Assassin's Creed Valhalla: A Good Viking Story

 Allow me to start off by saying that I liked Valhalla and had a good time with it. However, there are definitely multiple issues with the game and story. We're going to dive in and go over all of it, the good and bad. When I started the game, I noticed right away the great accessibility choices. You can choose closed captions with subtitles and the ambient noises in the game do get included with the closed captions so the subtitles will point in the direction of a fire crackling. There were also settings to make the controls easier which is great for me because I have arthritis in my hands. There is also colorblind mode. The accessibility settings are great and it shows they really took the time to tweak them for everyone. You can also choose what difficulty setting you want to have for the game ranging from easy to very hard. Once everything was set to my liking, I was ready to start playing. 

Accessibility settings in the game.

Valhalla is set in the 9th century centering around the Viking invasion of England. You start the story in Norway and here you can decide if you want to play Eivor as female, male, or let the animus choose. I went with female Eivor for my playthrough. The story starts with Eivor as a child during a feast honoring the king of the Raven Clan when things take a turn for the worse and young Eivor witnesses the destruction of her hometown by a rogue warlord, Kjotve the Cruel. There is a time skip after this event showing an adult Eivor trying to rescue her crew after a failed attempt to kill Kjotve. This beginning is a way to start the battle tutorial showing how to do stealth and attack enemies. It's pretty straightforward and the combat is a lot of fun. 

I liked Eivor right away. I found her interesting and the voice actress for her is quite good. As everyone escaped in the longship and returned home, you get shown who Eivor is. The king of the Raven Clan adopted her and his son Sigurd is her brother and you get that sense of love and respect they have for each other right away. There are places to explore in Norway of course that are beginner areas and part of the story. It may seem like a bit of a long introduction, but I didn't mind because it was fun exploring and I got to see how Eivor's battle skills worked with an axe and a bow. The areas of Norway in the game are beautiful and I found myself stopping often just to take in the view. 

A beautiful view in Norway. 

The story really begins when Sigurd shows up with two Hidden Ones (assassins) he has befriended during his time away, Basim and Hytham. Sigurd gives Eivor a hidden blade, a gift from Basim. Basim proceeds to tell them about the existence of the Order Of The Ancients and tells them that Kjotve is one of them. Sigurd's father tells them going after Kjotve is a mistake, but naturally Sigurd and Eivor don't listen and unite with King Harald to attack Kjotve. After their success, Harald announces that he is going to unite all of  Norway under his rule and the king of the Raven Clan swears fealty to Harald angering Sigurd. Sigurd and Eivor make the decision to go to England with people loyal to them in the Raven Clan and build their own place free of Harald's rule. 

This unlocks the world map for England and while you can travel back and forth between England and Norway, it is a good idea to stay in England for a while to explore doing the main story, side quests, finding mysteries, getting treasures, and doing raids. The raids are done really well and because you are building a town you need supplies which means raiding various places along the coast which are marked on your map. As Eivor would command the longship and pull up to a place that could be plundered, a raid command would pop up, and everyone would hop off the ship and the chaos would ensue. Eivor would have to use Odin Sight (like eagle vision) or use her raven to get a lay of the land and see where things were. Once everything of worth had been taken, a message would pop up deeming the raid successful and everyone could leave. In order to build and upgrade buildings in Ravensthorpe, these plundered supplies get used. If you run out, you have to go raiding again. The goal is to level up your settlement because it gives you more influence and power. The issue is that after a while the supplies would run low and there would not be enough raiding areas so I would have to run around on the world map and try to find supplies in other places like bandit forts and small villages. 

Viking raid time!

The leveling system is different in Valhalla. When Eivor does raids, completes a story mission, or unlocks new areas, takes down an Ancient or their zealots, she is rewarded with 2-4 skill points which she can use to unlock different abilities on a Norse constellation skill tree. The abilities range from improved stealth to stronger melee attacks. When these abilities are unlocked, it increases Eivor's power level. The power level is important because each area on the world map, each legendary beast, and each challenge has a specific power level. If Eivor's power level is too low, she can't take these things on without dying. While this adds a bit of a grind to the game, I never really noticed it because there is so much to do with the many extras in the game and as Eivor completes each story chapter she gets a pretty big chunk of experience which unlocks those abilities and power levels fairly quickly. There are also books of knowledge Eivor must find which are usually hidden in enemy forts and once she obtains it, it unlocks special attacks she can do when her stamina bar is full. My favorite one so far is Valkyrie Smash. It gives an extra boost to Eivor's combat skills and can make for some thrilling battles. 

The skill tree in action and yes, my Eivor got real powerful.

Another thing that is different is the armor, armor sets, and weapons. You will have your armor and weapons with you for a long time so it's a good idea to gather all the materials you find so you can upgrade them. After a certain upgrade you can take them to the village blacksmith and he will improve them even more to a higher quality so that you can add various runes that enhance your armor and weapons with things like improved defense or a resistance to poison. By the time I had fully upgraded my preferred sets, they were at mythical level which definitely gave Eivor that extra edge in combat. 

Upgrading your gear is a good idea for your adventure.

When I wasn't doing Viking things and just wandering around admiring all the gorgeous scenery,  I spent time petting the dogs and cats in the game. I always love it when a game has the feature of petting the cute animals in games. I stopped and petted all the dogs and cats everywhere. Another cute thing in Valhalla is that after petting the dog or cat they follow you around for a bit and you can pet them again and again. I did this a lot. It just brought so much joy being able to sit with a fluffy dog and pet them. 

