Firstly, lets get some basics out of the way. I played Odyssey for more than 400 hours. Did 100% everything in the game and DLC including every question mark on the map. It was a fun game but Valhalla is so much better in almost every single way.

In Odyssey, you would spend hours deconstructing all the junk loot you would get. The stats system was totally broken leading to all those one shot builds (you would one shot bosses while still have a hard time assassinating normal NPCs). So it is such a refreshing change that Valhalla moved away from that.

In Valhalla there are 13 armor sets, which is still a good number, but the focus of the game is the actual gameplay and assassination. Here you are required to play a little more like an assassin, sneak into areas and thin the heard before fighting the remaining enemies, as opposed to going in a fort like Chuck Norris and mindlessly taking out any breathing thing under the sun.

I already have close to 90 hours in Valhalla, and my gameplay has significantly changed since Odyssey. My gameplay is much more similar to what I had in older AC games where stealth was rewarded (you can one-hit assassinate anything in Valhalla).

One more thing: the exploration in Valhalla is truly amazing. Every single loot box either wealth or a small resource crate has its own small puzzle associated with it. Thus it feels so much more rewarding solving those puzzles to reach the loot box.

In summary, Valhalla encourages you to play like an assassin. It encourages planning, puzzle solving and making calculated moves. Thus Valhalla is ages and miles better than the previous entries in the series. I am a little surprised at all the negative posts on this forum.

I guess , if you can overlook the horrible graphics and the camera in combat making you feel small and weak. Every time i try to play i rage quit and come here to complain. Game looks horrible and the combat and animations , i can take a screen shot of a battle and you would not know which one i am.

the basic core of what makes a game is a huge step down,,,,the loot and the amount of loot is a just a minor detail.

@show_stoppa I just popped in to say, “Hey! I just hired your Jomsviking.”

Instead we no loot at all, nothing exciting to do - just raid and murder soldiers to get stuff for a settlement that is empty and void of families and people.
A lifeless world with many empty places where nothing ever happends, i just played some Origins and behold i saw a trade/peasant caravan in the middle of nowhere (2 camels, some sheep and some people walking the desert) and the English coutry sides are EMPTY.

There is absolutely NOTHING exciting in Valhalla that wants me to keep playing, the soulles uninspiring world is the worst part of it, skills are mehh, weapons and armors are boring, runes are pointless and the jomsvikings are immortal (raid is allways WIN - they never die or get injured - why we can store a 100 of them is beyond me).. and collecting *wealth* is *yawn wahtever*.

Nah this game is 60% done, and i am being generous - now 50% into AC Origins (Bayek is a boss) my 2nd run and i am enjoying a wonderful game - maybe after this Odyssey wil be next after allready put 440 hours is - Adrestia ftw !.

Hey Ubisoft have you guys seen the farmers in the Valhalla map, after weeks they still stand still just like many other NPC .. just saying.
Just like someone else mentioned, i have no idea how the economy works in Valhalla, there are hundreds os sheeps and cows just walking around everywhere, would it hurt to get some sheperds with maybe a dog and a whistle ?.

Look at Sciropscire and Glowcestrecire, empty with nothing but cow and sheep.. isn't it exciting ?.

How about 50 warlords everywhere in provinces with their own settlements and some political stuff, you know we have a vikings main hall in the settlement - let us have visitors, some trading.. warlords who want to make use of Eivor and his men to conquer area's.. the stuff we can come up with is allmost endless.
But hey worrk on that store stuff, and forget about the fixes in patches.. right?.

@show_stoppa

they went kinda overboard with the puzzles, at first i liked it but after 120 i realzise thisis not a fighting game but a puzzle game.
There really isnt a lot of fighting going on.

@show_stoppa I actually liked the build system in Odyssey. You could go one shot boss kill to a tank that could be almost impossible to kill. It did take some time to reach that level to make those builds. Other then that I agree, Valhalla is amazing.

