I Finally Played Through Assassin's Creed Valhalla

     I finally played through Assassin's Creed Valhalla, including all of the expansions which add quite a lot of value and are extremely enjoyable. If you don't play these expansions, you'll miss out on a heck of a lot of incredible stuff. 

     There are two main reasons I didn't end up playing through Assassin's Creed Valhalla when it first came out even though I had invested a little over forty hours into it pretty quickly. The first reason is that while the introduction to the story was pretty cool, I bore easily of politics and the story here is very political throughout. Fortunately, the story is actually really good and the politics are far more believable and relatable here than the stupid political party voting hollywood soap opera nonsense of the real world. The second reason is that the game world is insanely bloated with content which is a great thing but at the time was a breaking point for me. I had complaints about the combat and AI early on but I also believe I must have been quite burnt out on the series and open world games in general when I had first attempted to get into both Valhalla and Odyssey.

    The reason I returned to try again is because I loved Assassin's Creed Shadows so much and wanted to play more when I had finished it. Valhalla was still the only game in the series I had not completed, not counting the 2D platformer games. I still intend to get around to completing those as well at some point but I might not get around to that. I also haven't completed the expansions for Odyssey though and I plan to play through that again very soon to do so.

     Upon returning to Assassin's Creed Valhalla after completing Shadows, I immediately noticed how much smoother the gameplay is when it comes to the animations and parkour movement. It's far more fluid when it comes to the platforming aspect. Shadows has excellent gameplay, I just found it interesting and noticeable that certain aspects are better in Valhalla. It's always weird to play through this series and see the types of changes that happen, usually better but sometimes worse. 

     One of the things I had missed the most for awhile was the deeper platforming puzzles in the Ezio trilogy that not only required precision platforming but also timing as you had to flip switches and reach your destination before time expired or you would have to start over. In Valhalla, there are the "animus anomaly" platforming puzzles which are pretty amazing visually. They're mostly simple but are a very cool experience and some of them do make you think a bit more. I found the reward for completing them all to be absolutely mind-blowing. The cinematic story that you unlock for it is far longer than I expected it to be. It's also not something I go out of my way to find online, you know? I prefer to play things like that for myself. 

     There are also the Tombs of the Fallen which can be cool puzzle tombs as well, sometimes frustrating but mostly epic, especially the finale which was especially frustrating. I did end up looking up guides for some of that. I have no doubt it would have taken me so many more hours to figure some of that out without them. A lot of these puzzles felt more like a waste of time than actually being fun to solve but I was glad they were at least in the game and some of it was fun. It's not that they're impossibly hard, it's just sometimes things aren't as obvious and I do get bored of running around in circles missing that one thing, you know? Freakin Darksiders, man, ugh!

     One thing I had noticed in the older games while replaying them awhile back was how similar everything was story wise to the "rabbit holes" I had ended up going down between the end of 2019 and 2024. Those stories about the "illuminati," how the Templar are basically "the new world order," and so on were practically the same as the stories I had come across about real society. Seeing that kind of blew my mind. It's also kind of annoying, making things even harder to believe. Everything's a lie. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." The full creed that is an excerpt of is really good too. Look it up if you don't know it. It's in the games as well but it's far more rare to come across. The short motto is what you usually hear. I never, ever want to go back down those holes again. I often can't believe I was able to escape. If you haven't experienced it, you have no f***ing idea and it makes me mad that I can't really tell you what it's like other than it's maddening and I don't know if I'm even still sane. I think I am but I certainly don't feel that way when the entire world is against me. Anyways, I can understand stories being based on real life, but that darkness is a bit too "real," you know? But it's also kind of beautiful... it's either a bit too hard for me to explain right now or it would just take an entirely different article on its own so let's get back to the game here. 

     Note:  Spoiler here about the very first Assassin's Creed game. While the Templars are basically "The New World Order," manipulation and betrayal happen on both the good and bad sides. The main leader of the Brotherhood in the first game ends up being the bad guy who has lied to Altair the entire time and had him killing targets just so he could gain more power, basically. So, without even knowing it, you're the freakin bad guy the whole time. This is a familiar tale and it reminds me of one of my favorite action movies, Wanted. It could also be compared to stories like the Jason Bourne series and others of course.

