Hello everyone! I'm sure you've just seen the Ubisoft presentation, where they showed Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion and something unanounced
Few weeks before I had an opportunity to play both
It was organized through cloud streaming
Technology that the entire gaming industry is aspiring to and it's already working
Not as perfect as we would want it to, but it's a decent experience
There were no latency. Yes, sometimes picture broke into pixels, but I managed to make the impression about the game
I played it for two hours. Two hours isn't that much for such a game
I managed to feel the way that developers chose and what you actually should wait from Valhalla
And I rush to share all the details with you
The first and the main emotion that you get when you launch the Assassin's Creed Valhalla is
I started to say it since AC: Sydicate - Ubisoft look at the Witcher
At its quests, at the mechanics - to drag it into the Assassin's Creed
At the stage of Origins it became obvious, at the stage of Odyssey it became even more obvious
And first emotions from the Valhalla is that tried to make the Witcher over and over again and finally they made it
Because when you riding a horse through these English landscapes, marshes and swamps
Red sun is setting down and dramatic music is playing - It impossible to not remember Velen
And it's reminds me more Velen, than Skellige. Though Skellige would be much more precise association
And you can't get rid of this feeling. You riding on a horse and like: "Am I in the Assassin's Creed or in the Witcher?"
Not so fast, Roach
Then you come to town, start climbing on the tower and remember: "Yeah, I'm in Assassin's Creed after all"
Then you do a synchronization. It's insanely beautiful by the way, landscapes are beautiful as well
Great work with the lighting
Then you jump off that tower and getting to the streets and this feeling evaporates again
You're in the Witcher again
And those feelings are actually pretty nice
They do not leave you throughout the entire gameplay
One moment you remember that you are playing Assassin's Creed, in the other moment there will be that nice vibe of the Witcher
And you could've blame Ubisoft for the lack of originality and copying other people's ideas
But damn, I don't want to do it
Who of us didn't want to feel this vibe of Velen and to travel through such landscapes?
But with brand new content and meaning
Yes, they copy. But it works. And it's great
And the best part for me - they continued their path towards Witcher in terms of quests
There are a lot of small cute scenes
You travelling around those English lands and meet kids. They say: "Let's play hide and seek"
And you, grown up man or a woman. A brutal woman - because we play as a vikings after all - like a fool you're hiding from those kids
In a town you try to cuddle a cat, he runs away, you follow him and he leads you to the character that you can hire to your ship's crew
So despite the fact, that we have a story about brutal vikings, it has gained a lot of cute Witcher-ish things
And I completely melted when at some point in the game one of the vikings marries Oswald - King of the Eastern England
And on one hand it's made completely in the viking style - because they're drinking, drunk people shoot arrows
They compete who can drink more grog. And I can tell you - it's not the easiest mini-game
At that moment I played as a woman and some clanmate of hers come up with intention to get laid
You have dialogue options of course, just like in Odyssey - Yes, No, Agree
The most funny part - after all that he's like "I'll never forget it" and you have two option to answer with different names
And you're trying to remember - what's his name?
I made a mistake and in my scenario he was wildly upset, because I said his brother's name
And he left to grieve
Some of your friends drink themselves into oblivion and you take them off the roof so they wouldn't fall
Overall brutal vikings drunkenness is happening intertwined with English traditions
With wedding race
And it's very nice to see something like this in Assassin's Creed, do you agree?
And, like I said, all of it is very similar to the Witcher
Open-world mechanics remained about the same.
There will be goons who are travelling freely and that you need to eliminate
You can walk down the street and some note will fly by
You're chasing it like in the good old days of Assassin's Creed, but now when you grab it you're getting a skill point
This is much more interesting than collecting tunes for the ship or something like that
Tomb exploration, search for secrets is in place
With this English entourage
You took a vase, threw it at the wall - there's the secret
What's interesting - Assassin's vision is now Odin's vision
It helps you find hidden treasures and it shows you what you already found in in each region
Wealth bar is growing. Also there is Mysteries bar and Secrets bar
So you have things to explore
There is also gambling, there is poetry competition, dance competition etc
In other words there are a lot of cute things that displays the everyday life
And that everyday life is in the setting where vikings are invading England and there is a mix of cultures are going
And the game reflects this very well
Another global difference in feelings - this game is much more focused on fights
In Odyssey we had mostly story-driven fights, then here I have a feeling, that in Valhalla there are much more enemies
You riding by some settlement where the wolves scared everyone away
And here you are, dealing with the wolf pack just like Geralt
Then you sneak into the house to find out what happened to the villagers
Quests with investigations are also in place
There's also Raid mechanics, when you when do you get on your viking ship, sail to some castle and start burning it down and slaughter everyone inside
You can summon the ship at any moment - just blow the horn and your ship is docking at the right place
There are a lot of enemies and enemies are very different - they have different abilities, different skills
It's interesting to fight with them
And in some key moments of the story the full scale siege of castles begins
With enemies waves, with some side events
You need to eliminate archers, but also you need to help break down main gates
Some kind of mini-bosses are constantly coming out, then boss is showing up
And yet in all this mess the Assassin's Creed gameplay is maintained
For example, you can fight with mini-boss or you can leave the battle to your mates
Meanwhile you can climb to the tower and jump from it making assassin's kill
But now it's not that easy to perform, because they added that damn QTE(quick time event)
You need to get right into timing to make that stealth kill
You can kill a boss with it, but if you fail you will have to fight with him
In the segment that I played - vikings have a feud and you fight with other clan
And the head of the opposing clan has a personal tamed wolf
So in the boss battle you fight with two opponents at once
But if you perform that assassin's pirouette you can eliminate one of them
But I couldn't do it
As for the fight mechanics - it continues traditions of Odyssey, so if you didn't like it there - in Valhalla you won't like it either
And vice versa. If you liked the fight mechanics of the Odyssey - you'll like this one as well
In my opinion it's a little weird, with all those numbers, levels of the enemies etc
You have your strikes and blocks on the bumpers, also you have ultimates
If you press and hold left trigger it will be with the bow - or left weapon
If you press and hold right trigger - there will be various ultimates with the sword
You have 8 skill slots total and you need to place abilities by yourself
So you can't use the entire arsenal of the character all the time
You need to kill regular soldiers to charge your ultimate and you should use your ult wisely
All moves looks great - you throw a lot of axes in all directions, then you can buff your weapon with the poison, for example
Or you can kick someone - Odyssey says hello
Also you can charge someone - Odyssey says hello one more time
Stamina is important in this fighting mechanics.
