Various Thoughts

Oxenefordscire ended up more like the beginning of the midgame rather than the midpoint of the game itself.

While exploration and combat never changes from that point, the main questlines take a hard turn into railroad central. Early main quests are good at giving you the illusion of choice; later ones not so much. This works on a thematic level (the whole unchangeable fate/destiny thing) but it’s not a lot of fun to experience. Oh, I guess there was one change in the exploration aspects: You’ll want to clear all 10 Anomalies before completing the Norway quest that sends you to the far northeastern point of the map.

Ultimately ended up at 142 hours with 94% completion, all areas cleared, and 65 Mastery points. I never did find any Black Bears or Wolf Fangs for the hunter requests though (or small Sturgeons and big Redfish for the fishing requests), and had to look up the location where to use those various Mysterious Tablets (the area is instantly recognizable, but also easily overlooked since there’s no treasure chests there).

One final thing:

If you’re experiencing random freezes, try installing the “Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019” C++ update. The x64 one fixed the issue for me.

With roughly 50% of England cleared (Oxenefordscire, Lunden, and everything lower level), 7 zealots killed, 11 Order members killed, all non-feast buildings constructed, silver equipment, and 205 skill points this seems a decent enough place to mark as the midpoint of the game.

With ~55 hours invested so far it’s quite large, larger than it seems because there’s also an Asgard ‘dream world’ map (cleared that too) along with apparently a Vinland area (haven’t gone there yet). What’s really remarkable about this is that each area so far has felt pretty distinct in both the landscape and questing departments, all of which was enjoyable until the bizarre Odyssey-like change in the Eivor/Sigurd dynamic that occurs in Oxenefordscire.

Combat-wise I’ve been using heavy dual-wielding. Started with a greatsword & dagger combo, switched to a spear & dagger combo, and then finally settled on a greatsword & spear combo (using the Dual Swap skill depending on whether it’s a boss fight or not). It’s extremely effective for plowing through enemies I can’t assassinate/headshot ahead of time (I do however still miss the 3-enemy chain assassination ability quite a bit).

There’s no shortage of skill points (and you can respec whenever you want) so there’s not really any need for skill breakdowns, though Brush with Death and Advanced Assassination are godly, Explosive Corpse and Battlefield Bolt are garbage, Counter Roll is kind of sketchy since you need to dodge into attacks for it to work, and Auto-Loot is just plain nice to have. Abilities are a bit trickier. I’ve been rolling with Valkyrie Dive (great quick stun), Rage of Helheim (you have to hold the button to connect), and Throwing Axe Fury (crowd control). Bow abilities I’ve mostly been ignoring apart from Powder Trap (to blast through weak walls).

As far as settlement buildings go, some are certainly more useful than others. The Blacksmith (equipment upgrades), Hidden Ones Bureau (quests, targets, rewards), Hunters’ Hut (quests, rewards), Seer’s Hut (quests), Museum (quest, rewards), and Fishing Hut (rewards, at least one Mystery event requires the fishing line) are probably the most important. The Barracks (cosmetics), Tattoo Shop (cosmetics), Shipyard (cosmetics), Stable (cosmetics, don’t have to travel for horse training), and Trading Post (don’t have to travel to other cities to shop) meanwhile are all nice to have. The feast-buffing ones are obviously situational (although the Bakery has a couple quests), and the Cartographer is completely useless if you happen to be the exploring type.

At some point you’ll also get an Opal Shop for free. This serves as a method to buy Cash Shop items with in-game currency rather than actual money. On the positive side of things this currency is renewable through simple daily quests… on the negative, these quests award 5 opals a piece and you only get two a day (a new piece of equipment costs ~130 opals). So while you ~can~ technically get these pseudo-DLC items for free it’s not exactly something worth obsessing over (and besides, there’s plenty of equipment/customizables already in the game).

All in all a very impressive showing so far even with the recent main plot hiccups. The only other thing I can really complain about is the inability to assassinate zealots the same way you could assassinate mercenaries in Odyssey. Oh, and I guess it’s also a bit annoying that the most efficient path forward is to complete the main questline in each area before exploring; it reduces backtracking and some items don’t appear until a quest triggers them (if you see a chest marker on your map that doesn’t have a related item for instance, chances are it’ll appear later during a quest).

The follow-up to Odyssey, Valhalla trades ancient Greece for medieval Europe (specifically Norway and the Viking invasion of England).

The exploration aspects remain pretty much identical, though points of interest have been streamlined/condensed for a far less cluttered experience and it doesn’t appear to be possible to highlight enemies while in Bird View any longer (I suspect the ranged ability which automatically highlights enemies replaced it). You also now have to manually click on a chest marker if you want it shown on your compass rather than that happening automatically.

Combat on the other hand is a bit different, with boss fights now being geared toward counters/parries and slower deliberate fighting instead of hectic hack & slashing (random trash mobs can still be attack-spammed into oblivion though). A particularly interesting choice is the implementation of a stamina system which drains when you dodge/block, use a power attack, or miss with an attack, but refills when you connect with normal attacks or just move around normally. This encourages a more engaged, hybrid playstyle and avoids the trap Elex fell into.

The biggest change though is the equipment system: It’s been drastically simplified so that there’s only one or two varieties of a particular weapon or armor piece. Rather than continually finding new randomized variations with slightly better stats, you instead directly upgrade whichever particular weapon/armor type you want to use. I’m not sure how I feel about that just yet considering my fondness for collecting things, but it does make sense from a gameplay perspective and makes finding a new weapon something of a special event.

All-in-all, at this point with Rygjafylke cleared (make sure to periodically check your map at its most zoomed-in setting to catch any resource chests; they show up as faint gold specks), I’m pretty well satisfied with this incremental upgrade so far. We’ll see how things progress when the assassination ability is finally unlocked and the action shifts to England.