Assassin’s Creed Odyssey — Dance of Sparta

On the surface, the mere existence of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is goofy. It released a year after a game known as Assassin’s Creed Origins, the game that delved into the origins of the Assassins throughout the series’ history with the establishment of the Hidden Ones. Yet, Odyssey takes place around 400 years before that game, to, let’s say, delve even further into the origins. This made it easy to think Odyssey existed for the segment of the fanbase that needs to know everything about the lore of a specific universe. Even by the end of the game’s long, long journey, it was tough to shake off this thought.

Don’t take that cynicism as me saying that I didn’t enjoy the actual journey. There isn’t as much of the “traditional” Assassin’s Creed flavor from previous games to be found in Odyssey, thanks to the time in which it takes place. Yet, it’s nonetheless one of the most enjoyable games in the franchise because of what it does well.

Odyssey’s main tale takes place in Ancient Greece during the year 430 BCE, and presents the option to choose between two siblings for the main character: Alexios or Kassandra. I went with the latter after hearing about how much better her voice actress apparently was (I eventually agreed), and because it was a refreshing change of pace with playing a female Assassin — well, Assassin-ish, character. The Eagle Bearer’s quest starts off slightly whimsical by running errands, but it quickly becomes a quest to find missing family members. There was no way they wouldn’t get embroiled in the legendary war between Sparta and Athens, which gets further complicated when a mysterious band of instigators known as The Cult of Kosmos comes into play. It wouldn’t be an AC game if there wasn’t a group corrupt and megalomaniacal people that need to be assassinated.

Despite that, there was vocal criticism that couldn’t be ignored, from those who claimed Odyssey isn’t a real Assassin’s Creed game, and… they aren’t entirely wrong. The end result ends up felling like an action RPG set in Greek History first, with some Assassin’s Creed elements tacked on later in development.

Odyssey’s story isn’t great, and often gets lost amidst the sheer amount of side content available. The new decision-making system isn’t as memorable as it could have been, where the Eagle Bearer can choose between two to three different responses to events, some of which can either alter the flow of the conversation, lead to relationships, or even alter the ending if they’re related to the story. There are some neat consequences for select actions chosen during main or side missions, but this doesn’t happen often enough. There’s also no penalty for sleeping with as many characters as you want, though that’s not exactly a flaw. This is the kind of feature they’ll clearly expound upon in future installments, perhaps with more consequences. But I understand that too many of those might have been difficult for AAA development team to implement.

With me listing so many issues here, you might think my impressions of Odyssey were mixed. That’s not the case. I had a great time playing through it, and enjoyed it a little more than Origins by the time I reached the end. The game nails the sense of adventure and the feeling of going on a journey from one location to another in Ancient Greece. In addition to having the option to travel on foot or by horse, this installment brings serious ship sailing and battling back from Assassin’s Creed IV and Rogue. (These were only available during certain quests in Origins.) Traveling around one beautiful location is enjoyable enough, but sailing to discover others and search around them to see the sights and explore secrets is part of the gameplay loop that never gets old. The occasional fights between other ships don’t dilute this, which I enjoyed here despite finding it a bother in ACIV.

It helps that the game looks beautiful in the process, even on the standard five-year-old PlayStation 4 I played through it on. The developers of Odyssey focused on making the game’s Ancient Greece as authentic as Ancient Egypt was in Origins. Several important landmarks are represented, and its many cities are extremely detailed, especially bigger locations of Athens and Sparta. It’s easy to prolong this already lengthy game by simply seeing the sights and absorbing in the atmosphere, but it’s difficult not to do that.

The combat appears largely similar to Origins initially, but includes minor changes that make for big differences. Shields are gone, despite the main character being a born in Sparta, the forces of which used many shields themselves. Instead, the game emphasizes parrying, easy enough to perform after getting the timing down. The player also has several offensive and defensive powers at their disposal in addition to basic maneuvers, which make the combat that more enjoyable and less of a chore after doing it for tens of hours. There’s still room for improvement, as individual hits lack impact on enemies; but again, it’s better than Origins in this regard.

Another way this doesn’t feel like an older Assassin’s Creed game is how assassinations themselves can start feeling like a hassle. There are special upgrade trees where the character’s abilities can be upgraded for hunting, basic combat, and assassinations; in games that offer these, I tend to divide points evenly between them to make my character a jack of all trades. But this came back to bite me later on, because the level scaling (something new to this game) made it difficult for me to stealth-kill even regular grunts when they leveled up with me, let alone more powerful targets. This means I not only had to apply the right amount of points for basic and stronger assassinations, but keep my equipment up to the character’s current level, which got repetitive. Fortunately, they’re addressing this in the next game.

There’s no denying that Odyssey is a long game, easily taking over 100 hours to finish for anyone that just can’t help but do most of the side quests and other assorted side content in addition to the main story. Yet, it’s a testament to how good and addictive its gameplay loop is that it took over 100 hours to make me start feeling as if I never wanted to look at another similarly-designed enemy camp and giant fortress again. Journeying from one location or small island to another is a feeling that never got old, and I was a little sad when I discovered all the locations. It’s good that the Discovery Tour mode exists for the game now, to allow for exploring the historical locations without worrying about fighting and completing quests. I am also well aware that DLC exists.

Odyssey has its flaws, which I’ve addressed above. But there are games where the enjoyable parts are so good that it’s easy to overlook the negatives, and this game fits that to a tee. It falls victim to the usual Ubisoft open world tropes, but it’s tough to complain when they’re so addictive. There were several opportunities where I couldn’t help but do one more mission before calling it a day or night, like with Origins before it. The game doesn’t break new ground for open world games, nor does it even try to distance itself from the Ubisoft Open World Formula, but I enjoyed it enough that I found it tough to care about that.