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victrix posted:malaka 
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Nov 7, 2022 10:53
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for a very long time I thought Eivor was trans, from the intro and the fantasy sections (and I thought how cool it was the game was so matter of factly about it) the mantling Odin thing made more sense in the end
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Nov 7, 2022 11:18
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Now that horror season is over I'm finally getting back to AC Odyssey to try and finish it off and free up the 100+ GB of hard drive space and what I'm now realizing is I don't actually like the modern day plot, I just like walking around a pleasant little cave/office/villa as a nice little break from the action, but actually playing as Layla for extended periods is so bad. Some highlights so far: -while going through the multiple tombs as Layla in the modern day the game glitched out and the mercenaries hunting Alexios were outside trying to find a way in -there's one part where you play as Deimos while they torture Phidias to death and Layla freaks out the whole time but by this point I'd already murdered dozens of civilians, often while stealing from their homes -the game doesn't seem to acknowledge that Deimos is a good guy and on my ship so I could just ask them for info at any time -a dramatic gunfight happens off screen between some character from AC comics or something and a member of my Layla's team who doesn't even have a character model Just made it to Elysium and its giving me strong Asgard vibes, hope it sucks less than that!
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Nov 15, 2022 03:17
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Odyssey's modern day sections are, to me, easily the worst ones of the whole series.
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Nov 15, 2022 03:32
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Ironslave posted:Odyssey's modern day sections are, to me, easily the worst ones of the whole series. Yuuuup. I pretty recently powered through AC: Od because I wanted to give Valhalla a shot and my basic notes: 1) the ending of the main game was  as gently caress. Just . . . shank this dude, roll family clip, applause? Zero loving catharsis for anything.1a) oh my god I do not give a fuuuuuuck about Layla. Normally I don't dislike the modern day stuff in these, this was just poorly done. 2) The expansion that begins up in Macedonia had a more interesting plot than the main game. I mean, it was pretty loving ham fisted and obvious at parts, but if you can let go and just wallow in the melodrama it hits surprisingly well. 3) The Elysium/Hades/Atlantis stuff was pretty solid. Story-wise not as much for Kassandra as there was in whatever the name of the Macedonia-starting one, but they did some really good jobs tying up some minor arcs from the rest of the game that went un-resolved in the main one. In the second act in particular she needs to come to terms with her actions in the main game having consequences, which was cool. Also the crazy OP powers and gear sets they threw at you were fun and a good way to have one last fun romp before putting the game down. 3a) they actually made me give a tiny bit of a gently caress about Layla in this part, I was genuinely surprised. Of note, the way they tied her up in the the Atlantis stuff hooked in really well with the way they set up AC: Valhalla once you start that, so that was nice. I was all set to just mash skip on all the Layla cut scenes in AC: Vikings but they've actually got me watching again so credit where it's due. 4) that free DLC that they released to kinda connect to Valhalla was pretty neat and you could rush it in all of half an hour, worth doing. All in all a weird situation where if someone just wanted to power through the end game stuff to get to the next one, the obvious suggestion is to just steamroll the Elysium/Hades/Atlantis DLC pack for the connective tissue that gets you to Valhalla. But the plot in that Macedonia expansion manages to be so head and shoulders above the rest of it that it's way easier to recommend on its own merits. edit: also clicking uninstall on AC:Od felt soooooo good. Goddamn I think that was chewing up HD space for something like two years. edit 2: lol just shy of 2 years. I unlocked the cheevo you get for finishing the Leonidas tutorial section on Dec 28 2020.
