Assassin's Creed Origins did something drastic and completely changed the formula for Assassin's Creed games.
I came out the other side of that experience with the belief that the shift into a larger open-world focused, RPG-driven offering was a step in the right direction for the series.
That sort of stuff is easy to say when something feels newly refreshed, and the real acid test is how well the formula stands the test of time. So the big question is, does Assassin's Creed Odyssey - which looks to build upon the newly introduced formula - capitalise on the change of direction?
This franchise has shifted so hard, I don't actually feel like I'm playing an Assassin's Creed game any more. The vast dialogue options, the expansive RPG elements, the absolute bucket-load of side content/questing. If you gave me this game out the box and didn't label it, and you wanted me to guess what I was playing, it would feel a lot closer to the Witcher than it does Assassin's Creed. Your character doesn't even carry around a hidden sleeve blade anymore. That's a subtle but significant difference.
The hidden blade is a hallmark for Assassin's Creed and it just feels like such notable omissions are the games away of sheading it's roots to settle into this new direction it's taken. It's not a bad thing. I said in my Origins review that it's a series that needed something a little different after all these years, and it's taken that to the very opposite end of the spectrum.
The time period on this occasion is Ancient Greece, and you'll have the option to either play as Alexios or Kassandra, depending on whether you want a male or female protagonist. They're siblings to each other, and there are no drastic changes to the plot depending on who you pick, so it's mainly down to personal preference.
The story is set during the Peloponnesian War and you're a mercenary who fights for both sides of the war between Sparta and Athens. This is heavily overlayed by a personal plotline - To transverse all corners of Ancient Greek land to reunite your broken family and eliminate a secret organisation controlling the war called the Cult of Kosmos.
Ancient Greece is one of my favourite time eras, and the shift in direction for the series does great justice to such a vast world filled with Ancient Greek references. The era is captured perfectly in it's scale and vastness. The multitude of Greek islands, the mythological beasts and creatures, the historical characters. Assassin's Creed games have always nailed historical accuracy - but seeing it on such a grand scale is the strongest suit of the game.
The all-action combat returns, heavily interwoven into the RPG elements once again. Levelling your character will allow you to use ability points on a skill tree to develop your range of attacks and equip better weaponry you'll either find out in the wild or receive as rewards for beating quests. The quest design leans way more into the action elements than it does the stealth-based gameplay the series grew up on - Possibly deliberately in another nod to truly shedding it's roots, but it works well and lends to some solid combat mechanics.
The combat also extends to the sea. The naval-based combat has featured in previous Assassin's Creed titles, but it takes on a huge role in the open world here. This wasn't the case in Origins, and there is a big emphasis on naval combat in the questing for Odyssey. I'm not as big on this side of the combat compared to that of land, but it does a good job of adding to the scale of the game and some of the graphical scenery whilst out of sea is excellent.
It builds well on Origins, and purely for the time era being one of my personal favourites, it's an overall positive step in the development on this new trajectory the series is on. It does have it's flaws. It ends up being way too repetitive and grindy on much of it's content, and that ties deeply into the trophy list, but it's a good installment to the series and still kept me engaged to the very end. Admittedly though, it did start to wear thin eventually, and my engagement threshold was being pushed to it's highest limits.
Speaking of which, the game has 51 trophies in total, including the Platinum trophy, and strap in, because this is a long old haul to the finish line.
The "Odyssey's End" trophy, awarded for Completing Episode 9 + Epilogue, signifies the end of the main story arc, and Odyssey continues along the same structure Origins followed in terms of how the story is presented. Sequences with sub-objectives to achieve full synchronisation were dropped for Origins in favour of a running questline through a series of episodes, and that's bought back again here, meaning we've probably seen the last of the sequence-based format that was so familiar to the game for such a long time.
You can unlock a total of 10 progression-based trophies on your way to the end of the main story arc, and whilst you will be asked to choose a difficulty level to play through the game, this does not have any material impact on the trophies. I chose to play on "Hard", which is the highest difficulty level, and this is only really noticeable at very specific points of the game. It's not necessarily as noticeable whilst playing through the main questline, but it is for elements of this trophy list which aren't necessarily notable if it wasn't for the nature of the task.