Yes, you can pet the dogs in the game!

There is photo mode in Valhalla and it is a fantastic feature because you can turn the camera and get the angles just right. I spent a lot of time in photo mode taking pictures of various landscapes, Eivor looking around, and many pictures of dogs and cats. You can save everything to an album and share your photos with people in the game to like and you can like their photos as well. 

Having fun with photo mode. 

As Eivor's story progresses, you unlock other areas such as Vinland and a dream sequence of Asgard. These have their own respective power levels as well and once unlocked, you can travel between them any time. I liked both areas, but I really enjoyed the setting of Asgard. It was stunning and I loved exploring everywhere. However, I was not a fan of the overly complicated puzzles and it made a magical area tedious for me so much to the point that I skipped over a lot of things there. I do feel that Asgard was really well done, but I felt it could have been a little better with some of the gameplay there. 

Eivor in Asgard. 

The nice thing about Valhalla is you can take your time with it. There's no rush to finish the story and if you want to run around exploring everywhere you can. There's also mini game things you can do which I spent a ton of time on. Fishing is a relaxing one where you actually get rewards for trading a set amount of certain types of fish to a vendor. There's flyting which is basically a contest exchanging insults between two parties in verse. I had a good time with that one and each time Eivor wins a flyting contest, her charisma increases. There's drinking contests which play like a kind of rhythm game as you drink several horns or cups of mead. If you miss a beat, you spill your mead and you can lose to your opponent. I was terrible at the drinking game, but it was fun all the same. There's also a tabletop dice game called Orlog. I went from not being really thrilled with Orlog for always finding an excuse to stop and play. You and your opponent have a set number of stones and tokens that are known as God Favors. The God Favors have different effects ranging from blocking attacks, to stealing resources. The person who loses all their stones loses the game. It makes you plan out your strategies and tactics, something I love doing. Hearing the news that there is now going to be a physical version of Orlog in the future has me excited to play Orlog in the real world with friends. 

Eivor does some fishing. 

Now we get to the issues with Valhalla. While I enjoyed the story of Valhalla, I felt it wasn't as strong as the story in Origins and Odyssey. I liked Eivor a lot and it was a blast channeling my inner shield maiden as I went through exciting castle sieges, chaotic raids, and took down all the baddies. I feel that it was a good Viking story, but it didn't necessarily feel like an Assassin's Creed story. I loved the open world RPG setting. I'm all about that style because that is something that is fun for me and totally in my wheelhouse. I just wish it had given me a bit more in regards to the assassin aspect of it and more with Layla. It seemed more focused on being a Viking which is fine, but there were some plot holes for me and the story felt a little unfinished. I found myself missing ancient Egypt with Bayek and Aya as well as missing ancient Greece with Kassandra and Alexios. Yes, the assassins are there and we do get some of the lore that has been a big part of the series, but it still felt like something was missing.

Then we have the technical issues. Wow, the many technical issues have hindered Valhalla. There were so many bugs with raids as well as game breaking bugs that made it impossible for people to continue the main story. I was lucky that I was able to complete the main story, but that doesn't mean I didn't experience those issues either. The biggest thing is all the game crashes on every single platform. Yes, you are reading that correctly. It crashes on every single platform including the newer consoles Xbox series X and PS5. I played the game on PS4, my friends played on PC, Xbox, and PS5. All of us have experienced game bugs or game crashes. I understand that tech issues happen, but to have it happening on this scale is inexcusable. When I have things happening like the raider Vikings not helping me open a chest, yes it's funny, but also frustrating as shown in the clip below. 

Please, just talk amongst yourselves. It's fine. 

Eivor would even get stuck in places and I would have to figure out a way to fast travel to get her unstuck or I would have to reload my last save. A patch was released that fixed a lot of those quest bugs which I'm thankful for, but somehow the patch made the game crashes worse. During one stream, the game crashed three times. At one point there was another patch that crashed my PS4 and I had to uninstall and reinstall everything. Then the game wouldn't load my previous save files. This was stressful as I worked to figure it out and luckily everything was fixed and everything is running smoothly again. This shouldn't be happening, but here we are. I know the game was delayed at least twice, but seeing all these issues makes me feel they should have delayed it again until these many issues were sorted out. Honestly, it shows to me the game was not ready and frankly I would be okay with waiting if I got an actual finished game that didn't do things like this. It brings to mind the many issues and bugs Unity had. Granted those issues are fixed now and Unity is a game I like to revisit every now and then, but until these are dealt with Valhalla is not in the same area of great that Origins and Odyssey are. It kills me to say that because I was so excited for Valhalla, but after all the frustration with these issues it's just a good game, not a great one. 

I'm sure I'll come back to Valhalla after those issues are fixed because I did have fun with the game and loved being able to climb up to a mountain peak and take in a spectacular view. I also enjoyed taking down legendary bosses and solving mysteries. The general exploration and combat in Valhalla is a great time, but I need a little more stability with the way the game runs. I hope they do get it sorted out soon so that a good game becomes a great one like it was meant to be. Thanks for reading, see you at the next adventure!

What a fantastic view!

*Assassin's Creed Valhalla is available to play on the following platforms: Microsoft Windows, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Stadia, and Luna

*Join our community on twitch as we enjoy games and discuss mental health: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer