Assassin's Creed Valhalla review

Or the journey of a medieval diplomat through the lands of England

Usually game portals try to go through the game before the official release and publish a full review, as this is a significant plus in many ways with the reader. But here's the bad luck: Assassin's Creed Valhalla's storyline was so big that it took some (we won't point fingers) almost three weeks to complete it. And it’s not even a stretched plot: you just don’t want to miss all the delights of the game world and additional activities. In this regard, Ubisoft has made a big breakthrough: if in the Odyssey you had to complete additional tasks to level up and successfully complete the story quests, in Valhalla you will do side activities at will, and almost every one will give you a lot of fun. But let's talk about everything in order!

The latest part of the Assassin's Creed series offers a look at the events of the ninth century through the eyes of a Viking who, in his late childhood, loses his mother and father and remains in the care ofthe head of a family-friendly clan. For the first few hours of gameplay, it may seem that the main goal of the hero named Eivor ( or the heroine, since you yourself can choose the gender of the protagonist or change it right during the gameplay ) is to avenge the death of relatives. But when revenge is done, and justice prevails, the hero loses a clear goal and literally "goes with the flow." Having come up with nothing better, Eivor, together with his clan, sets off to conquer new lands straight to England.

The "real" world of the Assassin's Creed Valhalla virtual universe is on the verge of a collapse that could destroy all life on the planet. We will find out about this as soon as we leave the coast of Norway. But why did scientists from “our” time need the memories of a Viking, who, even if from time to time, sees pagan gods? You can get an answer to this question only at the very end of the game, but for now we have arrived in England and are already ready to build the first walls of our own city.

The construction and arrangement of the settlement - Ubisoft announced this mechanic at the development stage of the game. But in fact, no strategy is observed. You just need to improve existing buildings and build new ones until your village gets the status of a city. But do you need resources to build houses? It was not proper for the Norwegian Vikings to extract wood, stones and other materials in a natural way. It is easier to take away the accumulated surplus from the neighbors! "Raids" on Christian monasteries in search of such prey is almost the only resource extraction mechanic in the game. Of course, a few materials can always be found in chests scattered around the world, but if you firmly decide to build a city, then naturally this will not be enough. On the other hand, no one forces you to develop the city, although it depends on whether you can go through additional and no less interesting quest lines.

Indeed, in order to complete the story of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, you do not need to deal with many hours of level grinding and constant improvement of the protagonist's equipment, which we consider a big breakthrough after the same "Odyssey". If you are aiming to run through the story, then the skills obtained for such tasks are more than enough to continue the story. That's justthe existing side mission mechanics will keep you from getting past the corresponding marker once you figure out how they work. Instead of the usual side activities like “kill twenty cows” or “farm a hundred pieces of iron”, the game features full-fledged, albeit short, stories called “World Events”. It only takes a few minutes to complete such events, but each time such a challenge will be stored in your memory, mainly due to its uniqueness. During the passage, we found more than a hundred similar quests, but none was similar to the previous ones.

But what are we all about good. The combat system in Valhalla is practically the same as the combat system in the previous parts, with the exception of one detail. If earlier in the game about assassins in many missions you had to use stealth and perform stealth kills, then the mighty Viking prefers to act in a completely opposite way. Even at the beginning of the game, when an assassin from the Hidden Guild hands the hidden blade to the protagonist, he puts it on the other side. No, no one forbids acting secretly in the game??aye. There is everything you need for this: tall bushes in which you can hide from the guards, stealthy murders, a hood on a cloak and all the same crowds of monks who roam the cities of the whole world from part to part and kindly take our assassin wherever they need. It's just that there is little sense from this, because according to the plot, the heroes of history always act openly and by force. What's the use of stealth, when almost every story quest that completes the quest line, a mob of angry Vikings storm the enemy fortress, attack outposts or overthrow kings. But even so, it is really easy to play, although crushing enemies to the right and left gets boring already somewhere in the middle of the game. When this happens, you try to avoid direct conflicts in every possible way, look for workarounds and inadvertently use stealth mechanics.

In general, the storyline is a fascinating journey through the regions of England in search of allies. So, for someone to refuse an alliance to our glorious Viking, of course, it is not provided here, but even such a trick in the context of this game could be called a good innovation. Is every storyline?The quest lake is presented in its own way, although there are also some similarities. To forge alliances, for example, you'll have to investigate the murder of an ealdorman, recapture a castle from Saxon invaders, and even kidnap the wife of the city's ruler. If only these adventures were not spoiled by the monotonous surroundings: almost all cathedrals and castles are very similar to each other. At some points, the developers did not even bother and simply inserted the same attractions in all regions. The same applies to the capture of fortresses: ram through the gates, get rid of the guards, lower the bridge and kill the leader of the enemy clan - a good half of the game is built according to this scenario.

Castles, captures, fights - that's what else. But with moving around the open world in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, trouble is really happening. And this despite the fact that the world here is really huge. In addition to the two main locations - Norway and England, you can also visit North America and two small regions of the pagan gods, Asgard and Jotunheim.

I'll start with Eivor's main transport - horses. In no game in the past few years have I sweared at this vehicle so much. Firstly, the developers went too far with the physics of the horse, now the main character, for example, has earth gravity equal to one, and the horse has ten. If you follow thetrodden path, then this very gravity is equal to yours, but as soon as you try to jump onto the hill, it immediately becomes noticeable that something is wrong here. A very gentle rise turns into a real test for the mare: she bays, grunts and gallops more slowly than the hero would walk on foot. Secondly, we all understand that branches and small bushes are not an obstacle for the horse. But horse Eivor does not think so and stops at almost every small branch. As it stops, she continues to run, but the hero model with the horse remains in place. To be honest, I'm tired of meeting with such incidents, given that most of the passage moved on my own two feet.

The second available transport in the game is small ships, longships. Since there are many intersecting rivers in England, a full-fledged ship would hardly have turned around here, but sometimes the width of the river becomes too small for a longship. It would seem that if automatic movement was already introduced into the game, it would be possible to finish it to the end. But no, a drakkar, like a horse climbing a hill, during automatic movement can easily run into rocks and stop its journey.

If we discard all the minor faults, some monotony, and, of course, my nit-picking, Assassin's Creed Valhalla turned out to be a really big and spectacular game. There is no intrigue here, because we do not understand what is happening in the relationship of the characters almost until the very end (and some did not understand anything even after the end), but for an adventure action game in the open world, the project looks very, very good. If Ubisoft released this game under a different name, it seems to me that users would like it no less than the current Assassin's Creed without assassins.