‘Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’ is an impressive world curbed by its own ambition

The Greek philosopher Socrates once said: "Every action has its pleasures and its prices." And when it comes to Ubisoft's latest entry in his historical action series, he could not have been more right. While you can find fun at Assassin's Creed Odyssey it has a considerable cost, and that is your time increasingly limited.

Odyssey has the most extensive map we have seen in the history of the series and say that it is great would be a euphemism. It is massive, extensive with masses of land and vast seas in between. 50 hours and there are still many areas that we have not yet explored.

Although the world is undoubtedly vibrant and impressive, there is not enough variety in its activities. He suffers from repetition, slowly becoming an experience centered on the boring level of grinding. It is a monotonous dream that, although it is beautiful and fun to play at times, tends to stay longer.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey is great but superficial in the same vein as many other games in the open world. The difference here is that it forces you to play your most inconsequential moments, for hours and hours, in the name of the additional content.

A story of one, two stories

Located in 431 a. C., Odyssey is a recount of the Peloponnesian War between the Spartans and the Athenians. You can choose between playing as one of the two Spartan misthios, Alexios or Cassandra, a brother and sister condemned to a horrible fate. Despite having two protagonists, the story is the same no matter who you choose, and this includes dialogue. Kassandra and Alexios recite the same lines during their adventures with only minor changes in the way it is said. Alexios' responses tend to shamelessly come off while Cassandra takes a more playful approach. Either way, the experience feels the same.

The story of Odyssey fares better than most Assassin & # 39; s Creed games. It is more a personal story, which focuses on the tumultuous history of a torn family. Present a mysterious cult at the center of a great war and a villain you would never expect. There are brief moments dealing with the animus, but they are mostly disposable experiences. Since the current story has been confused over the course of the series, Assassin's Creed would be easier to digest if he simply discarded it altogether.

An introduction to dialogue trees gives you the power to change the course of the story through interactions with characters. For example, there are moments in the game where you must decide between being merciful and forgiving someone's life or just killing them.

The same dialogue system is used to find romantic partners, although these interactions are not as deep as we would have liked. Decisions are reduced primarily to choosing who to sleep with, and the scenes appear as situations you would find in a corny porn. It's not exactly what we would call romance, but it does provoke some laughter.

Although the general history of Odyssey is nice, his game is slowed down by rhythm issues. Start strong, but as you advance, you spend too much time away from the main missions trying to level up. On more than one occasion, I found that the difference between my current level and the recommended mission level exceeded four, and in one case, that gap jumped to eight levels. That's about ten hours of play. With so many truces between the missions of history, the power of a story that would otherwise be shocking is significantly diminished.

Grinding is not like that

Like Assassin & # 39; s Creed Origins Odyssey has an RPG progression system. Includes a standard skill tree seen in many open world games with each weapon and armor that has a level requirement and point value. This time, the skill tree allows you to assign special abilities to bow and melee weapons. An energy meter fills up when you connect successful hits against enemies, and segments of the meter can be spent for elaborate movements that cause more damage.

For experienced Assassin's Creed players, combat has a more simplified approach. Melee attacks are performed with the firing buttons, one light and one heavy, with emphasis on stopped stops to perform counterattacks. After a few hours, you will feel as if you are going through the movements in combat. Remote attacks make things a little more spicy. Archery attacks can be modified with special abilities such as three arrow shots and even a download of arrows from above. Arrow attacks work well, although they feel a bit weak compared to the satisfying bars of swords and axes.

there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the leveling system, skill trees or weapon upgrades; The problem lies in the impact they have on the way they approach the game. At first, leveling up is a reasonably quick process that asks you to complete the history missions, but as the world opens and you approach level 20, you should think about earning experience points at all times. It becomes a slow process that can not be achieved simply by playing through the main missions.

Odyssey demands that you complete an incredible amount of external missions to progress, and it begins to feel repetitive once you realize that you have played all these missions before: Go here, investigate this, talk to that person, Kill this person, take things from a chest. All this, no matter if you are in Athens, Sparta or on a remote island, you begin to feel the same. Skilled players will also have difficulty completing quests with higher level enemies because Assassin's Creed Odyssey puts most of its emphasis on level, weapons, armor and abilities instead of the ability of a player.

Conquest by land and sea

Odyssey tries to vary experience in several ways, but these new additions struggle to remain convincing. The naval battles make a disappointing and quite simplistic return. Most of the time, sea battles make you shoot arrows at enemy ships and prepare to receive incoming arrows. You can also ram your ship against others to cause significant damage and launch javelins to create weak spots on enemy ships.

