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Review Roundup: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

A solid entry to a solid series.

Assassin's creed odyssey
Image: Ubisoft

I’m not sure how many Assassin’s Creed games there are at this point, but it’s somewhere in the ballpark of 20, I think. What I do know, however, is that the most recent iteration, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey just released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC and that the reviews are starting to pour in.

This time, the game is set in ancient Greece and takes place during the Peloponnesian War. You have the choice between two different characters (a first for the series), male and female siblings that turned mercenaries. In this title, your choices actually do matter, and while some might only make marginal differences, others will find characters meeting up (or dying) earlier than you may expect.

It’s a pretty interesting twist, with Gamespot saying, “With nine different possible outcomes at the main story’s conclusion, there’s a surprisingly large amount of cause and effect that can make the narrative feel all your own.”

The story and characters featured in the game

Assassin's creed odyssey assassin's creed odyssey

Image: Ubisoft

While a major factor of the AC titles are obviously the combat and stealth aspects (which we’ll go over below), having an enjoyable, easy-to-follow story is a key element in a game of this nature. With that comes the need for quality voice acting work. Bad voice acting can be one of the quickest ways to take someone out of the experience, and AC Odyssey seems to toe the line, according to IGN.

Accents and voice delivery throughout Odyssey are hit or miss, usually falling somewhere between good and outright scenery-chewing, especially when it comes to no-name NPCs who sound like someone who’d watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding once before being asked to do an impersonation.

The character and facial animations are on point, however. So there’s that.

Leveling up in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

For those gamers that like a little story with their action game, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, again, is somewhere in the middle. With its comfortable and familiar control scheme and relatively standard skill tree, gamers will not be able to just go through the story missions to level up their characters enough to earn the latter levels of skills, but instead will need to grind them out with sidequests.

Assassin's creed odyssey assassin's creed odyssey

Image: Ubisoft

Now, sidequests are typically a good thing, but the key is having enough variety and fun in those to keep players coming back without it actually feeling like a grind. As Digital Trends puts it,

Odyssey demands that you complete an incredible amount of outside missions to progress, and it begins to feel repetitive once you realize that you’ve played all of these quests before: Go here, investigate this, talk to that person, kill this person, grab stuff from a chest. All of it — regardless if you are in Athens, Sparta, or on a remote island — starts to feel the same.

Here’s where the problem comes in, however. In Odyssey, if an enemy is only a couple levels above you, even the most skilled players will find in nearly, if not completely, impossible to beat them. That means much more grinding.

But wait, there are microtransactions to solve all of your problems

Assassin's creed odyssey microtransactions

Image: Ubisoft

Ahh, we meet again. Like many games of recent years, Ubisoft was kind enough to give gamers ways to make that grind a little less difficult. While there are some XP gain options available by using Ubi Club virtual coins, these are limited time boosts and offer smaller percentage gains.

If you want the real boost, you’re going to have to fork out about 10 bucks. From Polygon,

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.

Conclusions

Overall, it looks like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a solid offering and adds some interesting features to the series. If you are a fan of past titles, you’re sure to like it and if you’re new to the series, well, then, what the hell have you been playing for the last 10 years and why do you want to start now?

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey releases on October 5 and is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Have you played the game yet? What did you think? Let us know below.

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Former KnowTechie editor.

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