Is ASSASSIN'S CREED: ODYSSEY Any Good After The Hype?
After having spent months with the title, I have collected my thoughts and impressions on a game that would've fared better with a smaller open-world, better side quests and a better parkour system...
When it was first announced back in June of 2018 that we were getting yet another Assassin's Creed entry, I was rather skeptical. We had just gotten Origins not even a year prior to the announcement and so for me it was rather shocking to see that Ubisoft was already announcing their next entry into the series. I wasn't sure what to expect but as a fan of the series I was pretty excited. With that excitement came a fair bit of disappointment when I finally did play the game. Here is my review of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.
Unfortunately, Odyssey does this massively. The first 15-20 hours of the game sets you into the story quite well, it introduces a few interesting characters and actually has you starting in a pretty interesting area of the map. However, it’s the next 25-35 hours that puts you into a state of absolutely boring grinding. Over 85% of the side quests are simply not interesting or fall under the same formula that many open-world games have when it comes to side quests. Quests that require you to simply go fetch something/someone from an outpost or whatever, bring them back safely and you get rewarded an X amount of XP or gear. Odyssey relies so much on this formula that it often becomes forgettable when you finally find an interesting side quest and by then, it’s probably too late for you to truly enjoy an otherwise interesting side quest because you’ve been bombarded with bad side content.
There are side quests in this game that literally require you to give NPC’s drachma (money) and that would be it. You would literally enable a side quest by speaking to an NPC and that NPC tells you to give them an X amount of drachma because they’re struggling financially, you do that and you get an X amount of XP and that’s it. That would be a side quest that you just completed. That should NOT be counted as a side quest and instead just a random encounter which, if you decide to give that person money, should improve your reputation or make it worse depending on your choice. There are reviewers out there that try to make the excuse that this game is an RPG and as a result, it needs to be filled with as much side content so that the game allows you to level up and feel a sense of accomplishment.
Yes, it is an RPG game but let’s talk about Skyrim for a moment. That game is a MASSIVE RPG that has tons of amazing side content, so much so that players often journey onto side quests and completely forget the main story because of how amazingly well-crafted the side quests are. The side quests in that game are long and have you making choices that truly impact the way the world evolves around you. In that sense, the side quests are very reactive as they also cause NPC's to react to you differently. This is from a game made back in 2011 and has been remastered multiple times because how well-crafted the game was.
Furthermore, the side quests simply do not tie into the main story so really, you have no incentive other than that the game forces you to play through these tedious side quests in order to level up and get better gear but this alone simply isn’t enough, the player needs an engaging story and interesting characters to really push them. This is not the case with Odyssey, the developers have made an obnoxiously massive world filled with unworthy side content. You look at games like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Insomniac’s Spider-Man which both offer a much smaller open-world than Odyssey, yet offer much better side quests that are both fun and challenging.
For this very reason alone I’ve deleted the games three times prior to finishing it because so many times, I got bored and just didn’t have it in me to constantly grind and that’s a massive problem. When I have to delete a game and then re-download it because I got bored of it then it becomes a question of why am I even playing this game. However, there are times when side quests are honestly great. 15% of the side quests in this game actually offer really exciting bits of story and introduces some really weird, yet fun characters.
For example, one of the most memorable side quests that I found myself enjoying was the “What lies below the surface” side quest. The quest has you talking to this scrawny looking guy that tells you to complete a series of three trials before being able to face a Minotaur. After you do this, you’re directed to a cave where you’re supposedly going to fight the Minotaur but of course, it turns out that the scrawny guy pretends to be a Minotaur by wearing a bull mask. This quest was hilarious and it honestly made me appreciate it so much because of how badly crafted the other side quests are. There are other side quests that are quite incredible like “Age is just a number”. Basically, an old lady asks that you help her create an elixir that will help her husband be a little more able... in bed as he is now too old to perform in the way that he used to. This whole quest was an absolute blast to play. The quest also gives you the choice to romance the old lady or just help her with the elixir. It’s completely absurd but that’s what makes it so fun.