While you have the option of boarding ships before delivering the final blow, the novelty of knocking down enemy soldiers in shark-infested waters quickly disappears. Instead of spending more time with the combat that you experience in excess on land, it is much easier to simply throw one more round of arrows to sink the ship and send the crew to death, all at once. In a short time, you will find yourself navigating the enemy ships instead of facing them.

Odyssey also features conquest battles, large-scale combat scenarios in which you hack and hit dozens of enemies to gain control of a territory. To start these battles, you must reduce the control of an army in a region by dismantling bases, killing enemy soldiers and commanders, looting valuable treasures and burning war supplies. A meter in each region indicates how strong an army's grip is on the area, and once it becomes vulnerable, you can participate in a battle of conquest.

These battles are fun apart, even if it's the same two-shot bout you'll find elsewhere in the game. The only difference is that it is in a centralized and frantic place. The real prize is the large number of experience points you gain from completing a battle of conquest, and since a region can be fortified again, it offers unlimited battle opportunities for conquest.

Mercenaries are the heaviest feature, usually appear when Civilian assassins, steal, or even kill enemy soldiers. The new reward system hits your head and sends you up to five powerful enemies in your own way that somehow (even in technologically private Ancient Greece) you know where you are at all times. Because of this, it turns out to be especially frustrating, since it is not uncommon to accidentally stumble upon a mercenary who is ten or more levels higher than you. While you can pay your rewards or crouch until they disappear, once they've seen you, it's too late, they'll keep coming for you anyway.

Speaking of avoiding enemies, stealth takes a backseat once again in Assassin & # 39; s Creed Odyssey . While it is advisable to kill enemies without being seen, stealth detection is not always consistent. There are times when enemies will see you on a roof when you feel unlikely. It seems that enemies face in your direction within a certain range, regardless of whether they are a story below you or not, begin to feel your presence.

Meanwhile, you can run over the enemies from behind without being heard. . Other times, secretly catching an enemy inadvertently makes you see another. It's a system that you can play sometimes, but it does not feel very accurate. It is also increasingly difficult to kill high-powered enemies due to the grindy leveling system. For all these reasons, it is difficult to eliminate all enemies on a base without being noticed.

However, there is a good addition to stealth, which is that you can recruit characters and turn enemies into allies. You can assign these recruits as lieutenants whom you can summon in battle to create distractions, making it easier to shoot down enemies. While the system works as advertised, it still does not return Assassin & # 39; s Creed to its roots centered on stealth.

An extraordinary world, hampered by its own extension

In some respects, it is almost forgivable that Odyssey requires you to explore areas that have nothing to do with the main story. From the ports along the beach and the long streets of Athens to the remote forests and mountain ranges, the world inspired by Ancient Greece is an impressive achievement: a living and breathing ground full of interesting characters and scenery.

Although it is undeniably an impressive world players can get lost for dozens of hours, there are technical drawbacks that make it difficult to enjoy it. The load times between deaths and scenes are very long. The game also occasionally stops to load at random times as the screen freezes and dims. An example of this is the considerable loading time between the incorporation of Ikaros (the bird mate of Kassandra and Alexios) and the return to your character.

These interruptions are usually brief, although there were some occasions when the stuttering lasted about one minute. more or less. We played Assassin & # 39; s Creed Odyssey on a standard PS4, so these issues can improve or disappear completely on platforms like the PS4 Pro, Xbox One X and PC.

Another technical nuisance comes with the save system. It is not uncommon to complete a goal, receive experience points and then die soon after, only to return to a place before a mission is completed. The automatic save system is meticulous, so you may return to the last synchronization point or where the mission started. After a while, manual storage becomes a common practice before the critical points to avoid any lost progress.

Microtransactions make a return on Odyssey. You can buy individual weapons, equipment packages, drachmas and materials with Helix credits purchased with cash. We never reached a point in the game in which we would have been tempted to spend money since the gear and useful resources abound in Ancient Greece.

DT Gameplay

Our take

Assassin & # 39; s Creed Odyssey presents a rich and exuberant world attenuated by its repetitive activities. Although the main story is compelling, completing it requires that you participate in a massive amount of levels through less than stellar side quests. There is a lot to do in this world, but many of them feel like a busy job struggling to stay exciting or attractive. Odyssey is another open-world game that misinterprets the meaning of more content.

Is there a better alternative?

Yes, Marvel & # 39; s Spider-Man is a recent example of open-world action games. right

How long will it last?

We complete the main story in 40 hours, but there is enough content here to last at least twice as long.

Should you buy it?

No, not unless you're a fan of Assassin & # 39; s Creed.