Hello everyone. I recently platinummed Assassin's Creed Odyssey after around 140 hours (also, it apparently took me exactly 4 years, 4 months and 4 days to accomplish this lol) and would like to talk about the experience.
Overall, this was a very straightforward game to Platinum. Unlike other massive open world RPGs, there are no trophies for choosing certain story paths or for ensuring certain fates for characters. There are no trophies for difficulty modes. There aren't even any missable trophies. The vast majority of trophies are either related to reaching certain points in the story, completing certain side quests and activities, or performing certain actions related to customization.
So you can really play the game however you like and work on getting the trophies in a more lenient and fluid way. The game even seems intentionally designed in such a way as to not require a guide to get the platinum. A bit of a rarity for the series and in the genre (though, there were issues with this in practise I will get to later). I really like this approach because it means regardless of if you casually play this game and then wish to platinum or aimed to platinum it beforehand, it's not a huge inconvenience to do so. There's no need to replay the entire game just to make 1 random decision in 1 side quest because you missed that the first time.
Ok, I lied. there actually is one trophy that's missable. It requires you to get laid. So sadly, you cannot roleplay a virgin and get the platinum.
In all seriousness, while I did say earlier that the game is straightforward to platinum, that doesn't mean it isn't tedious. The game's main story takes around 40-50 hours to complete. Getting the platinum would take around 70-ish hours to platinum if you knew beforehand what quests and activities were worth doing and skipping everything else. The prior non-RPG ACs could be platinummed in half the time even if you weren't planning for it. And as Ody begins to repeat a lot of content and areas, it becomes quite tedious. I burned through a lot of Podcasts when I was playing it.
In addition, Ody is normally quite good at accounting for if the player does quests out of order as well as notifying the player if there are new quests in previously completed locations (the game even encourages sequence breaking). During my playthrough, I decided to do ALL the side content and missions first, and then tackle the main quest and then mop up any remaining trophies. For the most part, this worked out well. But there were a few rare times some quests struggled to keep up. And unfortunately, these happened to be the trophy related ones.
Here are the most problematic trophies:
"Hermes's Homie - Unveil all sub-regions of Greece". This trophy requires you to visit every sub region on the map. The way the game tracks is that when you open the world map, locations you haven't visited either have a rocky texture if they are on land or have a paper-like texture if they are on water. Once you do visit them, their texture updates to reflect what they actually look like. On paper, this sounds like a fair system. If you explore the map and do all the POIs, you should naturally hit most if not all of the locations. And unlike Origins which asked you to complete all locations, Ody lets you skip the activities themselves and only just set foot in the local area. You don't even need to fully explore the area. But the problem is that it includes small random islands scattered all over the map. Some of which have the same texture unexplored as they do explored. So if you haven't been keeping track of which of these random islands you visited, it can be really tedious to find them. On top of that, the trophy is said to be buggy where even if you have met the requirements, it can pop hours later. Unlike past AC games, climbing viewpoints doesn't unveil large sections of the map so they don't help much.
I got this trophy by looking up YouTube comments that mentioned "places you likely missed" that provided a list of such random small islands and where they were. I noticed that I had visited most of these locations because my pursuit to 100% the game required me stopping on such islands to complete their activities and bounce. The trophy popped for me when I visited Kradia Island under Samos. The only island that didn't have any activities whatsoever so it never popped up on my radar.
A similar thing happened to me for the "Child of Poseidon - Complete all underwater location objectives" trophy. There are 42 underwater locations all over the map. I did 41. The only one I was missing happened be in the middle of nowhere in the sea where there no POIs nearby. I feel the game would be better served here if such trophies only required you explore 75% of the map or complete 75% of the activities. Doing them all is really tedious and offers no leeway if the player misses one or it happens to bug out.
"Stink Eye - Recover the Cyclops's eye from a goat on Kephallonia" is another infamous trophy people have complained about. It requires you to kill goats on Kephallonia until RNG drops the Eye you need. It's really annoying. I was lucky and found it after 10 minutes but it can take much longer. One suggestion I've seen is that it may be faster to start a new game and play until you encounter the goat in the cutscene and kill them there.
For me, the 3 hardest and most unexpectedly stressful trophies were "Master of the Hunt - Complete the Daughters of Artemis questline", "Trust Me, I'm a Doctor - Complete the Hippokrates questline", "A Pirate's Life for Me - Complete Xenia's questline". Because the game didn't properly update or mark where their next steps were.
"Master of the Hunt" consists of 2 individual quests. The first quest requires you to hunt down 8 legendary animals all over Greece. Upon completing this, the next quest is available on a far away island. I completed the first quest but the second did not pop up on my map or radar or quest log like the game normally does. All the guides I looked up only had info for the first quest which is normally the hardest and most involved part and told me to just play it through. Even PSNProfiles didn't have the complete picture. I was convinced I had broken the quest somehow and there were even YouTube comments of other players expressing a similar concern. I only managed to get this one after watching one particular YouTube video that happened to also include the final step to the far away island. When I visited this island, the quest didn't pop until I came very close to its start point. Normally, this shouldn't happen. The game usually does a great job in either highlighting when the next quest in the chain is, or at the very least, having the icon show up on the map even if you haven't fully explored the area before. It was a similar case with "Trust Me, I'm a Doctor" only with 3 "hidden" quests instead of 1.
"A Pirate's Life for Me" was really wacky. The quest tasks the player with finding treasure maps and using them to find 6 lost treasures all over the map. While you can collect some of the treasure maps and the treasures themselves beforehand, the game gives you the quests to collect them individually and sequentially. Moreover, this is the only quest in the game where the quest markers are disabled for most of it. Even if you have Guided Mode turned on. On paper, this isn't a problem. You can use the treasure maps to find out where to go and if you get stuck, you can use a guide. Except, with the way how I played the game beforehand, the quests kinda broke.
