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Assassin's Creed Odyssey, set in ancient Greece - it's definitely an RPG now
- Thread starter Infinitron
- Start date
Ivan
Arcane
yep, as others have said, this has no soul. traversal is a bore, and it's baffling that you can't gallop the horse. I'm outie.
combat was better in Odyssey, but itemization is a frequent annoyance. Kudos for letting you attempt higher level missions, which I did, but that just showed how funny and limp the combat was.
gave Unity a quick spin and recalled how much I hated the forced training wheel climbing.
combat was better in Odyssey, but itemization is a frequent annoyance. Kudos for letting you attempt higher level missions, which I did, but that just showed how funny and limp the combat was.
gave Unity a quick spin and recalled how much I hated the forced training wheel climbing.
Same here, Odyssey sucked me in for way longer than I expected. Certainly fighting Donald Trump as the "End Boss" was a bridge too far. The game's "main plot" was never epic enough and I think that's it's greatest flaw — by epic, I mean large and complex. Basic plot is: get revenge. That's a good start, and has dark undertones.
In an epic plot, it is best to avoid it being grimdark all the time, and I thought the humor and levities really helped making the protagonist a three dimensional character with a three dimensional quest. The main quest is merely two dimensional. It's flat, it's simple and it's the Asscreed formula.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, AC Odyssey suffers from being an Asscreed game. Every single thing I did not like was connected in one form or another to it being chained to the Asscreed IP. It's a good game despite itself.
Lemming42
Arcane
I really like the meandering nature of Odyssey, so the main plot being quite nondescript never bothered me. There's something almost dreamlike about the experience, just an endless string of fields, forests and towns, interspersed by sharp bursts of combat and stealth action. You've never really got much of a story reason to be sailing and clambering around like you are, but it sort of doesn't matter, the journey is motivation enough in itself.
The protagonist (I was Kassandra but I assume the dude has mostly the exact same dialogue) really plays into nature of the game, she's kind of spaced-out and unflappable in a way that works well with this sort of vaguely-psychedelic journey with no real purpose, no clear aim, and no real start or finish. It basically is a comedy game, with a few obvious exceptions. You're an affable but ultimately amoral mercenary who manages to cause problems wherever you go and, like a sitcom, there's typically no consequence to the havok you wreak. Everything will be back to normal at the next island you visit, where you'll do it all over again. It helps that almost everyone else in the game world is just as weird as the protagonist, and are quick to propel you into ridiculous scenarios like becoming the Olympic champion because the last one drowned while drunk or something.
Since I played the game I've always wondered how much of the mood the game evokes was intentional, and how much was down to the devs just mindlessly doing the usual Ubisoft content-spam approach and somehow accidentally striking gold this time around.
The protagonist (I was Kassandra but I assume the dude has mostly the exact same dialogue) really plays into nature of the game, she's kind of spaced-out and unflappable in a way that works well with this sort of vaguely-psychedelic journey with no real purpose, no clear aim, and no real start or finish. It basically is a comedy game, with a few obvious exceptions. You're an affable but ultimately amoral mercenary who manages to cause problems wherever you go and, like a sitcom, there's typically no consequence to the havok you wreak. Everything will be back to normal at the next island you visit, where you'll do it all over again. It helps that almost everyone else in the game world is just as weird as the protagonist, and are quick to propel you into ridiculous scenarios like becoming the Olympic champion because the last one drowned while drunk or something.
Since I played the game I've always wondered how much of the mood the game evokes was intentional, and how much was down to the devs just mindlessly doing the usual Ubisoft content-spam approach and somehow accidentally striking gold this time around.
Jedi Master Radek
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2013
- Messages
- 4,239
I wanted to play something less intensive so I chose this.
Mercenary system serves as a nice diorama of a the whole game. You look at the mercenary tiers, get excited and want to be at the top. You defeat first mercenaries and have fun. Then you defeat some more and you are able to take a few of them at the same time. You also meet no 1 mercenary and want to defeat him. You reach higher rank, fighting gets monotonous, you haven't seen anything new for hours. When attacking the fort you messed up and now you fight against bounty hunters reinforcements, who by mistake damage soldiers and everything turn into a 3 way battle, quite fun, even if very gamely. You get to epic levels and realize that the game is going to throw an infinite amount of epic level mercenaries at you for banal crimes, all low ranked adventures disappeared long ago from the world. You kill the number 1 mercenary and take his place. No one notices it, epic level mercenaries go like pigs for slaughter after you. Later you make a big mess and notice a mercenary with a level higher than yours, you have unlocked new SeCrEt S tier of mercenaries, but nothing really changes. You feel disgusted and stop hunting mercenaries and start paying off bounties.
- The game is stunning visually, when I walked the Athens I was honestly impressed and thought for a moment that maybe there is some hope left for AAA gaming. Sadly, besides the visuals there are no interesting places to visit and looking at things goes stale pretty fast. After some time everything blends into one monotone substance. You have dozens of bandit camps/ military barracks that feel so samey that makes Skyrim dungeons look varied. Previous statement is not a hyperbole, which is terrifying.
