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

[jf8350143]

Well it runs pretty well on my patato laptop, which has a shitty 940m on it. I say its optimisation is at least passable.

 

[Makabb]

Guise drop this ubishaft game or you will sour your taste before RDR 2

 

[Molina]

After few hours playing Odyssey, I'll be totally honest with you (Yeah, I know, it's decline...) : If you like popamole RPG, it's just as good as pre-EA Bioware's game.

 

[Phobos]

Guise drop this ubishaft game or you will sour your taste before RDR 2

No thanks, I'mma wait for the PC port

Spoiler

1 year after the Xbox One 2 and Playstation 5 ports.

 

[a Goat]

So I assume we can make a subforum for ass creed and invite that faggot who quit because it didn't happen before to be the mod of it now.

 

[Life of the Party]

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has a huge grinding and microtransaction problem

When you can pay to skip the grind

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, more so than even Assassin’s Creed Origins, is a game ruled by your character’s level. You can successfully fight enemies one, and maybe even two, levels above you if you’re particularly skilled or sneaky, but you’re usually better off sticking to areas that are designed for your particular level. Trying to fight someone someone three or more levels above you is a death wish.

This means that the game does a pretty good job of controlling where you can go and when you can go there, which makes parts of the open-world game feel a bit less free than I would like. But the real issue takes place later in the game, where grinding becomes all but necessary for most players.

“Early in the game, grinding by racking up small quests, only occurs in patches, with the central story offering almost enough XP to keep up with leveling demands,” our review stated. “But it certainly becomes more common later in the game, in which the final act is stretched over a vast hinterland of leveling.”

We’re not the only ones who were upset about the pacing or use of this level-gating.

“If your character goes from level six to seven, all of the animals and most of the nearby enemies will also jump from six to seven. This eliminates that moment where you instantly feel more capable and competent for a while after leveling up,” Gamesbeat stated. “I was making good progress with my character up until level 15. At that point, I had a story mission that required me to take on a level 17 assassin. That was so challenging that I decided to get to 17 myself first ... But it took me six hours to go from 15 to 17.”

The late game includes a brick wall that you can have to scale by leveling your character to a certain point.

The XP rewards of the game’s side-missions also seem to scale with you — which gives you quite a bit of freedom when it comes to where to go in order to grind for XP — but you’re still going to spend a significant amount of time grinding for XP unless you play like a completionist from the beginning.

This isn’t that big of a deal, in the larger scheme of things. Odyssey is fun to play, making grinds not much of a grind. The problem is introduced when you realize that Ubisoft is also selling you the ability to level up faster through the in-game store.

When the grind becomes commerce

While the game doesn’t do much to surface the real-money economy to you through the game itself, the in-game store has a few items that will help you with that pesky grinding problem. A problem, by the way, you can’t avoid if you want to finish the game.

Luckily, you can buy an item that increases the XP you gain from playing by 50 percent.

The permanent XP boost, which gives you 50 percent more XP for everything you do and works on all your saved games, is available for 1,000 Helix Credits. So how much do Helix Credits cost? We’re glad you asked.

The most affordable option to get the XP boost is to spend $9.99 on Helix Credits, but members of the Ubi Club can also use the virtual coins they earn by playing the game to buy two-hour XP boosts that give you 25 percent more XP while they’re active. Each boost costs 10 coins, and you’ll earn a decent amount of coins just for playing through the campaign. You may already have a nice collection of coins if you own a few other Ubisoft games, in fact.

But those boosts are limited in both time and amount, while the for-pay boosts are forever, and give you much more XP. You just have to pay for them.

None of this is new; the Helix Credit system and for-pay XP boosts existed in Origins, but that game didn’t enforce its leveling requirements nearly as heavily at the end of the story. It’s almost inevitable that you’ll find yourself grinding to some extent while playing Odyssey.

This could be poor balancing or it could be a matter of Ubisoft pushing players toward paying to solve a problem the publisher created with the slow and controlled leveling system, but either way it’s a bad deal for players. It’s also possible that the XP system will be patched in some way after release, and we’re hoping for that outcome: This is a system that could use a bit of tweaking.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/3/1...yssey-level-grinding-microtransaction-problem

 

[Astral Rag]

More top-quality writing from Ubisoft for the mature gamer.