@dreadgrrl oh. Hey. It's been long. Like really long. I don't frequent the forum anymore and actually just saw this message.
Glad you recruited my jomsviking. I will make sure to keep her in tip top shape for the river raids for you.
Wish there was a way to see the jomsvikings of friends as I really wanted to get all of my friends' vikings but can't see them.
Hopefully I ll run into yours soon.

@show_stoppa what game are you playing?

Valhalla has the same stupid puzzle for looting from the beginnig to the end.

A locked door, a wall to explode, a scripted walk on a wall, stop.

And for? Just materials. This Is exciting?????
Make 100 hours of "the Door il locked ecc ecc, goes in the opposite way of the Door, arrow, unlock".
WOW. Game design: 3

You want exciting climbing?
Put jump and cling not scripte.
You should have to look where jump,where cling, you should have to press to jump in the right direction ,not hust press a button and watch pg climb .

Game is too easy,you don't have to play like Assassin's, never.
Just fight ,parry, finisher, again for xxx time.
No stamina and weight that affect your moves ,your run,your Dodge.
All armor are useless, you don't have to make attenction .



Enemy are dumb and weak, there is no strategy to adopt for not be in difficulty.
And i play on dreng withouth the use of ability.


World is a dead world.
No Life.
No people.
No reason to explore because all loot is schematic: chest -> loot or material, nothing in the other part of world.

Valhalla is a huge step back in gameplay, variety of build, rewarding in combat and exploration.

And worst are animation and hitbox.
Is very disappointing how enemy or animal animation are bad, and how hitbox are innacurate.
People should never buy a single object in the store until Ubisoft patch gameplay, but seems that player are happy because has cat amd tattoo....

@show_stoppa Most sadly, what you enjoy in Valhalla, turns out to be what the majority of other users dislike on this forum. They complain that all the puzzles needing to solve to get the treasures are instead "too much", and call the exploration "boring". I completed both games. I like Valhalla more but I do not dislike Odyssey. I sunk more than 200 hours into Valhalla without any gear resources grinding.

Like you I was very surprised about all the hatred towards Valhalla here. In fact it has reached the point that it is popular to hate it. I am not at all saying Valhalla is perfect and I do hope some features can be included or fine-tuned, but the amount of negative energy surrounding the game here is bordering on nitpicking and even being unreasonable sometimes, as some are demanding features that are either not a staple in the AC series or going against the lore.

This will be my last post for this game here, as I do not think I am going to spend more time in a place full of negative people. So @show_stoppa, I am glad my last post here is talking to someone like you.

@show_stoppa

I also really liked the small puzzles. I never finished Odyssey, because it was just boring. You were flooded with armors and all things to do were the same. Liked Origins and the old AC games, but Valhalla has the most fun game elements. After finishing the story I can’t say that is great. Origins had a better story (but not like AC II).

Valhalla has the potential to be a great game. If they fix the many bugs, remove the non cosmetic Iaps, improve they story, add some repeatable content or way to replay missions.

I really hope they continue and improve the small puzzles.

@b00msie

in odyssey you really make builds, in valhalla it doesnt even matter what you wear most armor are alike as weapon perk, and its all [censored] easy even on drngr

@imaginaryruins Is not negative people,but in a forum Is normal that are different opinion and sometimes opposit point of view.

This game is good, but Ubisoft created a game with no deep in gameplay and structure.

Skill tree, no sense.

Combat, good on paper but animation and hotbox are terrible.

Play souls or nioh and understand what are good animation.

World are empty.


Game is too easy, no difference in build and armor don't affect your gameplay.

Valhalla is too much "superficial" , but Ubisoft look only ar store.

Puzzle, my god, are for a 2 years child repeated xxx time.

@customer_x

couldnt agree more.

@asgardian02

In Odyssey you had to make an assassins build, archery build, combat build and then you could defeat everyone. All enemies were the same. To make some harder to beat, you had to hit them a ridiculous amount of times. Not much strategy was needed, you had to be fast an the buttons. A sort of simplified version of Tekken.