     Ah! A funny part about the parkour movement being more fluid in Valhalla than in Shadows is that while that is generally true, there are also the super damn annoying parts where I was constantly getting pulled out of sprint after a small climb or bumping into nothing, having to re-sprint all the time for no damn obvious reason. It also happens when you bump into NPCs. So, that's kind of funny. Generally a more fluid parkour system but also extremely frustrating with the stupid little things like that.

     While I thought Shadows was an incredible game, I felt that the world and enemy behavior in Valhalla is much better. It was weird to me to find Valhalla so much better when I had originally kind of hated it, but again, I think I was just burnt out at the time. The world here is larger and filled with way more content than Shadows. What's crazy about that is that I have almost the same amount of time played in Shadows as I do in Valhalla but that's because Shadows has more story to it than it has side content. That's interesting, isn't it? These games literally take over one-hundred hours just to experience the main story. That's not rushing, of course. I do wonder how quickly you could brute force your way through the story but I can only expect doing it in such a way would truly ruin the experience. I would have to play through each of these games from start to finish back-to-back to really try and compare that amount of content and the exact differences. It's pretty wild to me that I have over two hundred hours played on each, not counting my time played on PS4 before PC. They're both excellent games but I think Valhalla is better overall. I still can't help but prefer the overall stories in Origins while finding them to be incredible in both of these games as well. Origins just really stuck with me, man. I do plan to play that again as well but not until after I replay Odyssey.

     I found the World Quests in Assassin's Creed Valhalla to be very weird but interesting, mechanically. When I first encountered them I didn't understand why they wouldn't track in my quest log. It's mostly because you're meant to do them right then and there and most of them aren't far from the NPC you start it at. They're very brief little stories that usually take place right there in the immediate area you're in. You listen to the NPC and quickly do as they request or hint at. It's pretty cool once you get used to it. Most of them are cute, cool, and some are surprisingly really damn good for being so short. Some of these side stories are really sad. When people lose close loved ones to war and invasion but can't let go and pretend they're still alive.

     Then there are the mushroom hallucination missions that are either brief visual puzzles or a quick combat encounter. I really enjoy those, especially the visual puzzles. There are also other puzzles where you have to align a symbol with the camera. I know there's a name for that but I forget what it is. The side content is pretty cool and there's also special unique huge wild animals and side bosses that unlock what feels like special content and gear. Oh! Flyting! I loved Flyting! What a funny name too. Flyting is where you have a rhyming battle with an NPC. You listen to what they say and then you have options to choose from that best fit the tale and rhythm. Most are easy but some of them are not just rhymes and you really have to pay attention to what they're saying to figure it out. They're mini-games that you bet on so it's best to Save the game just before starting the Flyte so you can reload if you mess up and lose.  

      Some brief comments on the awesomeness of the story without getting deep into spoiler territory, it was interesting to see your brother Sigurd completely lose his mind after being shown truths about himself and the world he is a part of and came from. I found it to be quite relatable, reminded me of my own experience down the rabbit holes. He did not come back the same. I didn't care for the story about our clan camp's blacksmith getting married, specifically, but the connected story about the elderman being sacrificed to a wickerman was pretty wild. Overall, the stories are very much worth experiencing and playing through the game for. I did play through these newer games in the series on Easy difficulty. I wasn't a fan of the overall RPG element changes in the series even though they are cool. I just prefer the older games and playing these on Easy feels closer to that older style and I get to enjoy the world and stories. I usually prefer to play games on Normal or even harder but I really liked the whole parry/kill system of the older games and wanted to continue playing that way and I felt like this new system made enemies too spongey. But that's just a preference. I have no doubt you would enjoy playing it on normal or harder and really dig into those rpg elements that I didn't need to while having the difficulty toned down.

     I loved every single expansion. I liked the stories a lot and the new gameplay elements introduced were pretty cool. Ragnarok is a truly exceptional finale all on its own but both Wrath of the Druids and Siege of Paris were super cool. For the most part I had even decided to pick armor transmogs for these expansions to fit what I felt was a good theme overall. That reminds me, I hate that we have to pay to transmog our gear in this game, especially when money isn't that easy to come by with how many things you end up paying for. The Druids expansion kind of brought back those pigeon assassination contracts from the older games if you remember those. That was neat. Something that was dumb about the Wrath of the Druids expansion were the camps that had a single treasure chest that required you to enter a Raid for. That seemed like very odd and bad game design. It was definitely annoying and pointless. 

