The release of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla should keep fans busy for another couple of years as Odyssey did. The game is a vast, deep venture into the series’ lore and gameplay aspects, this time taking fans right into the Viking way of life. However, one thing that’s the same is the franchise’s tendency to repeat past mistakes.
These are the points that have held the series back from reaching that high standard that separate a good game from a great one. Unfortunately, Valhalla has continued bringing these aspects back when they really should have been avoided. Be careful when reading further due to a few spoilers mentioned.
10 Padding Of The Environment
The Assassin’s Creedseries has never been part of the open-world games with the best side missions. The main reason for this has been the padding of the environment, meaning players are made to traipse around the map just to get to one location.
Valhalla does the same, as the player is bound to spend hours of their playthrough simply making the character run across barren land. What’s more, the abundance of sea travel has meant the padding has also shifted to this aspect. The series continues to figure that a large map is instant fun rather than a tedious process.
9 Giant Curveball At The Ending
The series has always mistaken shock value to be an adequate conclusion for an arc. This has resulted in endings that have come out of nowhere. While the impact is there, it’s not exactly justified since there wasn’t any real set-up for it.
Valhalla took the route Assassin’s Creed III did and removed the lead protagonist from the story forcefully. Rather than complete the plot adequately with no room for interpretation, this game emulated prior ones and focused on the shock of Layla’s exit.
8 Continuing Stories From DLCs
If one were to look at the best-ranked games in the series, these would be those that were very straightforward in their plot. The mistake of recent entries has been to progress the story through DLCs, leaving those who didn’t purchase these confused when the next game starts from somewhere else.
Valhalla heavily relies on Odyssey’s DLC, to the point where it’s impossible to know what’s going with Layla when she’s first introduced in the game. The problem here is that it not only leaves fans insulted, it also forces one to indulge in a bunch of exposition material just to know what the story is.
7 Forcing Players To Gather Health Packs
This is an issue that Ubisoft has fixed and then committed once again. Games that you should play after Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla are likely to be more accustoming, as this one brought back the use of health packs, which serve as a constant annoyance throughout the game. This is due to the fact that enemies tend to swarm the player, making damage a surety.
The player is forced to retrieve on several occasions since health packs need to be upgraded and even then there are only a couple or few at hand for the majority of the game. The series had learned from this mistake for a few years, yet seems to have landed back on the trend.
6 Excessively Long Campaign Mode
It appears that the Assassin’s Creed series is now ready to join the list of ridiculously long games to complete. Valhalla has about 60 hours just for the story mode, which isn’t the best thing. This has been a mistake on the part of action-adventure games in general, as they just don’t have the abundance of missions that RPGs offer in this regard.
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla ends up being a tedious affair where the story is concerned since the plot is so overarching that one will be inclined to stop caring halfway through. It also brings another problem of the series where there are so many characters that it’s hard to keep track of them.
5 Not Giving Separate Environments Unique Identities
While there were no doubt some beautiful locations to find in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, it was largely the same wherever you went. Similarly, it’s very difficult to distinguish where you are in Valhalla, seeing as pretty much every area is a copy of the previous one.
The hope was the environments would come across as unique due to the smaller map in this game. Unfortunately, Valhalla chose to continue the practice of places comprising of barren lands and sparse buildings to make up the environment.
4 Stereotyping The Period Setting
It’s a habit of fans to think of what historical setting the series will be indulging in next. However, the characters in-universe have gotten to the point of being caricatures. Assassin’s Creed hasn’t identified this issue yet, seeing as every new entry has turned the stereotyping to higher levels.
Valhalla focuses almost exclusively on the brutish perception of Vikings and the Nordic backdrop. While this is prevalent for most mainstream depictions, the game’s fault is making the characters very flat, as it doesn’t take long to understand that they will continue to behave in the same way.
3 Relying On Tried-And-Tested Gameplay Aspects
If you’ve played Assassin’s Creed: Origins, then there is absolutely nothing that will surprise you in the gameplay for Valhalla. Odyssey had earlier made the mistake of assuming a tried-and-tested formula justifies the lack of originality, something Valhalla continues.
Everything from the interface, the environments, combat, and stealth mechanics, among others, is a carbon copy of the previous two games. There’s definite fatigue to be felt in this entry as it comes across as something of an expansion game rather than a wholly new one.
2 Making Combat Extremely Simplistic
Combat is another aspect that has never been Assassin’s Creed’s strong suit. The series has mistakenly assumed that fans prefer a simple fighting style to blaze through enemies, instead of bringing forward quality combat techniques to enhance gameplay.
Valhalla might be even more on the brawler side, with no need for defense, creativity, or even parkour since all one needs to do is spam the attack button. While this problem could have been given a pass in earlier entries, Valhalla is too far into the series to repeat this.
1 Graphics Based On Character Models, Not Realism
Despite being made on a pretty good game engine, the Assassin’s Creed games haven’t been able to bring a realistic outlook. Ubisoft has misconstrued the detail of a character model to be the equivalent of graphical mastery, with Valhalla characters looking horribly clunky at points.
Not once do conversations look realistic, as the graphical models are fixed on one expression for everyone. The features look impressive if characters remain stationary, but then appear completely fake once they begin speaking.