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.

This is something typical that I have been seeing on this forum lately. No matter what is released, people are just not content with it.

The river raids introduced several new cool mechanisms, new maps, gears and abilities, and yet people are not content.
Just looking at this post and apparently someone would have preferred 'a transmog system' or a NG+ over a completely new game mode.

I mean seriously, there is no pleasing people in this forum.

@duskdragon56496

Yup. I did defend Odyssey alot and I have 500+ hours in that game. And I was pretty much done with Odyssey by mid 2019.
After that I played Division 2 for close to 2000 hours. Actually made tons of one shot builds there too. Division is almost the same type looter game as Odyssey.

I still think that Odyssey was a great game and I really liked it. And the reason I defended Odyssey was because at the time the idea was a change for AC games and hence I welcomed it. The second reason I defended was because the gear system was the core mechanic of the game which just couldn't be changed. I made all those one shots builds so that the game could feel like what Valhalla plays like right now i.e one shot assassination, enemies not being spongy.

Having said the above, I made this post a while back, when I saw tons and tons of posts about people criticizing the 'gear system' in this game. The post wasn't really about criticizing Odyssey, but rather a reactive post sharing my view on the gear system in Valhalla.

I still think that the story in Odyssey was more engaging. But the mysteries in Valhalla are miles better than side quests in Odyssey. I prefer the gear system in Valhalla (yes I can't make any builds) but this means that more people can now get in and enjoy the game. The naval, weekly ships and tales of greece were far better in Odyssey compared to the buggy mess the Yule event was. Overall I liked both games and own day 1 Gold Editions for both. Just because i am admiring one aspect of Valhalla doesn't mean that I think Odyssey was crap.

I think after the whole store bought armor sets outnumbering the base game armorsets debacle, seeing the river raids mode is a refreshing and a long needed change that this game needed in terms of post launch support.

I haven't played the mode enough so this post is primarily based on my early impressions of the mode.

First, I have been seeing tons of posts on reddit and even on this forum mentioning that the game doesn't 'feel' like a viking game. I think, with the addition of the river raids, to some extend, the game does feel like a viking game. And I can also see why this is added as a separate mode compared to the base game, as the base game was supposed to serve as an 'Assassin's Creed' game.

Second, looking at the core mechanics, I really like that instead of adding just new maps, abilities and gears (which definitely were needed), the game has also introduced new raiding mechanics such as jomsviking health, ranks and raiding alert level. In addition (I am not entirely sure), but once you raid a location, there is a cooldown where the location is destroyed and randomly generated again bringing replayability in the mode. Even the small things like ringing a bell to refresh the recruitable jomsviking is well thought out (now if only there was a way to recruit friends' jomsviking). Overall, all these mechanics are nice, and even though they aren't as comprehensive as the ones developed for standalone games, they are still detailed enough to serve as part of a new game mode.

Finally, I was fan of the mysteries and puzzles in the base game, and based on the initial impressions, they are also a part of the new game mode, which is great.

Overall, river raids mode has delivered (atleast based on the initial impressions), but only time will tell, how much this mode keeps the community engaged.

Have the same issue mate. Its sad that this post has been a month old and there has been no response from any of the mods. Atleast add this issue to the known issue list.

@animuslover I dont understand why it has to be one or the other. Why is new content not welcomed? Should the devs fix issues, definitely, should every single new content piece be delayed until every last person has every single thing fixrd, I dont think so. They should keep with the new content schedule while also focusing on issues. Most studios, especially as big as Ubisoft have multiple teams, so the team working on the bugs could be, and likely is, totally different than the team working on new content.

I agree with you on the trophies part as I still havent been able to get all my trophies transferred over from PS4 to PS5, which I don't know will ever happen or not.

As for the mastery challenges, I actually really enjoyed them. I got gold in all of them (except 2 hunters where I had silver) when the mode came out. The assassination challenges were super fun and hard to get gold on and required alot of planning. River raids were the ones which I wasnt too excited about, but I can see why some people would like that due to mindless hack and slash.

@max18400 I agree on that. Valhalla needed more time in play testing and the fact that they actually pushed the release date to an early date is just plainly unacceptable. You can't blame COVID when you are actually releasing the game before actual release date. The Yule festival was probably the worst post-lauch content I have ever played. It was totally unplayable.

@dreadgrrl

My turn to dig up an old thread. Lol.

Just came on to say, I saw your jomsviking today in raventhorpe and recruited him. Usually I ignore those bunch as my Eivor is too good for those peasants, but for some reason, today I actually went and checked if it belonged to someone I knew.

@animuslover I hear ya mate. But as I said, there is no 1 team doing it all. There are multiple teams tasked with different stuff. Yes there is a QA team which I am sure isnt doing a very good job at making sure that things are bug free when new content is released.
This is a typical product development thing. I am pretty sure the team making new content would not even know how the base game is coded, and it could possibly be that they are based in a totally different country speaking a totally different language.