- This is a low fantasy game that chooses ancient Greece as a an inspiration rather than Western European medieval time that was made by a bunch of architecture enthusiasts. I like how they didn't shy from the fact that ancient Greek monuments and sculptures were colorful, most devs would just include sad white, washed up marble and call it a day. The "it's fantasy" vibes are so strong that I can't imagine anyone not feeling them when playing.
- There is no Peloponnesian war in the game. It's just a blue team fighting the red team. There aren't any political machinations, even the reasons for starting the war are not even mentioned in the game. Other polis exist solely as provincial cities for Athens and Sparta, they lack any sovereignty. You can help take over provinces, but it does not matter, the war cannot be won, soldiers from cleared forts return to life and after some amount of time provinces randomly change their owners on their own. There is no faction or reputation system, you can install a faction in the province, then fight it and take the province for previous owners and then again fight against current owners to give it to other faction at nausea. Real live mercenary being so treacherous would get a dagger in the rib sooner than later. Game narrative sides with Spartians, which I disliked.
- Writing is average, although writers occasionally manage to create interesting setups for quests or give a decent line. Writing is at its best when it's amusing. Bad VA sabotages writers efforts a lot. Some characters like Socrates. Hippocrates or Barnabas are very likable. Nearly all quests makes us do the same activities that the Open World gameplay does plus some "special extras" like clicking on things so the protagonist may investigate them to fill the bar. C&C and dialogues options are limited.
- The game made me realize something. Any plot that wants you to care about protagonist's FaMiLy does it because writers can't write. They can't write characters the audience would care about so they use familiar relations as a substitute for good character writing. The thinking goes: "It's you mother and father deal player, so you will obviously care about them and want to find them and treat them like real characters". Fuck off. At one point you get to kill or spare the father you know nothing about, he feels like a stranger in the game. You may say that having to make choices while having low knowledge can be an interesting dilemma, but it's true only when contrasted with choiced made with full knowledge. Only part of the story I really liked was when we meet Hippocrates, there even was some nice C&C: if you did quests in a wrong order, you one of them is failed and you get an alternative quest, which also could be failed. * Anytime the game focuses on 1 civilization it becomes really shitty.
- There are 3 distinct endings, each of them is horrible. Pythagoras one gets mentioned here as a special offender. There are C&C influenced alternative outcomes to one of the endings which amount to small, non satisfying changes.
- I loved Greek shanties
- There are many activities, they menage well enough to hide for a time how repetitive and monotonous the whole game is, but when you feel it, you really feel t.
- Combat is alright, big leap forward from sticky Arkham style combat of previous games. The biggest flaw is how you see all it has to offer quite early and then it becomes repetitive.
- Level scaling is horrible, it makes the repetitive nature of combat even more prominent. You will never meet enemies that die from one hit, each enemy is always a bullet sponge. Even Skyrim scaled only a portion of enemies to player level. I dare to say that even Oblivion had a better level scaling system! At least there you get new enemies at different levels, so it was less repetitive and the ridiculousness of bandits in deadlic armor equals the ridiculesness of whole provinces being full of ubersoldiers being able to solo neighboring regions. Scaling can also make character weaker, because the cost of resources needed for equipment updates gets high at later levels and there is something nonlinear at elemental damage scaling.
- I liked how in many quests rather than to follow quests marker you need to open the map, find the place you need to go and then only when you get close enough you get quest markers. Sometimes quest givers provide a desciption on how to get to the objective. I also liked ostracon challenges. It's only baby steps, but still nice improvement over how big open world AAA games work.
- There is too much of going from place A to place B. Too much of the playtime is spend moving from places rather than doing something interesting. Hated how my horse on its own sometimes decides to move slower.
* On the side note: I was really upset how Asclepius priests used Hermes staff as their symbol. Such a big, noob mistake that could be avoided by 3 min of googling.
Mercenary system serves as a nice diorama of a the whole game. You look at the mercenary tiers, get excited and want to be at the top. You defeat first mercenaries and have fun. Then you defeat some more and you are able to take a few of them at the same time. You also meet no 1 mercenary and want to defeat him. You reach higher rank, fighting gets monotonous, you haven't seen anything new for hours. When attacking the fort you messed up and now you fight against bounty hunters reinforcements, who by mistake damage soldiers and everything turn into a 3 way battle, quite fun, even if very gamely. You get to epic levels and realize that the game is going to throw an infinite amount of epic level mercenaries at you for banal crimes, all low ranked adventures disappeared long ago from the world. You kill the number 1 mercenary and take his place. No one notices it, epic level mercenaries go like pigs for slaughter after you. Later you make a big mess and notice a mercenary with a level higher than yours, you have unlocked new SeCrEt S tier of mercenaries, but nothing really changes. You feel disgusted and stop hunting mercenaries and start paying off bounties.
