Review: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
The Assassin’s Creed franchise used to be my jam. So many snowy Christmas breaks were spent parkouring across Italian rooftops, capturing feathers and treasure chests. Somewhere between Assassin’s Creed: Revolutions and Assassin’s Creed III—when it became clear that there was no narrative direction for the Desmond Miles storyline—that passion began to wane. The franchise and I have had a bit of a complex relationship ever since. For every Black Flag or Origins that I sink 100+ hours into loving, there’s a Syndicate or Odyssey that I bounce off completely. It was after my experience with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey that I felt that my interest in the series was at its lowest point. For as large as that game was, for as captivating as Ancient Greece is, and as gorgeous as the graphics were, it was a game that never felt like Assassin’s Creed to me. With these recent releases, Ubisoft has overhauled the games completely and taken them into more of a loot-driven, craft-heavy RPG direction. It’s not for everyone. Personally, that’s never what I wanted from an Assassin’s Creed game.
After Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima was released earlier this year to critical acclaim and managed to do Assassin’s Creed better than modern-day Assassin’s Creed games do, fair or not, there’s a lot of extra pressure on this Valhalla release.
The first (and most obvious) thing that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has going for it is the setting itself. Not only is the age of Vikings fascinating, but it also offers up a radically different tone from its predecessors and lends itself well to this universe. The bright golden vistas of Egypt and Greece have been swapped for England’s murky countryside, and as crazy as it sounds, it’s an improvement. Even as the amount of Norse mythology in pop culture in 2020 seems excessive with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and God of War, there’s still room for more. When Ubisoft finally announced that the latest Assassin’s Creed was going to be set during the Viking Era, it became the title that I was most anticipated for this holiday season that wasn’t called Cyberpunk 2077.
COVID-19 hit my region hard in March of 2020, and I found myself suddenly working from home and having a lot of extra time on my hands. Needing something to keep me company in the background, I started to binge through all the series that were on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime that I didn’t have time for before the pandemic. Among those was the show Vikings. Being that there are six seasons of the show on Amazon Prime, that was a lot of binging. By the end of it, I felt like I knew Ragnar Lodbrok and his family better than I knew my own. As it turns out, this was the perfect primer for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. For those that watched the show—which I believe to include the developers themselves—you’re going to feel right at home with the lore and viciousness that Ragnar, his sons, and the Vikings brought with them from the mountains of Norway to the riverbeds of coastal England. However, there are some creative liberties taken that veer from Viking culture that dilute the authenticity a bit.
Vikings are known for their brutal raids on small villages, and that’s something that Valhalla doesn’t shy away from. It embraces it. As the captain of the Raven Clan’s ship, you, Eivor, prey upon any and all small towns that dare set up near the river’s banks. With the press of a button, Eivor blows his/her horn, their ship hits land, and more than a dozen AI-controlled Norsemen spill out. Even after you have done this process dozens of times, it never gets old. It’s such an adrenaline rush. Whether it’s a small encampment, a town, or a monastery, it doesn’t matter, you’re going to burn it down and take anything and everything of value. If the guardsmen have the nerve to deny you what you’re after, you slaughter them in the most ruthless way imaginable. You will always feel like an asshole when you do this, but, hey, you’re a Viking.
The game doesn’t let you go full Viking, though. During these raids, you can’t kill civilians or force the Saxons into slavery, but I suppose a line had to be drawn somewhere. There are times where that reluctance to go full Ragnar can get a bit maddening, though.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla plays a lot like 2018’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey but feels grounded—and in a good way. For example, The climbing and parkour system in Odyssey was unsatisfying for anyone that’s been playing this series since the beginning. It was almost as bad as Syndicate’s grappling hook. In those earlier games, climbing a church rooftop so that you could synchronize the area used to be a puzzle in itself. What do you climb on? If you grabbed this and then jumped over there, could you reach that? You could spend hours trying to climb some of the cathedral ceilings using trial and error, but it was so satisfying when you finally made it to the top. In Odyssey, whether it was a rocky ridge, a marble wall, or a smooth statue, it was so hand-holdy that you could climb up anything with no issue as if you were Spider-Man. In Valhalla, Ubisoft seems to have found a nice middle ground. Climbing terrain isn’t much of a challenge, but some thought is needed to climb bell towers, ruins, and gaining access to secret areas.
That sense of grounding the gameplay isn’t limited to the climbing mechanic. The story in Valhalla feels far more like what that old Assassin’s Creed fanbase (myself included) are looking for. You’re not waiting for hours to see how this story fits into the overall Assassins vs. Templar storyline. While crafting and looting remain important components in the game, and, while it’s still very much an RPG, it’s nowhere near as overwhelming and in need of micromanaging as it was in the previous two entries.
