Assassin's Creed: Odyssey

The next game in the neverending run of Assassin’s Creed games is Odyssey. In terms of my progress, I am only missing the one game in the series for the complete set and that’s Assassin’s Creed Chronicles India which I will get to one day and hopefully soon.

I kind of broke from my pattern of clearing up some of the older games to play this one as I was really keen to get into it. However, I quickly found out that it’s not a game you can just pick up and play as I soon found myself 5 hours in and feeling like I hadn’t gone anywhere.

AC: Odyssey follows the story of Alexios… or Kassandra as you go on a journey of revenge to destroy the Cult of Kosmos, a group of people who I can only imagine are the ancient Greece version of the Templars. Along the way, you can help loads of people and make a name for yourself as the Eagle Bearer. There are dialogue decisions for the first time in Assassin’s Creed history so you can play any way you want. You can even decide to be straight, gay or somewhere in between.

In terms of gameplay, there is another massive open world map to explore and this is where a lot of play time will be spent. It took me ages just to fully explore the starting island, then you hit the open sea to get a real feel for how big the map is. Thankfully the ship travel is relatively quick but there is still a lot of ground to cover. The most frustrating thing about this is the bizarre positioning of some of the fast travel points. In some of the larger locations, they are few and far between, but then on some islands that are tiny, there are four of five within a stone’s throw of each other.

In terms of combat, I found that it suffered the same issues as Origins in that it is possible, and satisfying, to get through a location without being seen and killing everyone, but there is always that one guard that sees you and if he does, all of his mates come to cut you down. I could imagine this becoming very frustrating having to either be killed or run away to come back once they had seen you but playing on easy, it’s possible to leave a pile of corpses and just carry on in most scenarios.

When going from place to place and potentially needing to get around in a hurry, I was often faced with the same thing preventing me from doing so. The environment. For the most part, it’s very polished but for some reason, Alexios has no issues scaling a bronze statue with no discernible handholds, but gets stopped in his tracks by small mounds of earth. Seriously, some of the bits that aren’t climbable are just laughable. Also, I played the game for over 120 hours but still couldn’t find a way to make my horse go faster than a trot when within 100 metres of semi-built up areas. If he did, I reckon my play time would be closer to 80 hours.

Achievements – 1,850 Points - 93 Achievements

The main game offers up a normal 50 achievements but the expansive DLC ups it to 93. I think it’s done now though which is odd as it would have made sense to take the score up to 2,000.

Out of the main 50, there is just the one missable achievement but it’s only missable if you play like an amoeba as it’s for spending the night with another character. Loosely translated – get laid. When I say this is missable, it’s really difficult to play this way as from chapter 5 onwards, pretty much every sub-quest dialogue will give you a romance option. Some of them are just funny too. The first one I had was Odessa (potentially the first romance available in the game) and you literally just throw lines at her until she cracks and takes you to bed. She doesn’t take much cracking either and neither does anyone else for that matter.

Concerning the rest of the list, there’s no great shakes. Following the main story and eliminating all targets will most likely leave you with very little left to do. Don’t take this as it’s a quick game though, because doing all of this, and the character specific side quest achievements (which are all secret) will take a while simply because of the size of the map.

Some of the more notable achievements are for getting your ship up to legendary status, which involves grinding for materials to upgrade it, defogging the entire map (there are some areas you don’t need to go to during the main game) and everyone’s personal favourite, clearing all underwater locations.

This last one has had some issues with locations not completing and the achievement not unlocking but I was fortunate enough to be playing after this was patched. There are only 42 underwater locations, each of which are a pain in the ass because nothing underwater in games is good.

Some of the other achievements involve having to recruit legendary lieutenants to the ship and using overpower attacks with each weapon. Another two I had to go out of my way to get was for getting a maximum bounty, which just involved slaughtering all civilians and the reloading the game when done, and for killing a leader while an area has low resources but again, this was easy once you know it’s a thing.

Downloadable Content

The DLC can be broken down into three sections:

The Lost Tales of Greece and Mythical Creatures

These are nice little missions that have been periodically add to the game. They each carry one achievement for completing the quest or killing the monster. It’s a shame that there aren’t more monster quests as these are the most fun.

The most recent Lost Tales of Greece expansion didn’t carry an achievement which has led the community to believe that there won’t be any more added to the game.

The Legacy of the First Blade

This is a 3-part DLC containing 15 achievements in total. These are a continuation from the main story and adds more to the legacy of Alexios/Kassandra. There are 3 achievements for completing each part’s missions and on top of this, you need to kill another set of dudes who want to kill you and learn new abilities and use them. On top of this, each part contains a miscellaneous thing to do just to mix it up.

The Fate of Atlantis

Again, it’s another 3-part expansion but this one focusses more on the outside universe of Assassin’s Creed and is more attuned to the craziness from the Tyranny of King Washington in Assassin’s Creed III.

Fate of Atlantis sees Alexios travel to Elysium, the Underworld and eventually Atlantis to free some people from oppression and find some answers with regard to his wider role in the franchise. Of the achievements here, there is more killing and exploring to do, as well as completing the questlines.

Overall, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is an excellent game. The characters are relatable and well developed, the game world is stunning and despite some of the travel issues, it’s very well balanced. On top of that, the season pass keeps on giving and no one is really sure when the DLC train will end. In this regard, it’s also certainly value for money and also includes remastered versions of Assassin’s Creed III and Liberation. If you are a fan of the franchise, you can’t go wrong.