For example, there a handful of trophies awarded for defeating classic Ancient Greek mythical creatures, including the Cyclops, Minotaur and Medusa. These are big fights designed to test your combat abilities, and on the hardest difficulty, these become rough. Perfecting your dodge, timing and endurance to their heights. This also extends to other combat-centric elements of the list including a trophy awarded for beating a side questing arc that requires you to defeat 8 Legendary animals. Again, big fights which will battle-harden you on the toughest difficulty. These alone are worth a mark on the overall difficulty rating - Providing you do indeed choose to play on "Hard" difficulty.
It may also be important to note that enemies scale to your level too, so you always feel like you're fighting battles relative to your own levelling curve. It keeps the difficulty consistent, and fights do mostly feel like they're fair, especially when you finally equip that weapon or piece of armour you've been levelling towards.
Across the 10 episodes of the main story, there are 95 missions in total to beat. This is a testament to the scale of which Assassin's Creed games have grown. I did primarily focus on the story before consciously tackling the side activities, which will constantly have you bouncing around the different regions of Greece. This naturally leads to discovering new territories and things to do often, so it is very easy to get sidetracked, but I did remain committed to beating the story first and foremost, so when I say my save file read 60 hours by the time I'd achieved this trophy, I'd like to think that's a fairly accurate measure. It did feel as long as the time indicated.
So it is a lengthy offering, but the difficulty of selecting "Hard" doesn't actually become that prevalent throughout the story, as many of the quests are simple exercises designed to tie a plot together. The combat can still be challenging, but it never hit it's peak. That sort of challenge is reserved for the big boss fights outlined above. However, for a story arc, that's still a big time investment, but even at this sort of length, it still barely scratches the surface of what the remainder of the trophy list demands.
There are many miscellaneous trophies you'll unlock naturally by just progressing the main story. I'd unlocked 31 trophies by the time I'd finished the main portion of the game, and whilst a couple of these can be considered side activities that sit well away from the main quest, the vast majority of them are for very simple, naturally-achieved tasks.
However, despite this large accumulation, the post-story grind is big in it's own right, with a number of notable trophies that make up some significant additional hours on top of an already time-consuming main story.
The "Cult Unmasked" trophy, awarded for Defeating all the Cultists of Kosmos, was the first priority in terms of side content progression.
The Cultist tree lays out 43 assassination targets as people linked to the Cult of Kosmos, and unlocking the trophy will require all 43 of them to be killed. For the most part, they're not readily available to hunt down, and their identities will need to be revealed by unearthing clues about the Cultist and their exact whereabouts. To have to scour the landscape and reveal clues, as well as find and kill the Cultist, makes this a fairly time-consuming exercise, and a big chunk of the post-game clean up is dedicated to this trophy.
Some of the Cultists identities will also only be drawn out through some longer-winded prerequisites too. For example, one Cultist will only be revealed once you weaken a certain region, which requires a couple of hours of taking on mundane side quests to lower the regional influence down to the necessary point that triggers the naval battle you need to kill the Cultist at sea. Another Cultist is drawn out at the higher ranks of the Gladiatorial arena, and you'll have beat a bunch of random warriors in order to reach him. This game is very good at padding longevity through artificial means, and some of the steps required for this trophy are a good example of that.
This trophy also directly links to the "Legacy Restored" trophy, awarded for Upgrading your Spear to Tier 6. Spear upgrades are purchased with Cultist fragments, which are awarded per Cultist you kill. All 43 fragments are required to upgrade the Spear to Tier 6, making these trophies heavily linked.
The "Top of the Food Chain" trophy, awarded for Becoming the first Mercenary, is another key focus within the post-story grind, and this relates to another sub-quest similarly aligned to the Cultist tree. This trophy requires you to kill 38 Mercenaries across the land to climb the ladder from Tier 9, all the way up to Tier 1 and reach the number 1 spot.
Each tier contains 5 Mercenaries to defeat, except Tier 2, which includes just 3, and then Tier 1, which includes the sole number 1 Mercenary. A Mercenary will either come to hunt you when you have a bounty on your head, or you can pro-actively hunt them around the map. Either way, each time you defeat one, you'll gain a spot on the ladder.