Ok, so normally, like I said, Ody is pretty good at accounting for the player doing stuff out of order or completing quests before officially accepting them. The quest usually then has the player character going "oh, I already did x" and the quest giver going "Oh great job. You're even better than I thought. So we can skip this next step you should do Y now". This pirate quest is in a weird sort of limbo where it will let you complete some parts of it out of order, but the quest objectives and progression act like you're doing it "intended way". For example, one of the middle quests ask you to use a treasure map to find a treasure. I already found both beforehand 100+ hours ago but the quest didn't acknowledge that for some time until after the quest "started". I was then able to turn in the quest but the treasure maps remained in my inventory and I hadn't seen it yet so it had the "new item" icon on it. This caused some confusion later on as I was using the wrong treasure maps thinking it was the newest one.
And one of the later quests task you with using 1 treasure map to go find 2 other treasure maps and using them to go find the 2 actual treasures. Normally, when you find the first spot, the quest updates and points you to a merchant you need to interrogate who points you to a chest you need to loot to get the 2 final treasure maps. And then the game becomes hands off again like it usually is for this quest. But when I reached the spot, it didn't update because I had unknowingly already looted the 2 final Treasure Maps and just had to go find the treasure. I didn't know this and began worrying I had soft locked the quest. When I looked up guides, they said to go interrogate the merchant and loot the chest he points you to. I could still interrogate the merchant and get him to tell me where to go, though no markers appeared like they normally would and nothing in the game indicated I had already gotten what I needed. I couldn't even loot the chest as I had already looted it before. And when I browsed my inventory, the "new map" I had looked nothing like the one from the guides and there was nothing there. I really was convinced I'd had to do a NG+ run or something and properly do the quest. Before trying that, I decided to try one last leap of faith and follow the guides to see where the treasures actually were just to see if that would complete them somehow and not further break the quest. And to my surprise....that worked. I could pick up those treasures and complete the quests and get the final trophy I needed for the platinum. And it was only afterwards, looking through screenshots of other people's guides, that I realized I had all the treasure maps but the hands off nature of the quest and its weird progression didn't inform me.
So yeah, for the most part platinumming this game was straightforward if a bit tedious, then it became really confusing as I was troubleshooting why certain quests and pop ups weren't appearing. They really soured the experience. So if you are going to platinum this game, I hope my experience here helps you out.
With the trophy review all done, here my review of the actual game itself:
In many ways, I'd say Odyssey is the best AC game. It fully becoming an RPG allows it to improve many features of prior AC games and allow the player much more agency in the gameplay. But in others, its attempts to make changes dilute both its own positives and staple AC aspects.
Let's start with the basic gameplay.
-Basic Gameplay:
Odyssey expands on the foundation of its predecessor Origins. It retains Origins' improved combat where you can mix light and heavy attacks, parries and dodges, different weapon types that actually have different animations and properties, ranged bows and abilities into a single combo. But makes quite a few key improvements. You can no longer perpetually block (which was also awkward to use in Origins) and makes parrying more useful to compensate. Perfect dodging now gives a Flurry Rush effect which slows down time giving you more of an opportunity to pummel enemies. Put this all together and you have a really fun combat system where you can get this long unbroken combo going where you're always capable of attacking multiple enemies in some form. However, it does feel a bit unbalanced. AC Valhalla would later add in a Stamina Meter to prevent the player from just spamming heavy attacks and dodges which improves the combat but Ody's system still works well.
The new Combat Abilities are also quite fun to play around with. Such as Sparta Kick gives a reliable way to knock enemies off ledges so using elevation as a weapon is much more feasible or Ring of Chaos giving you a nice area of effect attack.
Stealth is also improved from Origins through the additions of new abilities. In Origins, many of the ways the player had to sneak through areas and take out enemies was somewhat limited. The hidden blade could only be upgraded a few times and couldn't be further boosted. This led to situations where if the player was underlevelled, it would no longer be feasible to OHKO some enemies using stealth as the raw damage of Hidden Blade Stealth Attacks would no longer be sufficient. Ody introduces new abilities that are both quite fun to play around with and allow you to boost your Stealth Damage to take out enemies even if your raw damage is insufficient. Abilities like Critical Assassinations allow you to deal 300% your raw Stealth Damage to a single enemy. Rush Assassin allow you to teleport between up to 4 enemies and deal around 200% Stealth Damage each time (and even teleport to the same enemy multiple times to hit them multiple times). Ghost Allows you turn invisible for a short time and Ghost Arrows all you to shoot Arrows through Walls. So there's a lot more fun tools to play around with.
In addition, all these abilities are limited by the amount of adrenaline charges you have which is a good way to address an issue prior AC games often had where it was too easy to spam your most powerful tools to cheese encounters. In Ody, Adrenaline refills by doing damage to enemies using normal moves and attacks so there's more of an element of planning out attacks present. You might consider saving and building up your Adrenaline by performing regular Assassinations on basic guards so you can perform a Critical + Assassin Strike + Overpower Combo on an elite Enemy (so around 5 bars of Adrenaline) to take him out without drawing attention. Even if you're underlevelled, playing on Easy Mode means these abilities can often compensate for the low damage at least on regular enemies and can make harder enemies easier to deal with.
I also like how these abilities can be mixed and matched in different situations even if not explicitly assigned to that specific situation. For example, Rush Assassination is marked as an Assassin Ability. You normally can't use it in a combat encounter. But you can use hit and run tactics where you can break line of sight to get enemies to line up together when searching for you and reuse the tactic. Sparta Kick and Overpower are normally designed for combat situations but you can use them in stealth to take out certain beefy enemies without drawing attention. Hermes Speed is intended to give the player an edge in combat but you can use it in Stealth to slip through gaps in enemy patrols and guard routes. Ghost Arrows can be used both in combat to damage enemies through their shields and in stealth to damage enemies through walls while remaining undetected. This gives the player way more options and flexibility.
