UHQBot
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Hello Berathraben,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
Berathraben joined on the 10/01/2018.
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Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a great return to form for the series, but between the first and fourth entries, it's likely you've missed some of the backstory behind the game's geopolitical conflict.
If you're a fake history buff or just want to get caught up on the world of Europa, Sega has you covered. The company has released a documentary-style trailer covering the history of Europa (not to be confused with Europe), covering the plots and backstories players need to know before diving into VC4.
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Minecraft is all about imagining a new worlds and going on adventures within them. Minecraft: Dungeons takes the first part out of the equation and instead focuses on dungeon-crawling with your friends.
Announced at this year's Minecon, Dungeons is a four-player dungeon crawler using Minecraft's iconic blocky art style, but emphasizing the loot-hording and exploration aspects of the original game. This won't supplant Minecraft, however, as Dungeons is being made by a smaller team at Mojang. "This has been a passion project for them, and is inspired by their love of classic dungeon crawler games," the announcement post says.
You can watch the first trailer for Dungeons, which hits PC next year, below.
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Hello DenisWaliew,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
DenisWaliew joined on the 09/29/2018.
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Hello manmom,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
manmom joined on the 09/28/2018.
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Last Year: The Nightmare is a recently announced multiplayer horror game for PC, putting five players as survivors and a sixth as a murderer. The group of teenagers that comprise the survivors wake up to find themselves in a mirror version of their sleepy home town, which itself contains a supernatural force taking the form of psychotic murderers to hunt them down. You can check out the reveal trailer for the game below.
The game seems similar to other asymmetrical horror titles like Friday the 13th or Dead by Daylight, but seems to put a bit more agency into the hands of the survivors.
The title is one of the First on Discord launch titles, meaning it will be releasing on PC later this Fall.
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Fans of classic dungeon-crawling, rejoice – Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk offers many enjoyable hours of smashing walls to find secrets, exploring winding and mazelike maps, and fighting massive bosses. As Dusk Witch Dronya, you use a magical book to create a highly customizable puppet army that explores the depths of a huge labyrinth. While story bits are plentiful between crawls, the focus is on a successful cycle of of exploration, combat, and customization.
From a selection of puppets, you can build the perfect army. While you begin with simple tools like mages, tanks, and rogues, you can mix and match abilities to create insanely powerful characters. The same is true of equipment, as you can infuse your best weapons and armor with other pieces of loot. You’re constantly upgrading and using multiple resources to forge the ultimate team; you can field up to 15 different characters active in combat, and many more supporting them. The gameplay loop is immensely satisfying, and you always feel like you’re growing. I enjoyed grinding out levels and gear to take on some of the optional, more difficult encounters. Leveling can get dull at times, moving from autobattle to autobattle as you work up a stack of experience, and some levels contain baffling frustrations like pits that are easy to walk in, killing your whole team, or rows of unavoidable poison.
The story goes to some insane places. On the surface, you’re attempting to find some special items below the dungeon while you defy your old master, but the ludicrous and bizarre developments defy any kind of traditional storytelling; it’s entertaining, if not the stuff of Shakespeare.
As with many dungeon crawlers, the story is simply window-dressing for a layered exploration experience as you move though maps and dungeons. Epic boss battles form milestones during your travels through a multitude of environments, from dark caves to lavish towers. The unlock trickle even continues into the post-game if you want another 20 hours of content and a multitude of ultra-tough boss encounters. You take on a variety of enemies in each area, including elite enemies marked on the map that you can avoid if you’re not feeling up to the challenge. Instead of solving big puzzles, you get some freeform tools to unlock secrets, like being able to smash through walls, set up portals, and hide from roving foes. The allure is sublime as you move from environment to environment, an addictive progression romp that always keeps you fiending for a rare drop or a new pact.
Pacts are items you find or create that allow you to form your characters into covens, which come in myriad forms. One pact may supercharge a single character from multiple support units, others may allow you to level up a support very fast at the cost of your main unit’s experience gain. Some support three characters, others two, others one, and they often come with other restrictions as to what kinds of characters can be slotted. These pacts add a cool wrinkle, allowing you create teams designed to cast ultra-powerful spells, burst with insane critical damage, or guard and take massive assaults. Mixing and matching pacts with your characters is great, and lets you make interesting decisions with your team composition.
