Baffling In All The Wrong Ways | Assassin's Creed Valhalla - Luke Stephens

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Valhalla is unique in that it starts off pretty good. You’re having a good time but the more you play the worse and more tedious it gets until you realise you were never having a good time and you’ve just been playing filler for the last 50 hours!

I absolutely hate that mainstream audiences seem to rate their experience with games simply by "How much time can I waste with this product?" instead of actually having a meaningful or interesting experience

This is a small gripe, but I played Valhalla at a friends house a month or so ago and he let me do a raid. I was almost INSTANTLY bored with the combat. It felt stupidly easy and uninspired. And then I tried to kill a monk. And the game YELLED AT ME. A Viking. For killing a monk. During a raid on a Monastery. That was the final nail in the coffin for me.

Geez you really hammered home how I feel about this game. I spent so much time in this game (so many hours), all to realize Origins and Odyssey did it better. When you pointed out how they missed the mark on the storyline of the struggle of being an assassin, in a brutal Viking culture (much like Ghost of Tsushima), a lightbulb came on in my head. Totally true! Thanks for being so thoughtful and charitable in your critique.

"The game is not over! The game is never over!" - Loki He wasn't exaggerating.

Playing Valhalla felt like a chore to me and that tells you everything about the game

"3 minutes is not long enough time to have anything last and be memorable." Tell that to my wife bud

The fact that I had hundreds of hours in Odyssey and came back to it, replayed it, and had a blast, and then I go back to Valhalla and I’m bored within 20 minutes says something.

I'm a big fan of the wilderness setting. I'm really disappointed that they haven't made climbing trees and environmental scaling/ambushing more prominent.

Assassin's Creed in the begining had two components two it, running and stealth. Stealth was the main point of the game, and running was implimented for when you messed up, or finished your task and had to go. Combat was just counterkill after counterkill because the point wasn't to fight, but to take care of your enemies quickly and keep moving forwards. Two changes to this formula (imo) take a portion of responsibility for the state Valhalla is in (if we are ignoring everything but the core gameplay). The first is the developement of the combat system. As fighting was innovated to feel more fun- combat started to actually become a playstyle, which wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for the other change. And the other change? The ever-increasing scale of maps. On it's own, it doesn't seem as much like an issue until you think about the design of AC. You used to be an assassin in a city or area occupied by potential encounters with enemies, which you deal with through stealth, combat, or running away. Stealthing an enemy potentially requires crowds, tools, verticality, and cover. Combat is self explanitory. Running away requires superior movement, tools, cover, and other things previously covered in stealth. Now here comes a larger map with a lot of flat areas, with less verticality, a lack of cover besides tall grass, a tree, or tents, and the only people out here are you and your enemies. Social stealth is out the window, traditional stealth has little to no variation, and running away can only be done using a mount, so why bother keeping in parkor animation which won't be used because nobody RUNS away. There's a singular part of gameplay left you will naturally experience in gameplay. Combat. It isn't playing as an assassin anymore, you just play as a warrior who can sneak just because this series used to do stealth.

even after putting 100s of hours in witcher 3 I didn't do all side quests and still after final dlc ended, I felt sad that game has ended. so I conclude that it's the quality that matters, valhalla is blast to play for first 15 to 20 hours, then it drags on, you start to wish it to end.

i just wanna say thank you for these long ass vids they are the perfect thing to sleep to on a restless night

I have never rage played through 20 hours of game before in my life. I was genuinely angry but determined to finish. I dropped the controller when I realized there was one final region to take over after the endgame.

This is honestly one of the most underrated gaming channels I have ever seen. You sir deserve all the success for yourself and your team. Well done.

“A chain smoking gas station attendant” 😂😂😂😂😂😂 Never heard such a perfect comparison lmfao

Thank you for this. I lost interest in Valhalla after about 25 hours and haven't been able to put my finger on a concrete why. Meanwhile I loved Odyssey and put 100+ hours into it. It's fascinating how both games are essentially identical at first glance and yet one worked for me and one just doesn't.

It was at “skill bush” that I decided to leave a comment. Good work, Luke. All the best to the family.

In 10 years people are going to talk about how Ubisoft changed their spell casting balance to favor summoning in Assassin's Creed.

It’s incredible how I just damaged my sleep schedule by watching a 3 hour long Valhalla video 😂😴