|
I'm sure this has already been covered to death in here, but I'm not going to read 600 pages to find it. Getting ready to start this game. Is there any strong consensus on who the better VO is, male or female? Reading around online it looks like it's another situation where the female character is cannon (even though Ubi seems to shy away from actually saying it - I found a comment by some Ubi exec actually using the words "separate but equal" to describe the male/female playthroughs lol), but honestly I kinda dgaf about cannon. I just want to make sure it's not another situation like Kassandra / Alexos where one VO is just obviously heads and shoulders superior to the other.
|
#
¿
Nov 5, 2022 16:57
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 16:00 |
|
|
CAPT. Rainbowbeard posted:Female Eivor is best. Male Eivor is good, but Eivor Varinsdottir is also a girls name, so... Were they actually lazy enough to not change references to the last name to Varinson?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 5, 2022 18:21
|
|
|
Shalebridge Cradle posted:Kassandra is the objectively correct choice Yeah, this is more why I was asking. The difference in VO performance between Kassandra and Alexos is just nuts, setting aside all the stuff about which character is cannon. That's not even saying Alexos had a terrible VO, Kassandra's was just really good.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2022 17:19
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2022 03:45
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2022 15:38
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2022 19:57
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2022 23:57
|
|
|
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?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2022 00:04
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2022 14:04
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2022 14:19
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2022 14:35
|
|
|
Jumping puzzles feel worse but the over-all control feels a lot less "floaty" than Odyssey did.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2022 21:01
|
|
|
I'm all for post-launch support and all that but this bit kind of kills me:quote:This epilogue will tie up some of the storylines developed throughout the game and offer closure to your time among the Raven Clan. Motherfucker that's what the end of the game is for. I had the same complaint with Odyssey. Good game over-all, and I'm even pretty happy with how it tied everything up - once you play through both major DLCs. The ending in the launch version though just felt lacking.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2022 22:48
|
|
|
See, I didn't even know that was the end of that plotline, because somehow I got that way earlier. That was like some mid-late game poo poo for me, I did that before finishing off the family/cult line poo poo.
Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Nov 18, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2022 23:45
|
|
|
christmas boots posted:Ragnar wuz here Basically. It's "Halvdan carved these runes"
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2022 02:45
|
|
|
Lobok posted:I think it's kind of hilarious, actually. They Gumpified history so that some dude/dudette with either a wrist blade or a magical orb affected every event. They're in every etching, every painting, every photograph of note. It's like that even in the AC2 trilogy if you read the random crap you get and the synch puzzles etc. I remember one that laid out how all of WW2 was basically a weird templar false flag op, or something like that. I'm actually really OK with that. Half the appeal of the series is the weird mix of oddly historically accurate poo poo combined with crazy weird video game mechanics and conspiracy theory nuttery.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2022 18:13
|
|
|
Some of the stuff seems to be pretty well established as true, though. The adam and eve poo poo, for example, and even the general look of Isu architecture etc. Watch the Adam/Eve video while playing Atlantis and you can absolutely see how they tried to make them connect as far as the look goes.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2022 18:43
|
|
|
Yeah. Don't get me wrong: I'm the first one to roll my eyes at people who insist Ubisoft can't write stories or that it's all just dumb vidjya game poo poo. But, uh, I really don't think they've had it together to do a slow burn unreliable narrator thing for like a decade and a half at this point. I'm just going to go occam's razor on this one and assume that the contradictory stuff is because of different teams writing with little in the way of a central, guiding plan across many years of development. It's also pretty noteworthy that the games that cluster together (the Enzio trillogy, AC3 and Black Flag, the Layla trillogy off the top of my head) are pretty internally consistent, probably because they had a lot of the same people guiding the narrative. It's when you start comparing, say, Origins to Brotherhood that the wonky poo poo really pops.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2022 19:32
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:im one of those people who insist ubisoft can't write good stories and you nail the exact reason in your second paragraph; all their stories feel like they were written by several different teams of people who like different kinds of stories and who aren't really communicating with each other very much - not just across the whole series but within every individual game. that's the vibe i get with every ac game as well as the far cry and watch dogs games, its just how they do worldbuilding and it tends to result in fun worlds (most of the time) and bad, messy stories If you don't 100% need assassin stabby-stabby stuff and are OK with isometric RPGs, the Expeditions series is good. Expeditions: Conquistador, Expeditions: Vikings, and Expeditions: Rome. I've haven't played Rome yet, but over-all they're pretty good about putting you in the period and giving you a story and a goal that makes sense but without hewing so close to reality that it isn't fun. It's a niche, but if you've got that itch they scratch it pretty well.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2022 22:43