Labyrinth of Refrain is an excellent dungeon crawler that brings some cool new features to the table. While the title can be grindy at times and includes some frustrating maps and encounters, the core systems underneath are a joy to tinker with for hours.
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As one of many games mimicking the style and structure sanctified by Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Timespinner has its work cut out for it. It introduces fun twists that distinguish it from the pack, but Timespinner is at its best when it’s comfort food, since it nails most of the fundamentals players expect to follow its classic look. It takes a little while to get going, but nonetheless delivers a fun time-traveling adventure.
Playing as Lunais, a girl raised from an early age to be a time messenger, you must save your clan and village by traveling back to a time before the evil Lechiem empire that threatens them is all-powerful. Here’s the catch: Success means removing this particular timeline (and Lunais herself) from history.
The plot is as labyrinthine as you’d expect from a story about time travel, and gets more complicated as it unfurls. Much of the exposition relies on notes found across the world. They aren’t long or plentiful, but as they complicate the roles of Lunais, the countries at war, the people stuck in the middle of the conflict, I had to keep going back to them just to make sense of what exactly was happening. The overall thrust of the story comes through even if you don’t get the whole picture, however, and seeing the conclusion to Lunais’ story was one of my main motivations to explore Lechiem.
Lunais’ time-bending powers let you stop time whenever you want, freezing the world and enemies in place. This helps you get out of dangerous situations and use enemies as platforms; I was able to access a few areas I probably shouldn’t have early on by luring enemies towards high jumps and freezing them in place. That said, there are only a handful of satisfying puzzles or platforming challenges that use this power, and I’d regularly forget I even had it for long stretches of time. With it being a central mechanic, that’s disappointing.
Fortunately, other aspects pick up the slack. Instead of equipping weapons like swords or axes, Lunais uses magic orbs to dish out damage, and you have a number of cool combat options at your disposal. Along with a basic melee attack, you can summon pistols, shoot lightning, and chuck icicles as your main offense. It’s a clever system, as different enemies have elemental weaknesses you can exploit by swapping your loadout, and you can equip two kinds of orbs to vary your damage output and element. I usually found it best to stick to two of the same kind and swap loadouts with the press of a button, since having different orbs can lead to some unwieldy attack patterns.
Lechiem’s grid-based map seems large at first as you start carving out its various nooks and crannies, but it follows a fairly strict progression from left to right. Most of the interesting divergent paths are back-loaded in the second half, so you spend much of the first half simply moving forward. You have enough secrets and optional paths to explore later on, most of which offer a challenging boss fight or cool reward as you make your way to 100-percent map completion. I wish these were more evenly dispersed instead of bunched up near the end, though, since the mainline bosses are rare and mostly pushovers, which exacerbate the slow start.
You also unlock side quests for some of the friends you make during your journey, but these end up being fairly basic fetch quests and don’t offer much of a reward beyond learning about the character who gives them to you. These stories add some interesting layers to some of the cast, but don’t feel essential.
I can’t deny the allure of the formula Timespinner is aping, and if its pixelated font and damage numbers give you nostalgic shivers, don’t hesitate to give it a shot. It doesn’t escape its genre trappings, but its combat, late-game exploration, and interesting plot make for a strong foundation that hooked me long enough for it to all come together.
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Hello zuver,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
zuver joined on the 09/28/2018.
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Dragon Ball FighterZ is finally releasing on Switch soon, nine months after the game hit other platforms, which dares publisher Bandai Namco to create a launch trailer that isn't just redundant. To do just that, the trailer focuses on the Switch's unique features while also showing off that the game seems to run quite alright on the system.
In the below trailer, two friends wearing orange and blue/white (get it) are yelled at by their grandmother or landlady, it's not totally clear, for making too much noise playing FighterZ on Switch. So they take the right outside and catch the attention of a young woman, who joins them for play. The battles continue and come to a head with a force when the older woman wearing purple with a hairless cat by her side ends up taking part in the fight as well.
I also think it has a reference to 1990s comedy Home Improvement but I might be wrong.
The Switch version of the game has one-on-one rights, two-versus-two, and individual three-versus-three, as shown in the trailer. You don't have to dress like your favorite characters to enjoy the game when it releases on September 28 but no one is going to tell you it hurts.
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Hello VenomPuppy,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
VenomPuppy joined on the 09/27/2018.