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Nov 15, 2022 03:45
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imo AC Odyssey is a great game if you abandon the story midway through and just play it very casually every once in a while to gently caress around conquering forts and doing random local side missions
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Nov 15, 2022 03:52
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Earwicker posted:imo AC Odyssey is a great game if you abandon the story midway through and just play it very casually every once in a while to gently caress around conquering forts and doing random local side missions This is how I was doing it for over a year but the Witcher 3 is getting a PS5 release in a month and now I need the drat space  Overall I did end up appreciating the almost weird 'off brand Xena episodes' tone that 90% of the game is kind of going for, though it still annoys me that the most interesting part (naval combat, building up the ship, recruiting lieutenants, etc) is maybe 5% of the game and can largely be ignored. Cyrano4747 posted:Yuuuup. I haven't finished the third part of the other big DLC Legacy of the First Blade, but other than secret family out of nowhere at the end of part two I did like how over-the-top they made some of the Order of the Ancients targets, like the guy who uses the hundreds of random guards/etc you've killed against you to try and trip you up. It definitely harkened back to some of the cackling psychopaths from the Ezio games and it's kind of funny that it's the only part of Odyssey that even remotely connects to the rest of the series. My plan was to hit Elysium -> do the final part of the First Blade -> hit Hades -> finish up the couple of additional good blue quests they added and maybe kill the last couple super animals that one hunter lady sent me after -> hit up 3rd mystical place -> finish it off by doing the last little denouement quest they added back on Kephallonia. I'm hoping the Atlantis parts can be sped through without clearing the whole map because ever since I got a few endgame armor sets random loot drops have lost any value to me, but we'll see... Wolfsheim fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Nov 15, 2022 |
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Nov 15, 2022 06:40
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Wolfsheim posted:
This is a solid plan. Each of the three atlantis expansion worlds has a set of crazy super armor. The elysium armor is the assassin-damage based one and it's what I wore through the rest of it. IIRC the hades armor is the warrior geared one. I never bothered with the blue quests even though yeah they seemed pretty decent. The final atlantis map can be speed run pretty well. Do yourself a favor and just take fifteen minutes to go around the circle and pick up all the eagle viewpoints, as it makes bopping back and forth for quest completion etc. later a lot easier. Oh, you also get a loving insane super weapon in Atlantis proper. Honestly I might tweak your plan a bit. Do Elysium and Hades and Atlantis back-to-back but bail on Atlantis about half way through, once you get the super weapon. There's a convenient point where everything narrows down to one main quest where a lady wants you to go lie to her boyfriend. Get the super weapon, cut it there, and then enjoy going loving ham on the rest of the game content. Finish first blade, do your blues, finish atlantis, then do the Kephallonia thing. Also I set the difficulty to easy for the DLCs, zero loving remorse. It was a fun game to play and I did most of it on hard because I enjoyed the combat and the challenge (where I've got Valhalla now) but holy gently caress goddamn by the end I wanted to just face roll poo poo and get it over with.
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Nov 15, 2022 15:38
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Wolfsheim posted:This is how I was doing it for over a year but the Witcher 3 is getting a PS5 release in a month and now I need the drat space i have uninstalled and reinstalled it about 15 times (but keeping the save files of course) i have one spot on my xbox that is perennially reserved for an AC game and i play most of them as just a casual gently caress around explore and do side missions kind of thing once i get tired of the story and powerful/kitted out enough to enjoy the open world, i just switch them up all the time, usually switching between Syndicate, Origins, and Odyssey as those are the most fun to jump in and out of Odyssey is probably my favorite to play this way because the bounty hunter system makes the world a lot more dynamic, and I'm fond of basically designing my own assassination missions by taking out the local rulers on various islands. the provinces keep switching alliances and getting new leaders after you kill old ones, so you can keep doing this forever, it's like procgen old schoool assassins creed in a way. but i do wish the whole "building a crew" thing was more flushed out, once you hire lieutenants they don't really do much at all, just stand there on your boat and occasionally engage in ship combat, which i find a bit boring. a lot of my crew are former bounty hunters who tried to kill me and i had to murder their pet lion on a rooftop in athens after lighting half a street on fire or whatever, and some of them are former leaders who i decided to knock out instead of kill because they put up a good fight! all those great memories and now they just mill around on the ship saying nothing. but overall it has by far the most chaotic and alive feeling open world of any recent AC game and i think that is what makes it so inviting to keep diving back in. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Nov 15, 2022 |
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Nov 15, 2022 18:44
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There is a skill you can use that summons a person from your ship into a battle. But I agree, this part sounded very exciting. You can hire almost anyone in the world except for story character! And in the end it does give some bonuses to the ship but, well, meh. You are also right about this game being uniquely alive in terms of the world. I don't get why people don't see it, I struggle to name any open world game that feels as varied as this one. People talk about how the world is bloated and there are not enough good quests in it but it's missing the point. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Nov 15, 2022 |
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Nov 15, 2022 19:38
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One fun thing I recently discovered is that if you get the good ending and save Deimos (Kassandra, in my case) and set her up as your summon lieutenant she does all her boss fight moves, including a bunch of giant glowing AoE attacks that heavily damage and ragdoll any enemy within a giant radius around her. As far as I know she's the only lieutenant that has any unique characteristics whatsoever (outside of it being funny to have randos like the poisoner or various mercenaries that try to kill you)
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Nov 15, 2022 19:45
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ilitarist posted:There is a skill you can use that summons a person from your ship into a battle. there are a few story characters you can hire too, though not major ones. and they basically become generic mute soldiers the moment you hire them. quote:People talk about how the world is bloated and there are not enough good quests in it but it's missing the point. i guess it's "bloated" if you try to play it in a linear way, and i think that complaint is what led them to make valhalla much more linear, where once you conquer a province it's permanently "yours" meaning there's no longer much to do there. whereas the entire world of odyssey is constantly at war with itself regardless of your actions. plus in valhalla the bounty hunters are practically static and you have to go challenge them, while in odyssey they track you down and often show up while you're in the middle of some other poo poo which adds a lot to the chaos
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Nov 15, 2022 19:49
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Part of the bloat is in the non-story missions that crop up. I’m talking the generic “misthos, a spartan stole my wallet please go kill him in this random camp” type stuff. Once you realize those aren’t worth touching it moves better.
