Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Review - A Fun Adventure With A Few Problems

Written by Chris Woodside  on November 11, 2020

Reviews: A darker and grittier world than the series has ever experienced before and a disappointing step back in some key areas.

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One of the first things players are greeted with when they begin their journey in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is just how much control you have over the minutiae of your adventure. There is not simply a single difficulty mode the player will choose at the outset, but an entire set of difficulty modes. The player will set the challenge level for combat, stealth, and exploration, all of which can be fine tuned to challenge the player at the aspects of the game they feel most comfortable with. Its features like this that make Valhalla the most customizable and unique game in the long running Assassin’s Creed series. Ubisoft has done so many things well in this latest entry, building off of the open world RPG elements that began in Origins and Odyssey, that it's a shame some of the newest features detract from the experience so heavily and prevents a good game from being a masterpiece at the level of its predecessor.

When it comes to the customization mentioned before, Valhalla builds off of the options present in Odyssey where players could choose to play as the Male Alexios or the Female Cassandra. From the beginning, players are asked to choose which version of Eivor they would like to play as, with a third option thrown in the mix. This third option gives players the ability to choose to have the gender of your character determined by what particular missions and moments in the story you are experiencing. Rather than pushing the player in any one direction, Ubisoft confirmed prior to release that this dynamic gender selection is the “canon” option in the story, the reasons of which I won't spoil but are weaved in well with the lore and canon of the Assassin’s Creed narrative. While the dynamic character option is a unique way to provide players additional choices, I found the voice acting and overall experience to be more entertaining playing as the female Eivor and in a second playthrough would probably choose to select the female option from the beginning.



The journey in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla stretches across more geographic space than any title in the series before it. You begin as a young child in your Norse village of Vikings and experience a brutal tragedy at a very young age, before eventually deciding to set off on your own to England. It’s here when you arrive in England a few hours into the story where the world of Valhalla truly begins to open up and introduces the player to the new gameplay mechanics that truly set this title apart from the more recent open world entries in the series. You are tasked with adventuring across the Kingdom, forming alliances, and raiding to your heart's content.

The world that Ubisoft Montreal has crafted of Middle Ages Britain is truly stunning. Playing this game for the first time on a PC running a 3080 graphics card squeezed out every bit of beauty and detail that Ubisoft put in. The world of England and Norway in Valhalla has such a varied amount of landscapes and climates that it feels as though Ubisoft is simply showing off at times in just how beautiful this world could be from the snow capped mountains of Norway to the grassy fields and long rivers of feudal England. Thankfully, the developers included a cinematic view option for long travelling that is reminiscent of the open sailing options of Black Flag that give players the opportunity to truly appreciate the effort that went into designing every aspect of this game. I found myself more than once hopping into a Viking ship, setting a marker at the other end of the map, and throwing the game in cinematic mode as I just marveled at the lighting, visuals, and gritty colors that defined this era of English history.



As beautiful as this time in history may be, however, it certainly isn't without its drawbacks. In many ways, this is the darkest Assassin’s Creed title yet, with the possible exception of the very first game set against the backdrop of the Crusades. While the world is beautiful nonetheless, it does lose a bit of the character that Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt had from the previous two games. Unfortunately, this also extends to the dialogue and voice acting. Eivor is very well voice acted, particularly in her female incarnation, but much of the comic relief moments that defined some of the earlier games in the series (like Uncle Mario’s “It's a-me Mario” from Assassin’s Creed II) is gone. None of this is in and of itself a bad thing, but it is a stark departure from the past decade plus of Assassin’s Creed.

Another feature of Valhalla that serves as a distinct change from earlier titles is the combat. Fitting in with the darker setting of this title, the combat is very much Soulsborne inspired in a way that none of the other previous titles in the series were. While it is undeniably exhilarating to master the combat enough to combine your quicker lighter strikes with the heavier strikes that use up your stamina bar in order to bury your axe into an English soldier, it still doesn't quite reach the same adrenaline that I had from the combat systems of Odyssey and Origins. As exciting and brutal as the combat can be, there just isn't anything in this combat system (even when unlocking new abilities from Books of Knowledge scattered throughout castles, monasteries and fortresses) that quite compares with being able to Spartan kick enemies off of high mountains. Some of the most exciting gameplay I found was avoiding this open conflict as much as possible and returning to the “roots'' of Assassin’s Creed gameplay and trying to pick off enemies slowly and methodically without being caught. The unique difficulty options for combat, stealth and exploration work well with this as well. I oftentimes kept the stealth difficulty at a more manageable level while turning combat to some of the higher tiers. It's not quite as frustrating as being “de-synced,” but still provides ample punishment for when I got careless and let myself be detected by enemy guards.