A common criticism levelled against Ody is that "you can't OHKO enemies using stealth anymore". Often followed by how ridiculous it is that enemies can withstand being stabbed in the throat. I've always disagreed with this. Firstly because in past AC games, both the player character and enemies have animations where they survive being stabbed (see AC3). Secondly, one can simply play on Easy and Normal and simply upgrade their Assassin gear and abilities to more than compensate. And Thirdly, I'd argue this RPG logic also helps balance playstyles in AC.
According to the original creator of AC games, Patrice Desailits, AC games have always wanted to make both combat and stealth viable options as opposed to other Stealth games where only Stealth was viable and combat was designed to be a last resort. Which is an admirable goal but the past AC games often struggled with balancing both playstyles. In something like Brotherhood, it was easy to use chain kills to easily slaughter entire armies while stealth was quite slow, tedious and limited.
Ody being an RPG where your potential in combat and stealth is dependent on your gear and abilities result in both playstyles always being viable but never at the same time. This is something the game actually lies to the player about. The loading screen tips say the player can either be a specialist (investing in mostly combat or stealth) or being a generalist and spreading out their investment. But being a generalist really dilutes a character's potential. They'll be a stealthy Assassin that isn't great at stealthy Assassinating and also a combat focused Assassin that isn't great at combat. It is clearly better to specialize into one or the other and swap gear if needed. Ody even has slots where you can save different setups and give them different labels which highlights this aspect (which granted, can be quite expensive to maintain).
Also, that's kinda how Assassins have worked in the lore. Most Assassins weren't amazing in every category. Using the crew of AC2 as an example, canonically speaking, Paula is better at social stealth than Ezio and La Volpe who is better at Parkour than Ezio and Paula. Bartholomew is better at combat than Ezio, Volpe and Paula but terrible at Stealth. And Ezio, canonically is only well rounded at each of these aspects in AC2, not a full master. So it would be logical for an AC RPG game for the player's character to have trade offs or mix-max in different areas.
In addition, the way Ody handles its RPG systems is also a step up from Origins. Origins limited progression to only weapons, certain upgrades and skill points. Which resulted in Bayek kinda playing quite similar for many players. It wasn't really doable to make min-max Bayek in completely different playstyles as much. An endgame Bayek would be about as good in combat and stealth as another. But in Ody, between gear for both 3 weapon slots and 4 armour slots (each of which can be engraved to receive certain buffs and nerfs or allow entirely new mechanics), an entire system for allocating skill points to all kinds of modifiers (like chance to receive health on hit, or damage while airborne etc), and way more abilities. It is far more feasible make radically different Misthios Builds that play quite differently and have different strengths and weaknesses. I made a Misthios build using the Gold Travelers Gear that made my Invisibility Power last forever and further boost stealth damage and give extra adrenaline for performing stealth attacks at the cost of being really frail and having limited raw combat potential.
As a result, Ody finally feels like a full on RPG. Something the AC franchise first introduced in AC2 with gear that had stats which didn't matter is now finally a deep system one can really engage with.
Ody is also quite forward thinking with many of its systems. Missions and their rewards scale as the player levels up meaning the player will always receive an appropriate reward for completing missions no matter when they do them. This addresses a criticism I always had of games like Witcher 3 and Borderlands 2 where once you level up past a certain point, side quests x levels below your current level don't give enough XP or rewards. With the game essentially punishing you for doing side content. Ody on the other hand is content to give the player thousands of XP and Drachma for doing a quest they picked up at level 5 at level 60.
Another feature I really like is gear upgrading. If you really like specific pieces of gear, you can pay a rather expensive fee to bring them up to your current level making them always usable.
A common criticism I've heard of Ody is that the game forces the player to grind since the level requirements for the next main mission jump and this is also to encourage players to buy XP boosters. I will not argue that Ubisoft weren't tempted by or adjusted the XP of missions to encourage that. But I will say that the game doesn't encourage the player to grind or replay content in order to progress. From my experience, I found most side quests in an a region or maybe an adjacent region sufficient to give me enough of a buffer to do the main quests for quite a long time. So the player is at least always experiencing new content should they ever need the experience.
In addition, I like to play open world games by doing all possible side content before starting the main quest. I was able to make it to around level 60 by the time I had explored all the regions and done everything before interacting with anyone in Megaris which is well above any requirement.
-Map Design, Social Stealth and Parkour
This is probably going to be my most negative section.
The world in Ody is absolutely beautiful. I'd go so far as to call it the most impressive map I've ever seen in an open world game.
It is extremely massive yet is so varied and full of detail. You have large cities and lakes of salt with NPCs going about collecting them. You have large red lakes caused by algae. You have massive cities like Athens with large bustling marketplaces where vendors sell their wares, kids and animals play in the street and people go about their day. You have places like the village of Olympia where you can see athletes train and merchants mess with tourists. You have large farms where you can see NPCs having animations for working on the land. There are large snowy mountains and deep volcanoes.
You know how a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 has extremely detailed and intricate NPC routines? Ody feels like it's only several levels below that but the sheer scale and variety of its world kinds makes it more beautiful.
Yet I feel it's a massive negative aspect of the game.
Consider the following analogy. Imagine if Insomniac made a new Spider-Man game but set it in rural Kansas or something. A place with no large skyscrapers so web swinging was made less useful so you often had to drive from point to point as Spider-Man instead of Web Swinging. Even if every other aspect of the game was amazing, the fact that web swinging was so situational instead of a core part of your moveset would kinda be a bummer.
