I spent a good long while playing Assassins Creed Valhalla and i’ve finally finished it, to the extent that these open world games can be considered ‘finished’ anyway. I did not ‘complete’ it; there was no 100%-ing here. There will be a few spoilers (including the ending) below.

I don’t have a long history with Assassins Creed; the first game turned me off by starting the story in modern day which was not what i came here for, so i never made it more than a few minutes into that one. But earlier this year a friend convinced me to give Odyssey a try, and it turns out i loved that game and played it obsessively. It helped that i found out most people just ignore the modern day story and rush through its scant scene. I then started Origins and made a little headway into it, but i decided Valhalla was more compelling to me, so i put Origins on pause and jumped a head (thanks PlayStation Plus).

The Good

Valhalla had a strong story. Eivor’s journey shifting from the exploration and conquering of England to the exploration of herself was good. I found myself avoiding walkthroughs as much as possible for this game, in large part because i wanted to avoid spoiling the story for myself; along the way i found myself developing theories about which characters might be up to what.

The story led me down quite a rabbit hole on Wikipedia reading about 9th century England and the Viking raids. It’s been a blind spot in my historical knowledge; unlike Odyssey where most of the famous that-guys from history were at least names i had heard of, most of the historical figures in Valhalla i was not at all familiar with. It lead me on quite a learning journey, and even inspired me to start planning a trip to England to visit the county which bears my name.

I expected to hate the quests taking me through Asgard but they were so key to the game’s story and didn’t overstay their welcome. The game managed to make Norse mythology compelling to me in a way that Marvel re-imaginations never were able to.

Th ending was far stronger than Odyssey’s. The end of Odyssey boiled down to having a dinner with my long lost mom, a-hole step brother, my step dad, and my feral sister. And then the game just… kept going. It didn’t feel like a true ending, just another event in a rich game, that didn’t give me the satisfaction of feeling like i was “done”. With Valhalla’s chapter organization, this was not the case. Fighting Fenrir, going to Valhalla with Sigurd, and the sacking of Hamtunscire all built up nicely, and then Gunnar’s wedding followed by The Last Chapter were a lovely denouement. Even though the game is still playable at this point (and i left a lot undone) i felt satisfaction at the end of the game, and ready to move on.

The Bad

As much as i loved the story, i felt it was very underserved by the gameplay. It is not nearly as much a sneaky stabby hide in the shadows game as its priors, which i adapted to, but it would have been nice to have more of that in there; the majority of the game i played as straight hack and slash.

The bigger problem however is that a lot of the time the game felt too big, both in sense of length, and in a more literal sense. There were so many periods where i had to go from one quest point to another traveling a long distance, with very little to do in-between. A lot of time was spent just running across the map with my controller in one hand and my phone in the other. Side quests were replaced by “world events” that for the most part only take a minute or two to complete and mostly stay contained within their little area, and big chunks of the map left these scarcely spaced out. Odyssey and Origins definitely did a better job of making the world seem full and active.

The other problem with the game’s bigness is its length. I wrapped up right at 100 hours, without bothering to purchase any of the game’s DLC. You get a lot of bang for your buck, but some of the story’s overarching themes get lost in that time. By the time we get to the big revelations regarding Eivor’s hugr, i had vaguely forgotten a lot of the background told through flashback and visions in the beginning of the game and had to jog my memory to see how the pieces fit together. The story taffy was pulled a little to thin across the expanse of the game i think.

The Miscellaneous

One of my least favorite parts of Fallout 4 was going to Far Harbor and, to unlock the origins of the mysterious synth DiMA, the game introduces a weird virtual reality platformer that the game’s engine couldn’t really support. Valhalla added this too with its Animus anomalies to explore as Layla, but larger, taller, and more annoying. They’re spread out all over the world but i think i only happened upon half of them; completing all of them unlocks a cutscene at the end that adds some clarity to the ending of the story. I only know this because i just looked it up right now to see what the point of them was and watched the cutscene on YouTube.

Niflheim, the roguelike dungeon runner, added nothing to the game i feel like. I did one dungeon run after accidentally starting into the quest and was annoyed at the waste of time and didn’t revisit it again. There’s enough to do in the game already.

Basim’s brief heel turn at the end of the game threw me for a loop; it made sense in the story but after fighting him i did not feel that he had shaken off Loki in anyway and expected him to keep playing the villain, up through the point where he shows up in the modern day story, where i expected him to some how fuck things up for Layla and crew. The only reason i know he isn’t the villain is because i know he’s the protagonist in the forthcoming Mirage, but still it does not feel like he earned his redemption after that battle in Norway.

I tend to hate games-within-games, whether it’s Elder Scrolls Online’s Tales of Tribute or Horizon Forbidden West’s Strike, or even just plain ol poker in Red Dead Redemption. That said, i found myself enjoying Orlog enough that i would seek out the Orlog player in each town. I even thought about buying the IRL Orlog game they sell but that’s a bridge too far for me.