As mentioned before, your combat abilities can be unlocked by obtaining Books of Knowledge spread throughout the map. As in past titles, there are both ranged and melee combat skills that can be learned, with four in each category equipped at any one time. These skills do keep combat from feeling overly stale or repetitive too quickly, but none of them truly feel fundamentally game changing in the combat system to the point where I felt compelled to explore and hunt them down. You certainly will want to try them out when you first get them, but once you find the four abilities that work best for your playstyle there is little incentive to change anything.

One of the most disappointing “new” features of Valhalla was the effective abandonment of the leveling system. Experience is still collected for virtually everything you do in this game, there is no maximum level that you are constantly striving for. instead, as you reach each new interval of experience points you are given two skill points that can be invested in the extensive skill tree that replaces the old leveling system. It's a unique idea that makes Valhalla feel like a full fledged open world RPG, as the skill tree allows you to focus your development of Eivor based on your playstyle (such as investing points in ranged, combat, or stealth areas) but the implementation ultimately feels bloated and falls flat, ruining what had been one of my favorite features from Origins and Odyssey. It certainly is enjoyable as you begin to “unlock” and uncover new areas of the skill tree that are fogged up at the beginning, but none of these skills felt like they were worth the investment (many provided only minor statistical upgrades, and some still only provided those upgrades when I was wearing a certain type of armor) and I never felt the need to grind for additional experience or complete unnecessary side quests.



Another much marketed feature of Valhalla is the extinction of the traditional (and endless) style of side quests that appear in the game. In some ways this is an obvious reaction to players' critiques of the endless and the sometimes monotonous nature of side quests in previous games, but in other ways this feels as though it was a necessary change in service of the narrative. Eivor is a Viking, an invader in England, so there would be little sense in littering the map of English noblemen seeking assistance from the very people invading them. Rather than these endless amounts of fetch quests, they have been replaced by points of interest on the map that serve towards a satisfying progression system. For example, each region of the map has a certain amount of wealth that can be plundered, as you find more wealth it gradually fills up each bar. There are also more narrative drive side activities that are discovered more naturally and consist of short “world events'' that appear randomly throughout the map. This new approach to side activities is beneficial for a variety of reasons, but primarily the nature of discovering them organically keeps them from becoming stale or repetitive while also using a progression system that constantly rewards exploring every nook and cranny and point of interest throughout the map.

A final major change to the gameplay structures of Valhalla is the loot and customization system. Large open world games of the modern era have adapted some form of the Destiny like system of providing players with a generous amount of loot that constantly has you swapping between different weapons and armor after virtually every quest. Other games have taken this approach to an extreme (notably this fall’s Marvel’s Avengers) where new gear becomes outdated so quickly there is virtually no need to upgrade it because you will be trashing it in the next fifteen minutes. Valhalla completely subverts this trend by providing players very few fully fledged new items or loot throughout. All of your gear can be upgraded by using resources and collectibles found throughout the map and you can gain certain statistical bonuses (both immediately and through the skill tree) by equipping matching sets of items, particularly armor. This more robust and thoughtful approach to a loot and customization system had me put in much more thought to what items I chose to equip. I knew that rather than being able to find a new axe in ten minutes, this new weapon or piece of armor would be with me for the long haul and whether it was worth sticking with it to finish upgrading its power to the maximum level.



A final word does need to be said about the massive technical problems many have experienced in a short time with this game. Playing on PC with the new 30 series graphics card, there was a massive issue where I was unable to play the game for a full day. For whatever reason, a Ubisoft representative informed me there was a handshake issue with the 30 series cards they were aware of with the game that prevented the game from being recognized in your files when you went to start it. It seems to be mostly resolved for me now, but be aware it has been an issue if you are a lucky owner of the new 30 series cards.

Within the game itself there are also a massive amount of technical issues to be aware. It's not totally uncommon for new games to have certain amounts of glitches in the days following release, but Valhalla has been one of the most extreme examples I have experienced in recent memory. One of the more notable examples was an enemy that somehow became stuck to me and rode around with me endlessly like Kazooie from Banjo and Kazooie. Still alive, he was constantly striking in mid air as I rode around on my horse, talked to NPC and went about my adventure. While glitches like these are more humorous and don't ruin an otherwise beautifully rendered visual masterpiece, none of them were truly game breaking, except for the PC specific issue I had where I was entirely unable to play the game.



By and large, Assassins Creed Valhalla is a good game, even if it disappoints in some areas and never quite reaches the same highs of true masterpieces like Odyssey. I've enjoyed my time in England despite the step back in some of the gameplay mechanics, large amount of glitches, and darker narrative. It is undoubtedly a massive game with many different activities and secrets to explore and a wonderful launch title for a new generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft.