Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (PS4)
From 431 to 404 BC, two powerhouses of ancient Greece were locked in a conflict known as the Peloponnesian War. The cities of Athens and Sparta called on their allies as the two jostled for land in a bid to be the superior empire with the face of the country and the face of Greek warfare changed drastically by this historic conflict. This important moment in the history of one of the most powerful regions of the ancient world serves as the place and time that Assassin’s Creed Odyssey takes place in, but the Assassin’s Creed series does not just use such a setting as a backdrop for its historical fiction. For its adventure into the past, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey brings ancient Greece to life in jaw-dropping detail.
In this open world action-adventure game, you’ll be able to travel across a significant amount of Ancient Greece. While the islands and coastal cities of Greece were naturally condensed to be more navigable than they would be in reality, the scope of this setting still comes across. You are given a horse early to make land travel easier, the horse thankfully easy to call in most safe locations and even able to follow roads on its own to make traversing such long stretches of land more manageable, and when you get a boat of your own, you’re able to head out on the high seas to travel to the many islands that exist in the Aegean Sea. The Greek world really comes to life thanks to the absurd level of detail put into locations, the highlight definitely being visiting Athens while it was still in its prime. To see the marble statues back when they were painted, to find the Parthenon still in one piece, and to travel through so many districts and historic locations in a city that feels packed with so many different walks of life is almost intoxicating for someone with any interest in history. In fact, the game’s Discovery Mode completely dispenses with the combat mechanics for people specifically interested in that so they can drink in the detailed recreations of history in a virtual world.
Athens isn’t the only impressive location although its certainly the one of greatest renown. Sparta, of course, is present in its full glory, and the game even knows where most people will have learned of the ancient Greek city. The game’s protagonist is not only a Spartan but a descendant of King Leonidas who fought with the 300 Spartans, the game even executing its tutorial by way of that famous fight and allowing you to later add a Spartan Kick to your abilities so you can push enemies off cliffs and down pits in style. The game’s story will take you to compete in the Olympics yourself, you can find yourself in Thebes or the island of Lesbos, and rather than simply cutting all of its locations from the same cloth, you can expect a surprisingly wide variety in realistic location variety. In fact, even beating all three prongs of this game’s long story will still leave ground potentially uncovered. You’ll still find ruins, military forts, vineyards, temples to the gods, caves, small farming towns, and bustling ports all along the way with various little tasks or quests to complete in the area, so without a doubt the biggest appeal of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will be the game world and monumental amount of effort put into realizing such a setting.
Playing as a mercenary whose personal journey intersects repeatedly with the Peloponnesian War, your first major choice in the game is whether you wish to play through the adventure as Kassandra or Alexios. Kassandra seems to be the better pick, the designers not only originally intending her to be the only playable character but her vocal performance and animation helps to lend a lot of character and wit to the mercenary girl. Alexios isn’t poorly acted by any means, his performance just seems to be far more typical of a heroic male lead while also having moments where he can show off his emotional range and charming humor. Regardless of which mercenary you pick, the adventure will mostly be the same with the other character acting as your sibling. The game actually begins with your family broken apart by the religious superstitions of the Spartans leading to you and your sibling being cast from a cliff, with religion actually holding major sway over the minds of many people in this representation of Ancient Greece. Having grown into a mercenary on an isolated island though, your choice of protagonist soon stumbles into a line of work that begins to reignite the severed connections of your family, and soon you’re traveling across the Greek world to try and see what can be salvaged of a family that has become embroiled in war, conspiracy, and an underground organization known as the Cult of Kosmos.
While most of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is remarkably realistic, the “Assassin’s Creed” part of the name does mean it ties into some science fiction and mystical elements ever so slightly. Rather than simply playing as Kassandra or Alexios, you’re also a woman in the modern day using a machine that lets her experience her genetic memories of these Grecian mercenaries. The Cult of Kosmos is part of an ancient order of people who pull the strings behind major world events and have access to supernatural artifacts, but while you will brush up against these breaks from reality at a few key points in the main quest, the genetic memory storyline is actually not that present. To put it into perspective, I would not be surprised if most discussion of the game completely ignored that element since it crops up so rarely and its devoted ending is the most underwhelming. It does dive the deepest into the myths and legends of the ancient world and most of its content is actually saved until you’ve had plenty of time to complete the main story of the broken Spartan family. Taking down the Cult of Kosmos in its entirety is actually the third pillar of the plot and the one that stands beside the main story better, especially since the cult so often has a hand in meddling in your affairs and you can easily break off from the main story for a bit when you’ve found a clue that a member is operating in the area.
Not only is the level of historical detail in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey impressive, but the facial animation does a lot to sell the personalities of the speakers. Admittedly the overall animation can fail a cutscene, pretty much any character who falls over or dies turns into a limp ragdoll the moment life leaves their body, but its pretty easy to grow attached to the supporting cast thanks to them being fully voiced, acted well, and realized excellent in the game’s graphical engine. However, since this game spans such a huge swathe of the Greek world, it’s actually surprising to see which characters weave in and out of the plot. Markos and Phoibe are introduced early on as the people your character befriended after being separated from their family, but Markos is only really relevant as long as the island you start on is despite being such a formative person in your life. Barnabas at least sticks around and guides many of the side quests, the jolly and adventurous old ship captain repeatedly adding an optimistic air to any event he’s tied to.
As you travel about Greece, you’ll soon find your renown as a mercenary growing to the point that major figures in the war want you on their side, and your growing fame means you make some allies of major historical importance. Sokrates actually becomes a fairly close companion, his famous method of teaching through questions allowing him to guide some interesting side quests with ethical dilemmas and his attempts to bridge the knowledge gap between him and the protagonist make for a fun relationship where neither ever feels like they’re resisting the other’s approach to life. You’ll find yourself helping the famous physician Hippokrates, traveling with the historian Herodotos, and meeting meaningful names of the Greek theater like Sophokles and Thespis. Almost all of them are depicted in a fairly grounded manner, free to make jokes and have flaws despite their elevated importance in history, and it can actually be surprising to learn someone is a historical figure after they’ve been so expertly woven into the narrative as a character important to this particular story. Perhaps the best instance of this is Alkibiades, a name with less fame who is introduced as a licentious and jovial partygoer and whose sidequests seem to offer up plenty of more instances for him to engage in ribald puns… only for the player to soon realize that this Greek statesman is actually surprisingly cunning and is cleverly able to disguise his machinations behind such bawdy behavior. He is still actually rather raunchy underneath that though and the game gets a good amount of humor out of that aspect, and while most of the romances in this game are rather shallow flings, at least with Alkibiades the flings feel like they fit right into the complex relationship you have with him as his go-fer. Many moments in the story like who you can cultivate a relationship with or interact with are also up to your choice, and while the ending of the family story is always somewhat quick to wrap up, different choices along it can determine how it turns out and even which characters survive to its conclusion.
The gameplay side of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is thankfully quite enjoyable as well and benefits from its Assassin’s Creed ancestry by having so many polished systems in play. Your mercenary is able to hold their own in a fight with a wide variety of weapons, each type handling differently and having different perks. Staves and spears have long range and quick strikes, but an ax or mace can hit much harder despite requiring longer swings. Daggers can be swung around incredibly quickly while a sword sits as a good middle ground for power and speed. Your bow allows for sniping a foe from afar, and in general you can always sneak up on an enemy and take them out quietly provided they’re not too tough. The playable mercenary is also fairly nimble and athletic, most surfaces scalable that allows for unique entry options into many buildings as well as escaping foes by hopping across city rooftops or finding high up hiding places. Many enemy encampments can be scouted first by your mercenary’s eagle Ikaros, the bird able to mark items and enemies so you can view their locations even when you’re on the other sides of walls. Stealth can do a lot to make battles easier, but you are still meant to be able to hold your own in a battle, the game even featuring moments where you can participate in a big battle fighting either for Sparta or Athens as they jostle for control of a region.
Setting your preferred weapons isn’t the only influence over your fighting effectiveness either, as you can level and up and unlock new skills to use once you’ve built up some energy through combat. You can unlock abilities such as the option to briefly set a weapon aflame, stun foes around you with a flash, or fire multiple arrows from your bow at once. Couple this with a fighting system where dodge rolls and deflections will let you slow down time briefly or breakthrough enemy guards respectively and the combat system can actually be fairly deep. However, the game ensures that it can continue to grow more difficult. For example, early on you can easily knock foes off cliffs for easy kills to potentially overcome a difference in strength, but soon they become resistant to such trickery. What’s more, if you begin to earn the ire of enemy armies or mess with civilians, you can find a bounty on your head and mercenaries will join in battles with their own unique tricks and approaches. Poisoned weapons, firebombs, trained animals, and other tactics are much harder to deal with on top of whatever soldiers the bounty hunters have come to assist, so even deep into the adventure there are still combat challenges to find where you need to carefully watch your health and dodge frequently to come out on top.
Ship combat, on the other hand, is a little plain. You mostly move around and fire arrows or throw javelins when your sailors are ready, and the variety in your naval foes isn’t quite as interesting. You can board ships at least but only after you’ve worn them down, but the game at least sticks mostly to adventuring around land where fighting and stealth are more fun to engage with. Once you get Overpower moves you also have another layer of combat where you can build up to flashy and powerful moves to speed things up near the end of the game, and another element exists to help players who might be feeling fatigued as this adventure starts nearing 40 hours of playtime. The player is free to pick between either Exploration or Guided modes and swap between them at any time, the player either using details from conversations to find their objectives in Exploration or being able to mostly rely on map markers and a compass near the top of the screen to guide them to their goals for Guided. With alternating between them so pain free, it means you can start sweeping up smaller quests or overcome a particularly well hidden one if it frustrates you, but Exploration does a great job of guiding you around and the game does still mark other important areas to navigate by like the fast travel points you’ll want to activate by scaling large structures or forts you can take down for good loot and experience points.
Experiences points and equipment are part of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s role-playing game elements, and while most of what I’ve said so far has been fairly complimentary, the RPG mechanics aren’t the best fit for this adventure. As you complete quests and fight enemies you’ll accrue experience points so you can level up, and if leveling up just provided the extra abilities or allowed to you to use the better armor and weapons you’ve found along your adventure, there wouldn’t be a problem. However, despite taking place in an open world where you are free to head where you like once you have the means to travel, some areas have foes of a set level, meaning that exploring the world map will be restricted in a few ways even though these islands and regions aren’t harboring anything that’s really different in skill level than what you’ve faced already. Instead, the enemies are just higher level and thus too strong to kill. It can be a shame to find a new region and be locked out by the level, but this pretty much exists only as a limiter as everything else in the game world seems to level up with you so that going to an earlier area is never easier. The growing with you idea wouldn’t be bad if not for the lock-outs, but again, if the level barriers were to keep you away from late game areas like the ones tying to the mystical elements hidden around the world, that might be okay. However, at a few points in the main adventure, you will suddenly find the next part of the story is a quest with a much higher level than what you’re at even if you’ve been stopping to do interesting side quests.
This is likely Ubisoft’s attempt to get you to buy your way past these level gates, but the good news is that despite these sometimes arresting the momentum of the story as you need to go level up, the game has some side quests that are enjoyable to engage with. The game pointing you away from the main plot for a bit means you aren’t as likely to miss these as you are required to explore for some extra experience points, but there were probably cleaner ways to push you towards these enjoyable diversions like having them weave into the story in some way. The fight for freedom in the Silver Islands features two fleshed out characters in rebellion leaders Kyra and Thaletas whose story you can easily get invested in and both can serve as romantic partners, an encounter with a woman named Roxana can lead to you entering a huge battle royale with a variety of foes you need to take down, and you can even encounter characters with minor ties to the main plot like meeting the oracle who demanded for you and your sibling to be tossed from the mountain as a child.