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Nov 15, 2022 19:57
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Earwicker posted:there are a few story characters you can hire too, though not major ones. that's no way to talk about your mother and the main antagonist
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Nov 15, 2022 19:59
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Those are infinite random quests. I think in a way Ubisoft hurt the game by making those random quests so elaborate a lot of people don't realize those quests are extremely optional filler. Approaching those games as something you 100% will definitely make you hate them.
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Nov 15, 2022 20:03
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I 100%ed Odyssey and I don't really hate it but I certainly consider it an inferior product to the heights of the series (from Brotherhood to 3). But seriously I finally 100%ed Odyssey by massacring the last camp of hunters that was unchecked on the map and the animals that lived together with them in peace (I'm not sure Québec "gets" how hunting works). It felt extremely anticlimactic. A few years before I 100%ed 3 by replaying the campaign without upgrading my ship and then fighting a cool scripted naval battle amidst a giant Hollywood storm, dodging waves and sniping at bigger ships through the rain. It felt climactic.
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Nov 15, 2022 20:15
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Kuiperdolin posted:I 100%ed Odyssey and I don't really hate it but I certainly consider it an inferior product to the heights of the series (from Brotherhood to 3). 100% brain sickness aside you could have just as easily had the last thing you do in Odyssey be killing the head of the cult and the last thing you do in AC3 be some mind-numbingly tedious homestead hunting bullshit, kind of a weird metric
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Nov 15, 2022 20:20
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For all my love for Odyssey I can't imagine 100%-ing it unless I'm stuck on a desert island with it. The point of this alive world is outside of main story set-pieces everyone will have very different experiences of this game. Most people will never see parts of the world and what they see will define the game for them. It's not quite on the level of Deus Ex or something in terms of variety of approaches, but it's up there with the best RPGs I think combining variety of builds with the variety of playable situations you only see in those proc-gen roguelike games that never have a big detailed world like this one.
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Nov 15, 2022 20:59
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i really wonder what the gaming landscape and general mentality around open world exploration would be like if "achievements" and "platinum" etc. just weren't a thing at all. obviously there are still some people who would have that completionist mentality on their own and still try to do every single possible activity in a game world but i feel like games and consoles incentivize that brainworm poo poo with achievements and such and i feel like a lot of game design would probably be better without that stuff i would love to see a game that combined the historical detail of AC with the flexibility of a more sandbox oriented game like minecraft or NMS, where it's a world for you to temporarily inhabit and build stuff and play whatever role your imagination comes up with, instead of something to "win" Earwicker fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Nov 15, 2022 |
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Nov 15, 2022 21:04
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Cyrano4747 posted:Part of the bloat is in the non-story missions that crop up. I’m talking the generic “misthos, a spartan stole my wallet please go kill him in this random camp” type stuff. Once you realize those aren’t worth touching it moves better. A good chunk of the bloat for me was all the undifferentiated checkmark locations on the map, and the utter worthlessness of the randomized loot system and its stat weights.
