Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is too long.
I started playing this game two years ago. I sank 65 hours into it and got something like 2/3rds into it. I might’ve gone further but I was tired of playing it. A patch introduced severe performance problems and I stopped. I had played enough Valhalla.
With recent talk of a new Assassin’s Creed, I decided to check back in with Valhalla. To no surprise, the performance problems were sorted out and the game ran great again. 30 hours later, I saw the ending, probably.
I say probably because the ending is so inconclusive that I can only assume from context clues that I’ve finished the game. I completed the main quest. I completed the major side quests. I fought a boss and watched some cutscenes. Credits never rolled and I definitely was not satisfied by how it ended, but I got as close as one can get without completing every single activity.
There are a lot of activities, which pad out an already lengthy game. Stuff to collect everywhere. Common people to aid everywhere. It’s not the icon-packed map of Unity, but it’s almost worse in that there is a ton to do, and lots of space between spots on the map to travel between them.
While I like the core gameplay of Valhalla, as I’ve liked Origins and Odyssey before it, this one went too far, ends too poorly, and suffers from the same problems as those two previous games. It’s fun and beautiful but it’s too much to a weak ending.