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Naughty Dog today posted the theme for The Last of Us Part II today in full. Titled "The Last of Us (Cycles)," the newly released for the game is unsurprisingly but fittingly a slow and somber guitar piece by musician and composer Gustavo Santaolalla. The Academy Award-winning Santaolalla was also behind the original game from 2013. You can check out the track below.
If you're looking to buy the track, Naughty Dog also tweeted out several helpful links.
ICYMI: “The Last of Us (Cycles)”—a new theme from Part II by Gustavo Santaolalla—was released for #OutbreakDay!
— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) September 27, 2018
Apple Music https://t.co/SvUHDxw0PF
Spotify https://t.co/ANMC9D04AI
Google https://t.co/fBf2DWmcZh
Amazon https://t.co/HvdPOwvINM
Tidal https://t.co/AIKUIqFS9p pic.twitter.com/N3zM7r7QW5Santaolalla has also composed for a variety of projects like Netflix's Making a Murderer and the movie Brokeback Mountain. The Last of Us Part II is a PlayStation 4 exclusive. At PSX last year, director Neil Druckmann estimated the game to be 40-60% complete.
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Hello darknezz,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
darknezz joined on the 09/28/2018.
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Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption is an indie title with a lot of eyes on it. We first took note of the Souls-like in 2017 at PAX and named it one of the best indie games at GDC earlier this year. Since then, not only have the developers added a Switch version, but they've also announced a date for all three console versions. Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption will release on October 18 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch.
You can check out the latest trailer released for the release date announcement below.
The game is obviously influenced by Souls titles, but has an interesting twist: you give up powers as you fight each boss. The bosses, representing the seven deadly sins, remove things like your strength or defense, forcing you to fight each one a different way.
The game is also coming to PC, but is launching as part of Discord's First on Discord publishing initiative, gaining a three-month period of exclusivity on the Discord Store. Those titles will release in the Fall.
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Hello wwsyhsyfsa06762,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
wwsyhsyfsa06762 joined on the 09/27/2018.
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Hello phatstack,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
phatstack joined on the 09/27/2018.
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Forza Horizon 4 almost overwhelms with the amount of great content it offers. Complete a race, and another three appear. Travel down a new road, and you’re alerted that you still have 500 more to discover. Hop behind the wheel of a new car, and the game dangles another dozen in front of you. As you pick away at each of the game’s 26 distinct campaign threads (yes, you read that correctly), you may find yourself distracted by hidden billboards, landmarks, seek-and-find missions, and instanced events that pop up at the top of every hour. Forza Horizon 4 offers an absurd amount of things to do, most of which are fantastic, and all of it is backed up by exceptional driving mechanics. This is one of those experiences that you just can’t help but lose yourself in, and Playground Games rewards you well for almost every second you spend behind the wheel.
After tearing up the Australian outback, the Horizon Festival moves to Great Britain in this installment. From the sprawling farmlands and quaint villages along dirt roads, this area of the world may seem too peaceful for racing, but Playground quickly reveals that you won’t just be looking at these sights from afar; you’ll be racing directly through them by any means necessarily. Ripping through wheat fields, smashing through fences, and launching high into the air to land on the rooftop of a century-old church are just some of the chaotic things you'll be pushed to do. Forza Horizon 4 turns Britain’s beauty and history into the ultimate playground for cars, complete with some of the biggest jumps you’ll see in a racing game.
Britain doesn’t just bring a different cosmetic charm to the Horizon Festival. Players also experience all four seasons that affect this region. Rather than just having certain sections of the open world be set in summer or winter, the entire play space transforms when a season rolls in. This means the open world features four distinct variations, each with varying driving conditions. During summer, a track may offer breakneck speeds on dry pavement, whereas the winter variation requires careful drifting across thick snow and treacherous ice. The weather greatly impacts the way you race, and sometimes forces you to retreat to your garage to bring out rides that are more suitable for the conditions. All four versions of the world are beautifully realized and add even more excitement to the already great racing mix.
The game begins with a lengthy three- to five-hour showcase that moves from one season to the next, but then settles into a weekly rotation for each. This brings about the problem of locking the player into the less-than-desirable conditions for a week, but players have the freedom to change seasons for specific races should they not enjoy specific weather. The dreaded Game of Thrones saying “Winter is coming” carries some weight here too, as racing is the most challenging in this season.
