Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a massive, beautiful game that really rewards long play. After 168 hours and all achievements, you see its best parts, the stunning world of Ancient Greece, flexible combat and builds, and big story choices that make you feel in control.

But it does get repetitive, lots of similar camps, fetch quests, and level-gated grind slow the pacing. Still, the scale, atmosphere, and sense of adventure make it one of the strongest RPG-style Assassin’s Creed games.

If you're curious whether everything negative people say about the 'RPG' AC games is true, like I was, let me save you 80+ hours and confirm it's all true. For context, I never leave reviews. If you like a game, cool. Hate it? Cool. But I just do not understand how this game is sitting so highly rated.

I have never, NEVER, played a game so completely filled with and predicated on repetitive, mindless slop content. Every. Single. Quest is 'mistios, I've run out of toilet paper, please kill the bandits that took it' or, even worse, 'sprint around in a 100m radius circle to collect 5 leaves, I've been waiting weeks for a hero like you to come along and help'. Every quest objective is ever so slightly far away as well to feel like a complete chore to get there. This isn't just the case for the hundreds of side quests, but the main quest as well.

Speaking of the main quest, I'd heard positive things and sadly I think those people singing the game's praises were playing a different game. To be clear there are sections of the main story I enjoyed, sections with genuinely rewarding emotional payoffs, genuinely impressive motion capture helping sell tragedy in some moments, and some great voice acting by Kassandra's voice actor. However most of what you'll be doing feels ancillary, unimportant and a complete waste of time in a game already bloated with slop content. Worst of all, I'd heard the payoff was worth it but the story just sort of... ends? The modern day aspects are also by far the worst aspects, full of characters I had genuine disdain for and, again, zero payoff.

The gameplay itself, depite the 'RPG' mechanics, is a basic and brain-dead as it's ever been in this franchise. Parkour is the biggest culprit with near enough no depth and the abilities to completely negate fall damage 10 hours into the game, and completely scale 95% of surfaces without any thought as to your path from the opening minutes of the game. Combat is animation driven slop with an incredibly low skill-ceiling and a reliance on long 'super-power' abilities that I'd honestly um and ah over whether to use. On the one hand the fight (and my misery) might end sooner, but on the other the 15 second combat animation might mean I'd be better off button mashing. If you insist on playing this game I implore you, gear yourself towards a high crit chance and crit damage build that can one-shot enemies and turn the difficulty down to easy, you'll be done a good few hours sooner.

The game is also this awkward hodge-podge of all the worst ideas from other games. Did you love the inane map-marker driven nonsense in the witcher 3? Did you also feel that while the witcher 3 was a masterpiece in some regards, the combat was a weaker aspect of the package? Good news, we've got thousands of cut and paste map markers and the combat is worse than in the witcher. Did you like the nemesis system in the LOTR Shadow franchise? Then you'll love this completely gutted, characterless mercenary system blatant copy of it. It even takes genuinely good aspects of previous games in the franchise and makes them inexplicably worse. How is the naval combat in Black Flag SO much more enjoyable, versatile and well-executed than a game by the same developers, released 4 or 5 years after it?

My final vent is the length and the DLCs. At this stage I'm about halfway through the Fate of Atlantis. Throughout my 85ish hours with the game I've been debating whether my thoughts are it's bad game or just a mindless game that's not for me. I was thinking the latter held true but this game is so intent on showing more and more hours of pointlessness down my throat that I simply can't picture anyone who'd enjoy the content on offer stretched over this length. Genuinely, I want to meet them, the same way I'd be interested to discuss with a serial killer why they are the way they are so I can just understand how their brain works more than anything. I thought approx 7.5hrs ago that I was finally coming to end with this game but had the awful realisation this final DLC looked a little large. So I googled. 15 hours long. I'm trying. Seriously, I'm trying to get through it. But the negatives of the main game are even sharper here with even less payoff. I think I might have to give up on this torture, I'm getting more enjoyment writing about how you should please, please avoid this slop than actually pushing through the final 5 hours to at least mentally tick this game off and parcel it away in my library to never touch again.

HOWEVER, it's not all bad. The game looks gorgeous. The sync point towers provide from some great screenshot opportunities across varied and genuinely gorgeous biomes. It feels like a success in being an 'odyssey' in this respect. It runs surprisingly well as well. I've got a strong rig but I was genuinely surprised to see I could push 1440p ultrawide at 100fps (with dips to 80ish in city areas). Additionally, there was a period of about 10hrs where I just roamed the Aegean, landing on new islands, completing quest chains and indiscriminately stabbing my way through Greece. This felt like the game I imagined it could be. Well put together, contained, gorgeous, a genuine sense of discovery. Were all these positive worth the slog of the remainder of the game though? No. Not even slightly. This game is a case study in how to create a gorgeous, soulless time sink that has no regard for the intelligence or time of players and I'm genuinely baffled as to how this half-baked RPG nonsense the franchise has turned to hasn't completely killed this tired franchise that I (for better or worse) spent so much time with as a kid.

By all means give it a go, but if you aren't hooked within 2hrs, please please refund this. It doesn't get better, it just gets longer.

one of the best games i have yet played