Assassin's Creed Odyssey: A Diluted Epic

Games with too little content can be unsatisfying, game padded with only meaningless fetch quests to increase length remains unsatisfying too. To my surprise Assassin's Creed Odyssey is not that type of game. No matter how many hours you put in into it, you will come across plenty of side and main content that is worth experiencing. That's makes it all the more baffling how the game dilutes it's own experience by padding the already meaty game with mandatory grind. 

This review/analysis is mostly spoiler free. I will not talk about DLCs cause I can't be bothered to play any more of this game.

How to enjoy Odyssey without getting frustrated:

I have got to admit, it took me 3 tries to finally figure out how to enjoy this game and from the player reception I've seen, I'm not alone in this experience. Thus I dedicated this whole section to explain how to carve out a path for your enjoyment as you carve out your odyssey through the game. 

• Play on easy. Yes, you have to swallow your pride on this one. It's not that the gameplay is very challenging on higher difficulty but rather enemies become huge damage sponge. This mean your assassin and hunter abilities are weak enough to make stealth un-viable and not investing in constant equipment upkeep is suicide. As a result higher difficulty just forces grinding. Do not worry, the game can and will still have enough challenge. 
• Do only story side quests. Special side quests are marked with a gold in black icon, which leads me believe the devs knew which side quests are worth doing. This doesn't mean all of them will be good but those are the only side quests with any story. Some are definitely worth experiencing and take up a significant bulk of your playtime. You can't skip them cause you need to level up. 
• Don't upgrade armor, only ship. You may get a strong urge to keep your legendary gear up to current level but don't bother. They need more resource than it's worth and you will constantly get get loot anyway. Instead save your resources for ship upgrades. Plus do some assassination contracts now and then, you would need the money in one particular quest.
• Don't explore combat locations before hand. The game has plenty of fort, bandit camp, cave etc which serve as small combat arenas. Almost all areas worth going will have a quest attached to it, so only do them after you get the quest. That way you'll save a lot of time as enemies respawn. 
• Brush up on Greek myths and famous people from that era. Half the fun is getting to see these magnificent locations and interacting with the larger than life characters in game. That sense of wonder would be lost on you if you don't know about the legends.

That's it, now you're ready to fight the poor game design and actually enjoy your time in the game. Though I must emphasize that if you played the game any other way and loved it, that's great. This section was not meant to invalidate your experience but rather show a way to player that can't get into this game.

Gameplay:

Combat

Assassin's Creed as a franchise had never had a very compelling combat, relying mostly on single button chain attacks and counters. But it didn't matter cause the secondary combat items like smoke grenade, silent/berserk darts and various hidden blade take-downs made stealth the most satisfying way to play. All that changed with AC: Origins as the combat mechanics shifted to a hitbox based hack and slash.

Overall that was good move considering how stale the previous combat was getting. Odyssey takes that to the next level buy adding distinct abilities. A prominent example of that is the spartan kick, which was popularized by the movie 300.

I would call most of these abilities an integral part of the combat, something that keeps the combat engaging through out. But "most" is the key word here. In their ambition to add cool moves, the developers added abilities that are completely supernatural. Teleport assassination is fine in the high fantasy setting of Shadow of Mordor but in this game it comes off as something that trivializes the "assassin's creed experience". I can't speak for most people but the distinct historical revisionist fantasy nature of AC is what appealed to me, something the separated the franchise from 10 other fantasy game in the market. This is a common point on every facet of that game.

Despite some cool assassin abilities, the assassin skill have taken the most hit in this game. Origins had the right balance of keeping old abilities like berserk dart, bombs but Odyssey removes all that. Assassinations on anyone more than the lowest level enemies is very hard at the beginning but get better as you invest more skill points. Feels like the devs were intentionally moving the gameplay away from stealth to a more open combat focused one. A chief example of this how the game has no hidden blade, instead the player character uses a "piece of eden" in the form of a broken spear.

Ranged damage like assassination has been severely nerfed from Origins, which makes head shot kills in early game impossible. But on the plus side the "hunter" skill tree has many cool new abilities that add variety to the gameplay, even if they lean on the more supernatural side. If you focus on a pure hunter build however, it can get pretty over powered in later parts of the game.

Exploration:

Let's address the elephant in the room, the climbing mechanics. Yes, it's incredibly dumbed down.You can hold the climb buttom and go anywhere without a thought of the terrain. Such an iconic feature of the franchise being reduced to an after thought really hurts to see as a fan. Specially since just a year back Zelda: Breath of the Wild showed just how much engaging climbing mechanics can be like. Synchronization points which used to be a mini climbing puzzle are nothing more than busy work to unlock fast travel points. With the next game coming from the developer of AC: Unity gives me some hope but I'm half sure it will continue on this path.