On this logic, I believe I had to defeat 38 Mercenaries, though that is a non-committal figure. The Mercenary system is the most annoying mechanic in the game. Having a bounty on your head and being pursued by Mercenaries has a very limited novelty value, and whilst it can be a productive method towards attaining the trophy, it also meant I was having to kill more of them that what was necessary to. Alot of the Mercenaries that came after me were lower in the pecking order, and defeating these does not progress you up the ladder, so this only served as an inconvenience to progression. Pursuing this trophy was where I was starting to get a little bit fed up of how certain elements of the game had started to consume my experience with monotony and dullness.
Mercenaries aren't difficult to take down, but to go from Tier 9 and just jump around the map slaying them all one by one to reach Tier 1 is just another lengthy exercise in a game with trophies fully focused around these sort of tasks. After the Cultists tree, did we really need something else that is essentially just the same thing reskinned? The real grind of the list was beginning to test my patience by this point.
Finally, the "Lord of the Seas" trophy, awarded for Upgrading the Adrestia to Legendary Status, requires you to accumulate enough upgrades for your ship to achieve it's highest regard. There are 9 different parts of the ship to upgrade, and 7 levels are required per component to fully upgrade it. Again, this will take some time, but it's mainly down to the amount of resources you need to collect. Drachmae, Wood, Precious Stones, Ancient Tablets and Iron Ore are all necessary for these upgrades.
I found myself constantly out of wood, and the easiest way to acquire this is to purchase from a Blacksmith. This is an easy fix, but cuts into the Drachmae you need in tandem with the other materials to upgrade the ship. As a result, I began to run out of drachmae with a handful of upgrades remaining. I think I was also too liberal with my spending early on and underestimated the amount of money and resources this trophy would eventually require. It also didn't help that I wanted to purchase wood, iron ore and precious gems, rather than naturally farm them from the environment, but I was done with the grind by this point and really just couldn't be bothered. I did end up having to do some additional side content to earn enough money for all of the above though and this was seen as a necessary evil. I wasn't prepared to go around farming materials from the landscape.
This entire list is actually littered with grindy trophies, but the rest of these are much more passive in comparison. There is a trophy awarded for reaching level 50, which I did unlock deep into this journey, and I did actually end up achieving level 56 by the time I had concluded the entire list, which is probably another highlighter of how grindy this experience is - I overlevelled by 6 whole levels to get this Platinum finished. Every action you carry out seems to award experience points, so you'll comfortably reach this anyway. There is also a necessity to complete 20 different side quests and 20 message board quests, but again, these are much more passive as you'll need to find ways to earn Drachmae and resources for ship upgrades, and questing is the best way to accumulate this.
The trophy list ramps up the expectation of the players dedication to previously unseen levels for an Assassin's Creed title. My save file for Odyssey clocked in at 94 hours and 1 minute by the time I'd popped the Platinum - That's almost 25 additional hours in comparison to Origins at circa 70 hours of game time. It did start to weigh me down after jumping between one grindy exercise to the next and the repetitive nature of the game catches up with itself eventually - Particularly post-story. I dislike it when games I enjoy go to unnecessary lengths to extend their longevity, and this has to be taken into account for the difficulty rating. At this stage, we're still pretty early into the sandbox era of Assassin's Creed, but I hope future games move away from this.
The game is most fun when it challenges you with it's combat and the big boss fights but these are somewhat lost in a sea of grindy post-game and side content. The combination of both just about edges into the lower tier of a 7/10, but the majority of this marking is down to it's overall length and the monotony of how you have to reach the end of the game. It's just too much and I'm hoping it doesn't take the edge off the excitement I have for the DLC.
Notable Trophies -
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| Odyssey's End - Complete Episode 9 + Epilogue. The Cult Unmasked - Defeat all the Cultists of Kosmos. Top of the Food Chain - Become the First Mercenary. Lord of the Seas - Upgrade the Adrestia to Legendary Status. |
Hardest Trophy -
