Assassin's Creed Odyssey, set in ancient Greece - it's definitely an RPG now

[Grampy_Bone]

I completed Origins and honestly do not remember much difference in combat mechanics there

It was more direct and had greater hit feedback. Odyssey's strikes are very loose and flaccid, your weapons just swish over the enemies as damage numbers scroll past. In Origins Bayek was like WHAM WHAM KAPOW BITCH. It felt a lot better even if it was mechanically similar.

Overall the problem with the game is the ill-advised MMO level scaling system, where all your choices and build options are invalidated by the level difference. You don't need any special tactics to win fights, just reach a higher level than your enemies and you win.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

There was a huge difference. In Origins, dodging did not work well on higher difficulty settings, because it would get you out of the way but also you were too far to attack, so you had to run back. Against enemies with large weapons, they could still hit you even if you dodged, and against enemies with shields, unless you dodged behind them, you couldn't damage them at all.

So the best way to fight them was to parry with the shield. It worked against any attack, and incapacitated the enemy for a few seconds. But also enemies had very different attacks, some very quick, some slowly unwinding. So in order to know when to parry, you had to know different enemies, and watch them closely.

In Odyssey, you can just dodge against everything even on Nightmare, because the bullet time and auto-aiming lets you dodge and get a bunch of strikes in immediately from various angles. So just watch for the flash of the enemy's attack, hit dodge, and profit. Braindead combat ftw.

 

[moon knight]

Odyssey is absolute garbage, Origins shits all overf it.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Both are good for what they are. Just don't expect Gothic or Dark Souls and you'll be able to enjoy them.

 

[moon knight]

Both are good for what they are. Just don't expect Gothic or Dark Souls and you'll be able to enjoy them.

Shit combat full of damage sponge NPCs, with a boring lifeless and unimmersive world filled with simplistic and boring fetch/kill quests, most of them with objectives Kms away from your quest giver, and with level scaling.

It's shit.

Not to speak about the constant rape of the Assassin's Creed lore.

 

[Lord_Potato]

I dont give a fuck about AC lore, I just want it to go away. I'm fed up with dumb conspiracy theories and von Daniken level of retardation regarding the First Civilization.

And I did not mind the distance between quest givers and objectives. First, you have quick travel. Second it gives you an opportunity to look upon this gorgeous world.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

the constant rape of the Assassin's Creed lore.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Played it some more, and aside from combat gripes (and the effing hitpoint bloat on enemies on Nightmare), some observations:

- The world is very well done in terms of terrain and how it looks, but true to their creed (pun intended), Ubisoft made it as simpistic as they possibly could. Climibing and parkour are basically just a different looking version of walking, because they require no active participation. In BotW, for example, climbing took stamina, which depended on the angle being climbed, and so on, but here, you can just climb forever, which turns it from an active gameplay element to some passive bullshit. Same thing with horse-riding, in Witcher 3 and Kingdom Come, you can have the horse go at different speeds, but here it's all automated. The horse speeds up on its own in wildnerness, and then slows down, no player input possible or needed. And of course, even though I am playing on Exploration mode, the quest markers on the screen and map ruin the actual exploration, as you never need to pay attention to your surroundings.

- The writing is really underwhelming. It's kind of hard to put the finger on it exactly, but listening to the dialogue here is kinda like listening to 2 of your neighbors talk about some daily bs that no one cares about. It's miles behind Witcher writing, but even games like Elex put it to shame. It's just so empty of interesting content. Feels like it was written by automatic text generators. There is no charm, humor, no depth, no emotional stuff, just blah blah blah.

- Pretty much every quest ends up in you having to go to some bandit camp, and clear it out or steal something.

 

[Ibn Sina]

I enjoyed Origins but I got super bored of Odyssey. The topography is horrible and makes navigation a chore with all those hills and mountains interrupting the terrain and because the parkour has been heavily nerfed so navigation on foot is not fun. Story and quests feel boring and lacklustre, nothing feels meaty or draws you in. The aesthetics and the overall design of ancient Greece is good though.

 

[moon knight]

I dont give a fuck about AC lore, I just want it to go away. I'm fed up with dumb conspiracy theories and von Daniken level of retardation regarding the First Civilization.

Conspiracy theories, the mysteries of an ancient forgotten civilizations with incredble hi tech devices that humans mythologized in gods, the millenary and everlasting cnflict between 2 secret societies was the hearth of Assassin's Creed and the main componet of its success. It's what made the series fresh and interesting and why people looked past its lackluster gameplay.

The fact that you don't give a shit about it doesn't mean thatthei fuck ups regarding the lore are meaningless.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Obviously even Ubisoft considers the AC lore uninteresting and tired, that's why they stopped developping it and focus on the story set in the past, completely ignoring the present. Layla arc had some screen time in Origins, here it only takes like 5 minutes. And first civilization ruins are mostly there to provide battlegrounds with mythical beasts.

 

[moon knight]

Obviously even Ubisoft considers the AC lore uninteresting and tired,

No, it's just Ubisoft Quebec, the developed the worst garbage in the franchise, the AC3 DLC, AC Syndicate and this Odyssey.

that's why they stopped developping it and focus on the story set in the past, completely ignoring the present. Layla arc had some screen time in Origins, here it only takes like 5 minutes. And first civilization ruins are mostly there to provide battlegrounds with mythical beasts.

The problem is that the story set in the past is shit too.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I watched the first ~30 mins of gameplay from this on mkiceandfire on youtube. My conclusion is that this game is an insult to the player's intelligence and general culture. I was actually close to buying it when it was recently 50% off, good thing I reconsidered.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I watched the first ~30 mins of gameplay from this on mkiceandfire on youtube. My conclusion is that this game is an insult to the player's intelligence and general culture. I was actually close to buying it when it was recently 50% off, good thing I reconsidered.

