AC Valhalla: An Unfinished Review (and Rant)

I love From Software games, and yet for the last few weeks, I've not been sinking my teeth into Elden Ring, even though I bought it on day one. Instead, I've been raiding my way through Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Aside from a brief stint with AC: Origins, I'd not played any of the "new" Assassin's Creed games, so where else to start but the most recent one?

My God.

Valhalla tips you into the form of naughty Norseman/Norsewoman Eivor Wolf-Kissed, a handsome, brave, and actually quite interesting vikingr. Over the course of many hours, your goal is simple: secure allies around England to help your clan wage a war with Wessex. The key problem with the game is that this is all you do.

The path to forming an alliance is the same, no matter whether you're carousing with a Norse king or singing Ebony and Ivory (or, one supposes, Ivory and Ivory) with a Saxon. You go to a town, meet the local bigwig, they'll give you tasks to complete, you complete them, boom: you've got an alliance. The tasks are all much of a muchness too, usually tasking you with uncovering a traitor (which is great exactly once), storming a castle, or teaching a young Saxon to find his inner bravery like you're an after-school special from the Starship Troopers universe.

All of this would be fine, really, if the game were just a little shorter. As of now, I have around 75 hours in Valhalla, with around 10 of those hours spent in Ireland in the DLC Wrath of the Druids. I do not feel as though I am close to the end. I have looked at walkthroughs for this game and seen that there is a seemingly never-ending list of counties that I still need to win over if I am to triumph over the big bad of Wessex and the Order of the Ancients, AKA, the Templars.

Why? The game's combat is trivially easy. I am playing on normal difficulty and haven't died in combat in around 55 hours. Once you get a weapon that you like, you'll become an unstoppable killing machine. There is no difficulty spike, but a crevasse, instead. Eivor could singlehandedly storm the final castle or defeat the final boss with ease, all by themselves. I don't need more allies at this point, yet the game insists I run off all over England because otherwise I'll never be able to win. Fuck off.

Yet still, I see people criticising others for calling the game "too long". I've got a life that I need to live outside of this game! I have other games I want to play! While one could argue I should take a break and come back later, the plot is so paper-thin that I'm pretty sure I would forget about every character within the span of a short break, rendering the many, many hours that I've invested meaningless.

The revelation that I'm not really enjoying my time in Valhalla anymore has come on in the last week, so in around the last 10 or so hours of gameplay. After completing another fetch quest, storming another castle, and fighting another zealot (boss enemies that are members of the Order), I can't take it anymore. There is nothing that is keeping me here.

It's a shame too, because when Valhalla is good, it is very good. Just this morning I did a side quest that brought me to the edge of tears. Some of the castle battles are genuinely epic, and the graphical fidelity and art direction are stunning. There are times where running around England being a terrifying viking is awesome. These times just don't come up often enough.

Instead, you repeat the same old tasks again and again, battling with a cluttered UI and a never-ending in-tray full of busywork for Eivor to accomplish. Isn't being a Viking meant to be a little more interesting than being a project manager?

I can think of almost no other games which have had such a huge 180 in my affections. I thought this game could top Black Flag and become my favourite AC game. After 30 hours, my enthusiasm receded, and by 75 hours, I don't have the stamina to carry on. Valhalla is an exhausting experience.

You may perhaps be wondering why I put so much time into this game that I dislike. Why did I continue after that 30 hour mark? Frankly, it's because Ubisoft have created a game that sticks its tentacles into your brain and the capitalist way of thinking engrained therein. We all feel the need to be productive, and ticking little tasks off a long checklist scratches that itch. In the last 10 hours of playing this game, the scales have fallen from my eyes.

What Valhalla actually is, is an insult. It has a contemptuous view of your spare time and how you might like to spend it, giving itself an epic length without ever justifying it. If you're tempted to play Valhalla right now, I would honestly tell you to reconsider. It's a game that will spit in your face, and you won't realise it until you've already sunk a ton of hours into it.

To sum up, I didn't like it. Not sure if I made that clear.