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:yeah ive always thought those looked interesting but until, litereally, yesterday i did not have a system capable of playing them. My two cents is that Vikings is probably the best entry point. They're utterly unrelated to each other minus the dev team so it's not like you're missing story beats etc. The non-sale price on Steam is $30, which I think is fair, but it goes on sale a fair bit. Conquistador is cheaper but I think the polish put on in the intervening few years is nice. I haven't played Rome yet. Plus, to be frank, I just like viking stuff better than conquistador stuff. edit: oh and they really don't railroad you as far as interactions with other cultures, which is neat. Want to be a fairly chill, peaceful viking who's trying to make money with trade? You can do that. Or you can burn every church you find in England, your call.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2022 22:51
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:
Eh, Vikings resolution scaling looks fine. It's certainly an older game but it's not enough to actively detract from anything. Playing Valhalla got me in the mood for it so I fired it up a few weeks ago, so I've got a pretty decent memory of it. Agreed that Conquistadors is rough, but it's also extremely unique in setting so if these kinds of games are your thing it's worth slogging through that. Agreed though that if Rome's on game pass just do that to start with. That said I've got a massive soft spot for anything 8/9th century Norse/English so . . . yeah.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2022 23:24
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:
Iirc they straight up say in some email it’s Massachusetts . Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Nov 30, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2022 21:18
|
|
Vinland is in Canada, so yes anyone who made it to Vinland made it to Canada, by definition. and we already knew that Eivor went there from the whole Vinland section of the vanilla game, so i dont understand what the new explanation is?
|
orcane posted:the low effort trash they released for FarCry 6 (some pseudo roguelites, and the next DLC sounds like it's yet another one of those). So yeah, I definitely don't bother with season passes or gold/GotY/etc. editions of Ubisoft stuff anymore, they're almost never worth it. Ubi really wants all their games to be platforms that everyone interacts with (and thus buys cosmetics for ) forever and ever and ever. You saw the same poo poo with the DLCs for at least Division 1 and I think D2 also trying to turn them into roguelites. poo poo, there was also all that talk of the next rear end Creed game being a hub that you bought entire new games for as some kind of dystopian live service nightmare. Someone over there took a look at Destiny or WoW or GTA5 or loving something and got a raging hard on about live service and customer spend as an ongoing, steady thing rather than just a big rush at launch (and therefore something you can do things like take loans against). Plus you've got them chasing every single microtransaction gimmick possible and shoe-horning them into single player games. rear end Creed is loving chock FULL of cosmetic DLC these days, and that's not even talking about the premium currency and cash shops. In single player games. Oh and account upgrades to speed up your exp gain which is literally something I'd literally never seen outside of f2p mobile games and mmos before Ubi bravely scooped that turd out of the gutter. And let's not forget them charging head first into NFTs right as that market loving collapsed. I kind of take the opposite tack as you: I wait until an Ubi game has been out a couple years and has a gold or complete or whatever edition. I got Odyssey when Valhalla launched and got a complete game that they were even gracious enough to un-gimp the exp gain on. I got Valhalla complete like two months ago. I'm not going to try and get on a moral high horse about how their games are poo poo or whatever, because I play them. But goddamn they've long since trained me not to buy that poo poo at launch, or even in the first couple of years. edit: and to be clear I don't even hate live service games. I played Destiny 2 for years. But there are a lot of franchises that I got to love as single player games and that's kind of what I want from them moving forward. I don't need live service AC, I'm happy stabbing people by myself. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Dec 1, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2022 00:11
|
|
|
mitochondritom posted:I've been playing Valhalla for, I don't know, 30 hours now or something and I've got absolutely no idea how the loot system works or where to find different items. I know there's flails in this game, but I've not seen one. Sometimes I get gear from chests but I'm not sure if it's random or not. There are two types of chests. The small ones that don't show up as a gold dot when your map is medium zoomed out, but do show if you're right in on a place, and the big ones that show as a dot and count towards getting all the "treasure" in a region of the map. The latter is where you're going to find either upgrading materials or new equipment. I haven't had much problem finding new armor but if you just google the locations it's all out there.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2022 23:34
|
|
|
Sandwolf posted:They haven’t released an rear end Creed game in 3 (ish) years. What the hell Ubisoft. IIRC this was a conscious choice in the wake of the lukewarm initial reception for either unity or syndicate, I forget which. I know I remember an article about them making the conscious decision to step away from the annual release cadence to try and focus the storytelling and gameplay. I can't remember if they said specifically what they felt was weak, but the underlying feeling was "yeah, we know it's a bit half baked, we should stop that."
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2023 19:53
|
|
|
Sandwolf posted:Yeah but Origins came out in 2017, Odyssey in 2018, Valhalla in 2020. And for all their flaws, those games are all better than Unity/Syndicate, etc. so how’d they churn those out left and right and then can’t even finish a game that’s meant to be half the size of those. GaaS is going to be the death knell of a lot of previously good franchises. I don't want to play most franchises forever. I want to enjoy a cool story in that universe, pay my $50-70 to do so, and when I'm done go enjoy other things until the next installment is released.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2023 20:10
|
|
|
Whelp, I loving did it. It took me two years of on again, off again playing, but I did it. I beat Assassins Creed Valhalla, plus all the non-Asgard DLC. Just don't have it in me to do all that Ragnarok poo poo. But I did all the stuff in the real world. All in all, B+. Pretty solid, really enjoyed being a viking that just kinda said gently caress all this assassins vs. order/templar poo poo and did her own thing. It needed to be trimmed, though. Even just bee-lining the main quest and the side quests that looked interesting it was just way too much. There needed to be about 75% of the game that was in there. Still, nice tie-up to the Origins/Odyssey story, and the modern stuff was interesting without being overbearing. Some nice nods to older poo poo too. I also really liked (female) Eavor as a character. She just worked in a way that clicked with me.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2024 00:21
|
|
|
Some Valhalla Thoughts: 1) Mechanically speaking the game gets stale way, way before the story does. This is a big part of why it took me two years. Once you get some good equipment and skills under your belt the difficulty is trivial, and every encounter is more or less identical. This was a bit less of a problem in some of the DLC areas - especially France - but in the main game it was a huge issue. In the end, even if I was digging the story the minute to minute gameplay wasn't enough to make me keep the controller in my hands. I'd end up finishing a story arc or region and then putting it down until I got a hankering to do it again. Origins and Odyssey especially had this problem a bit, but it really seemed to hit its apex in Valhalla. Comparing it to earlier AssCreed games I don't feel like I ever had the same kind of basic gameplay fatigue. *shrug* It might be a symptom of the larger open world thing they're doing here, but the minute to minute gameplay just never felt as trivial in Origins especially as it did here. I'd actually be interested in an iron man run of Valhalla, just because I think I died maybe like two times after getting to England. And one of those was jumping off a way too high ledge without a fluffy pile of leaves under me. 2) The story telling is heads and shoulders the best that I've seen in an AC game in a loving long time. Really love the way they wove in the Odin/Issu stuff into the mainline game without beating you over the head with it. REALLY loved the way they just let some poo poo be ambiguous. 3) Along both of those lines, though, some narrative beats just didn't land because of how long the game was and how the gameplay didn't keep me engaged all the way through, so I had a lot of lengthy breaks. There were times when someone died or betrayed me or whatever and I could tell it was supposed to be a Big loving Deal but I'm sitting there scratching my head because the last time I saw that person was a year ago IRL and it's yet another person with a bad haircut and a name that begins with "Aeth" and ends with "stan" or "wulf." Don't get me wrong, it was a decent game, albeit one that I think had some flaws. The big fixes that I can see would be to either trim the total game time down to about two-thirds to three-quarters of what it is, or to do something with the gameplay to make it more engaging so that quests don't feel quite so trivial. More, better set pieces where you need to do some problem solving (like the Paris missions where you had to do some light Hitman type poo poo) or even just a spike in difficulty level so that you had to actually think about what you were doing and plan your approach.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2024 00:46
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:I feel like the core issue with the gameplay is that (as far as I can tell) everything can be dealt with via regular dodge, with zero concern for direction or anything. And the regular dodge becomes especially powerful with the "slow time on dodge" ability (IMO this and the "recharge recent damage if you don't get hit again" ability are the two most important things to pick up early - the latter also effectively removes fall damage, since you'll just regenerate it). Yeah, the dodge mechanic is hilariously OP. I had entire boss fights that just went look for red flash > dodge > chew off 1/10th of their health bar > repeat 9x Once in a while I would make the conscious decision to try a parry because I was kinda bored. The big issue, in my mind, is that dodge is one size fits all. You've got two attack signals, and dodge works for both. But parry doesn't work on the red power attacks, so if you flub that you eat a big hit. The game very quickly teaches you to gently caress off with parries and just jump out of the way all the time. Now that I think about it I'm kind of wondering why they didn't make the enemy light attacks (the orange/yellow indicator) track through a dodge. Because then you'd actually have two main damage mitigation skills to juggle and would have to pay attention in fights. edit: I'm sure the answer is because they were going with absolute mass appeal in this and that might make things too difficult. Dark Souls the AC games loving ain't.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2024 16:48