- The game is stunning visually, when I walked the Athens I was honestly impressed and thought for a moment that maybe there is some hope left for AAA gaming. Sadly, besides the visuals there are no interesting places to visit and looking at things goes stale pretty fast. After some time everything blends into one monotone substance. You have dozens of bandit camps/ military barracks that feel so samey that makes Skyrim dungeons look varied. Previous statement is not a hyperbole, which is terrifying.
- This is a low fantasy game that chooses ancient Greece as a an inspiration rather than Western European medieval time that was made by a bunch of architecture enthusiasts. I like how they didn't shy from the fact that ancient Greek monuments and sculptures were colorful, most devs would just include sad white, washed up marble and call it a day. The "it's fantasy" vibes are so strong that I can't imagine anyone not feeling them when playing.
- There is no Peloponnesian war in the game. It's just a blue team fighting the red team. There aren't any political machinations, even the reasons for starting the war are not even mentioned in the game. Other polis exist solely as provincial cities for Athens and Sparta, they lack any sovereignty. You can help take over provinces, but it does not matter, the war cannot be won, soldiers from cleared forts return to life and after some amount of time provinces randomly change their owners on their own. There is no faction or reputation system, you can install a faction in the province, then fight it and take the province for previous owners and then again fight against current owners to give it to other faction at nausea. Real live mercenary being so treacherous would get a dagger in the rib sooner than later. Game narrative sides with Spartians, which I disliked.
- Writing is average, although writers occasionally manage to create interesting setups for quests or give a decent line. Writing is at its best when it's amusing. Bad VA sabotages writers efforts a lot. Some characters like Socrates. Hippocrates or Barnabas are very likable. Nearly all quests makes us do the same activities that the Open World gameplay does plus some "special extras" like clicking on things so the protagonist may investigate them to fill the bar. C&C and dialogues options are limited.
- The game made me realize something. Any plot that wants you to care about protagonist's FaMiLy does it because writers can't write. They can't write characters the audience would care about so they use familiar relations as a substitute for good character writing. The thinking goes: "It's you mother and father deal player, so you will obviously care about them and want to find them and treat them like real characters". Fuck off. At one point you get to kill or spare the father you know nothing about, he feels like a stranger in the game. You may say that having to make choices while having low knowledge can be an interesting dilemma, but it's true only when contrasted with choiced made with full knowledge. Only part of the story I really liked was when we meet Hippocrates, there even was some nice C&C: if you did quests in a wrong order, you one of them is failed and you get an alternative quest, which also could be failed. * Anytime the game focuses on 1 civilization it becomes really shitty.
- There are 3 distinct endings, each of them is horrible. Pythagoras one gets mentioned here as a special offender. There are C&C influenced alternative outcomes to one of the endings which amount to small, non satisfying changes.
- I loved Greek shanties
- There are many activities, they menage well enough to hide for a time how repetitive and monotonous the whole game is, but when you feel it, you really feel t.
- Combat is alright, big leap forward from sticky Arkham style combat of previous games. The biggest flaw is how you see all it has to offer quite early and then it becomes repetitive.
- Level scaling is horrible, it makes the repetitive nature of combat even more prominent. You will never meet enemies that die from one hit, each enemy is always a bullet sponge. Even Skyrim scaled only a portion of enemies to player level. I dare to say that even Oblivion had a better level scaling system! At least there you get new enemies at different levels, so it was less repetitive and the ridiculousness of bandits in deadlic armor equals the ridiculesness of whole provinces being full of ubersoldiers being able to solo neighboring regions. Scaling can also make character weaker, because the cost of resources needed for equipment updates gets high at later levels and there is something nonlinear at elemental damage scaling.
- I liked how in many quests rather than to follow quests marker you need to open the map, find the place you need to go and then only when you get close enough you get quest markers. Sometimes quest givers provide a desciption on how to get to the objective. I also liked ostracon challenges. It's only baby steps, but still nice improvement over how big open world AAA games work.
- There is too much of going from place A to place B. Too much of the playtime is spend moving from places rather than doing something interesting. Hated how my horse on its own sometimes decides to move slower.
* On the side note: I was really upset how Asclepius priests used Hermes staff as their symbol. Such a big, noob mistake that could be avoided by 3 min of googling.
Last edited:
PorkyThePaladin
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2013
- Messages
- 5,183
Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla are kinda fun in a brain-dead low expectations way: pretty worlds, tons of content and shit to do, decent combat. But Ubisoft sucks the soul out of them and you if you play for too long. I used to think Bethesda games were soulless and boring and huge and copy-pasted, but Ubisoft takes it all to the nth degree.
Modron
Arcane
- Joined
- May 5, 2012
- Messages
- 10,059
The only asscreeds that have any worth are 2-4, the nuest ones drop most pretenses of stealth, edutainment, puzzle dungeons, racing segments, reuse setpieces a lot, collectibles don't yeild useful items/weapons, et cetera. Really just all around decline. Maybe you might like to see some of the islands in Odyssey but that's about it (I haven't played Valhalla or Mirage and don't think I will with the woke infusions nucreeds have plus the magical teleporting shit in Mirage which was supposed to be inspired by earlier acs kek).
Very likeable, and memorable. High marks for Barnabas.
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