This post is intentionally vague to avoid as many spoilers as possible.
My friend so thoughtfully bought me AC Odyssey (the same friend who bought me Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana) and it brought me back from being burned out with gaming (due to the strenuous demands of gaining viewer numbers for streaming).
I know it's in fashion to make fun of Ubisoft games - just like Call of Duty series, even though every time I see people streaming CoD, the gameplay looks so precise and fluid, brilliantly so that I never understand the hate - but AC: Odyssey hits all of my gaming buttons!
First, you can chose your avatar's gender, and instead of having the tired silent hero who just stands there not reacting to anything, the hero actually has personality. I appreciate how you can chose to be either Alexios or Kassandra. It's always a good thing to have a choice.
But if you can only be a particular hero with no option for customization, that hero better be well-fleshed-out, as with Sora from Kingdom Hearts, as opposed to William from Nioh. Despite hundreds of hours playing Nioh, I can't find a molecule of personality in William; he has no personality.
I chose to be Kassandra and found her personality compelling - she's a wonderful mix of having a good sense of humor, being blunt at times, other times exhibiting wisdom, and using cheesy pick-up lines that work.
The NPCs and side quests are also memorable and quite well-done. Although there are so many side missions, and quite a few are fetch quests, or sorties to go out and kill enemies, those are primarily to boost your experience, as some are timed missions (i.e. you have 24 hrs to a few days to complete). However, the primary side quests flesh out the world, story and characters very well and are rather complex and sometimes startling.
The side quests that stick out are the minotaur quests (that have ever branching out story lines) I also appreciate missions which delineate a cultist's personality and story in depth, which compels you to do these major side missions. Others have very colorful NPCs that I won't soon forget. I was actually surprised when killing one such enemy, to find out that she was a cultist in the end, when she was merely considered an elite warrior. Not to say that all cultists you kill have these long-drawn out characterization, but quite a few do, which is refreshing.
The story is compelling, and although it follows the save-the-world formula, there's political intrigue and deep lore, unlike the Monster Hunter series (which is one of my favorite franchises) where it's simply a matter of a monster threatens the village, and you go kill it. Further, you really want to kill these enemies since they're portrayed so well, as so disgusting you enjoy defeating them.
The cultists are disgusting, but they're not caricatures, they're very much like real people. I know it's not kosher to discuss politics, but one such cultist reminds me of our very own cabinet member who's justifying ripping immigrant children from their mothers.
Though I'm new to AC, haven't played one until Odyssey, it has a lot of lore explained rather well during gameplay, which I appreciate--I read online summaries of prior AC games, and Odyssey does a great job summarizing the mysteries in-game.
Throughout, both in the main campaign and side missions, there are many things to do so that you won't be bored. Once I get tired of killing legendary beasts, I tackle clearing out the Ubisoft-requisite bandit and soldier camps, solve puzzles (Ainigmata Ostraka tablets that give you a puzzle to find various items), hunt down cultists using clues, fight in the Arena, participate in battle skirmishes siding with either the Athenians or Spartans, and finally, leveling up my ship, weapons, armors, and abilities.
Although I tend to hate any combat related to water, I found the naval battles in Odyssey extremely fun, which adds another gameplay component to keep combat varied. It's ever so satisfying to ram into ships, shooting arrows and javelins, then initiate boarding to finish off the enemies!
Indeed, there's just so much to do, and with the quest markers off button, I'm always exploring and looking forward to what's around the next corner. Instead of groaning when new quests show up, I get excited to see a main side mission marker on map (it only shows when you're close to the area) because of the quality of the side missions. I do groan, however, whenever I see yet another timed mission, but I tend to ignore those unless I want the experience, money or resources.
Some of the main story quests involve investigations, figuring out puzzles by hunting down clues, so it's not just going from one track quest marker to the next. It's exciting to uncover the various Cult members, and unearthing the keys.
The over-world is absolutely gorgeous with varied terrains and verticality that encourage exploration. I love the caves and tombs, finding treasures and fighting enemies along the way. Although not the most complex level design, it was fun exploring, moving storage crates to open up to another area.
I wondered why, despite the lack of diversity of enemies, the fighting in Odyssey never gets old, just as it doesn't in the Souls and Monster Hunter series. The combat appears to be a cross between Souls and Nioh but that in Odyssey might be even more addictive than Souls'.
Although the Souls series has such huge diversity of enemies, and even within the same Hollow enemy set, each Hollow has different attack patterns. However, if you level up so high, you can easily 1hko all these Hollows. Even though the squishy sound of killing Hollows never gets old, but clearly it no longer becomes challenging.
For one thing, I so appreciate how the enemies in Odyssey level up along with you, so despite being only half way through the game, I'm at level 41 (I believe the max level enemies is 50). Therefore, I'm never able to 1hko an enemy using melee, except when I use assassination abilities.
Since I can't aim, I haven't been using ranged tactics, primarily relying on melee and fighting the enemies as you do in Souls and Nioh. Again, the melee falls between the two. The enemies are not so easy to kill (because of how the game levels up with you) as in Souls, but they don't take forever to kill as in Nioh, so it's the perfect balance between those two great franchises (Nioh 2 will be coming out).
