This is the right time to praise the effort that has gone into creating 3 different realms for each episode of the Fate of Atlantis. The cynics among us will argue that was the least they could do after making you retread the same regions of Greece you'd already seen for the entirety of the Legacy of the First Blade. The effort here is still admirable though, and Atlantis is probably my favourite of the 3 realms within this story.
There isn't much else different of note in terms of gameplay features though. Atlantis is framed as a hub for harbouring Isu knowledge, and you'll need to fill the knowledge bar in order to access certain areas of the map. This is split into 3 levels and follows the exact same concept as Tartaros Veils in Episode 2, which would only grant you access to certain areas once you'd obtained a full armour set. Discovering Isu caches, Keeper Insights and finding Codices are all methods to fill the knowledge bar through it's 3 full levels. It's new, but not really new.
Everything else is the same. Quest structure, abilities and a new batch of characters asking for the same old things. It's hardly reasonable to expect much drastic change this deep in, is it? And with the amount of post-game content Assassin's Creed Odyssey has introduced us to, there's only so many times you can repeat yourself. Reference the opening line of this post for a clinical summary.
This final pack of episodic DLC adds 5 trophies, with yet another emphasis on questline progression.
The hidden trophy in this set is awarded at the conclusion of the final part of the story, which contains 9 main quests. Some of the other trophies intertwine as you progress towards the end goal of beating this plotline once and for all.
Completely filling the Isu knowledge sequence is one of these trophies and you won't be able to reach certain missions until you've earned this trophy, as some quests only become available to start once you've maxed out the knowledge bar. These particular quests are accounted for in the 9 mentioned above, which effectively makes this progression-based too.
Collecting all Keeper's Insights, of which there are 3, will also award another trophy. These generate Isu knowledge, so directly link into progression for the above trophy too, so it makes sense to link them all together to improve trophy acquisition efficiency.
The other trophies are awarded for simple side activities, including forging 3 Legendary weapons, which just requires you to collect Adamant from chests in secured areas. The weapons look cool, but mean absolutely nothing at this stage of the game. My character has felt way too powerful for so long, new weaponry/armour is just something nice to look at by this point.
The last trophy is awarded for Killing 10 Isu Soldiers with the Blessing of Kronos enhancement - Another ability you just need to apply an ability point to in order to unlock it's final form, and kill 10 enemies whilst it's active.
Whilst none of these DLC packs for The Fate of Atlantis are truly difficult, this particular episode did feel like the easiest run of trophies out of all of them. A straight-forward questline, with trophies which complimented this through side activities, combined with low-bar requirements. No addition of those grindy Cultist/Mercenary branches that have existed in other forms of DLC to artificially lengthen the content on offer.
My final cumulative time on my save file sits at 145 hours and 22 minutes, meaning this package added another 7 hours onto the total - About the same length as Episode 2. It's a big level of time commitment for a game that never strayed too far from it's principle formula, and it has been a bit of a slog at times. This is what Assassin's Creed has become though with it's new direction of being a more akin to an RPG-style driven series, and the future holds more of where that came from.
No comments:
Post a Comment