate to call it "good". It can be enjoyable in small doses before the irritations set it. For instance, some of the mysteries are really fun; I adored the animus anomalies, the cairne challenges etc and I was even having fun with Siege of Paris...until the game-breaking which was a sobering reminder of how awful this game can be. Then there's the horrible stealth, parkour/movement system, the forced OG mechanics in a world not conceived with it in mind etc, etc. I can see how the push/pulling of the good /bad can get a player to invest in a game that isn't that great

2.Hence why a viking setting should not have been chosen...The problem with the stealth is that it just does not function properly. It's wildly inconsistent. You could do exactly the same thing twice with the same enemy type and in one instance he does not spot you then the next instant detection making planning a crapshoot. Sometimes they can insta detect you from far away other times they're completely blind so their vision cone is ill defined. There doesn't actually seem to a stealth "system" in place. Even the social stealth is a complete fail because the most efficient way to avoid enemies in distrust areas is to crouch and go on rooftops rather than engage with the social stealth opportunities. In fact, in going out of your way to engage with social stealth you'll likely get detected.

@lospoyos Also, that was the case in every other AC game too. You either went full stealth and killed everyone, also possible in Valhalla, or you were spotted and killed everyone, also possible in Valhalla.

Combat is much better than in the past, but still a way to go to catch up with other brawlers.

Stealth is rubbish, there’s no “I’m Batman” moments, which is basically what stealth should be, on top of that enemies are either too dumb or too acute with infinite sight at night, they don’t act in a way that seems intelligent rather than simply basic not too well written script bot.

Parkour is actually relatively smooth but could be better, all the flashy cool animations have gone, so it feels like less of an event.

The world itself is beautiful (outside of being pretty washed out and having no real night time) but feels dead because your actions have no medium let alone long term implications.

The game is good when it works, it’s just so buggy and a tad bland because it misses out on the tiny details. Character models lack detail and their animations are just dead and awkward, the sky is a cartoon with a phaseless moon and floodlit nights, enemy AI is repetitive and simplistic, your mount has no discernible personality of their own yet is your main companion throughout (other games have a story there), NPCs repeat the same actions endlessly and have gone back to having no day/night cycle (kids in the settlement accost you regardless of the hour). This game feels like it’s running on an engine that can barely be maintained and is stuck in the past and only getting buggier.

@pesto Your last line is exactly it. The engine is showing its age especially in comparison to other open worlds of the same scale.

@lospoyos Hey no need to judge me. I paid money for this trash, it's not like they allow you to get a refund after you install it. Shouldn't have to justify myself to you over my opinions. Never said you can't use stealth it's just another poorly added feature like it was in origins and odyssey. Vikings or spartans would have made poor assassins thats obvious but they did it any ways.

@philyg213 It is not possible to stay in stealth and take out everyone because stealth in valhalla is shotty garbage. Yes I've played all other AC game before and never had this problem until the newer 3 games where they felt way off.

@karmachaositgp That sounds like a you problem because it is definetly possible to play Valhalla and stay in stealth the entire time.

@pesto LMAO AC is not a brawler game or not suppose to be. Thats why it was great because it actually took skill now its "im hulk smash smash " Thats all there is to it. It's shallow bloated combat full of cut scenes that break the flow so much.

@philyg213 No its not, Been gaming 30 plus years and the broken AI and poor enemy detection that is whimsical at best screws it completely up junior.

@animuslover Yet we got people trying to defend the shotty stealth mechanics in this game. Mind boggling.

@karmachaositgp Seriously how is this support? I don't care about debating what each individual likes or dislikes. How is that support? Makes no sense yet when you contact "support" all they do is tell you to use their garbage forums. Debating is not going to fix anything it's only made it worse lol

@karmachaositgp Damn, Valhalla is 30 years old?

@karmachaositgp that was just me wondering why you played "350h with a piece of garbage". Usually when I dislike a game I drop it way before the 10h mark.
You shouldn't make the number of years of gaming an argument, you'll always find older players than you (nearly 40y of gaming here, been playing some very (very very) oldschool Ubisoft games like Iron Lord (1989) ).

I'm not fighting over your problems with the game, I'm just curious, because I liked it a lot and played any AC and DLC that made its way to PC so far (but the 2D ones)
I think you can go stealth, but it's harder than older games, because there is too much camps in the game and I, and ther player I guess tends to rush through the #57 guard camp of the game that you go for an iron bar or a roman mask. Though in Egypt and Greece, most of the camps were looking the same, here efforts have been made in terms of scenery.

I also don't really understand - I repeat I don't disqualify your judgement - what is the real problem with the stealth in this game. With parkour, I see the hero/heroin is a little less nimble than a dude like Arno or Bortherhood's Ezio. In older ACs, guards have scripted path that helps a lot to get into their back and the 3 recent games they removed lots of that.

tbh, in Origins, guards are super dumbs aswell : kill one, stay there, one guard will take the spot, kill him, wait etc. Here this "can" happen but it's more rare. In older ACs, kill one guy and do not even hide the body because if the body is not on the pathway or line of sigth of another guard, there will never be an alert until the level unloads and the game start to count how many corpses you never hid and then magically raise the alarm.
I wouldn't say the older AC were better here : the guards were clearly scripted Metal Gear 1 robots there that you could stealth speedrun though, when now they are closer to MGS3 or later IA, no ? (and I guess speedrunners now combat through levels)

Valhala forces you to hide bodies, at least.