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Nov 15, 2022 21:43
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Ironslave posted:A good chunk of the bloat for me was all the undifferentiated checkmark locations on the map, and the utter worthlessness of the randomized loot system and its stat weights. Yeah, by the time you got a couple set items all the purple poo poo was only worthwhile for melting down for scrap or selling. Not to mention the blues, and the odd white item was just comical. Item progression was very quickly just about quest reward set pieces. Conceptually I get it. I enjoy diablo too. But goddamn it did not work in the game that they built. Origins had a similar issue, but it never felt half as dire as the firehose of worthless crap in Odyssey. At least they could have given us a sell/disassemble all button. I'm liking the Valhalla system a lot more. Find materials out in the wild (no need to melt down poo poo) and use that to upgrade the much more limited amount of gear you find. One thing I will say I miss is the Odyssey strongholds. I think they were in Origins too? They were fun little set pieces where you really did have to think about your approach and take them apart a piece at a time. On the other hand Odyssey, at least, felt like it had too drat many. By the midpoint I was actively ignoring them unless I absolutely needed to get there for a quest, and even that tended to be an in-and-out for the objective rather than clearing the location. I get that the raids an the castle assaults are supposed to take that place, but it doesn't really feel like they do. Now for something I dislike in Valhalla: the skill system is a bit much for an AC game. I think Odyssey had it about right with letting you customize and feeling like leveling gave you progression. The Valhalla tree is very quickly "ok what do I have to bee-line to grab this big skill node I want" and now that I've filled out most of those I'm just squinting at this Paths of Exile style sprawling mess and trying to figure out which dot gives me light attacks and bear gear upgrades etc. I'm sure some people dig it and it's a lot more granular than the previous systems but goddamn, I do not want to have to look up a build chart for an AssCreed game.
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Nov 15, 2022 23:57
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valhalla had a better loot system, the problem is that the "upgraded" version of most armor looks worse than the basic or middle version armor choice is purely a fashion thing for me in most games, so i do appreciate the diversity of what odyssey offered because you can assemble some great outfits in that game, but even for me it was way too much
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Nov 16, 2022 00:02
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Earwicker posted:valhalla had a better loot system, the problem is that the "upgraded" version of most armor looks worse than the basic or middle version Can you down-shift the look by picking another cosmetic option? That tab over in the blacksmith next to upgrading? Like, I've got a super duper +3 upgraded Dad Ax, can I apply the cosmetic look to make it the basic bitch Dad Ax?
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Nov 16, 2022 00:04
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Cyrano4747 posted:Can you down-shift the look by picking another cosmetic option? That tab over in the blacksmith next to upgrading? you can now, but its an option they added after i already finished the story and got tired of the game
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Nov 16, 2022 00:06
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I used the basic raven set and thought it looked badass 
Goa Tse-tung fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Nov 16, 2022 |
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Nov 16, 2022 10:34
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I still say that at this point you just don't need a skill point or rpg system. Everyone's played AC by this point, I just don't like having to unlock abilities that I've had in 5-6 games before. Particularly when they are all about expanding player combat options rather than offering solutions to specific problems that you can progress gate. It's just there so that Ubisoft can pad content and their games would be better if they stopped.
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Nov 16, 2022 10:56
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Alchenar posted:I still say that at this point you just don't need a skill point or rpg system. Everyone's played AC by this point, I just don't like having to unlock abilities that I've had in 5-6 games before. Particularly when they are all about expanding player combat options rather than offering solutions to specific problems that you can progress gate. It's just there so that Ubisoft can pad content and their games would be better if they stopped. Eh, I appreciate it for the options it gives for customizing your play style. Maybe late game you've unlocked everything on the board, but even fairly late mid-game you have some real decisions to make about whether you're going all in on brawling and combat or stealth.
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Nov 16, 2022 14:04
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I think it can be done well, but the effort compared to the payoff is too high. The switch to Aya in Origins is probably the best use: everyone had their own paystyle (mine was Predator Bow for clearing and the big fuckoff lifeleech Axe for going loud), and then the switch happens and you need to play a different game basically. It was fitting to show the alienation between Aya and Bayek in an additional way: their build, colors and then spelled out in the story. But that was it, the two games after that use it to show us becoming halfgods/gods, and I think a skilltree is cheap way to do that. Any game can do that.
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Nov 16, 2022 14:15
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Cyrano4747 posted:Can you down-shift the look by picking another cosmetic option? That tab over in the blacksmith next to upgrading? I am so glad Tsushima has this option. None of the fully upgraded looks fit my style, it was usually the middle ones that were the best.
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Nov 16, 2022 14:18
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Lobok posted:I am so glad Tsushima has this option. None of the fully upgraded looks fit my style, it was usually the middle ones that were the best. Oh god yeah. The head pieces in particular just got too much. I was also 100% on board with the middle options.
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Nov 16, 2022 14:19
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Cyrano4747 posted:Eh, I appreciate it for the options it gives for customizing your play style. Maybe late game you've unlocked everything on the board, but even fairly late mid-game you have some real decisions to make about whether you're going all in on brawling and combat or stealth. But I don't accept that any of the decisions for customising play style are necessarily either-or choices! The series was perfectly fine with you being good at stealth/combat/why-would-you-be-ranged before Origins!