 

[†††]

 

[jf8350143]

The grinding is fine when it comes to level up. All the fetch quests give very tiny amount of xp, only the major quest and side quest with a story grants you large amount of xp. So unless you do zero side quest, otherwise you won't be having levelling up problem.

Grinding for money and materials is a whole other story, because the random generated fetch quests rewards are mainly the resources.

 

[illuknisaa]

More top-quality writing from Ubisoft for the mature gamer.

I like how their arms clip through each other in the first scene. Is that suppose to symbolize that their love made them become whole or some shit?

 

[Storyfag]

More top-quality writing from Ubisoft for the mature gamer.

I like how their arms clip through each other in the first scene. Is that suppose to symbolize that their love made them become whole or some shit?

Greek Gods did weirder shit to mortals for teh lulz.

 

[Fedora Master]

It sure would be nice to have a modern game that doesn't have a fucking romance at all in it.

 

[RNGsus]

So will Ass Creed finally show us how brutal and domineering ancient homo sex was? Will there also be philosophers diddling boys?

 

[Molina]

It sure would be nice to have a modern game that doesn't have a fucking romance at all in it.

You can prostitute yourself during some quest.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/assassins-creed-odyssey-review/

ASSASSIN'S CREED ODYSSEY REVIEW

Of all the Assassin’s Creed games, Odyssey is the most aptly named. It's a roleplaying game of mythic proportions, a world so vast and intricately detailed I feel lost in it all. This isn’t just Ubisoft’s usual style of open world draped over the Aegean Sea, either. There’s still that familiar scattering of icons that covers each of its 30ish zones, but Odyssey’s various activities weave into a satisfying web of interlocking systems. Previous Assassin's Creed games were full of mundane activities that existed merely to check them off a list, but nearly every pursuit in Odyssey folds back into its overarching quest in some way. Many of Odyssey's zones could host a smaller RPG on their own, but together they form an incomparably large world full of things to do.

Odyssey sheds so much of what Assassin’s Creed is known for to fully embrace the core concepts of a roleplaying game—and it's all the better for it. Even though the story doesn't live up to its initial premise, the additional layer of choice, breathtaking scenery, and colorful sidequests make Odyssey not only the best Assassin's Creed to date, but one of the best RPGs since The Witcher 3.

Choice and consequence
Unlike previous Assassin's Creeds, dialogue options now let me influence major and minor quests—sometimes with horrific consequences. I refused to intervene when a priest wanted to put a plagued family to death, incited more than one rebellion, and even spared a shamed general from what should have been a very satisfying dish of stone-cold revenge. And, yes, I've also bumped uglies with quite a few willing characters.

These frequently wonderful side quests are spread out over a world that is almost incomprehensibly large for a singleplayer RPG. Normally size doesn't matter, but the sheer scale of Odyssey's ancient Greece is to its benefit, especially because each area feels so distinct and detailed. It's a vast world that I want to explore, and each zone has a subtle aesthetic that makes it unique, from the arid badlands of Crete to the verdant plains of Arkadia. This isn't just Ubisoft's biggest game ever, it's also it's most beautiful.

The new 'exploration' mode makes exploring that world a lot more immersive. Enabled by default, this turns off most of the quest markers and instead provides me with vague directions to objectives, like saying it's located north of the agora in Athens, leaving me to suss out the exact location on my own. Sometimes that's as simple as using my eagle, Ikaros, to scout out the location from above, but other times it means speaking with characters or taking on extra quests to get more information. When I failed several subquests to discern the location of an assassination target, I had no choice but to ride around Boetia using my own faculties to find his campsite. If you have the patience for it, it's a system that makes exploring more involved and satisfying.

If there's one casualty of Odyssey's massive world, though, it's the main story. No matter which of two siblings you pick, Kassandra or Alexios, there's a lot of heart in their journey to reunite their family. True to Assassin's Creed, Odyssey tries to tell a story that sees Kassandra rub elbows with all of the biggest names in ancient Greece, but the end result is a story that has charm but often feels disjointed and confusing. It simply tries to do too much, whisking you from the backwater island of Kephalonnia to heights of Athenian society and then to audiences with Spartan Kings.