@asgardian02 Nope. I am saying that the hate for Valhalla for not having loads and loads of unusable loot, is unjustified. Having said that, there is definitely a need for improvement in alot of things related to gear system in Valhalla.

First and foremost, the numbers in Valhalla are completely unintuitive. There should be a better explanation of what each number means, i.e I have a crit chance of 152 on my dagger. What does that even mean.

Second, there should be some utility explanation of different attributes in the game. i.e what is the difference between Armor, Health and Evasion. In which situation should a person prefer one over the other.

Third, (Odyssey has the same issue which Valhalla reduced but didnt completely fix), there should be venues for spec'ing into different things as opposed to just spec'ing into crit chance and health restore perks.

My point is, if we keep complaining about not getting tons and tons of loot which will get deconstructed at the end of the day, we wont move forward with asking the right questions. As I said before, the gear system of the game is a 'core system', which can't be changed. So the best thing to do is figure out how to better utilize and make sense of the current system.

One major issue that alot of people had with Odyssey was that it wasn't really an AC game. i.e you couldnt play as an assassin because you couldnt one hit assassinate people. Valhalla mitigated that issue with the timed-event assassination ability and just plain one hit assassination game-play option.

When I first started making those one-shot builds I had an idea that crit chance and crit damage was 'kind of' OP and game breaking. As the level cap increased from 50 to 70 to 99 and masteries, the increases in values of crit chance and crit damage completely broke the system. And that is when I stopped making more builds as it stopped feeling rewarding.

As for the amount of gears, as i have said before, Valhalla needs to have more gearsets. I am completely on board with that. But I also think that the idea about having fixed gears is nice as it stops the game from breaking, like Odyssey did.

Another thing that I dont see people mentioning is the quests related to getting some cool ISU items. Like the sword, hammer, and one piece of gear of thor. All those quests and puzzles are really nice and I feel like devs should add more of such things in the game. Because those, to me alteast, feel rewarding.

And as I have said before, one game is not better than the other. Both games have some really nice things, and others which were not so nice.

@animuslover I hear ya mate. But as I said, there is no 1 team doing it all. There are multiple teams tasked with different stuff. Yes there is a QA team which I am sure isnt doing a very good job at making sure that things are bug free when new content is released.
This is a typical product development thing. I am pretty sure the team making new content would not even know how the base game is coded, and it could possibly be that they are based in a totally different country speaking a totally different language.

@freestepper Odyssey is a great game. And so is Valhalla. But both have their issues. As for the discussion of worst game, both of the games are miles better than Syndicate, rouge and AC3. Atleast for me.

@thenorfolkian ofcourse developers should be fixing the bugs. But I think people need to understand that, as I have said before, at large studios like Ubisoft, multiple teams work on different things. It could very well and most likely be that the team which made this change has nothing to do with the team which focuses on fixing bugs.

@lj4mma Origins was awesome. Odyssey was nice and I liked the story and the gear system, But I just couldnt get over the fact that you didnt have a hidden blade. Valhalla is nice too, though the story could have been a bit more intriguing.

As for the worst AC game, I think Valhalla is much better than Syndicate, Rogue, and AC3.

And if sales are anything to go buy, I dont see them changing the formula.

@animuslover I dont understand why it has to be one or the other. Why is new content not welcomed? Should the devs fix issues, definitely, should every single new content piece be delayed until every last person has every single thing fixrd, I dont think so. They should keep with the new content schedule while also focusing on issues. Most studios, especially as big as Ubisoft have multiple teams, so the team working on the bugs could be, and likely is, totally different than the team working on new content.

I agree with you on the trophies part as I still havent been able to get all my trophies transferred over from PS4 to PS5, which I don't know will ever happen or not.

As for the mastery challenges, I actually really enjoyed them. I got gold in all of them (except 2 hunters where I had silver) when the mode came out. The assassination challenges were super fun and hard to get gold on and required alot of planning. River raids were the ones which I wasnt too excited about, but I can see why some people would like that due to mindless hack and slash.

@thenorfolkian is that really such a huge thing that hinders your gameplay?
Seriously, every time I visit this forum, it is filled with such posts.

This issue has been reported countless times in the past 8-10 months, and yet no fix. Its about time to fix this and let PS5 players get the platinum.

As the title says, Light Fingers Skill is not working on PS5.
I tried removing the point and reassigning, sometimes it works for a few minutes, and then compltetely stops working. Other times it just doesnt work.

@crawxubi
I understand, but this list here contains every single thing which is even remotely challenging in Valhalla.

I personally like the mastery challenges (yes there are AI bugs which need fix) and stone challenges. Fishing, not really a fan of. Raids are nice but can get repetitive, same with drinking game. Drinking games are easy and repetitive.

@dreadgrrl

My turn to dig up an old thread. Lol.

Just came on to say, I saw your jomsviking today in raventhorpe and recruited him. Usually I ignore those bunch as my Eivor is too good for those peasants, but for some reason, today I actually went and checked if it belonged to someone I knew.