The video game rendition of miniature Greece is gorgeous to look at and for the 1st 10 hours exploration is a great experience. The 1st time you come across a fort and imagine all the ways you kill enemies is exciting to say the least, riding your horse through the gorgeous landscape and coming across a tomb by accident feels like great discovery. Even the 1st few time you encounter tough mercenaries feel good. But after your done with the starting island Kephalonia and 1st main land region of Megharis, you have experienced at least 70% of what the game has to offer.
Having a ginormous map seems wonderful at first but you soon realize there's not much exciting areas to discover and given how big the map is, just exploring without hints can be a time waste. Big maps works for games like Just Cause cause you're going through areas very fast but you can't do that in Odyssey. Thus like I said in the previous section, only explore locations after you've got a quest lest you want to waste some time. However hunting for tombs is worth it, but for that it's easier to just look up the locations online.

World Design:

Ubisoft has been a master of open world design along with Bethesda and Rockstar for a very long time. No other studio can boast the huge variety of huge detailed cities teams at Ubisoft has created that also feel incredibly lived it. Assassin's Creed Odyssey is no exception to that, well, for the most part. 

You are introduced to your first city in Megharis and while decently sized, it won't make much of an impression on you. However even since the tutorial island you can see amount of varied npc animation the game boast. You can really start to soak in the atmosphere and appreciate the npc activities once you toggle walking instead of auto running, the camera also draws in closer to your player character. Observing little details like 2 npc having an argument, a group of performance artists entertaining other npcs on the street or someone just fishing really makes you feel like a part of living breathing world. Then when you finally reach Athens be prepared to be blown away. Athens is easily the most expansive detailed city I've seen on a open world game, makes Bethesda's cities look like small villages by comparison. Playing normally you would probably climb and run past everything too fast but if you slow down to explore the various districts, the staggering amount detail in crafting the city is really a sight to behold.

But here's the problem, after Athens there's nothing out there to awe you after that. Cities reuse assets too much and despite being detailed it all blends together to look and feel the same. The only note worthy difference in design comes in Sparta for being the obvious reason of being the only other major power but even then it failed to impress me. Your experience may vary. This is not to say that cities and places of interest are placed randomly, there's certainly some historical accuracy behind the places and statues. But it's not visually distinct enough to capture the attention of someone not well versed in Greek history.

Story:

Side Quest:

 There are essentially 3 types of side quests in Odyssey. 2 of these quest types are filler nonsense that you'd only do for money or to kill time. Easily distinguishable by their black in silver icon, you would find most in the contract boards and some thrown about in the open word. Avoiding them is recommended as even those give the illusion of story are nothing more than a "go kill x person or y beast" quest. The only thing I can say positive about them is they give the illusion of mercenary being a thriving profession. It would have been nice to see rival mercenaries taking on these contracts. I see some multiplayer potential here but don't wanna give Ubisoft any ideas ripe for abusing. 

The 3rd and most important kind of side quests are the ones with gold in black icons. You can easily find them with your trusty hawk Icarus or looking in the world map. There are plenty of them and are the only quests which show some effort in story telling. Now I have to admit that despite some of my problems with them, these side quests are the best they have been in the franchise, a clear step above AC: Origins. The dead pan npc expressions of the previous game has been improved to have a animation system which makes the stories feel more expressive.
If I had to take a rough guess, around 50% of these quests are definitely worth doing, that's a good thing since you have to do them no matter what difficulty you play in. The amount you have to do to progress in main quest is certainly more than other open world rpgs but if you play on easy, it not an annoyingly huge amount.   

Many of quests are multi part as in, after you complete a quest, that story may continue in another quest you are not forced to do. I was really happy with this design not only because it made the characters feel like they matter but also because if the story feels boring you can leave it or see it evolve. Almost every island or state you visit has one of these quest chains, some tied to the main story featuring characters from there and some entirely optional. This doesn't mean all of them are worth doing cause even the best among them doesn't come close to the best Witcher 3 side quests but they retain a certain level of quality that you might stop you from being bored. 

[light spoiler for side quests in Pephka, Messara]

Among all the average to decent side quest chains, one that really stood out to me was the quests regarding the Minotaur. I started questing in Pephka due to the arena and from the begining it's obvious how intertwined the people's lives are with the myth of Minotaur. I didn't have to look up online what it was about cause the quests made the myth obvious. A humorous quest chain about a fake minotaur dealing with family issues that had me audibly laughing at various points ended in Pephka and I thought I was done with all the minotaur business.
But once I reached Messara, I started hearing about that myth again and to my surprise the npc even mentioned how the stuff I experienced in Pephka. This lead to another quest chain that led me finding an actual Minotaur. Thus unlike most bosses, this was one boss I actually was invested in fighting due to spending so much time engrossed in the myth. 