It's actually surprisingly not so bad. I mean, yes, there are mountains of typical Ubisoft crap, but you can remove it via settings to a large degree. For instance, if you select minimal HUD option, it removes a lot of on-screen diarrhea that gets in the way of playing. So does playing in Exploration mode. Nightmare difficulty makes combat kinda fun, and the game makes up for its mediocre writing and exploration by having a massive beautiful world, and shit tons of decent content.

At any given time, you have a ton of quests, there are mercenaries and bounty collectors chasing you while you are chasing others, while sailing around on an upgradable ship fighting off pirates and other nations and participating in a territory control mini-game in the midst of the Pelopennisian War. Yes, it's kind of like going to McDonald's to get a bag of tasty crap rather than a gourmet meal, but unlike most recent Ubisoft games, and Bethesda games, this McDonald's crap is actually legitimately tasty.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's actually surprisingly not so bad. I mean, yes, there are mountains of typical Ubisoft crap, but you can remove it via settings to a large degree. For instance, if you select minimal HUD option, it removes a lot of on-screen diarrhea that gets in the way of playing. So does playing in Exploration mode. Nightmare difficulty makes combat kinda fun, and the game makes up for its mediocre writing and exploration by having a massive beautiful world, and shit tons of decent content.

At any given time, you have a ton of quests, there are mercenaries and bounty collectors chasing you while you are chasing others, while sailing around on an upgradable ship fighting off pirates and other nations and participating in a territory control mini-game in the midst of the Pelopennisian War. Yes, it's kind of like going to McDonald's to get a bag of tasty crap rather than a gourmet meal, but unlike most recent Ubisoft games, and Bethesda games, this McDonald's crap is actually legitimately tasty.

I mostly meant the writing. My curiosity was about the game world as it's said to be quite large and detailed, but the writing of the intro and the first missions was horrible. Like a cheap cgi remake of "300" followed by "Ancient Greek GTA".

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Oddyssey is the epitome of quantity over quality. It's like a packed single-player MMO. The amount of content in it is staggering. There are main quests, never-ending side-quests ( i don't know if they are procedurally generated or just so many of them), territory control missions and battles, missions on foot and on ship, mercenaries coming after you and you coming after them, tracking down cultists, finding treasure chests and those treasure search missions, arena, upgrading your ship, upgrading your equipment, and on and on and on.

I spent so many hours in the game already, and I am still only barely done with like 4 provinces out of a total of what, 30, 40? It's insane. And because the graphics and combat and some of the mechanics are at least decent, it's kinda appealing, even if you constantly realize it's a completely pointless game. The quests, dialogue and characters are mostly cardboard quality.

 

[TheChickenKing]

Oddyssey is the epitome of quantity over quality. It's like a packed single-player MMO. The amount of content in it is staggering. There are main quests, never-ending side-quests ( i don't know if they are procedurally generated or just so many of them), territory control missions and battles, missions on foot and on ship, mercenaries coming after you and you coming after them, tracking down cultists, finding treasure chests and those treasure search missions, arena, upgrading your ship, upgrading your equipment, and on and on and on.

I spent so many hours in the game already, and I am still only barely done with like 4 provinces out of a total of what, 30, 40? It's insane. And because the graphics and combat and some of the mechanics are at least decent, it's kinda appealing, even if you constantly realize it's a completely pointless game. The quests, dialogue and characters are mostly cardboard quality.

I think this assessment is pretty much 100% spot-on. I was kinda bummed that they didn't go with fewer, better quests. I enjoyed a few of the ones I played and liked some of the characters, but the scale of the game was absurd and it was clearly filled out with a tremendous amount of poorly constructed content. I use the word content there deliberately; the developers definitely emphasized "content" over actually good material.

 

[Rahdulan]

The quests, dialogue and characters are mostly cardboard quality.

Their biggest problem was proclaiming it's an RPG now because it puts them in a new arena where they are at distinct disadvantage compared to old status quo Assassin's Creed held.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Content gets better when you reach Athens, get to know Socrates, Alcybiades, Pericles and Aspasia. In Argos when you meet Hipocrates. And in Corinthos where you meet Brazydas, do quests for hetairas.

Also some of the islands have neat stories and questlines.

And once you start looking for the four McGuffins its connected with some good investigation, riddles and fun combat.

But it's just too little for a game of such a scale.

 

[Oracsbox]

Just played the 'One really,really bad day' lost tales free dlc
I was highly amused,if you still enjoy playing odyssey it's definitely worth a playthru.

 

[Sam Ecorners]

Started playing it for real and was surprised to find branching quests? Killable characters that block out entire questlines? Woah

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Yeah, just wait until you run into your 450th fort, 390th mercenary, 12,057th piece of random loot, 890th mmo quest, etc.

 

[RaptorRex888]

Only interested in this for the setting. You would think ancient Greece would be an overdone place for videogames but there are surprisingly very few, especially third-person action-adventure / RPG's.

I don't care what anyone says, Rise of the Argonauts was great.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I love historical settings, but the problem with Ubisoft games is that they are so shallow, they do not actually tap into anything interesting related to the history. If you play Kingdom Come: Deliverance, you get some idea (perhaps not 100% accurate but close) of how medieval life in HRE was. If you play Odyssey, you will walk away thinking ancient Greeks spent all their time fighting 1 on 400, finding phat lewtz, and dealing with conspiracies.

 

[glass blackbird]

It's really silly to pretend Kingdom Come was historically accurate, honestly.