The detection of enemies with Birdseye was much too easy in Odyssey, so they made it difficult to do a one strike assassins kill. In Vallhalla I really like it that the raven is not so powerfull. It shows you objects on the map to explore, but does not highlight the enemies. The way Valhalla handles this is much better.

The theme of Assassins Creed is Assassins. In Valhalla they brought this back a bit. You can play it like a viking, but they stimulate the sneaky approach in a lot of missions. After the first chapter of the game I felt like I started as a viking, just button smashing my way through the game, but later on you are really stimulated to play it as an assassin. Maybe a lot of the players did not even notice this...

The puzzles are a bit easy, but fun. I agree they could have made them harder. In Odyssey it was just grinding, no fun in that at all.

@b00msie

yeah i dont agree with you. I never got odyssey to play as an assassin. I like melee combat i hate ranged combat, never touched the bow in odyssey nor in valhalla.
Odyssey was easy even on hardest setting but still harder then valhalla in hard setting.

There is absolute no reason to play stealth in valhalla. The world isnt hostile in any way. Why on earth would you mingle with a group of monks to get through the gate which takes like 5minutes or more, when you can just as easily climb the wall.

@asgardian02

For a normal soldier you get 10 skill points for a normal kill and 15 for an assassination, with heavy soldiers its 75 points instead of 50. But next to that, a lot of times the game hints you should play it sneaky. Of course you don't have to, this way Ubisoft makes sure, more people like the game. But if you look at the points given, it is clear what they originally wanted you to do.

I like to play it in way that I won't be detected. It is much more a challenge this way and the challenge is my reward. You could easily storm each monachstry, but I prefer to first sneak through them and kill most of the guards and then storm it.

What I like is that they made it fun for everyone, you can sneak around or do the frontal assault. I agree they should have added an other difficulty level for people who only do the frontal assaults, although it is not really the AC way.

@b00msie

how is it more a challenge to attack 1 enemy at a time vs running through the front gate and alarming the entire fort your there?
But yeah to each their own gameplay i can respect that. Your play style would bore me to death though, lols.

@b00msie When I started Valhalla, I hated not being able to use the bird, and the rations really annoyed me. However, after replaying Odyssey, I now realise that actually both of those systems make Valhalla easier, not harder. Odin's sight you can spam in battle, allowing you to re-highlight enemies (okay most of the time you end up booby-trapping a body instead). So while the bird is worse for scouting, in the end the ability to re-highlight the enemies makes it easier overall. As for the rations - it's only hard at the beginning, once you maxed them you actually have to be trying to run out of them. In Odyssey, you have to escape battle or use a skill with a cooldown to regenerate health, and you have to be out of combat to use the bird too, so once you are spotted the highlighting is gone. Both have health on hit effects for weapons.

@ImaginaryRuins I've said it before, but again for the record, people moaning a lot here are mostly people who did enjoy the game except for certain things. No one in their right mind can be bothered to complain about something they 100% hate more than a few times. So I'll say it again: I enjoyed Valhalla a lot as long as I was doing the main quest, but they didn't build/improve on Odyssey apparently - at all. It's like Odyssey never happened and this is the next game after Origins.

Agreed, my wife is currently replaying Odyssey and I can't help but thinking it would be too much loot if she even got 10% of what she's currently picking up. And even though she's a gamer that enjoys the reward loop of gathering loot, she agrees with me- Odyssey's just way overboard with it.

I didn't mind Valhalla's method, though I could've used just a bit more. This may be a bit off topic, but more gameplay variety would've been nice too. I like having a few different skins of things like axes, for example, but I feel like you hit a point of diminishing returns after two or three (and my gosh are there a ton of shields!).

Instead, it would've been neat to have more weapon types. One-handed swords being a big one.

Major props that they added the flail, though. Such an under-represented weapon in most games, and I had a blast wielding it in my game.