[spoiler end] 

The side quests in Pephka and Messara was the best example of intertwining myth and side quests together to leave even a layman with a memorable experience. Alas experiences like that are few are far between the endless amount of mediocre quests.

There's also some quest npcs you can romance that you meet during major side quests but unfortunately they are some of shallowest romance I've seen. All you get is 1 scene of them confessing and 1 sex scene that fades to black and then you go back to adventuring. No romance would have been preferable to what we get.

Mercenary and Arena:

I included the mercenary part of the gameplay in this section cause I didn't know where else to put it. It's part of the side experience that you are forced to take part in but is incredibly shallow. Adapted from the Phylakitai system found in AC: Origins, in this game there's a mercenary mechanic where if you kill a mercenary you get some cool gear and progress in rank. And what's the point of progressing in rank? Hell if I know, I've heard that in the end you fight a dumb boss and that's about it.
Well, maybe I'm being a bit too hard on it. It does spice up the game play cause now you have a GTA like wanted level and upon hitting certain levels of wanted rank, these rival mercenary would come after you. It's fun for the 1st 5-6 encounters but gets old quickly, you would mostly use them for recruiting ship members and get special loot. This system has a great potential as shown by games like Shadow of Mordor and giving them unique personality would go a long way from the short backstory menu text this game has. 

Tied to the mercenary system is the Arena. Well, not exactly tied but you get the quest from a mercenary early in the game. It's exactly as you would expect, a place to test your battle skill so not much to complain here. But it's inclusion feels a bit weird since there's almost too many places to test your combat in the story itself.

Main Quest:

Now we come to the meat of the story. Just like the major side quests, it's surprisingly not too bad, as long as you can look past the horrible pacing issue from level gating at various points in the story. This game also has the most amount of modern day story story since AC3. There's 3 plot threads that run throughout the game that start at various points in the story as you progress and you're free to finish each of them at any order you like though, 1 of them would end early for story reasons. 

There's some choices you can make in the events but your influence in how events play out in the grander scheme is almost non existant (except for final ending). But I would say that's not a bad thing since you get to shape the personality of your mercenary without worrying about what effects your actions have on the world. This kind of light role playing has it's place and it works well in a game like AC Odyssey.

At this point, I'd say if you feel like playing the game, go ahead and stop reading. To talk about the main plot I have to lightly spoil some parts of the story. But if you decide to stick around I promise to keep spoilers to a minimum. 

Right at the beginning you're given the choice to pick your gender, which goes completely against the lore. And that's not the end of the game retconning established lore, having supernatural abilities and creatures all left a poor taste in my mouth cause the very things that made the Assassin's Creed franchise unique are now gone. But I'm not gonna mention that any more. I only wish they actually cared about the choice of gender cause as it stands, Kassandra is basically just Alexios in a female body as far as story is considered.
The story start with your character as a child and through out the prologue chapter, you're slowly introduced to the tragedy that befell your family. Separated from your real family, the player character (PC) was brought up as a orphan in Kephalonia and pushed into being a mercenary. The pacing is just right and once you leave the island of Kephalonia, there's a real sense of wonder about the adventure you are going to have and the mystery that surrounds your family.  

This is the 1st plotline, and while the start is strong and a diluted yet still mysterious middle section the ending is very weak. Without being specific, there's one family member that you search for the longest during the middle section of the game and it keep building up the mystery but not only is meeting that character underwhelming but the conclution to that plot is left to a optional side objective. I won't lie that there isn't a surprisingly reveal but it never felt impactful. This questline show the biggest consequence of your various choices in the games so a plus point.

The 2nd plot line starts after you learn about the cultists. Cultists serves as this game's main assassination targets. But the problem is you are alone tasked with killing all members and there's just too many of them. Understandably the game can't have fleshed out stories for all of them so killing them feels no different than killing a tough mercenary. There's some cultits that are tied to the main story and while the implementaion is good as showin how the cult has its reaches in every corner of society, I feel they should have focused on only a few and fleshed them out more. The ending if this quest line also has an interesting twist but ultimately underwhelming. 

The 3rd one is the modern day plot line. This has the most crazy (read ridiculous) twist of the 3 but Layla being such a bland protagonist left me with no interest in this part of the story. And like tradition, the ending is again underwhelming. I would urge everyone to complete this last cause there's a sense of finality to the ending after which it feels awkward to go back to doing what ever you were doing inside the animus. 

Although individually the story and gameplay parts are not very impressive, when you take into conderation the huge amount of hours you will pour into the game, the experience becomes more than the sum of its parts. There's a grand scale to the world and to the story, something meant to experienced in a long time and not binged since this was a live service game. That vastness also comes at the cost of a cohesive focused plot and padded with too much unnecessary grindy content. Thus the best way I can describe the games is as a diluted epic.