That's how Ody's map works. Yes, there are large cities like Athens and Sparta, as well as smaller locations with a fair amount of urban development to them that would be quite fun to parkour around. But the overwhelming majority of Ody's map is either rural meaning there are few large buildings and crowds of people, or its water so you can only sail on it.
As a result, 2 of AC's most novel features that were quite iconic, parkour and social stealth are quite diluted. Consider 2014's Assassin's Creed Unity as an example. That game's map was set in Revolutionary Paris and said Paris was a sprawling mass of buildings, alleys and roads that were quite interconnected. As a result, parkour was a lot more fun as you could use more advanced movement options like side and back ejects and navigate the maps in cool and fun ways. There was a clear distinction between a skilled player that had mastered Unity's movement systems in how they navigated compared to a beginner. In addition, the presence of urban environments also meant large gatherings of crowds of people so it was more feasible to seamlessly blend among them like some sort of sus imposter. Giving the player more options for how to approach objectives.
Granted, I will be the first to admit that Social Stealth in past AC games wasn't exactly the deepest, nor the parkour mechanics often necessary for completion. But they still added to and improved the past games. But in Ody's case, not only have these mechanics been removed, their reintroduction wouldn't significantly improve the experience because of the way the maps are designed. See Valhalla as an example.
Currently, Ody treats parkour as just a climb button. There's no options for manual jumps, side and back ejects or any advanced movement. Even if Ody had the same parkour mechanics as Unity somehow ported into the game as is, you'd only be able to use them relatively sparingly in certain cities and forts as they aren't really useful on plains, mountains and forests. Same for Social Stealth. Large crowds don't tend to gather on mountains. Even ignoring the mechanical side, It takes away from the Assassin's Creed feel if instead of parkouring my way to my next objectives, I'm just riding a horse the whole way. Or if I need to escape from a fight, instead of parkouring my way up a building to break line of sight, I just ride my horse away.
It's shame because I feel these things could have added to and improved the RPG systems of Ody. Like Imagine if Social Stealth was another playstyle one could invest into as a way to complete objectives without needing to fight or "manually sneak around".
As it currently stands, I would have gladly traded 75% of the current map and had the game set in mostly city environments if it meant the game would have both the environment and mechanics for social stealth and parkour. It would also help the game feel less repetitive overall.
-Ship Combat
Ship combat returns after being absent since Rogue in 2014. And it's fine. The wind no longer impacts sailing and there are no major weather events. You can't get boarded anymore. But combat is faster and snappier due to being able to free-aim javelin and arrows and drift. The game being on 8th gen helps as there isn't any cutscenes or interruptions when boarding and invading other ships.
But to be honest, I'm not fond of ship gameplay. I wasn't fond of it back in AC4 and that's still the case here. I feel it takes away from the typical on-foot AC gameplay that I play AC for. You can't really stealth or use parkour with ships.
I actually wrote a piece on this before:
https://mieckfram.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-critique-of-ac4-black-flags-sailing.html
In Ody, like I said, it's fine. And I kinda liked it better here than in 4 or Rogue since more of my gameplay was spent on foot. And once you've explored every region and touched every viewpoint, it's much easier to just fast travel to avoid sailing. I'd rather Ody not have sailing but seeing as how important it would be for navigating Greece, a place known for its various islands and navel activities, it kinda has to be there.
At least thematically, the ship you use is called "The Adrestia". Named after the Greek goddess of (among other things) revolt and just retribution, fitting for one on a quest to avenge their family. Adrestia the goddess was also sister to the god Deimos.....
-Mercenaries
Ody appears to a take page from the Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor games' Nemesis System. The game has a system for generating "unique" mercenaries based on traits, backstory and model. And honestly this system is quite cool. If you increase your notoriety, it invites stronger mercenaries to come after you. And these mercs will hunt you to the ends of the earth so you can't just fast travel away to completely get rid of them. And if they are overlevelled, they can be impossible to take down which does add some nice consequence to notoriety in a way prior AC games haven't done before (granted it is too easy to pay off your bounty and avoid this. So I'd recommend not doing that and avoid mercenaries for some extra role playing fun). And taking down certain mercenaries and leveling up increases your mercenary ranking and nets you some nice perks. There's even some strategic elements like going after certain mercenaries early or getting contracts on them so you can get some good gear early.
One criticism I do have is that even though the way mercenaries are implemented is quite cool, there's not many ways to interact with them nor is the system very dynamic. Like in the Shadow of War games, the Nemesis System there was a lot more dynamic as Orcs would fight against each other, level up and this would shift the political system in a region. In addition, you the player could interact with this by controlling certain Orcs and having them do your bidding and having rivalries with others.
Ody's system works but the Mercenaries don't really interact with each other or you. And I'm not going to criticize this aspect too harshly. This isn't the focus of the game like it was with Shadow of Mordor/War so I'm not going to dock marks that the Mercs don't talk like the Orcs do. But I do wish there was a bit more on the gameplay side at least because I really love idea of a dynamic set of actors in an AC game. Maybe different Mercs have allegiances to Athens or Sparta and may casually work with them. So if you're helping out Athens in one Region, you may end up fighting a Mercenary Loyal to Sparta at some point. Maybe there's some sort of dynamic bounty and stats system where you can see what other Mercs are doing, and go and help them or poach their bounty and they may decide to help you out or sneak attack you. The game already has certain timed quests where NPCs give you a really basic quest so having competition or co-operating with other mercs could have been a great way to spice those up.
-Cultists
I feel the way the Cult is implemented more than makes up for how the Mercenary System works. The Cult system is one of Ody's coolest and best ideas.
Now technically, prior AC games have had a menu where you can check out your progress in taking out the local Templar population. AC1 had it as a side quest letting you know how many optional Templars are in the area. But AC2, the way the Conspiracy Menu works is just as a progress bar showing you how many Templars Ezio has killed and how many he has left to kill based on his knowledge at that point in the story. So basically it works like badges in Pokemon. And it works a similar way in Origins. These menus are cool narratively but since you only interact with Templars as part of the main story, there's no real interaction with these menus.