However, the good side quests are simply a minority in this and the game is bloated with bad side quests. Having spent 70 hours with the title I can honestly say just because the world is massive, it doesn’t mean the game is automatically amazing. The main storyline is great and I’ll get into that later, there are side quests that are astonishingly fun but at its core, Odyssey is a flawed game because of the amount of side content that’s been riddled into the world.
Moving onto another issue I had with this game is the parkour system which was birthed in Assassin’s Creed: Origins but was essentially multiplied in Odyssey. Origins introduced the new parkour system which enables you to almost climb onto anything regardless of your character having nothing to latch onto. Prior to this system, Assassin’s Creed games had a really solid feel to the parkour because more often than not, you needed to plan. Parkour wasn’t just a cheap way for you to get wherever you wanted as quickly as you wanted. Instead, the old system required you to often plan where to go or what to jump on because not everything was accessible.
In Odyssey, you can climb over anything. You can grab onto any type of surface whether it was a statue that’s impossible to climb or an absurdly steep mountain. This type of system really cheapens the gameplay experience, it just doesn’t feel as challenging or interesting. Even more so, it simply disconnects the player from feeling any sense of appreciation for the open-world design because more often than not, you’re just climbing onto whatever to get to the next quest instead of taking in some of the beautiful locations in the game. My favourite parkour system in the series easily goes to Assassin’s Creed: Unity. The game as a whole was quite flawed but the one thing it nailed for sure was the parkour. It felt smooth and it really made you feel like the parkour had an impact, that it made a difference to the way situations unfolded. For that reason, even stealth was so much more fleshed out and had a greater fun aspect.
The next thing I want to talk about is the character you choose to play as. Now, in my play-through I chose Kassandra mainly because I’ve never played as a female in a Assassin’s Creed game, having chosen to skip Liberation. Part of the RPG system in Odyssey, the game now allows you to make dialogue choices that are supposed to effect the way a situation would turn out. In this sense, as the character you play, you also control what kind of person your character turns out to be. I thought this was a pretty interesting choice and something that felt rather fresh to a series that has been running since 2007. Because you get to choose who and how your character turns out to be, I honestly felt attached to Kassandra. The choices I made were choices that I felt I would go with if I was in the situation myself and so a lot of the time, it felt like I was forming a deeper, personal connection to Kassandra than most main characters in the series.
I want to talk next about the main storyline in this game. There are games out there that often have a bad main story but amazing side content that make up for it. Odyssey is quite the opposite. It has an amazing main story but awful side content. When the game chooses to finally shine light on its main story, this is where the game really shines. Whether you’re trying to find information on who your real dad is, or attempting to find your mother after years of separation or helping to waken your brother up from the evil alliances he has chosen to make. The game has many elements in its story that make it a wonderful story to experience. There’s also the story of taking down the Cult of Kosmos which I think is actually one of the best things about the game. Each member of the Cult is masked and unknown to you at the start of the game but you must play certain side quests or lower a nation’s supplies to make a specific member of the Cult vulnerable forcing them to come out of hiding. Each member also gives you great gear, with all of them coming as a set once you take down an entire party of the Cult which usually has about 6-7 members.
The Cult really serves as a replacement to the Templars. Though, a lot of theories among fans have speculated that the Templars were actually inspired by the Cult to take down the Assassin’s. This is just rumours as nothing has been confirmed, however it would be a really nice way to connect Odyssey into the Assassin’s Creed lore as not much else does in the game.
The next bit of the story that I just want to talk about because I believe it is the best part of the game overall. That’s the story of Atlantis and how Kassandra is more connected to it than she even knew. You start off a quest given to you by your mother, Myrinne who tells you that there are certain clues located on the island called ‘Caldera of Fate.’ Now, much to my surprise when I was going through the game, I hadn’t actually been following the quest upon finding this island. I had found it by chance when I was sailing about and happened to make a stop on the very same island as I thought it looked interesting. As I didn’t have the quest enabled, there wasn’t anything there to really guide me and this truly helped to make the experience so much more authentic and impactful. On the island, you’re required to rearrange these mirrors that beam light onto one another which finally hits a huge stone door and unlocks it. After this, you go through the door to which you see a person waiting for you towards the end of this massive room and there you learn more about your father and Atlantis.
