Ubisoft recently gave me the opportunity to play Assassin's Creed Valhalla for almost a whole day. I took the opportunity to complete one of the storylines and several side quests.
As you can imagine, it looks a lot like Odyssey, both in its combat mechanics and in its way of pacing the exploration. I'm going to focus this preview on the main differences between Valhalla and Odyssey.
First of all, enemies have a guard meter in addition to their life bar. If you've played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice you know what we're talking about here: the meter empties when you achieve perfect parries, and you'll be able to inflict a big blow — or a one-shot — once it reaches zero.
This is great news, as we remember Odyssey's extended fights in which we would charge our skill bar by fighting enemies with far too much life, to then be able to finally deal real damage with an ability, then waiting another 15 seconds to get it back.
In Valhalla, you'll naturally empty the guard meters by parrying, and this simple fact will give you the opportunity to perform a big blow — or a one-shot — every 20 seconds, which should both shorten and boost combat.
You'll also get the Hidden Blade back, which kills in a single strike. You can forget about the frustrating assassinations of Odyssey, where you tried to stealth but were limited by equipment that didn't do enough damage.
Another difference is that the mercenaries that used to hunt you down if you made a mess no longer exist. They have been replaced by a system that reminds us of Origin's Phylakes: elite soldiers called "Zealots", each patrolling their own territory.
Now let's talk about the village. To keep it short, you'll pay resources for buildings to appear around your main house. Build a blacksmith's forge to be able to buy weapons, a fishing hut to unlock fishing, or a naval workshop to improve your ship. The village will have its narrative importance, but it's very basic in terms of gameplay.
To expand the village you will need materials, which means you'll need to raid.
There are a whole bunch of towns and villages on the map that you can attack with your team. You don't need any preparation, just take the ship, press a button, and the raid is launched. You attack, kill a few guards, open chests containing precious resources, and that's it. Rinse, repeat for more resources.
Raiding is nice — especially with the houses burning one after the other — but a phenomenal amount of resources is needed to improve the village, and we suspect that we'll have to spam raids to reach our goals. Unfortunately, their replayability is quite limited. Worse still, for every chest found, you'll have to put the controller down for 10 seconds and watch your Vikings take what's inside. It seems like a minor detail, but repeated hundreds of times during a game it can quickly become frustrating.
Still on the subject of repetitive actions, you'll be able to besiege a city by wielding a ram to break through several barricades. Involving the player directly in the breaching of the gate was a good idea on paper, but once translated into gameplay it becomes as boring as it is repetitive. No timing to master, no fragile points to aim at, just back off slowly and hit five or six times.
There's a chance that this mechanic will be reused in the raids of the biggest cities, adding to the opening of the chests on the list of recurring actions, and killing the rhythm in the process.
Regarding skills: the three Odyssey trees have been replaced by a wide board going in three directions. The board is divided into sections on which you buy statistics upgrades to finally reach the center of the section and get a skill. Go up to unlock combat skills, to the left for assassination skills and to the right for "hunting" skills, which are more movement-oriented.
The board is quite interesting, allowing you to choose the style you want to develop first, while offering roughly the same statistical improvements no matter in which direction you go — an excellent choice in a franchise where specialization limits more than it adds depth.
Finally, a quick word about means of transportation. You are provided with a horse and a boat, just like in Odyssey. However, you can no longer take part in naval battles, as the rivers of England do not offer enough space for that. A foghorn will allow you to call your Drakkar from any position.
As for the horse, it can now be upgraded in the stables. You can improve its endurance and teach it new skills — such as swimming, for example — which is a nice addition.
Valhalla offers an experience close to that of Odyssey with some quality of life improvements. Now, as has become usual with the Ubisoft open-world formula, the wonder you feel when discovering the map quickly fades, revealing a lot of unnecessary and redundant content to lengthen the game's lifespan.
There's plenty of collectibles, underdeveloped side quests and repetitive actions. If you had trouble completing titles such as Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Far Cry 5 or even Odyssey because of these problems, be warned: everything we've seen of Valhalla so far leads us to believe that the game will suffer from the typical flaws of the Ubisoft open world.
Content translated by Laure Laborde.
Even if Sony is slow to give a release date to its console, Ubisoft isn't slow and has already opened pre-orders for Far Cry 6, Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Watch Dogs: Legion on PS5.