In contrast, Ody's Cultist menu shows how much info you have on the local Cultists and how many you've killed so far. And it's not a static system as many Cultists actually physically exist in the world as regular NPCs. You can kill said Cultists in the open world even before you unlock this menu and it will count towards completing this. Because I played the game by doing ALL the side content before progressing the main story, I found I had already whacked quite a few Cultists when the menu unlocked. Plus, killing Cultists often gives you clues to finding others. If you find all the clues pointing to a specific Cultist, that Cultist will then be highlighted on your map. But the kicker is that you can still use some of these clues to find and kill them beforehand. I remember one particularly cool example was when one of the clues I found was that "This Cultist is a super rich dude in X region" and "This Cultist is a slave owner". I remembered that in that region, there was a salt mine I had cleared out a couple hours earlier but still decided to fast travel there and take a look. I did and when using Ikaros to scope out the area, I saw a dude in purple clothing walking around I just casually decided to kill him and found he was a Cultist. I felt so clever because I managed to kill a Cultist using only some clues and my own knowledge of the open world. I honestly wish the map was smaller so this could be made more often as I feel this is a really interesting and creative mechanic in an open world game.
In addition, there can even be some side quests that take advantage of the Cult System. I recall there was one side quest where a local leader of an area asked my help in taking down a Cultist. I agreed only to find they were the Cultist and had a twin sibling to throw me off. That quest made me quite paranoid afterwards as with every quest afterwards, I was constantly wondering if every NPC I met was a Cultist. Ody managed to accomplish what no prior AC game ever did. It actually made me feel conspiratorial and that anyone could be a Templar. It really gives a sense of how widespread and powerful the Cult/Templars are here.
Sadly, I do have some criticisms here.
The main one is the way Ody depicts the Cultists. It has a very black and white view of them. Just about every Cultist is some sadistic and cruel person in a position of power. And I think that's a shame. One of the things I really liked about games like AC1, AC3, Rogue and Unity was how they explored how grey the 2 sides were. The Assassins aren't just the good guys because you play as them. They are a faction with their own specific philosophy. A philosophy that can be critiqued. Prior AC games have shown how the Assassins with their "free will no matter what" philosophy can often result in a less stable society at times. Meanwhile the Templars believe that humanity isn't responsible enough to handle such free will so much be guided from the shadows and have often helped people and societies find a stability that Assassins couldn't. That is one of the reasons why the Templars typically have had the upper hand throughout the Assassin/Templar conflict.
The game eventually stops being creative with many of the Cultists. The side missions that feature them eventually stop being subtle and just make it clear that the local dude with lots of power who is a terrible person just happens to also be a Cultist. It was disappointing seeing the quests devolve like this when they started so strong.
I'd argue the Cult of Kosmos would be a far more interesting antagonist for both the player and the Misthios if there was a bit more moral ambiguity to the situation. For example, lets say the Cult were more like the Grey Templars in their beliefs. Like imagine one quest where you work with a local businessman who genuinely helps people by providing employment to the community take out a more heartless one. But then you find out said businessman is a Cultist so obviously you have to kill him since he poses a danger to the Misthios' family. But killing him would hurt the local economy and render many people homeless. This would be a great way for Ody to highlight that the 2 sides aren't black and white. That the Assassins' goal of killing Templars here might provide the people with more freedom, sure, but many would rather just have that stability instead. That stability you the player took away by being an Assassin. Plus, the people already made their choice. They chose to be under the Templars there and you even took their choice away with your actions.
Now imagine if the side quests featuring Cultists had them be more important to the local area and their deaths had some negative outcomes. Not only would that make the 2 sides more interesting but it would also show the Cult as even more of a threat to the Misthios given how interwoven they are into so many aspects of Ancient Greek Society. It would even add to the gameplay since Ody is a full on RPG now, it would put the player in their character's shoes and experience said conflict for themselves.
-Other features
The game uses a yellow diamond as the main marker for the currently tracked quest. This is a problem because many towns and areas have a yellow colour. So the icon blends in well. And there is no "point to the marker" option in the map. You can track a quest but may have a hard time finding what it's tracking. I find I often need to pan the map over to the sea, zoom in and then see which corner the yellow diamond is on. Then follow it until I see where exactly it is and what the nearest fast travel point is. Such an easy fix would have been to make it a Blue diamond instead.
The game got a patch where if you play the game on a PS5, you get to play the game at a higher resolution of 1440p at 60FPS with much faster load times, improved draw distance and visual details. This isn't a separate PS5 version. Just the PS4 version with some improvements. So no fancy haptic feedback (which I really love in games). But the higher framerates and better load times are a godsend. I don't really care much for the resolution. I honestly would drop it down to 720p if I could to get an even higher framerate. Hopefully that becomes a standard for the 9th generation.
I love the game's implementation of Photo Mode and wish it was the standard for all over games. Here, you can enter Photo Mode and take a picture at any point. That photo now shows up on your map and in the games of other players. You can even see the photos taken by other players, upvote them and the photo with the highest votes in the last 24 hours gets highlighted as the photo of the day. Personally, I'd love if this was taken a step further with an optional "Dark Souls-esque" system where you can see in the world, icons that a player has taken a photo here and see the photo rather than using the map. There is one downside however. In more "unique" places such as bossfights with Medusa or other monsters, or in Isu Temples, there tends to be a lot more photos by players which does spoil the surprise. Personally, I don't mind since so much of the map isn't unique that ways to highlight what content is there that's unique is great.
The game brings back Discovery Mode From Origins, allowing you take in the history of the world in a virtual museum mode. I do wish the codex from prior ACs was still available tho.