This frantic pacing doesn't leave much time to really know or appreciate these characters, and the reasons I was pulled from one area to the next sometimes felt paper thin. It's still an enjoyable tale, but The Witcher 3 this is not. That's pretty standard for Assassin's Creed, but having agency in the story has done wonders for making me more attached to Kassandra’s journey. Even if certain revelations left me confused or rolling my eyes, I felt invested in what was happening.

One thing worth mentioning is that Odyssey's story features some pretty stiff level gaps that have to be overcome by diverting time to complete side quests and other activities. I didn't mind it, since all of those experiences are fun, but it will be annoying to anyone who wants to just focus on the main quest.

I don't really mind that the story doesn't always work because Odyssey is an RPG that thrives thanks to its diverse and excellent activities. Black Flag’s ship combat makes a return as a central feature, though it's slightly simplified to be less of a grind. I love the feeling of boarding the Adrestia and sailing the open waters, cleaving pirate triremes in half or pulling alongside to battle them hand to hand.

Then there’s the new Mercenary system, which is inspired by Origin’s Phylakes but, again, is bigger and better. Instead of just 10 ultra-tough enemies wandering the world trying to skewer me, there are 39 partially-procedural mercenaries who wander about and, if I cause too much trouble, will try to collect the bounty on my head. These mercenaries remind me of Shadow of Mordor’s nemesis system, albeit without personalities that evolve with each encounter I have with them. But they do have distinct looks and a way of showing up when I’m already vulnerable, like Skiron, "The Crazy Lover," who had a sixth sense for sabotaging my stealthy infiltrations and getting me killed until I put an arrow through his weiner. Now he's just Skiron, The Crazy.

Odyssey retains the same MMO-style leveling system of Origins, meaning enemies who outrank me by even a few levels will be practically invincible no matter how well I fight. That’s still annoying—especially when I want to take on a new story quest but discover its level is beyond mine—but in the case of mercenaries I like how it establishes a food chain. When I saw Exekias the Legend, a level 50 merc, roaming around Delphi with his pet bear, I felt like I bumped into a celebrity.

The mercenary pecking order is just one of half a dozen secondary progression systems in Odyssey. It might sound like feature bloat, as if Ubisoft's open world games needed even more things to do, but each of these systems overlaps and influences the others in a way that makes Odyssey a lively and dynamic world.

Tides of war
Across most of the zones, for example, Spartan and Athenian armies clash for control of territory. When one faction controls a zone, I can destabilize its grip on the region by killing soldiers, or burning and stealing supplies found in their heavily-guarded camps. When a faction’s control of a region is all but lost, a Conquest Battle opens up and I can enlist to fight on either side in exchange for powerful gear.

In these set-piece battles, hundreds of soldiers take the field at once in an all-out fray to see which side is the last standing. It's a serious challenge made even more brutal if the opposing faction enlists a mercenary to ambush me. It’s in these moments that Odyssey’s combat system really shines. It’s functionally the same system from Origins, which means it can sometimes feel a little mushy and unresponsive, but new abilities that slot into an action bar give me so many cool tools to use in combat that it doesn't get on my nerves nearly as much.

Normal attacks build generous amounts of adrenaline, which can then be spent unleashing any one of these four abilities, like the Spartan Kick. It’s an even cooler Fus-Ro-Dah from Skyrim as Kassandra launches a foe backwards with a detonative kick. There's some clever combinations too, like using Rain of Destruction with explosive arrows to unleash an Ancient Grecian carpet bombing. Even if the combat system could still be more responsive, I like that Odyssey embraces combat over stealth more than any other Assassin’s Creed, because these new abilities make me feel like a god of war.

My favorite punching bag are the Cult of Kosmos, the conspirators who tore my family apart. . It's a lot of leg work hunting down these 44 cultists across Odyssey's big map, but it's a testament to how well Odyssey's systems talk to each other that this is one of the best parts of the game. Many cultists are unmasked as part of the main story, but the rest require scouring the world for clues to their identity. Sometimes I might have to complete an out of the way sidequest, while others require reading stolen letters to deduce their location.