Players can tweak just about anything in the game, and most events allow for any vehicle to be used. Should you struggle in a specific event, it doesn’t matter where you place – the game basically says you did your best and gives you the credit needed to move on to the next race. You are constantly making progress and earning experience, which in turn unlocks more races, activities, and vehicles. Nothing you do feels like a mistake. Even finishing in last place gives you gains.
Those gains are divided up between activities. This is where the lofty number of 26 campaign threads comes into play. Individual threads are set up for each of the distinct racing types, such as road, dirt, cross country, street, drift, and drag. Subtle story elements also come into play in four of the threads. One turns you into a stunt driver recording scenes for a racing movie. Another story is structured as a top 10 list for the greatest racing games of all time, where the player experiences races that simulate classic titles like Out Run, Smuggler’s Run, Project Gotham, and more. As great as these additions are to the Horizon experience, some of other the campaign threads focus on customization and push players to spend significant amounts of time tuning cars, creating blueprints, taking photos, and even using Microsoft’s streaming service Mixer, which gives the player in-game currency bonuses. If you are a completionist, having to invest time into every aspect of the game is can be annoying and something you don't want to spend time with.
Even if you complete every challenge in a favorite thread, you can still reenter these events to gain experience points and currency, which you need to unlock cars and homes (which are used for fast travel). Not being able to fast travel everywhere leads to some frustration in first 20 to 30 hours of play, as you’re forced to drive great distances to hit specific events. It does get better after that. The amount of distractions you find along the way also offers plenty to keep you occupied during those long trips.
Forza Horizon 4 also excels at multiplayer, allowing players to experience most of the game in cooperative or competitive ways. This means you can cruise around the open world together (and with up to 71 other players) to make progress in your own campaigns. You can also join up on the same team for racing, although it is more challenging, as it disables the rewind functionality. The hourly Forzathon events bring everyone together on the map for short but enjoyable challenges where every racer contributes points to reach a specific total for speed, jumping, and drifting. Succeed and you receive a unique type of Forzathon currency for use in a specific shop that contains even more goodies like new cars, horn sounds (of which some are based on other Microsoft games), and dance moves. Yes, Forza is jumping on the Fortnite hype train by removing the character from the car to perform a dance after achieving victory. You’ll even see characters doing the floss. All of the multiplayer options (included a game of tag with zombies as a theme) are good fun and reasons to veer off the single-player trail.
Given just how much content is in Forza Horizon 4, a good portion of it is blocked off until specific progress is made. If you’re hoping to play the game with friends, some frustration comes from this gating, as you must reach the second year of the competition to be able to take part in specific things like Team Adventures. This means you need to play roughly five hours of the game before you can take part in everything. Given how much fun this racer is, this isn’t a punishment, but it is strange that some aspects are blocked off from the outset of play with co-op being such a big hook.
Once Forza Horizon 4 opens up and the map is cluttered with points of interest, you really can’t ask for much more from a racer. It hits all of the right notes in terms of racing, exploration, rewards, and customization. Depending on your focus of play, you can turn it into a difficult game of precision that requires proper vehicle tuning, or a light arcade experience of tearing across Great Britain with no cares in the world. Forza Horizon has long been my favorite racing series, and this installment shows that there’s plenty of gas left in the tank.
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The Red Dead Redemption II PS4 Pro bundle was announced the other day, giving people an opportunity to do what they do best and scrutinize the box for details. RockstarIntel was able to do exactly that and mined out details from the console box to figure out what to expect from Rockstar's upcoming western.
The bundle says that Red Dead Redemption II requires a minimum install size of 105 GB. This puts it ahead of the previous PlayStation 4 record holder, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, which stood at 101 GB. Rockstar's last PS4 game, Grand Theft Auto 4, came in at 65 GB.
While PlayStation 4-exclusive content had already been announced, the console box clarifies that "online content" will stay exclusive to the PS4 for 30 days before going to Xbox One. It is unknown if this is the only content for PlayStation 4 or if there is completely exclusive content and timed exclusive content.
Small print on the box also indicates that Red Dead Redemption II's online will be for 2-32 players, lining up with what Rockstar has said about Red Dead Online and speculation it will be similar to Grand Theft Auto's online playground.
[Source: RockstarIntel]
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Soulcalibur VI's most recently announced character is the fencer Raphael, having been revealed and shown off fairly recently. Fencing is a well-loved style in fighting games and Raphael has a large number of fans who like the way his style feels. Soulcalibur VI producer is Motohiro Okubo is one of those fans and, really, what better opponent for an amateur fencing enthusiast than Olympic medal winner Miles Chamley-Watson?
