It’s also always interesting how these games simultaneously feel AAA quality and janky, probably depending on for how many games they’re been iterating on a feature and how rushed they were to get the game done on time.

Desync on killing a civilian during raid is hilarious. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQuSXwVWgAAN3_9.jpg

I loved Odyssey even if DLCs were on the meh side. There are plenty of problems with Ubisoft open world formula but as long as no one makes proper historical games that are not just about the map we’re stuck with AC series probably being closest to what sci-fi writers and Star Trek TNG creators imagined videogames to be. I’m aware of all the ahistorical stuff (and I mean ahistorical not in a sense of the usual whining about skin color and sex) but no piece of fiction will ever give me so detailed picture of a historical setting. I’ve spent countless hours playing postgame, getting meaningless levelups and doing mostly badly written quests (as well as less verbose and therefore better written randomly generated quests) just enjoying vistas and architecture and gameplay. It’s probably the best action-RPG I’ve ever played. The story might be worse than in many games but I play the game, not a story.

I like Valhalla combat system a little more. Odyssey was somewhat poorly balanced. Healing skill trivialized the game and playing without it would be a nightmare. Valhalla forces me to use everything on Nightmare difficulty and I do care about enemy defense meter. Valhalla also drops hard limits on power levels; it always bothered me that enemies 3 levels ahead of you got additional buffs to be an unbeatable beefgate in Origins and Odyssey. But Valhalla setting is a bleak and boring version of vanilla fantasy we saw a thousand times. Everything else you’ve said sounds true. Sad!