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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is an Assassin’s Creed game. If you know what I mean by that, you probably don’t need to read the rest of this review. If not, I’ll explain. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the 11th main game in the long-running Assassin’s Creed series, which began with Assassin’s Creed (2007). They all (to generalise) see a person from the modern-day sent back into the body of their ancestor (each game covers a different historical period) to fix something that will save the world. They have always been defined by expansive open worlds, stealth combat, and a myriad of missions – in this sense, Valhalla is no exception. However, with the recent rise of more sophisticated and complex open-world games, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has felt increasingly stuck in the past.
Valhalla is set in 873AD and follows the story of Eivor, a Viking who saw their parents die when they were a child. The player can choose whether to play as a male or female Eivor. They were adopted by the King of their clan, Styrbjorn, and grew close to their adoptive brother, Sigurd. When Sigurd returns after traveling for two years, he and Eivor decide to establish a new settlement in England and try to gain power there. As Eivor, you are asked to travel to the various kingdoms of England to forge alliances. This usually involves liaising with the monarchs and the jarls, doing them favours to gain theirs. These favours often involve long conversations and branching dialogue trees. These mostly provide an opportunity to roleplay, rather than really impacting the direction of the story. Certain key moments definitely change how things turn out for Eivor, but mostly the story remains the same regardless of what you choose. On at least two occasions, for example, I made the choice to spare a life only for an NPC to just kill them anyway immediately after I spared them.
The game also asks you to develop your new settlement. You have to gather supplies to build everything from a bakery to a tattoo parlour to a blacksmith – each granting you the opportunity to customise your appearance, improve your gear and stats, or even open up a branch of side quests. To get the necessary supplies, you have to raid monasteries, abbeys, and other religious institutions. These raids see you and others from your settlement storming the community with torches, burning their buildings, killing their soldiers, and stealing what you can. While the game punishes you for killing noncombatants, you still see them running in fear out of their houses as you are burning them. This feels uncomfortable, particularly in the early game. I found that I was constantly asking myself “Are we the baddies?”, but I’m not sure the game was asking the same question. I understand that it is historically accurate; you are playing as a Viking and Vikings did these things. But when games like The Last of Us Part II are trying to engage with thoughtless violence (which has been a fixture in video games since their conception) in a complex way, Valhalla just feels out of touch.
In terms of gameplay, Valhalla is what you would expect. The combat consists of the standard light attack, heavy attack, dodge, parry. It’s a little clunky, but mostly fine only really showing weakness in the infrequent boss battles which end up being either way too easy or frustrating. The stealth combat is the most surprising letdown. It’s easy to pull off if you have the patience and determination, but I have yet to find a situation that can’t be beaten by just storming in swinging. There isn’t a level up system, just a skill tree that mostly boosts your base stats, with a few special moves thrown in to keep you interested. Traversing the world too is standard. You can call a horse whenever you want (with a very satisfying “clip-clop” sound effect), or a longship if you want to travel by river, and you can fast travel to areas you have already been to. The mission structure is usually the standard “Speak to X at Y location. X brings you to Z to do a fight. Return to Y.” Side quests are more than often either like missions or just fetch quests. These could be saved by a colourful cast of characters, but the characters are mostly unexceptional. They are defined by a single characteristic or an exceedingly vague honor code that they rigidly stick to. With only one or two sticking in the memory after you have finished interacting with them.
This review was done on PS4 and you could definitely feel the strain it put on the console, with long loading times being constant throughout. The more worrying issue was the number of glitches. Most of them were innocuous (stiff character models, clipping, unrendered textures so on), though there was one which made the game unplayable until I changed my armour and another which has still made an entire branch of side quests unavailable to me. I am hopeful that these will be rectified in future patches, but it is worth noting if you’re planning on going in on day one.
All of that said, I’m not sure I can say that Valhalla is bad, perse, just mediocre. I suppose the problem is that Assassin’s Creed is one of the biggest franchises around and I can’t find a single thing in this game that it does better than anything else on the market. The dialogue trees and characters are more interesting in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015). The stealth and story is better in The Last of Us Part II (2020). The open-world is more varied and traversal more fluid in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017). The community building is better in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020). The combat is better in God of War (2018). All of this is made more obvious with the Viking aesthetic. While the historical coat of paint usually makes Assassin’s Creed feel distinct, Viking aesthetics have been central to high fantasy for so long that the world feels tired – like trodden ground. If you are really itching for a new open world to explore, maybe wait for Cyberpunk 2077 next month. If the reviews for that don’t go well, then I would consider Valhalla.
If you haven’t played an open-world game in the last 5 years, this will probably feel fresh and exciting, but more than likely you’ll spend your time feeling like you’ve played this before.
