Addictive combat
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has added vigour due to its new RPG elements, writes Aiman Maulana
THE Assassin’s Creed series has had players revisiting historical events and exploring the world as well as the narrative surrounding that particular timeline.
Many gamers are starting to get weary of the series due to its essentially rehashing the same formula over and over again.
Ubisoft aims to change this by giving the series a more refreshing taste with its latest entry, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
ASSASSIN’S CREED ODYSSEY
The bulk of the game takes place roughly 400 years before the events of the previous game, Assassin’s Creed Origins. It recounts the secret fictional history of the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece.
Players take on the role of either the male Alexios or the female Kassandra, a mercenary and a descendant of King Leonidas. The story will be the same regardless of which character is chosen.
The protagonist grew up in Sparta, trained as a warrior, and inherited the Spear of Leonidas at a young age. Due to an ominous prophecy by an oracle, the protagonist and their sibling were thrown off a cliff.
The protagonist miraculously survived the ordeal and was then taken under the wing of Markos of Kephalonia.
Years later, the protagonist sets out on a journey to restore their fractured family and uncover the dark secrets lurking in the shadows of Ancient Greece.
Just like previous entries in the series, this is all a simulation via the Animus system. In present time, researcher Layla Hassan recovers the Spear of Leonidas and must find the location of the Staff of Hermes.
To do so, she extracts DNA from the spear which leads her to re-living the lives of either protagonists in order to find out more about the Spear of Leonidas as well as where the Staff of Hermes is located.
PLENTY OF ADVENTURES
The core of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is open world action-adventure. Players will have a massive open world to explore with lots of quests to complete.
You can speed through the game by playing only the main quests or enjoy the numerous side quests which make up a huge portion of the game.
There are various side quests, and it’s optional so you can choose to skip it if you wish. These quests can range from hunting animals, taking down specific targets, fetch quests, and more.
Some of these quests will also provide additional stories that enrich the overall narrative. However, there will also be a number of repetitive quests given out by people with similar character models and voice lines, which can be a bit of a turn off after playing for hours.
Unlike most games, you can fail a quest and not have the chance to repeat it until you succeed.
When it comes to escort missions, there are times where it will be out of your control and the enemies end up subduing the person you’re escorting.
This will result in failure but the game will continue as if everything is normal.
Throughout the game, players will have to make certain choices which will shape the overall narrative of the story.
While there is ultimately no good or bad choice, it’s more of consequences based on players’ actions. For side quests, there’s nothing much to worry about but for the main quests, it can lead to one of nine different endings.
Players will also have the opportunity to influence either the Athenians’ or Spartans’ power over certain areas in the map. Anything from subduing their respective soldiers to taking or destroying the army’s inventory will weaken that area’s ruling power.
After a certain point, players will have the chance to enter into a skirmish, siding between the Athenians and the Spartans, with the winning side taking control of that area.
While some of this may seem repetitive after a while, it is still mostly worth doing. This is because all of these quests will yield players money, items, equipment, and experience points. With regards to the latter, this is the RPG element integrated into Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
FIGHT THE WAY YOU WANT
The combat system in Assassin’s Creed
Odyssey is surprisingly addictive. It essentially takes the simplicity of the earlier entries and adds a whole lot more depth to it. In fact, it feels like your usual western RPG with a mix of Assassin’s Creed DNA fused into it.
In combat, you can either dodge, do light attacks or heavy attacks. To aid or even prevent combat, there are three different styles with their own section in the skill tree that players can opt for — Hunter, Warrior and Assassin.
The Hunter style focuses on ranged combat, where you use a bow and arrow. This section of the skill tree will focus on adding ranged techniques or improving certain aspects in archery such as speed and strength.
The Warrior class is for direct combat with melee weapon. The skill tree for this focuses on melee techniques, primary weapon damage, and durability.
The Assassin tree is for those who prefer indirect combat and to subdue enemies as quickly as possible without getting noticed.
While this part of the skill tree has mostly nothing to do with direct combat, it does help you take down enemies discreetly and rather quickly. There is no best way of playing it, and this gives players the option of tailoring the character according to their own preference.
There is also naval warfare, where your ship will go into battle with other ships. This one is rather straightforward as you will need to attack either by bow and arrow, javelins or ram straight into the ship.
When an enemy ship’s health is depleted, you can choose to destroy it immediately by ramming into it, or boarding it. The latter option will result in regular combat.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has a good mix of depth and simplicity in its overall combat system that makes it easy for newcomers to enjoy, but not too easy that veterans of the genre would get bored. It’s also not overly fast-paced.
The only issue is that enemies tend to have the same pattern after a while, so combat becomes too easy in later parts of the game, even if they are levelled higher than your own character.
CONCLUSION
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a very fun game to play as the series moves out of its comfort zone and integrates new RPG elements that make this the best one in the series thus far.
It’s not perfect, as it does have its fair share of repetitions but the sheer amount of content you can enjoy will definitely have players hooked for a long time. With that in mind, I award Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with an 8 out of 10 rating.