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:i think you guys are overthinking specific combat moves the player can do when there are much more basic things they could do to make combat more fun like, for example, not having any enemies that literally just stand there completely motionless during a battle At the end of the day the combat system as a whole - from the basic mechanics to the enemy AI etc - is just really kinda bland and just "there." It's all functional enough, it's not broken to the point where people are going to make Youtube careers picking apart the myriad ways its hosed a la Starfield, but at the end of the day it isn't a strong or attractive system. The best apples to apples comparison I can think of is Shadow of Mordor / Shadow of War. You've got stealth, you've got assassinations, and you've got a really compelling brawler mechanic that makes fights where it's you vs. a crowd engaging and entertaining. You can also point to the Arkham games and the Spider Man games as another example of that kind of thing done right. In all of those combat is fun enough that going out and picking a fight is just a fun thing to do sometimes, and it's significantly more engaging and active than walking into the middle of a mission zone, shanking the first dude in the kidneys to start aggro, and then just dodge dodge dodge slash slash slash and once in a blue moon cook off an ability for flavor. I beat this game with more or less only dodge and light attack. Skills became largely superfluous by the mid-game except as a shortcut to burst damage and cut down the amount of time that I was dealing with a fight. Which I know sounds really bad, but honestly the game is better than the combat system. It kept me engaged enough to finish it, and I was interested in the story and the world. I just didn't keep me engaged enough to finish it in less than two years.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2024 17:29
|
|
|
CharlestonJew posted:I remember some attacks in the original ACs being un-counterable unless you had the dodge move, which you didn't get until later, so it made open combat a fair bit harder. By the end tho yeah you could just waltz in and slaughter an entire nation's military no problem This happened really quick. I replayed the old ACs during covid and in 1 it was legit hard if you had to go hand to hand. This became a problem in the final fight because they forced a big brawl on you and it was difficult both because of the mechanics and also because they were forcing you to use a skill set that the game had actively disincentivized up until that moment. Combat is a LOT more forgiving in 2, and by Bros it’s a solid option. It still felt more compelling than valhallas combat, but I’d have to go back and replay some again to really narrow in on why.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2024 17:53
|
|
|
ilitarist posted:I like Shadows Of games but it doesn't make much sense for a game that at least pays homage to the idea of an assassin to include fights with dozen enemies at the same time. I mean, sure, but we're already there. Ever since Origins they've leaned hard into the assassin stuff being kinda optional and talking fights with hack and slash being a totally viable option. edit: Haven't played the most recent one, heard they went back to their root with it a bit so maybe the criticism doesn't hold true there.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2024 18:58
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:Parry is very good against normal enemies because it frequently stuns them, which is a one-hit kill (and at least on Hard, enemies have enough HP that killing them with regular melee attacks is slow). When normal enemies are attacking, it's generally fastest to just parry them followed by doing the stun kill. I think there's a UI thing going on where some enemies yellow attacks end up looking more orange-ish. I'm thinking of the spear guys in particular. The red attacks I'm talking about are the ones where they get that red flame or haze or whatever that looks like they're charging up their super sayan poo poo or something. And even if parry is effective against normal enemies, dodge is still better once you have the time slow down skill. In a crowd? gently caress parrying, dodge one mook's attack and now you're in the matrix and can land hits on half the guys around you, including the fat boy elite.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2024 22:23
|
|
|
Mokotow posted:Quick Valhalla question - at which point is it best to go into the Ireland and Paris expansions? I'm at around level 160 and opening London but have people in my camp itching to send me over the drink. As far as the narrative goes they both take place after the main quest, but realistically it's ambiguous enough that it doesn't matter and you can do them whenever.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2024 13:52
|
|
|
Origins is a far more interesting stand alone story. Valhalla has a few things that are major plot points and will be a big wtf if you didn’t play odyssey. Origins is also the most reasonably scoped and paced of the three. I’d start with it and do the others if it grabs you.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2024 05:23