During the minotaur challenge questlines, one quest requires you to obtain a challenge token. If you choose to buy it, one of the other competitors will admonish you for wanting to "pay to win" and ask you "where is your sense of pride and accomplishment". Which is ironic given the game has a microtransaction store.
If you choose to romance Kyra, the Misthios says "We have a lot in common. I was hoping when the smoke clears, we could find somewhere quiet". Kyra responds: "And what exactly do we have in common? ". The Mishtios responds: "I just... We... I just thought that's what people said to each other. I wasn't expecting a follow-up." I found this funny.
The Alexois Meets Alexa ads on YouTube are amazing and all of you reading this should go watch them.
I wish there was a master audio option as then I could more conveniently knock the volume up or down depending on when I am listening to podcasts through the Spotify app (also, the PS5 Spotify app is terrible compared to the PS4 version).
-Story
--Modern Day
Ody continues Layla's story in the modern day from Origins. And to be honest with you, while I love the premise of AC's modern day sections, I dislike their gameplay.
I have written about this before.
https://mieckfram.blogspot.com/2019/09/critique-against-assassins-creeds.html
But in short, the modern day in AC games, even when they have a great story going on, are often boring to play because at their best, they play like a diet version of the Animus section. In Ody's case, Layla's sections don't have a massive open world to explore, there's no interesting combat or stealth. The levels are extremely linear so there's no real challenge or stakes.
Ody takes this to the extreme with Layla only having 1 super linear mission and story event in the base game. It takes 30 minutes to complete. It is super cool seeing the Misthios in the present and does highlight the new way the Animus works having more potential for surprises like this. But this entire story is set up and "resolved" in a mini-cliffhanger so quickly. Of course, the Paid DLC Expansions do follow this up but this is a review of the base game + any free content it got. Not the Paid DLC expansions.
There was free DLC for Ody that sets up Layla's story for the paid Atlantis DLC Expansion. I won't comment on the paid stuff here. But with the Free DLC, I like the premise and I'm surprised it's taken this long for AC to try something like this. The idea of the Past Protagonist being aware they are being watched by someone in the future who needs their help so there's some indirect back and forth between the past and present is cool on paper. I always felt this idea should have also been done in Brotherhood and Revelations since Ezio (from his POV) was told by what he assumed was a literal Ancient Roman Goddess that his whole purpose in life was to be a messenger to some future phantom.
Sadly, in Ody's case, it is boring to actually play though. It consists of replaying some of the basic tombs that were already completed back in the Animus. These tombs were already super linear and lacked much gameplay to begin with so the return trips with Layla aren't very exciting.
It's a shame because like I said, I do love the story and premise of AC's modern day. I just hate playing through it. I love that Layla's character is far more active and reckless than Desmond (who admittedly, was way too passive until AC3) and the story flags the possible consequences of the bleeding effect she is exposing herself to in addition to how wacky the Isu are (some dramatic irony since we know these red flags exist given what happened to Desmond). But I hate how boring these sections are to play. None of what's neat about Ody's gameplay (the decent combat and stealth and RPG mechanics, the massive open world, hell even the ship sailing) is present here.
--Animus
I do like the overall story and individual moments of the Misthios' story. I like how they start off as this selfish mercenary only out for revenge but get embroiled in this larger conspiracy involving the Cult of Kosmos. I like how some of your choices in the main story have logical ramifications and allow you to "roleplay" an arc for the Misthios. I wanted to go for one where the Misthios kills his father in revenge and tries to rationalize it only to see the consequences of it in how bolder the Cult are, how it hurts his mother and how it strains their relationship with Sparta.
The Misthios, despite not being an official Assassin, and it being a millennia before the formation of the official Assassins, ends up essentially doing the same things and coming to the same conclusions his successors eventually would. I do like this approach for a prequel AC game. Like, we know that the Assassin and Templar philosophies always existed in some form even before their official formation. So seeing the Misthios debate with Socrates over stuff like "hey, is it worth killing a leader who thinks he's doing the right thing for his people" or "why beef with these Cult members when they haven't done anything wrong? Well, they are trying to control people's lives from the shadows and people deserve that much at least" is cool since you see these people who aren't official Assassins nor have any concept of them making the same points that official Assassins will later stand on. The game doesn't really dive too deep in this however. It's not like Metal Gear Solid where your characters spend hours of cutscenes debating philosphy. But it is enough to feel more novel.
I'm reminded a bit of AC4. In that game, Edward doesn't start out as an Assassin. If anything, he kinda beefs with the Assassins and their Creed since he doesn't see the point of them. He even mocks their Creed and takes it at a surface level with the whole "Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted" line. It's only at the end, after seeing how the Pirate Life has turned out and from support from his Assassin friends, does Edward see what it actually means to be an Assassin.
Ody's story is like if Edward was kinda always on board with the Assassin philosophy, but there were no official Assassins around, so he sorta naturally comes to the same conclusions on his own rather than with assistance from his Assassin friends.
Of course, Ody doesn't really have The Misthios take their time coming to the same conclusions. They instantly hate the Cult and how they are controlling stuff. Yeah, they later also hate them for personal reasons but the story makes it clear that even if the Cult wasn't targeting the Misthios and their family, the Misthios would still have beef with them just for existing.
This is kinda what Aya's character was like Origins. Aya was the one who came to many of the conclusions that started the official Assassin Brotherhood, but she came to these conclusions based on the events of the story. She saw how killing one tyrant only causes another to rise after she was used by Cleopatra. She hates how the Order of Ancients Function after seeing the extent of their actions. All this leads to the formation of the Brotherhood. Meanwhile, Bayek, the player character, couldn't care less and only wanted revenge. Hell, even after he got his revenge, he was content and Aya has to twist his arm into helping her fight the Order.