     For Siege of Paris, I decided to use the Altair outfit just because we were in Paris. I used Ezio's outfit a little as well but have a preference for the simpler Altair version. I forget what exactly Siege added but I know it had something special about it as well. What drove me nuts about this expansion was that the mount was useless for half of the map. For whatever reason, it often moved slowly, as it does when moving through a town but out in the open world. I loved the Sigfred character in this story arc. He was kind of a psycho but I understood and respected him. 

     Ragnarok was just insanely epic. I started that one out with the Twilight armor for the eyepatch and flame theme. I loved being able to shapeshift into a bird and fly around the world manually. I didn't like the limitation of how often you could use the new abilities but overall it was really awesome and badass and you do upgrade them to last longer and such. I love the new permanent Street Fighter styled uppercut and summoning rats abilities.

     The one thing about each of these expansions that is a little odd to me is that they're so much shorter than the base game. I expect an expansion to be at least as long as the base game. Each of these expansions is probably around twenty hours, pushing thirty to forty hours if you decide to clear out the entire map which I did. I'm not saying they're not "worth" it or anything, I just think it makes more sense to have them at least match the amount of time invested into the base game if not be even longer. I'm not pointing this out because it's unusual. I'm just adding this commentary to it. It is sadly a normal thing for expansions to be kind of crappy for most games, especially for the price. These expansions are totally worth it in my opinion. Oh yeah! The roguelike mode in Ragnarok is so freakin good! And that's not even counting the cool tower side game that's in the same expansion as well. There's a lot going on in Valhalla, man. I actually think it's the best game in the whole series now. 

     The worst part about Valhalla? No New Game Plus. Come the hell on man! There's decent replay value here with the roguelike mode but with how many different armor types and transmogs you unlock, we absolutely need NGP here. You literally spend over one-hundred hours unlocking cool things. You don't even get half the cool stuff until then. I've seen comments over the past few years on forums that don't seem to understand the point of New Game Plus. There are plenty of us that actually enjoy replaying through the story. Keeping our talent tree upgrades and gear is one of the coolest things about playing a game over again when New Game Plus is an optional feature. And dude, both Origins and Odyssey which came out before Valhalla have a freakin NGP!!!! What in the hell?!?!?! 

     Then there's the random as heck game crashes. There are just times where the game will decide that it's time to crash five to ten times within a couple hours. There's no way to know why because nothing has changed. It just chooses to start crashing a lot and then it stops crashing and you can play normal again. And lastly, as far as one other bad thing, Eivor's narrative whispers during some of the story were so freaking annoying! I was like omg not this ASMR crap. lol

     So, Assassin's Creed Valhalla takes us through political clashes between clans, manipulation and spells through witchcraft, human sacrifice and rituals, the inheritance of powerful positions and corruption, madness of the mind and soul, history of the "gods" that end up being more human than we realize or think, ancient technology that surpasses current time technology, both of which are ongoing themes in the series, and the loss of good friends and family. This is a truly incredible game with excellent music and stunning visuals on top of everything else mentioned here. 

     I love the present time story related to current time Templars known as Abstergo but I don't like some of the story about the "catastrophe." Mostly just because now it sounds like propaganda to me. It's all about having to "save the world" and I just can't help but think that entire ideology is just pure nonsense, a means to control minds. I can't help but think nobody really cares about saving the world. If they did, they'd understand their vote doesn't matter. They'd understand "minimum wage" is not a "living wage." They'd understand obvious truths. But they don't. Nobody is "saving the world." It's a fun and nice idea but not even close to realistic. Fuck the world. Fuck hope.  

     I've uploaded screenshots to reddit if you wanna check them out. Specific shots of the Ragnarok expansion can be viewed here, here, and here. There's a fun little bobblehead thing for April Fool's and I took a bunch of screenshots with the Rabbids helmet. Here are some screenshots from the Tombs of the Fallen. These are screenshots from the Siege of Paris. And there are even more screenshots on my discord if you want to join me there. Thanks for reading. Game on.