If people want to compare Origins and Odyssey to The Witcher and Dark Souls, Valhalla’s equivalent would be Red Dead Redemption 2. Inventory management and side-mission structure feel very inspired by RDR2, and just as Arthur Morgan had a home base that he could upgrade with resources found throughout the game, Eivor has a settlement of his/her own. The Raven Clan came to England with nothing but the clothes on their backs and whatever possessions that they could carry, so when Eivor does find the resources throughout the world that allow him to upgrade the camp, there’s more to it than simply cosmetics.
With Valhalla shifting away from Odyssey and focusing on making a more realistic and gritty experience, my least favorite parts of this game are the elements that take away from that. Whereas the early Assassin’s Creed games had combat that focused on stealth, precision, timing, and parrying, Valhalla, like Odyssey, takes a more traditional approach. That makes sense in this situation since you’re a Viking, but the combat doesn’t feel or look like the other elements of the game. So much detail was put into this world, so when your character makes these exaggerated swinging motions with their fire that is ablaze or they dodge from an attack like they’re Sonic the Hedgehog, it doesn’t fit. I would have preferred something slower, something a bit more realistic in that sense. If Ubisoft takes anything from Ghost of Tsushima, I hope it’s a retooling of their combat.
Then there are the bugs. It wouldn’t be an Assassin’s Creed game without bugs, but Valhalla’s are some of the most crippling issues that I have ever experienced. As Eivor, you will find yourself relying on your AI-controlled comrades more than usual. It’s steering your boat, it’s controlling the horse that you’re galloping on, and it’s controlling a dozen-plus characters during your raids. With that much reliance on the game’s AI, of course there are going to be issues. Some of those issues will draw a laugh, like when you call for your ship when you’re too close to the shore and the AI-controlled boat starts to fly into the air end-over-end. Those are harmless and make for a great use of the Playstation and Xbox’s share button. But while raiding monasteries, Eivor will come across treasure chests that he cannot open himself and door’s that he can’t force open on his own. In those situations, an animation will kick in where Eivor turns to his teammates and demands that they help him. This works most of the time. But when it doesn’t, it’s frustrating. You can be in an empty building with nothing but the other Viking’s and sometimes they won’t help Eivor. They’ll either just stand there or randomly runoff. There’s no other way to open that chest either so you’re awkwardly stuck in this “come help me” animation until you finally give up on getting whatever treasures were in there. I ran into other encounters where my teammates wouldn’t follow me into the very next room to help fight a half dozen enemies–even when I would run back and forth between rooms. Maybe they just didn’t like me?
Lapses in the AI’s abilities were nearly the only technical issue that I ran into, though. On the next-gen systems, Valhalla runs at a smooth 60 FPS and looks incredible with its 4K and HDR. On the Xbox Series X, there was constant screen tearing during cutscenes, though. Not sure what that was all about.
Those issues can be patched out. My biggest issue with this game cannot be fixed that easily. Like Origins and Odyssey before it, Valhalla incorporates a lot of elements of mythology into the story. As fascinating as that mythology may be, I have no interest in implementing that into the gameplay. After 20+ hours of Valhalla, I hit a long stretch of the game that takes place in Asgard and I had to force myself to get through it. Again, like Odyssey, it’s not bad, it’s just not what I want from Assassin’s Creed. Save all of that prehistoric space magician stuff for the out-of-Animus storyline. Nobody cares about that. Just don’t taint my historic political assassination simulator with giant snake boss fights, magical weapons, and fraternizing with gods.
Earlier, I said that in my complex relationship with this series I’m either fully in and playing 100+ hours or I’m not feeling it and moving onto the next thing. In that case, for me, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a step in the right direction. Issues with the bugs aside, I had a blast with this game. I really don’t mind games that make you grind as long as they’re fun to play, and Valhalla nails that. The character of Eivor is the best assassin since Edward Kenway in Black Flag, and the world that you experience as him/her is diverse and full of detailed content. It’s the type of game that you can easily get lost in and end up spending 100+ hours with. In my opinion, it’s far superior to Odyssey, and the setting and aesthetic give it a slight edge over Origins as well.
If you’re into this new RPG-centric Assassin’s Creed, you’re no doubt going to want to sink your teeth into Valhalla. But if you’re someone that was turned off by this approach and prefer the style of the earlier games, there are enough elements of that in here that I would still recommend giving it a shot. If you’re considering it at all, I also highly recommend that you check out the show Vikings as well. That show and this game complement each other greatly.