Watson took home the bronze medal in the 2016 Olympic games, which might make him slightly out of Okubo's league. You can catch their fencing battle, and the subsequent second round of Soulcalibur VI with brand new footage of Raphael, below.
Soulcalibur VI releases on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 19.
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Hello noooober132,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
noooober132 joined on the 09/26/2018.
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Hello xcx,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
xcx joined on the 09/26/2018.
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Starting over can be difficult, but sometimes it's for the better. By leaving behind the picturesque Arcadia Bay and the beloved cast of the original Life is Strange, developer Dontnod tells a bold and engaging story. Life is Strange's familiar focus on relationships works well, and small tweaks to the dialogue system bring some welcome nuance. The sense of renewal also extends to the narrative; new protagonists Sean and Daniel are also starting fresh as they leave behind their home in a tale about grief, coming of age, and identity.
Though much has changed, the factors that made the first Life is Strange memorable are still alive and well, like balancing grounded storytelling with fantastical elements. The lives of Sean and his younger brother Daniel are turned upside-down when tragedy strikes. The police are on their trail, and Daniel struggles with a newfound and confusing telekinesis power that can have devastating effects on those around him.
Your time is spent interacting with characters, making choices that could have far-reaching consequences, and exploring environments to learn more about those around you. I enjoyed roaming through Sean's home in the early moments and learning about the family's ups and downs. Sean's voice strains when he observes a woman's bicycle in his basement and boxes labeled "Karen." Judging from his tone, these could be his mother's things, but she is no longer in the picture. Though the format of dialogue and exploration is familiar, it still works. Small changes make talking to other characters more of an immersive experience. For example, you can multitask with things around your desk, like drawing on a post-it note, as you Skype with a friend.
Life is Strange 2 is light on gameplay, focusing on character development and narrative (similar to Deck Nine's Life is Strange: Before the Storm). With little puzzle-solving outside of fetching specific items and escaping a room, this first episode's priority is weaving a story without giving players distracting mechanics. For such a narrative-centric series, I prefer this approach.
The two protagonists are on the run from the police, but this doesn't translate to nonstop action. Life is Strange 2 revels in its quieter scenes, and it has plenty. Bond with Daniel by teaching him to skip rocks, or sketch specific locations (which is a neat way to see the world through Sean's eyes). You also make decisions that are less crucial but sill interesting. The strength of your bond with Daniel depends on how much he trusts you, and scaring him or feeding him potentially harmful forest berries can be detrimental to your relationship. Because these small actions have an effect, such as giving Daniel nightmares, I was careful with how I approached these situations.
The core of Life is Strange 2 revolves around the brothers' relationship. I sympathized with Sean as he struggled to know how much he should tell his kid brother about what transpired back home, and how best to guide him through treacherous circumstances. Daniel's telekinesis power could shake up the relationship or bring them closer, especially as the two better understand what happened to them.
Major choices in this episode don't feel "wrong" or "right," which serves the story well. Stealing from a shopkeeper could mean food or shelter for the night, and calling your best friend Lyla might put her mind at ease, but it could also put her in danger. Just how far-reaching the consequences are remains to be seen. They may just color your experience along the way rather than make dramatic alterations to the story, which I still find compelling.
Some of these choices have added weight when you must also determine how others may treat you by the color of your skin. Playing as a Hispanic teenager in October 2016, the political climate seeps heavily into the story. Characters in rural areas may scrutinize whether or not you're truly an American citizen or show distrust toward you. This vulnerability brings dimension to the characters and connected me to their plight, without it feeling shoehorned in. Attempting a political storyline isn't always praise-worthy on its own, but it is dealt with care and detail here that feels genuine enough to work.
I'm curious to see how the story builds upon these themes, as well as what challenges the brothers face next. Dontnod does a great job at introducing these new characters and fleshing them out, and it will be interesting to see how Daniel comes to terms with his life-changing powers. -
Every Forza Horizon game has done a great job of taking peaceful, beautiful locations and use them as foundation for really cool driving set pieces. Forza Horizon 4 is no exception, showing the United Kingdom at an adrenaline-fueled high speed. You can check it out for yourself with the launch trailer below.
The trailer shows off the weather system, four different seasons, and some of the set piece races like a hoverboat and a plane.