Part of me wonders if Ody's main story would have been improved if the Misthios initially had no innate hatred of the Cult? Like, once they first encounter the Cult, the player could choose if the Misthios thinks its a big deal or ignore it or even initially side with the Cult before becoming disillusioned and seeing the flaws in their ideology and becoming a Proto-Assassin without realizing it.
I do feel the story has an issue with pacing and presentation. Like, the beats in a vacuum are great. Such as the ending dealing with Deimos. It makes sense that would be the climax of the story. And Hell, it made me emotional. Finally, AC told a parent child reuniting story that gets the feels. Take that Liberation. But there's no build up to it. The missions before it don't feel like they're leading to the climax of the story, they feel like another standard mid story mission. Like, with the way the ending was set up, I still had 1 Cultist and the Ghost Cultist left on the menu, so I assumed this would be the beginning of the ending. Dealing with Deimos is what begins the final mission to deal with the Cult once and for all. But no. As soon as you finish the Deimos mission, the game just....ends. It gives you the prompt that you did it and can do a NG+ run now. Of course, you can still go and do some small minor epilogue quests (oh, and all the DLC Expansions that greatly expand the story) but for a game that feels padded as hell, the story really feels like it needed more time in some places.
What makes this stranger is that like how Layla got Free DLC that added to her story and bridged the gap between the base game and the paid expansions, the Misthios gets some Free DLC that does the same. One of which takes them to the island of Korfu for story about a funny vacation turned serious thanks to a miscommunication error leading to a POE being abused. It even has consequences for the wider story as it permanently breaks Leonidas' Spear, informs the Misthios about their purpose as an immortal guardian of POEs. It even gets a bit existential with how the Misthios has to confront the fact they will outlive everyone they ever loved to do a thankless task. And how they can't even tell their friends the full details because they can't understand. It even has proper credits when it's completed (unlike the base game), has a post credits sequence of the Misthios in Ancient Egypt and England and opens the PSN Store page for AC Valhalla, telling you the story continues there.
But the whole DLC and its separate map is disconnected from the base game in both tone and content. None of your choices or actions are really referenced there. Which is understandable given it's technically DLC rather than a part of the base game so it can't easily account for the player's choices. But this addendum feels like it was designed to be the "real ending" but the story was rewritten and swapped around. So even if the individual moments are great, it doesn't flow well or is connected.
I suspect the game's development wasn't as smooth. Origins also suffered from similar problems where its story was rewritten partway through development and needed to use its DLC to properly conclude and set up its story. Ody is arguably even messier with this. I honestly wish both games got more time in development. I wish Origins got delayed to 2018 and Ody to 2020/2021 with Valhalla to 2023 so these games could have better incorporated the DLCs into their stories and been more cohesive. I appreciate the attempt to mimic the older ACs where the games came out quickly to try and continue the overarching stories, but I'd rather each individual game be as best as it could be rather than be another vehicle to set up the next game.
[Why you're an Assassin]
A bit of a tangent here. But a common criticism often directed at Ody is that "This isn't an Assassin's Creed game because you don't play as an Assassin/There aren't any Assassins or Templars around". And I strongly disagree with this statement. Both because it's false from both a meta/gameplay perspective and from a storytelling perspective as the AC franchise itself has always rejected that line of thinking.
Like firstly, from a meta perspective, this is the equivalent of saying that "you don't play as Spider-Man in Spider-Man Miles Morales because you don't play as Peter Parker". This would be an absurd argument because the whole premise of SMMM is that Miles is a Spider-Man. That he doesn't need to be Peter to be Spider-Man. Miles has the same gameplay, moves and goals as Peter does and takes the same actions he would. So he is Spider-Man in this case.
A similar thing applies to Ody. The Misthios may not be an "official" Assassin, but the game is about them hunting down proto-Templars using Stealth, combat and parkour because they fundamentally disagree with how said Proto-Templars plan to control things from behind the scenes. The Misthios kills more Proto-Templars and continues to do so than any prior AC protagonist. The game expands on the Isu and modern day. It's an AC game.
And Secondly, the AC franchise itself, from a lore perspective, disagrees with that. We know from Altair's Codex in AC2 that "even if every current Assassin is killed, the Creed itself would live on and be reborn because it is a philosophy, not a person". In AC4, Characters like Al Mualim are considered Templars by modern day Abstergo even though Al Mualim never officially joined the Templars (and even killed many of them) because by the end, he embraced the Templar philosophy. Showing that you don't need to be an "official Assassin/Templar to be an Actual Assassin/Templar".
Even moreso, prior AC games like AC2 and Brotherhood point out that Adam And Eve (yes, that Adam And Eve) are retroactively considered the first "proto-Assassins" for how they stood up for humanity's freedom during the Human/Isu War by modern Assassins.
Source: https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/History_of_the_Assassins
https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/Adam
Put this all together and the Misthios is an actual Assassins by the standards of this franchise and its past games. The Misthios fights for humanity's free will against the Cult of Kosmos which are considered Proto-Templars. So they are an Assassin.
And also, The Misthios shows up in Valhalla and has helped out the Assassins then as well.
[Side Quests]
Ody has many different kinds of side content of varying quality.
You have "Timed Quests". Think the Radient Quests of Skyrim. These tell you to go kill an enemy, hunt some animals or destroy some ships etc but you have 24 real hours to do it else these quests expire. These aren't very interesting. They even feel like they were generated by an AI with weird dialogue being used to string together a basic conversation between the Misthios and the quest giver.
You have Bounties and "post-story quests". These don't expire and sometimes reference stuff you've done in the main quest but feel similar to those Timed Quests.
