Well Ubisoft, you have managed to make something worthwhile. It is not without faults, but I will get into that later.
Let’s first go over the plot quickly, never know maybe some of you are living under a rock. Set in the 9th century, Eivor, who can be played as male or female the entire time or either sex at different points in the story, is seeking revenge for the death of their parents at the hands of a rival clan leader. In order to get what they want, they make specific choices that ultimately lead them out of Norway with their brother Sigurd to form a new home in Anglo-Saxon England. From there, the focus of the game is for this group of Vikings to extend their reach through devastating raids or diplomatic alliances, expanding their base camp of Ravensthorpe from a ramshackle village to a thriving community.
The game mechanics is very similar to that of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey however, it feels more refined. Combat is a lot more fluent and you can focus on your enemies. Odyssey for me felt like this massive open world where it is a constant grind to level up. Valhalla is a little easier (given that I am playing on easy mode) but it is not a constant grind to level up so you can attempt some missions. This is a major plus point for me. For those of us who have limited time and can only really afford 30min of game play a night the easy leveling up and mission attempts are great.
Upgrading armor and weapons is also easy. You simply get resources and go to a smith to have it upgraded. The same applies to your weapons. Again, this is not the same as in Odyssey where you constantly must play mix match with weapons and armor. Hoping that your character is on the correct level to equip them.
As mentioned previously the game is not without faults. I did a live stream and one of my viewers also noticed that the AI is not the most responsive. The in-game allies run past the enemies and they do not react at all. However, the enemies immediately react to your movement and swarm down upon you. Not to mention the graphical issues with a horse that was on the roof of the stable and clan flags that appear to just be black with no textures.
Other than that, the game is an absolute winner. I really hope that Ubisoft applies some patches to fix the small bugs. I am glad that the game is not as buggy and broken as some other Ubisoft titels. One that comes to mind is the very broken Ghost Recon. Be sure to check out the review here.