Once you’ve done all of this, you’re then tasked with four incredible tasks that require you to retrieve the artefacts of power. To do this is no easy task as you must take on four very powerful mythical beings. This quest in itself was immensely fun, from learning about your father and Atlantis, to then going on to fight these four mythical creatures. Simply because of this storyline, I will be investing into The Fate of Atlantis DLC. The problem isn’t the main story, in fact if you take away 85% of the side quests, what you get is a pretty fleshed out game with an amazing story and some really good characters.
There’s one more aspect that I must talk about when it comes to Odyssey and that’s the combat system. The game gives you a choice of three methods to lead your combat. Hunter, which basically improves your stats with a bow. The Warrior obviously makes it so that your hits have more impact and feel a bit heavier. That leaves the Assassin method which essentially helps you to efficiently take down enemies using stealth. In this sense, the game gives you a fair bit of variety in the way that you approach most of your fights. The three combat systems all have a skill tree that helps to improve whichever one you choose. You can also choose to use all three which is what I’ve done and that essentially helped me massively because I didn’t need to rely on one aspect. There’s also now the addition of engraving your weapons and gear which allows you to add an upgrade to fit your choice of play style. What I like about this combat system is that the game really hands you the choice of whether you want to play as an assassin or as a warrior or if you want to play as both.
However, the combat system is also quite flawed. You have these two ability wheels that allow you to choose up to four power-ups that help you massively. The problem with is this is the way the game lays it out for you. Every time you want to switch to the second ability wheel to access your other four power-ups, you have to hold down L1 and press down on the D-Pad. This was really annoying as it did break the flow of the fight at times and just felt awkward. Unfortunately, because of this I didn’t find myself using the secondary abilities as it does become very annoying to access them. This is a pretty big problem because the game does rely on you using these abilities to make it so that the enemies you fight aren’t these unbeatable machines.
This isn’t all to say that this game is bad, with nothing to redeem it because this isn’t a bad game. It’s just not the great game that many reviewers have tried selling it as. The game does many things correctly but does just as many things wrong. It’s an issue because anytime someone asks me whether they should get the game or if I enjoy it, I always find myself saying “Yeah, it’s not a bad game… BUT…” I could never just say the game is good and end it there. The fact is, it isn’t a great game but it’s not bad. It kind of just sits on the scale of being an okay game with some good moments. If you take away the 85% of side quests and focus on the main story and the 15% of amazing side quests then you get a pretty good game. I would be more forgiving with stuff like combat or even seeing the same temple about 20 times but these things start to pile up and if there’s not much that the game gives in return then it’s hard for me to defend it. People have this idea that just because a game is bigger nowadays, that somehow means that the game is good but that’s not the case. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey owes a lot if its fault to the size of the world. Perhaps if the open-world was smaller and more condensed then we wouldn’t have the same areas and locations, we wouldn’t have as many tedious side quests and we wouldn’t need to rely on jumping onto structures that are normally unclimbable so we can get to the next area as quickly as possible. Open-world games aren’t good because they’re big, they’re good because of how fun it is explore the world and learn about the lore within the game. Look at The Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto and even within its own series, Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag which I believe has one of the most interesting open-worlds in the series. Even Assassin’s Creed: Origins does this really well too.
I don’t rate games with a score of 10, I usually just say what I feel needs to be said about the game so take what I’ve said however you want. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t play the game for yourself but if you were going to play this, I would advise waiting for the game to be on sale. Seeing as the game has been out for several months now, it’s probably on deep sale now. If you can find the game for 15-20$ then I would go ahead and buy it. If you like to grind, this game has that and if you’re already a fan of the Assassin’s Creed series and haven’t played this then go for it. Like I said, this isn’t a great game but it’s not bad either so don’t go into it with huge expectations just because reviewers gave it an almost perfect score.
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