One cultist was hiding in a bear den in Malis, which required setting out to explore the countryside using my eagle, Ikaros, to try and spot likely locations. Another required weakening Athenian control over a pair of islands to draw them into a naval Conquest battle. Others might be easier to actually find but then require a stealthy infiltration into a labyrinthian fort full of guards.

Fans of older Assassin's Creed games can rest easy knowing that stealth is still big part of Odyssey. Sneaking into heavily guarded forts and estates is how I’ve spent a good half of my time, but the system remains largely unchanged from previous games. I still use my eagle to mark enemies and various objectives, and there’s still that familiar tension of trying to slink through an enemy camp unseen.

My only problem with stealth is that it too often reveals how dumb and inconsistent Odyssey’s AI is. More than once I’ve had guards get stuck on objects while patrolling or have had to sit back and watch as they run around in a panic seemingly caused by nothing. And nothing ruins the immersion of a leisurely horse ride through Athens like civilians desperately diving out of the way like they just dodged an incoming train. So while Odyssey is easily the best Assassin’s Creed I have ever played, and a damn good RPG to boot, there's still some fundamental parts that could've been improved.

When I look back on all the fun I’ve had, these complaints feel minor. Assassin's Creed Odyssey is enormous and beautiful, and it effortlessly ties action, stealth, sailing, faction control systems, mercenaries, and cultist hunting together into one cohesive game that, even after 50 hours, I want to keep playing. Odyssey is a lot more than just another Assassin’s Creed, it’s an RPG of unparalleled scale supplemented by satisfyingly layered and deep progression systems that each play their part in bringing ancient Greece to life.

THE VERDICT
90

ASSASSIN'S CREED ODYSSEY
Though the main story suffers because of it, Assassin's Creed Odyssey is a remarkably massive RPG held together by a web of satisfying pursuits.

 

[Urthor]

So it's basically the same as last year but with ships and dialogue that has gone from railroad to Biowarean levels of false choice?

I mean last year was pretty good but September madness

 

[Modron]

Was origin actually any good or is it another case of a lot of people saying 4 is awesome when it is really just kind of boring?

 

[DeepOcean]

Was origin actually any good or is it another case of a lot of people saying 4 is awesome when it is really just kind of boring?

Ass Creed games are good for larping on ancient worlds, no more than that, Origins is no different, you will enter on fucking pretty and really realized tombs with autistic attention to detail only to be forced to witness the retardation that is the convoluted, half assed main storyline. The gameplay is nothing to write home about.

The big changes with Origins are on two aspects, Ubisoft usually had a terrible linear awful story that they shoved on your face on all Ass Creed games, that changed with Origins that doesn't feel as restricted and linear as older ass creed games were, the game is more open with each region having a boss that you need to kill at any order you want. The second thing is the combat, the combat is still painfully easy, popamole and simple but it isn't the old farce where you could kill 50 enemies by counter attacking them with a single button.

On my opinion, just skip Origins and buy Odyssey on discount, you won't miss much, Odyssey's gameplay is better and you will be quickly burned out by Origins (It is an Ubisoft game after all) , unless you REALLY, REALLY want to see ptolomaic egypt but you will be disappointed as the story is unsalvageable garbage and Origins is just a prototype for Odyssey in terms of gameplay anyway.

People are praising Odyssey because it is the first Ass Creed game where Ubisoft didn't completely half assed the other aspects beyond the virtual tourism one, not because it has legitimate good gameplay, don't expect any real incline from this.

 

[aweigh]

Why not just use cheat engine to increase xp?

btw, all games are rpgs now boys, please post them all here.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

I hope I sleep right now and this is some bad dream right now.

 

[unfairlight]

Why not just use cheat engine to increase xp?

Your uPlay account has been permanently banned for cheating in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey

 

[a Goat]

Was origin actually any good or is it another case of a lot of people saying 4 is awesome when it is really just kind of boring?