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Nov 16, 2022 14:19
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Alchenar posted:But I don't accept that any of the decisions for customising play style are necessarily either-or choices! The series was perfectly fine with you being good at stealth/combat/why-would-you-be-ranged before Origins! I mean, not really. I've been playing through all the old games over the last couple of years (AssCreed 1 is rough in the modern day, goddamn) and while the Enzio trilogy, 3, black flag, etc. are all still great games the parts where you get down and dirty for straight up combat handle VERY differently. Right now I've got Evior built up as a straight up Viking. I walk into an enemy camp, shank a dude in the kidneys, and then basically brawl all comers until I'm the only one left standing. It very much feels like I'm playing a fighting oriented game. Meanwhile in the half-done playthrough of Revelations I've got going Ezio is competent at fighting, but everything from the controls to how much getting hit hurts is screaming at you that it's a secondary option. It's what you down-shift to after you gently caress up, your cover gets blown, and you need to kill a few guards before blending into the crowd. Everything in the original flavor AC formula is really emphasizing that you're a stealthy assassin who lurks from the shadows before quietly killing the target. It's kind of like how, yeah, gunfights are an option in the Hitman games but it's clearly not built out to be a no holds barred COD-style shooter. Meanwhile the modern trilogy of Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla 100% lets you flat out loving ignore stealth and stabbing from the shadows if that's the route you want to take. Both in terms of gameplay and theme they've really, really depreciated the whole "hooded assassin" bit in favor of Strong Protagonist Warrior. At this point it's really two different franchises. with the most recent trilogy having far more in common with Witcher 3 or Ghosts of Tsushima than it does the older AC games.
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Nov 16, 2022 14:35
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Odyssey's gear system was by far the most interesting of the modern trilogy because there was some genuine thought put into the interaction between skills and gear. The legendary affixes that you could shift around let you put together some fun and unique builds that offered a different experience depending on what skill tree you wanted to specialize in. Origins and Valhalla's ability system being almost entirely passive weren't nearly as interesting and instead of Odyssey's game-changing affixes you had stuff like "your parries have a 2% chance to do fire damage." Boring!
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Nov 16, 2022 14:42
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Odyssey is a very rare game that combines all those things making character building interesting and gameplay varied. I don't know other action-RPGs on this level. I know there are a lot of Diablo clones who do something similar but these are almost idle games in terms of actual minute-to-minute gameplay.
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Nov 16, 2022 15:44
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The only nice thing I'll say about Odyssey's combat is that a couple of the high-level abilities let you ignore it by just dumping on obscene assassin damage, actually engaging with it never felt good to me because of how weirdly weightless and MMO-lite it feels, thankfully once you get the pirate set that gives you something like 200% assassin damage you can stealth, rush assassinate and hero strike your way out of almost everything Origins had a similar problem but IIRC the overpower ability was even more overpowered (ha) and let you kill three guys at once so you could steamroll a lot of stuff with it Valhalla's combat isn't amazing and they really should have cut down on the death animations but souls-lite combat and the ability to dual-wield anything and everything makes it feel a lot better overall to gently caress around with, also they made it so you can do the classic 'walk up to a guy with social stealth and stab him as you're walking by' move that was sorely missing in Origins/Odyssey
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Nov 16, 2022 18:36
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ilitarist posted:Odyssey is a very rare game that combines all those things making character building interesting and gameplay varied. I don't know other action-RPGs on this level. i'd say the souls games and especially elden ring do a pretty good job of it, you can have some very different experiences with different builds in those games
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Nov 16, 2022 18:53
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These one and immersive sims like Deus Ex and Dishonored come to mind, but alive big open world makes all the difference. Even Elden Ring is just a big level with static content. Dishonored is a great game, but it's a series of very specific challenges. Odyssey feels like those immersive sim games to me but on a much bigger scale. Thus I don't think it's fair to talk about its combat system in a vacuum no more than, say, Prey's lack of weapon variety.
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Nov 16, 2022 19:29
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Can we all agree though that Valhalla has the worst controls out of all the recent games? I'm not the kind of person to wish violence on a developer, but holy gently caress doing the anomalies with layla made me want to inflict all kinds of things on whoever was responsible for the controls in this.
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Nov 16, 2022 20:56
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Jumping puzzles feel worse but the over-all control feels a lot less "floaty" than Odyssey did.
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Nov 16, 2022 21:01
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Yeah I thought Valhalla was a good compromise between Origins/Odyssey's "vaseline glide across any surface vertical or horizontal" and the older games "you had the controller turned slightly the wrong way and held the button slightly too long, good luck grabbing the one specific ledge you need to instead of parkour jumping backwards to your death idiot"
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Nov 16, 2022 21:21
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