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:Odyssey literally made enemies that were impossible to assassinate because they had too much hp. God that was so loving refreshing. I did the Paris DLC as the last major thing before I wrapped up and uninstalled and it was just a goddamned breath of fresh air to have assassination missions that were more than "rush up to some chump in a market place, stab in the kidneys, run away into a bush to break guard aggro before fast traveling to the next quest, I dunno maybe you'll need to wear a hood"
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2024 15:24
|
|
|
ilitarist posted:Stealth So, the issue with all of this is that the game doesn't actually incentivize you to use stealth. Yes, there are tools there for you to use. Yes, you can make a stealth build. Yes, the stealth gameplay can be fun because who doesn't like sneaking around and shanking dudes? But the game pretty actively disincentivizes it, because if you build a melee build it's stupidly faster to clear those same camps and combat arenas. For the longest time on Odyssey I ran a kind of hybrid stealth/melee build that leaned heavily on stealth but had a fair bit of melee to help out if poo poo got bad. Archery was my dump stat until I got enough points that it didn't matter. And it was fun. Basic sneak around stabbing like you describe, then when I got caught out go ham with the sword. But then I tried a respec to focus on melee and holy poo poo it was way faster to just walk to the quest objective, kick the first dude I saw in the balls, and then melee, dodge, melee then spam my insanely over-powered skills. I forget the exact break down I had, but it was typical resource generator / spender rotation like an ARPG. If it wasn't a boss battle, by the time I ran through the rotation twice the whole loving fort was dead at my feet. Compare that to games that actively incentivize stealth, either because you're just kinda weak at melee or because there are specific mission objectives surrounding not getting caught or sounding an alarm raises the difficulty level or makes side-objectives impossible or forces you to kill people that shouldn't die etc. Sniper Elite, the Thief games, and the Dishonored series all come to mind. Oh and Hitman, obviously. Odyssey is a sandbox that lets you do stealth, and to their credit they give you the tools to do it well (as opposed to Valhalla) but the game never really pushes you to use them and it leads to a more inefficient play style.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2024 15:37
|
|
|
man nurse posted:Something like Syndicate is probably what you’re looking for in terms of “classic assassins creed but newer”. In fact I’d wager it’s probably one of the strongest. You could also check out Mirage, it’s the most recent and is designed to be “back to basics”. Honestly the classic AC's still play pretty well on modern systems. I'm chewing through the Ezio trillogy on my steam deck right now in periodic 1 hour bursts as a gently caress around in spare time thing.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2024 16:26
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:i don't really understand this mentality. one choice means slowly getting rid of enemies, one choice means it takes longer. Part of the efficiency focus for me is just based on how bloated Odyssey and Valhalla were. I'm all for an open world game, but both of those got huge to the point where I eventually just wanted to see the story beats faster because I could tell I was burning out on the game. Doubly so after I inevitably put it down for a few months, came back, and had to do a lot of work to re-orient myself on where I was in the story. They're both games that took me multiple years to beat so, yeah, after a point I just wanted to clear Fort #346 ASAP and grab the quest mcguffin inside it so I could move on. edit: another part is the repetitiveness. You've really seen the game by the time you're 20 hours in or so, but after that you've still got a loving LOT of very similar things to clear. Doubly so if you care about optional but still story things like whacking all the order dudes on the map. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jan 17, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2024 17:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 16:00 |
|
|
Earwicker posted:yeah, I understand, I just dealt with it by going in the opposite direction. I've been playing Odyssey once or twice a week, for just an hour or two at a time, pretty much since it came out. Once I got about halfway through the story, I mostly avoided doing anything story related. I start it up, spend some time stealthily taking out a fort or doing some side mission, and then put it down again. sometimes I just cruise around the sea and listen to the music. Every once in a while I dive back into the story for a bit, but never for long. It's very relaxing and feels a lot less likely to burn out than pushing though all those hours of the story and achieving all the games goals etc at any kind of pace, and i'm unlikely to burn out because i spend more time playing other games or just doing other stuff with my free time. Yeah, that makes sense. And I know all this sounds negative, but this is coming form someone who's played Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla to completion (minus some of the Odin DLC which I really couldn't care less about). Obviously at a certain point I do find this stuff enjoyable otherwise I wouldn't be wasting my time on it. But I'm also absolutely seeing the cracks. Eventually I have to hunker down and push through, because eventually I hit a story mission where I'm like "wait, who's this dude? Why is he important?" and when I'm browsing a wiki for a summary on why his heel turn is a big deal I know I need to focus in and get it done before the main plot is just meaningless gibberish to me.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2024 17:43
|
|