There are definitely a fair share of generic and unexciting side quests, most of these being the kind that appear on the city message board since these are generated to be simplistic and mostly there if you can’t find anything else or need the quick money or experience boost. The game also has a secondary money system called Orichalcum that can only be accrued through such busywork quests as killing a certain amount of a certain enemy type, but Orichalcum purchases are mostly for flashy bonus items rather than anything necessary to success. It is easy enough to get around the most tedious or slow parts of the game’s design, but having the story hit the brakes for a bit to send you wandering off on your own could have definitely be handled better so that it wouldn’t arrest the momentum of such an excellent title.
THE VERDICT: The amazing recreation of Ancient Greece alone is enough to make adventuring through Assassin’s Creed Odyssey a blast, the world not only reproducing historic locations with loving detail but adding so much texture and variety to the world on top of it. The action gameplay takes on many forms as you have plenty of choice with what skills, weapons, and approaches would best suit the current type of battle. The world is packed with many side quests and opportunities to experience its vivid details, sharp action, and memorable characters, but the RPG system placed over top of everything only brings it down. Locking you out of interesting areas, breaking some fights away from tests of skill, and arresting plot progression all emerge from the level gating that arises along the course of your journey, but it’s definitely not enough to destroy the exciting odyssey you’ll be going on through such a wonderfully realized gaming environment.
And so, I give Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for PlayStation 4…
A GREAT rating. There is so much to do in this lovingly rendered point in history, and it appeals to the player in so many different ways. A history nut can marvel at the Peloponnesian War given life in a world they can walk through, players looking for exciting combat will find plenty of systems at play to keep the action involved, the world is chock full of side quests and small activities to participate in on the way to the important story beats, and it can actually turn a historical figure into the kind of likeable character you would normally find in a fully fictional narrative. Some story elements definitely feel a little weak, but things like the genetic memory angle are wisely crammed aside so the game can mostly focus on its adventure in Ancient Greece. The thing that really holds this game back from getting top marks though is that niggling reminder that you’re playing an RPG. Gaining new abilities is a good implementation of such mechanics at least and the equipment can be tolerated even though swapping out so much of it repeatedly isn’t really something you look forward to unless you found something really special. It’s the way the game locks off not only its open environments but its plot until you’ve wandered off to level up a bit that weighs things down. You can be in the middle of an interesting narrative when the game suddenly hikes up the power level of the next part of the unfinished story thread, and fighting above your level is locked out once foes become wise to tactics that can overcome the power gap like kicking them off cliffs. Thankfully it’s not such a consistent problem that it ruins the adventure, and the fact it forces you off the main story path can actually lead to you finding some of its best content in the form of memorable side quests like the Silver Islands and Alkibiades’s ribald errands, it just seems like a better means of encouraging such exploration of optional content could have been found than slowing down your progress arbitrarily.
The fact the game offers real world purchases to up your experience points as well just serves a reminder that, for all its graphical artistry and excellence in realizing the past, Ubisoft couldn’t resist some of its old ways. Underfed ideas like the ship combat are also sort of part of the Assassin’s Creed series keeping around any system that achieved some success, but that also means that this game has so much to build on that it can become such a well realized experience. You are living the life of an exceptional Greek mercenary whose life takes them on horseback across the country, traveling by ship between islands, slaying cult members from the shadows, and tearing down fortresses and armies as you play both sides of a war. Your trip back to this point in history will certainly bring plenty of memorable moments to make up for those unfortunate pace breakers where you’re sent off to build up your strength, so while I unfortunately can’t give it top marks for such a design decision, there’s still so much worth seeing and doing in this historical odyssey that pushing through those weaker parts is definitely worth the effort.