I've played a bit of Origins just recently. The only other AC I've played was Unity. To sum the differences:

• counters aren't golden standard of combat anymore, although there's still cheese(dodging around and hitting enemies in the back), combat is harder though
• different kinds of weapons are WAAAY different(in some AC's you only have some basic bitch sword to pick according to my bro, in Unity you've had swords, 2 handers and polearms, here there's much more)
• stealth is slightly improved(although there's still that retarded "grass makes you invisible" thing).

As for its own qualities now you have character levels now and honestly speaking they're fucking bullshit. If enemy is 2 levels above you, good luck defeating him. I know it's heresy but I'm seriously considering ticking level scaling on(yes it's optional - Bethesda can learn from Ubi). Even stealth takedowns get countered if enemy has higher level(dunno by how much I've turned off level display on HUD) so you can't just win it smart way. It's pretty and stuff, I've been on Chefren pyramid already and... yeah it looks nice. Missions are quite open ended as of now, I've accidentally progressed through the main quest for instance(therefore it's not as "instanced" as previous games were), there seem to even be some basic bitch dungeons here.

btw. retards on the internet were raving on about how the whole thing is full of WE WUZ but from what I see it's not that WE WUZ. The MC seems to be voiced by a negro, but he looks like tanned semite(as outdoorsy Egyptian should), the plot revolves around liberation communism(evil foreigners came here and took all the riches - about Romans and Greeks), which from my knowledge makes no sense(Ptolemy's dynasty wes't particularly hated or rebelled against), but you can see that someone was SEETHING his hatred to some things through the thing.

Also for some reason I've seen one "modern day" section that amounted to picking up some medicine 2 metres away and going back to the antics. Thought Ubi dropped this shit already.

 

[Markman]

There is not much of Assassins Creed left in the game, Ubisoft could have made a brand new IP or even call it Watch Dogs: Greece, would not made a difference.
Name is just milking out the franchise.

I'll wait for a sale on this one,prob around xmas with those additional 20% off from uPlay points. Still didnt finish the Pharaohs dlc on Origins, bit burned out after almost 70 hours in it.

This one is even bigger than Origins+dlc combined and requires a commitment of atleast week or two derping so I'll pass for now.

 

[cvv]

Could it be? After literally everyone including Bethesda of all people abandoned this lame mechanics Ubisoft resurrected level scaled enemies? And I thought Origins was bad, I take it all back.

 

[Prime Junta]

Was origin actually any good or is it another case of a lot of people saying 4 is awesome when it is really just kind of boring?

I'm in the middle of it. Ass Creed was barely on my radar but I was bored and recently upgraded my computer so I figured I'd give it a shot.

It's... I dunno, pretty much what it says on the box. Godawful leveling mechanics, passable action, pretty good stealth/assassination, pretty good parkour, absolutely gorgeous world that looks dusty and sun-baked and full of crocodile-infested waterways. I'm playing it on Hard and it's really ... not; this is frankly easy. Main problem with it IMO is that it's too big. The quests themselves are nicely-enough written and flesh out the setting well enough, but what you actually do with them is rather repetitive -- either sneak into a camp to murder mooks and assassinate someone, or rescue someone, or recover something; sometimes there's an unavoidable but rather mediocre brawl, sometimes you have to spend some time looking at things. And you're continuously engaged in little mechanical busywork to keep your gear upgraded. And there's the usual Kwan hangups where a cutscene of you bashing in someone's head with a blunt object in exquisite detail, or a couple of emotionally harrowing child murders, are perfectly okay but everyone wears their towel into the pool in the baths so you don't accidentally get a peek of a pixelated pee-pee.

So I wouldn't say it's exactly awesome or exactly boring. It's pretty, polished, easy, the moment-to-moment gameplay is fluid and enjoyable, and the setting is really carefully done -- I have a feeling a lot of genuine research has gone into this, as well as visiting roughly similar RL locations. Even with the fantasy and fiction, there is a quite a bit of historical Ptolemaic Egypt in here and I've gotta give a lot of credit for that -- it would've been really easy just to skip that part and make a bucketload of cliché instead.

My verdict at this point is that it's solid time-filler with fucking terrible MMO leveling and a side dish of education. Make of that what you will.