And then you have what I call "Proper Side Quests". These are indicated by either the yellow, blue or red icons they have. These feel like the typical side quests you may find in something like the Witcher 3. Although, the proportion of these quests that are of a high quality are rare. Many are more elaborate versions of these radient quests albeit with more cutscenes and choices. Few, like the town of Minos where the city has become a tourist trap with their local Minotaur, are properly fleshed out with good stories, gameplay and choices you can make.
Blue and Red Side Quests were added as Free DLC and these are usually some of the better side quests you can encounter. They tend to be more isolated from the main story so don't expect many of your choices to influence either the quests or the main story but as self contained quests, these are pretty enjoyable.
If you're playing Ody, I recommend only doing Yellow, Blue and Red quests. Only do Bounties and Timed Quests if you're super close to levelling up and need the EXP. Otherwise, don't waste your time.
Personally, I would rather the game be significantly shorter and have more interesting side quests instead. I dislike how this game opts to favour quantity over quality. It's also a shame because Ody actually has more mechanics to resolve quests with.
As an example, consider the Witcher 3. How many ways do you have to resolve a quest? You generally have dialogue which either consists of picking the right options or using Axii, or do a task for the person, or engage in combat. Whereas something like Skyrim adds to dialogue by having some basic speech checks on persuade and intimidation. You still have combat. But you also have stealth skills like pickpocketing, lockpicking and stealth to bypass some obstacles. You don't have to only fight or talk.
Ody feels somewhere in the middle of these 2. You have dialogue with some options like "lie" and "threaten". You also have combat. But you also have parkour and stealth. There's an early quest that demonstrates this. You need to help Markos pay off his debt to a local merchant. You can either convince the merchant to forgive Markos, threaten him (either with your words, by attacking him, or by breaking his wares), paying off Markos debt yourself, or sneaking into his house and stealing documents.
In theory, Ody should offer the most variety in how players complete quests since there are lots of mechanics and ways to problem solve. But this one quest with the merchant is about how complex the quests in Ody get and is even rare. Most quests are generally quite basic, either asking the player to go kill or do a thing, or choose a specific dialogue option. A shame because like I said, Ody has a lot of mechanics to play around with.
As an example, one of the Yellow Quests involved a Spartan Mother telling the Misthios to go Assassinate her son as he was deserter. You meet this soldier and he offers to pay you to let him go. You can either oblige or kill him. Even if you oblige, you can then go back to the mother and either tell her you spared him and she'll chastise you, or lie and say you did kill him and get paid double.
Imagine if there was more to this quest. Like, lets say the mother demanded proof you did kill him. If you chose to spare the son, you then need to work with the son to grab a dead Spartan soldier and make it look like it was him. There's the ability to grab, carry and throw bodies. So perhaps you could throw the body off a cliff to make it look like he fell to his death. Or throw him at some animals, get eaten and then carry the body back to the Mother. And depending on how you did it, she might see through your bluff. Such as saying "my son was afraid of cliffs. He'd never have gone there. You're lying". Now this quest is more interesting, has more ways to play it, and involves you using the environment and other mechanics rather than just basic talking and fighting. I'd love for Ody to be 25% as big and packed as it currently is if quests like these were the standard.
Custom Quests:
One of the coolest aspects of Ody is that players can create their own custom side quests and share them with others to play. And I really love this aspect. Yeah, the gameplay in these quests isn't much of a departure from the regular quests (likely due to the limitations of the creator) but the story and dialogue choices can be a lot more interesting. I have played really cool quests like the one where a guy made this parody of Castlevania where the Misthios can help this guy named Belmont deal with some sort of monster like Dracula and there were multiple choices and outcomes based on what you did during it. I've also played very boring ones where you have to escort an NPC across half the map. I've played ones that had really boring gameplay, but had writing that was "so bad it's good". Like one of them was this sorta epilogue for the main story and had the Misthios interacting with their family afterwards. But it was full of edgy deviantart swearing, typos and even some self awareness of that (like when Darius says "I killed the King of Persia (I forgot his name btw)"). And in between these conversions, there was an NPC called "Exposition Man" that tells you what's going on and how much time is supposedly passing between you waking between 4 NPCs. I was enjoying it even if it was so laughable.
Some of these were even designed to help the player level up. There are even these "XP Farm" Quests where you just kill some enemies or talk to NPCs and get a lot of XP quickly. There is one that exploits a glitch to help the player quickly synchronize viewpoints.
I genuinely recommend people try out the custom quests as they can be great. I also wish more games had a feature like that. The only other open world console game I can think of that has something like this was inFAMOUS 2 back in 2011. I remember spending quite a few hours messing around there and seeing all the wacky and serious content other players made.
My only criticism with this (aside from the gameplay being limited and the only lever creators have is with the cutscenes and dialogue) is the curation. The game now only shows around 20 quests that seemed to range from around 3-4 stars from around August 2019. Obviously back when the game was new there was much more variation in what the game's algorithm found. But there's not many tools in the game to manually search for or reshuffle the selections. You would need to use Ody's official website and use the Story Log there to bookmark a max of 20 potential quests. Then have those quests show up in your game for you to travel to their start points. It's a hassle but I feel is worth it as you can get some really creative and novel quests to show up in your game.
In closing, I love Ody's combat, stealth abilities, RPG systems, graphics, custom story creator and photo mode. I feel many of these are improvements over past AC games and even more fun than some other RPGs.
I feel the game is held back by its world design and padding. Resulting in a massive game with so much repeated content and filler. As well as diluting the franchise's staple parkour and social stealth gameplay. My ideal version of Ody would be a game 25-50% the current size, set mostly in large cities like Athens and Sparta, have systems that incorporate parkour and social stealth and have a greater proportion of more interesting and replayable quests. As well as being less of a chore to Platinum.
Anyway, what do y'all think? Join me in 4 years when I platinum Valhalla and talk about how it repeats Ody's pros and cons.
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