It's so addictive to dodge, and if you time it right, it slows down time, during which you can close the distance and whack the enemy. There's also just as addictive a parrying mechanic that is as satisfying as that in Souls and Nioh.
The Warrior Ability I tend to use is the "Shield Breaker", which satisfyingly rips off shields, and the even more hysterical "Ring of Chaos" that damages and pushes all the enemies back, stunning them. What I love about both of those abilities is that they never 1hko, rather they give you breathing space to then land further attacks.
Even at the highest tier, 3, Ring of Chaos has never been able to kill whole groups of enemies, though the ability makes me laugh out loud when you see enemies flying a couple of meters away from you, landing on their backs.
Precisely because of these addictive combat mechanics, never being over-powered as in the Souls series, and having to dodge/parry attacks as well as using abilities in a well-placed, timed manner, the combat is always fun despite Odyssey having limited enemies (humans, bears, cats, dogs).
And I haven't even touched upon the ranged and assassination approaches, which add extra layers of combat mechanics, that I can see being just as addictive as the head-on melee approach. Since I'm midway through the game, I'm using a little bit more ranged and assassination, and they appear to be just as fun as my rushing in blind attacking everything with my beloved heavy blade weapon.
Since I unlocked the passive ability of Assassin, "Stealth Master", it allows you to more easily sneak up on enemies, and again, it never gets old backstabbing and 1hko unsuspecting enemies! I believe I was only successful in assassinating all enemies in maybe 2 or 3 camps without alerting them. If I do alert them, the cheese strat appears to run away from the camp and come back to continue your assault.
I can see players getting tired of clearing out bandit and soldier camps, but I actually look forward to doing so, to see if I can clear out entire camps through stealth. Key strat here is to make sure you trap the brazier alarm so they can't call reinforcements!
The sound effects also hit my gaming addiction spot. The crunch of footsteps, the whoosh sounds of successful parrying and dodging, the satisfying "pock pock" sound when your eagle, Ikaros, finds an important item, stealing/looting drachmae (the coin sounds are quite ESMR), and the like.
I enjoy the music but there's only a few musical themes throughout the game, so it gets repetitive very quickly. However, the solution is to listen to my own music while playing the game.
I agree with a lot of the reviews I read about Odyssey, that it's an RPG following in the steps of Witcher 3 because it has good story, characters and complex missions that flesh out the world and lore.
My major gameplay complaint about Odyssey is that I can't figure out when we can or cannot crouch, or perhaps my character is in fact crouching, but I can't tell from the animation. Sneaking up to an enemy, I press crouch, but I'm only leaning a bit forward. But other times, the animation clearly shows a crouch position.
The other issue is dealing with what appears to be infinite amount of bounty hunters - there's a red meter showing how many are after you, up to 5. Your red meter increases when you steal or kill humans except for bandits. The problem is after killing 1 bounty hunter, another resurrects. Further, anytime you kill a mercenary that also increases your red meter further, and you're soon up to 2, of which these 2 also resurrect infinitely, rapidly going to 5 as you're committing murder.
The first time I was clearing out a camp, it was easy to get rid of the 1 bounty hunter, but as described above, due to the red meter mechanics, it quickly went to 5.
Fighting 5 mercenaries at the same time, including all the soldiers, was ridiculous. I think a better mechanic would be once you eliminate the 1 bounty hunter, he or she should not be replaced.
Since I wasn't very good at stealth killing enemies (this prevents the red meter from increasing), my strategy in clearing out soldier camps are the following. First, I would see what the objectives are in clearing the soldier camp. These objectives tend to be looting treasure chest(s), burning war supplies, and taking out the captain(s).
I trap the brazier alarm to prevent more enemies from arriving. Next, I run around the camp looting the treasure, burning the war supplies, which lead to all soldiers being aggro'd. I quickly got good at running away from them, stealing and looting along the way.
Finally, I run away from the camp, push the button for night-time, then target and kill only the captains, avoiding killing the other soldiers to prevent the red meter from increasing.
In terms of technical issues, the game crashed twice, and sometimes the screen freezes. However, that has significantly improved with the recent patch, so only a couple of times did the screen freeze, but at least the game resumes. The good news is that I've never lost progress since the game auto-saves.
The other major issue is the long loading screens (not as notoriously long as Bloodborne's pre-patch), so hopefully they'll patch that out.
I'm only mid-way through the game and already played 100 hours, but there's so many activities that I haven't even completed. It's definitely the type of game that has re-playability, as I'm definitely going to do NG+, getting all my abilities maxed out and of course getting all trophies and achievements.
In conclusion, for me, Odyssey does everything right such as character and world-building, a good story with interesting main and side quests with colorful NPCs, great combat mechanics (a lot of open-world games seem to struggle with combat), graphics, varied types of quests that include exploration and investigation, and most of all, it's fun. Indeed, I would say I love Odyssey as much as I do Monster Hunter: World.
For those reasons above, I consider Odyssey a masterpiece - it made me fall in love with gaming again.
Have you played Odyssey, and if so what are your thoughts?
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