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After Assassin’s Creed Origins, the sequel Odyssey feels like publisher Ubisoft fully invested into the idea that “proven concept but bigger = better” - which didn’t turn out to be the case in practice. As such, we’re left with a game that can feel downright exhausting at times, even if there are a lot of fun moments to be had
After Assassin’s Creed: Origins proved to be a mostly successful action-RPG reinvention of the franchise, detailing the founding of the assassin brotherhood in ancient Egypt, Ubisoft decided to turn back the narrative clock even further: The sequel to Origins, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, is set in ancient Greece, 431 to 422 BC, a time where assassins/templars haven’t been around yet. That didn’t stop Ubisoft from massively increasing the scope of Odyssey, however.
According to this comparison, if you also own the DLC episodes, you’re greeted with an absolute behemoth of a world-map that’s 271km² (!) big, out of which 145km² are landmass and not just the sea. There are also 145 (!!) viewpoints to sync with as well as 317 (!!!) quests to complete. In comparison, Origins featured a 92km² world-map, with 183 quests to complete and 78 viewpoints to sync with. As such, it’s fair to say that Odyssey offers almost double the content of Origins, which was already at least a 45+h game even if you only went for the story quests in the base game & DLC.
Knowing this, if you’re just looking for a game with a lot of content for your money, Odyssey should deliver. But content is not worth anything if it’s not enjoyable, so let’s talk about the gameplay first.
Generally speaking, Odyssey mostly plays like its well-received predecessor, with only a few changes and additions present: you explore the map, do main story missions and engage with side content once the story missions out-level you. You’ll get a lot of loot (with a larger variety than Origins) to improve your character equipment, spend skill points to shape your character and instead of upgrading parts of your equipment just like in Origins, you’re now upgrading your ship since Odyssey has a bigger focus on naval combat again.
The enormous world map is once more divided into areas with different level ranges for your enemies and they’re practically impossible to beat once the level differences is big enough – simply because their stats are too high, the enemy behavior is the same across all level ranges. Unfortunately, stealth is still de-empathized with a lot of forced open combat encounters and assassinations only instantly killing enemies if they’re in the right levelling range (usually just above or below your level, depending on your skills and equipment). Also, parkour remains unchanged from Origins as well, which means it’s pretty basic and a far cry from previous games in the franchise like Unity.
The biggest new addition to the basic gameplay loop would be the introduction of stealth, hunter and warrior abilities you can access and improve through the skill tree. Basically, these are just powerful attacks, shots or assassinations, executed through ability wheels. Most of them do require adrenaline though, which can be built up through normal attacks just like in Origins (where it could only be used for so-called “overpower abilities”, ultimate weapon moves). Apart from these abilities which spice up the normal combat a bit, it mostly remains the same as Origins, although it feels slightly snappier. The camera lock-on function still struggles with bigger enemy groups, unfortunately.
In general, the basic gameplay loop works just as well as it did in Origins. However, the main problem of Odyssey is the amount of content it offers while simultaneously entirely lacking in variety.
Let’s take combat, for example: Once you’re sufficiently levelled, almost every fight plays out the same way – build up adrenaline, use your abilities or overpower attacks, rinse and repeat. Sometimes you might also take out a few guards through assassinations beforehand, depending on what you’re doing. But as enemies and activities remain the same even at higher levels, with no new foes or challenges present, you’ll realize that you’ll basically keep doing the same fights over and over again. You’ll notice that higher levels only serve as a roadblock to stop you from advancing through the game too fast, instead of offering you different or more challenging encounters. While RPGs usually present you with more challenging enemies or tasks to keep you engaged even during their late-game, Odyssey remains the same, never mind if you’re 20, 40 or 60 hours into the game.
This also extends to the side activities in the game, of course. It’s fun to clear out your first tomb, fortress or bandit camp, definitely, but you’ll quickly find out that Odyssey only managed to have a map as big by copy-pasting it’s activities all over. It’s hardly fun doing what’s basically the same fortress for the 20th time, since all of them offer the same enemies and tasks, only with a slightly different layout. Even exploring the world map grows stale quickly, since it’s filled with massive empty patches that don’t even offer anything to do. There are a few amazing looking locations in there, sure, but that’s exactly why a scaled-down game might’ve been the better choice here.
And finally, there’s the story, which could’ve been the best way to make your journey through the game more interesting. And on paper, it does offer plentiful improvements, allowing you to choose between two different protagonists with different attitudes, Kassandra (the canon choice) or Alexios, and even introducing dialogue choices for the first time in the long-running franchise! Additionally, Odyssey departs from a single linear story and introduces three “story branches” during the base game instead, focusing on a different part of your journey.
But what starts out promising unfortunately ends up messy in the long run. While I loved the personality of Kassandra (my choice as the protagonist), the overall story is an incoherent, narrative mess. The pacing is completely off since story quests are level-gated (with some ridiculous jumps in between), two of the three story branches even to the point where you’ll have to almost reach the max level of the base game (50) to finish them. There’s also no free level boost like in Origins if you buy the story DLC – but a XP-booster sold separately (!) for real money (!!) through the in-game store in this strictly singleplayer-game (!!!).
Additionally, the usual Assassin’s Creed problems (not enough characterization leading to one-dimensional characters, incoherent focus on the present day storyline) are heavily on display once more and are even more severe thanks to the length of Odyssey. And finally, if it weren’t for the DLC, Odyssey is also barely connected to the rest of the Assassin’s Creed lore (apart from the shortest of the story branches) – making you wonder if this really is an Assassin’s Creed game or more of an action-RPG set in Greece that needed a big name in order to sell well.
Odyssey is basically the Origins-formula stretched way too thin through the massive amount of ever-the-same content if offers. It would work just fine if the scope was way smaller but when blown up to these ridiculous proportions, it’s plain exhausting instead of exhilarating. Odyssey is not a bad game if you're taking sufficient breaks between sessions - but if you’re the type of player who plays games for their story and prefers to finish one game before starting the next, this might not be the game for you.