Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a gigantic game that is best experienced on next-gen consoles.
Assassin’s Creed has been one of the biggest franchises in gaming for more than a decade, but Ubisoft has raised the bar significantly for its flagship title with its last two releases, Origins and Odyssey. Does Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, a Viking tale set in 9th century England, live up to the hype? That answer will differ among long-time fans of the series, but one thing is clear: You’re going to have a much better experience with Valhalla on the new generation of consoles.
You play as Eivor, a Norse killing machine and occasional poet who leaves Norway to establish the Raven Clan in England. Along with your brother, Sigurd, you’ll gradually expand your territory across the four kingdoms of England, forming alliances with other Danes and raiding as you go. You can choose to play as a male or female Eivor, or to “let the animus decide,” which I did. Interestingly, Valhalla allows you to switch the gender of your character at any time, so you can get both experiences without having to start the game over. I won’t spoil the story here, but it’s a solid narrative filled with some very entertaining side characters.
There’s also a city-building aspect to the game. Once you settle in England, you’ll need to raid local monasteries for supplies and raw materials to get your town running. You can then construct a variety of shops and buildings, which will provide you with additional quests or gameplay systems (such as fishing or shipbuilding).
The colossal map in Valhalla is broken down into several sections, each appropriate for a different power level as you progress. You’ll “pledge” yourself to one of those territories, and set off to try and form an alliance with the Viking leader in that area. There are towers to climb and synchronize, hidden pieces of gear to discover, and minigames to play. This is an Assassin’s Creed game, through and through.
Strangely, though, you won’t often feel like an Assassin. You’re a Viking, after all, and you’ll spend much of your time raiding settlements, or taking part in grand battles with local armies alongside your clan members. There are assassination missions that you’ll play, but stealth is not the main focus of the game.
That will be disappointing for some fans of the series, and also presents an issue, as the enemy AI in siege battles is not particularly sharp. Enemies in raids are often slow to react or just stand around waiting to be attacked. The combat system is fairly simple as the game begins, and gains a bit more depth as you unlock new abilities in the skill tree or discover abilities through hidden books of knowledge in the game world.
Instead of a the typical leveling system, Valhalla assigns you a power level based on how many skill points you’ve spent in a newly designed skill screen. If you’ve played Final Fantasy X, Valhalla‘s skill system looks similar to a giant Sphere Grid, with branching paths you can follow in any direction. The issue with the system is that players can’t see the entire grid at the start. Most skills are hidden, and to uncover new paths, you’ll have to fill in an entire section before the next section is revealed. This means that unless you’re using a guide, you can’t plan your character ahead of time. There are plenty of interesting skills and abilities tucked away in this system, but stumbling upon them will come down to luck. I don’t see what purpose hiding all of these skills serves from a gameplay perspective, and it’d be nice to see Ubisoft make a change in a later update.
Did I mention how big England is? Vahalla is a gigantic game – perhaps too big – and filled with things to gather or interesting side quests to complete. If you’re simply looking for a huge game this winter to dive into, Valhalla certainly fits that bill.
The world itself can be beautiful at times, but it’s never been more clear to me that the PS4/Xbox One generation needs to end as it has been playing through Valhalla. I reviewed the game playing on a PS4 Pro, and I could not count the number of times I wished I was experiencing the game on a PS5 or a high-end PC. Even on the Pro, there are a lot of blurry textures and texture pop-in that mar what is otherwise a vibrant and lush world. Character models aren’t especially impressive compared to the likes of The Last of Us 2 or Ghost of Tsushima. If you’re planning on picking up a PS5 or Xbox One X this holiday season, I strongly recommend you wait to play Valhalla on a next-gen machine. If you can’t wait, or if you’re just not sure when the next-gen consoles will be in stock, there is some good news. Ubisoft is offering a free upgrade to the next-gen version, so if you buy Valhalla on Xbox One, you’ll be able to play on Series S|X, and the same goes for PS4 to PS5.
Valhalla makes a few big changes to the Assassin’s Creed formula, and while it’s a very playable open-world title, I’m not sure it does anything better than previous games in the series already have, or better than its competitors in the open-world action RPG space. It’s not the best-looking game, and it doesn’t have the most satisfying or deepest combat. One thing is certain, though: next-gen consoles are arriving at just the right time.
Assassins’s Creed Valhalla releases on November 10th on Xbox Series S|X, Xbox One, PS4, PC and Stadia, and PS5 on November 12th. This review covers the PS4 version of the game, running on PS4 Pro. We will update this review with PS5 impressions and comparisons after launch.
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The trilogy will be available for free from November 9 – 12.