Forza Horizon 4 releases on the Xbox One and PC on October 2.
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Hello SemPernas,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
SemPernas joined on the 09/26/2018.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey Review – Fighting For Glory
in Game Reviews
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Many mythological traditions involve some form of demigod, an exceptional individual born from the union of a human and a deity. These heroes accomplish astounding things thanks to their divine heritage, but their mortal sides keep them from joining the ranks of true gods. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey exists in the same place between two realms. With vast improvements to combat and progression, no other Assassin’s Creed had made players feel this capable and powerful. However, Odyssey struggles to find appropriate ways to exercise that power, presenting a vision of Ancient Greece that relies more on familiar routine than legendary feats.
Though it won’t be the subject of any epic poems, I still appreciate Odyssey’s incredible ambition. The team at Ubisoft Quebec built an immense open world full of towering statues and gorgeous landscapes that serve as a vivid backdrop for your quest. After choosing either Kassandra or Alexios as your protagonist (I prefer Kassandra’s voice performer), you set out on a journey that pits you against nations, cultists, and monsters. The new hero has a likeable confidence, and I enjoyed making choices and watching the consequences unfold, but the pacing is infuriating. Despite doing plenty of side quests, I often had to grind or complete a series of barely related tasks to advance the story. That drip-feed pattern over 50-plus hours puts a serious damper on the momentum.
Odyssey’s setting is new, but the gameplay builds on the foundation laid by Assassin’s Creed Origins last year, expanding the RPG systems and adding several new features. Melee combat is the most rewarding distillation of that process; encounters are a ballet of attacks and abilities punctuated by dodges and parries. As you fight, you build adrenaline to expend on a wide array of powers. Set your blades on fire, then slow time and attack multiple soldiers to engulf them in flames. Send a lieutenant in to distract a bandit while you take aim with a poison arrow. These abilities and more convey a dynamic and godlike sense of power, with a blend of action and reaction that creates my favorite combat system in the series.
Naval gameplay returns in Odyssey in its most full-featured incarnation since Black Flag and Rogue. You can upgrade your ship, find sunken ruins, and hunt down pirates. It all works well and provides simple fun, but Odyssey doesn’t give you much incentive to go sailing. The naval encounters aren’t complex enough to be gratifying, and the rewards aren’t good enough to be enticing. Though I enjoyed the lovely views from my ship and the occasional exchange of fiery arrows, the naval component ends up feeling inconsequential beyond its function as transportation.
One of Odyssey’s signature features is mercenaries – roaming warriors who present more challenge than average soldiers. They are like the Phylakes from Origins, but infinite in number, and you climb their ranks as you defeat them. Seeking these encounters pays off, because you get rewards (like decreased weapon enchantment cost) for killing mercenaries who rank higher than you – but that doesn’t always happen on your terms. Mercenaries hunt you down after you commit crimes, which can lead to improvised encounters that make great water-cooler moments. But the system creates just as many annoying scenarios, like an angry mercenary standing right next to the person you need for a quest. Attracting many mercenaries’ attention when you’re trying to do something delicate is also a pain, and getting them off your back is a hassle.
The volatility of the mercenary system is a symptom of a bigger problem: the rarity of deliberately crafted gameplay. The game doesn’t have a shortage of content; Ancient Greece is filled with activities like clearing camps, infiltrating forts, and waging war. I enjoyed those objectives, but I was hungry for more scenarios that felt less random and more carefully designed. Instead, Odyssey feels like an ecosystem set up and left to run on its own with little authorial interference. Too many quests send you sneaking around cookie-cutter compounds to contend with a standard assortment of patrolling guards as you loot chests, burn war supplies, or kill specific targets. With some notable exceptions, even the main story missions and key assassinations rely on these tasks, so your actions during major beats often don’t feel distinct or special compared to the rest of the experience. While those activities may be fun, their repetition and predictability drain some glory from your tale.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey aims high in its attempts to blend innovative additions with returning features. The execution might be uneven, but Ubisoft Quebec ultimately strikes a successful balance among the many parts. The story is compelling, both as a hero’s journey and in the way it ties into the series’ wider lore. Exploring the world is fun, combat is empowering, and getting epic loot is a thrill. That solid core formula carries Odyssey a long way, but like Icarus and his wax wings, it’s not enough to reach the bright star on the horizon.
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