It has the hidden blade and shield that was missing from Odyssey but aside from that i can't think of much it does better. The assassination animations are worse in Valhalla regardless of the hidden blade.

Valhalla has a dual wielding system but the combat is clunky and unenjoyable to begin with and swinging two ridiculous looking inflatable weapons around isn't that appealing, either.

Short and simple answer:

No.

@tskales Yes, makes you go even crazier when all your loot, weapons, levels, upgrades and abilities disappear and places to get them are looted so they're just gone.

@netspook Yes, World puzzles. Camps arent mostly "run inside, loot 2 chests, shoot 3 arrows, run away". The outposts are all pretty unique. No copy paste like Odyssey did a lot for all their hundreds of camps. Some were even copy pasted right beside each other. Level system is way better than Origins/Odyssey. Stealth is way better even tho it's not at the level of titles before Origins. It is still the best from all the 3 mythological games. The settlement is giving an incentive to actually raid and loot. The gear upgrades is better handled and feels less like an "attack vector" for microtransaction.

The order of the ancients are way better handled (at least than Odyssey) with all the kill screens and little details. The world events are basically the "childish factor" of the game. Just like the Sex Odyssey of Odyssey. But some of these world events are very deep and actually give the world way more depth. Sad that they didn't use them a lot more as little stories to give the world more depth but instead also sided for childish quests like the snake egg lady.

Assassinations finally are lethal again. (with a minigame or by switching an option). Stealth should be rewarded and not punished by having an enemy you can't kill with a single blow therefore you can't proceed without engaging in an open fight.

AI made some improvements in some places but I feel like they made some changes making it worse. (Why is there not an opposite of improvement in english?) I do like the variety of enemies. I think there are 27 types and some variations of these types depending on the region you are in.

Sadly they still have magical abilities but they reduced it so not every skill is basically magic. (Just explained with a "It's an eden piece yada yada")

But the world building is far superior imo to Odyssey. Odyssey had that copy & paste feeling also in villages and cities. This feeling is pretty much gone in Valhalla (also because there are not many cities and they are not as big as for example Athene)

I can come up with some more later maybe

Rather get it on with female Eivor than hairy Kasdandra. Kassandra would’ve smelt like a sweaty bun

The Skill Tree....for one is a great add-on in terms of anyone able to have more say in what type of character they want..

Dual Welding....another huge plus with various amount of combinations.

Settlement......I personally like this as a nice touch of building and making something instead of having some Hut or Room.

Able to Upgrade Gear In Various Ways.....another big plus as there's different levels, ways to upgrade, add slots for the Runes which along with The Skill Tree gives players more options than any other previous AC Game.

Raids and Siege....while Odyssey gave up the Open Field Battles, we get double in Raids and Sieges...these never get old and wish they be even more providing loot was added to ones you did before...

Alliances..... I think this provides more focus to an area better than Odyssey which seemed to have you all over the place with multiple stories and missions. I hope they can continue to use and put these areas to use...be it in some Battle or Trade, Resources, calling for help...something....

@buzzster99
One thing which disappointed me: The hidden ones armor doesn't change appearance when upgraded Or is my game bugged?

Ahm the only thing I can think of is the flyting, I really like that and the repeatable romance scenes, I love those. In every single other aspect I much prefer Odyssey.

Well to be honest I also like building up my own base and scattering decorations about, but Odyssy had the ship which I also loved upgrading and decorating..

@souldrinkerlp Hidden Ones Armor starts with it's final appearance (as in it only has one look).

@linkedtoreality Upgrading it felt pretty unrewarding due to that. I really liked how the raven armor changed with each upgrade. I was looking forward to do the same with the hidden ones outfit.

The settlement, and it's in England and i like the raids, but if you mean the parkour, combat and stealth and bugged missions then the answer is no it doesn't, they are worse in my opinion, at the moment that is, hopefully that will change.

@tskales Not sure about Origins but Valhalla gives me nothing that Odyssey gave me, but it does take a load of stuff away. Does that count?

I am part way through another run of Odyssey and have no desire to go back to Valhalla. It feels so dead dull and lifeless compared to Odyssey.

No. I am not sure how anyone is accepting this combat? in Odyssey you felt like you were fighting the camera was right over your shoulder and you could see the blow coming and dodge or block etc.

Valhalla you are looking at the battlefield like you are flying a drone, far away, how does anyone accept that? Its horrible. Sometimes I lose which one I am. just some guy in the crowd, Obviously this was deliberate, far away, means you don't have to show details or have good animation, saves money.

The grainy unclear and crisp graphics, Odyssey was a beautiful game, this game is a few years back from Odyssey.

@tskales Than Origins, not much, but Odyssey, everything. I just enjoy this game. Odyssey was a slow death dragged me to hell, but Valhalla does everything better. Evior is excellent character, compared to Kassandra, and annoying Alexios. Stealth works like is supposed to work, there's no equipment and weapons clutter.
I'm only at 48% completion with around 98 hours in, and never seen a single location that looks the same like Odyssey. No endless mindless quests like go here kill that.
At first, i thought that the map was a bit small, but now i don't think so anymore, not to spoil anything....
In short, great game. So, who likes it, enjoy playing, who don't, play something you like...
Have fun...

The sound of footsteps in the snow is incredibly authentic. It is so authentic that, as a Canadian from a snowy province, it deeply disturbs me.

Origins didn’t have snow, but Odyssey had a bit. Valhalla does it better than Odyssey.

Otherwise, Valhalla doesn’t seem to do anything else better.

There are some things that I like about Valhalla, but unfortunately, there are also a lot of things that I don't like about it. Combat feels clunky compared to the last two games, the parkour is worse (feels like my character rubbed glue all over his body and is sticking to every surface), lack of weapon/armor gear variety makes the game feel unrewarding and limits build diversity (I played through 50% of the game wearing the same armor set), and there are some activities that I absolutely hate (like the Tron-like jumping puzzles, which doesn't go well with the terrible parkour system). There are so many annoying things in this game that's really testing my patience that I never felt in the previous games. Even the horse slowing to a crawl whenever you get aggro really irks me for some reason (as if people weren't already annoyed that the horse slowed down for no reason whenever you're around a city).

Don't get me wrong, I'm still "kind of" enjoying the game, but it's definitely a major step backwards from Odyssey, at least for me.

For me, the following features make Valhalla the superior game vs Odyssey.

1. Removing side-quests and attaching a multitude of mysteries
2. Settlement: its nice to see your progression affecting the world.
3. Romance: the feature of a long-term relationship was the reason I bought this game, but alas there were too few conversations. Eivor and Randvi rarely talked about anything that mattered.
4. Raiding: Love me some church burning and pillaging.
5. No level gating of the main quest - I went at my own speed. (note that I stopped playing Odyssey because I it felt like a grind to be able to progress in the main quest)
6. Granular difficulty: Interesting feature which I used.
7. Less equipment: I don't want to manage inventory.
8. Cats: I love petting them; there's one on the boat!
9. Mini-Games: I usually ignore mini-games, but found myself partaking way more than I normally would.
10. Sneaking mini-game: I loved the challenge of timing a stealth kill that was above my level.