Both you and the enemies have stamina - it's important to bring the enemy to exhaustion
And after that you will be able to perform a beautiful crushing blow or stomp him into the ground
One one hand it looks nice, on the other hand - there's too much legacy of the Odyssey
And still it's not always smooth
Character have a problems with targeting, animations stuck sometimes - if you played Odyssey - you know all this
Character progression is based on the unlocking of the starry sky and in 3 constellations
Bear, Crow and Wolf
And again - a little hello to the Witcher
Because basically we have a resemblance of the Witcher schools
Because if you level up in these directions and gathering the proper armor set you can upgrade the character
So progression in a certain direction gives bonuses for the appropriate equipment
Nodes in those constellation gives you either a passive skills or unlocking melee moves or just raising overall power of the character
And there are a lot of different moves
If you unlocked the Wolf constellation - here you go, you unlocked the Bow Stun Finisher by pressing R3(the right stick)
So if you exhausted the opponent - you can place a beautiful headshot
Or stomp him into the ground
You can upgrade stealth skills, you can upgrade backstabs
You can upgrade Assassin's Kill to unlock the ability to kill powerful enemies with QTE etc
In other words - there are things to think about
Overall it plays good, how it looks technically - it still could've been better
The Odyssey legacy is pretty big, but in terms of animations and moves - they added Viking flavor
Strikes are way more brutal, finishers are juicy
Including strikes to the ears with hammers, knocking out the brain through the eyes and mouth
I liked it
In terms of the atmosphere, in terms of transmitting the era - it's clear that this game is as historical, as all the previous Assassin's Creed's
This is an abuse of history
But this abuse is kinda nice, because it makes you interested in the era
It makes you go and see what really happened
It applies and to the plot and to the main characters and to the shown everyday life and everything else
I have never understood the complaints about the non-historicity of the "Assassin's Creed"
It's historical enough to interest you in a real history
Overall - I liked it a lot. Primarily because of the atmosphere and because of the things they made in quests
For now, based on the two hours that I played it - it's very similar to the Witcher in the best part of it - in Velen
Fighting mechanics, ship mechanics etc are the direct borrowing from the previous games
In my opinion, it's very important that though this game has a lot of old AC's mechanics
They all fade into the background, because of the atmosphere, because of that viking brutality
With a higher bid on action and atmosphere
And in the end... Yes, you're playing Assassin's Creed but you constantly forgetting about it
And this is a very weird feeling, I think not everyone will like it
Because there are a lot of fans who still say: "It's not Assassin's Creed anymore!" Indeed, it's not AC anymore
And in my opinion, at some point
Ubisoft must have the courage to cancel all those climbing on the towers, synchronizations, hidden blades
And just make good games in different eras
Yes, the plot might be related with AC
But why those hidden blade? Why all that climbing?
It looks funny when a viking in a fur, with a sword and a shield climbing on some barely standing building
Really - why?
And this game doesn’t really need it
Except the opportunity to kill a boss with an Assassin's Kill.
Everything else will work without it
In short - I'm waiting for this game. In autumn it will fit in perfectly thanks to its melancholy atmosphere
This atmosphere will be on the street, it'll be on your monitor
I can already feel that it will be very cozy game
And yes, they could've done fighting mechanics better, I want some progress
But we got a Viking skins, new brutal moves and strikes, but, sadly, the core mechanics remained the same
And i would like it to change
The same applies to engine - game is really beautiful, but character in cutscenes - technology is the same as in previous games
Again, I want progress, but it's not gonna happen in the end of generation. I guess we'll see it next time on the next gen
It does not prevent from enjoying the game and thirsting to play it
Honestly - I really, really liked it
Also I have a video with my impressions about Watch Dogs Legion, check it out, it also have interesting ideas
Although I think the game is not as good and not everyone will like it
Push that Like button if you liked the video, leave your thoughts in the comment section and we'll see you in few seconds, if you check out the next video
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