Assassin's Creed Odyssey is a game in the lengthy Assassin's Creed franchise and was released in 2018. AC Odyssey got a good reception with many people saying that it is a much better game than the previous, Assassin's Creed Origins, as if that was a difficult task to accomplish.
In the timeline, AC Odyssey is set in ancient Greece, way before Assassin's Creed Origins happens and way before the first assassins came to be. Now you might wonder, how are we playing as an assassin if there were no assassins. The answer is simple: we are not. In AC Odyssey you play as a mercenary who travels around ancient Greece looking for her (or his) lost family and who fights on both sides in a war between Sparta and Athens. During her travels the mercenary comes across a secret order that controls pretty much everything in Greece and some old ruins. These ruins that you get to visit a few times every 10 hours of gameplay are the only real connection to the Assassin's Creed story-line which they don't really progress in any meaningful way. So it is safe to say that when it comes to Assassin's Creed and the story of the Assassins, Odyssey is more like a spin-off rather than a proper installment of the series.
And yet the game is actually so much better than Origins. Whereas Origins was a poor combination of a generic Ubisoft open world game and an Assassin's Creed game, Odyssey has completely abandoned the Assassin's Creed part of the game and what we are left is yet another Ubisoft game following the same open world format. Now this doesn't make it a bad game, on the contrary, as a game AC Odyssey is pretty good. It uses a working formula and it shows, if you are looking for another open world adventure, this might be the game for you but if you are looking for an Assassin's Creed game, there is nothing here for you. As mentioned before the only mentions to Assassin's Creed are in the name and the fact that you can explore a few precursor ruins.
Now at the risk of contradicting myself, you do get to play as a modern day Assassin called Leila. Yes the same Leila that was introduced in Origins. The good thing is that they have kept with the same modern day character and hopefully they can turn it into something as great as we had in the early AC games. However, so far there is next to no story, no progression nothing new that Odyssey really offers on that front. So yes, that is another mention to the Assassins, but not a significant one as it really offers no progression to any direction.
Back to ancient Greece, if the game is actually pretty good what makes it so good? Well what makes any open world adventure good? Personally I would say that it's the freedom to do anything anywhere in the world and travel across the huge map completely freely. AC Odyssey doesn't accomplish this in the best way possible as you can only travel freely after you are max level and that would only happen after 70+ hours of gaming. The good thing is that even the lower level areas are so large that you won't run out of places to explore anytime soon. The funny thing is that not only for an Assassin's creed game, but also for an Ubisoft open world game, locking areas behind dozens of hours of grind is not a good thing. Some other Ubisoft games do have this mechanic but it still doesn't make it a good thing. It's just a lazy way of locking areas out of the reach of the player for the time being.
And Unfortunately higher level areas aren't the only thing thing locked behind a level requirement, the actual story is too. Well not completely locked but you won't be able to complete them if you are too many levels behind. There are three main stories in the game and all of them are restricted behind hours of grinding and leveling. And isn't that just what every story driven game needs? An hour of mindless grind between every story mission so that you have no chance of fluidly following the story from beginning to the end. This means that to finish the main main story of the game that is probably not much longer than 10 hours in total, it will take you at least 50 hours of grind in between. But the reward is well worth it [spoiler alert]. The magnificent climax of the game, after fighting in a war that's torn the Greek world apart and after uncovering the dealings of a secret cult, you get to have dinner with your family. Yes, the main main story ends in you having dinner with your family. There is no real resolution to anything that is going on in the world, just dinner. Now of course there are two other main stories, but what do those matter? This was supposed to be the main main story.
[spoilers end]
Well as it turns out after you complete the main main story you still need to finish the other two main stories to get a satisfying end to the game. The other two main stories that are quite closely intertwined with the main main story and wouldn't really makes sense without the others. Then why not just have them all be a part of the one same story and have a satisfying story from start to finish and let players play that story at their own pace, because that's something that would make sense, right? But I guess that would just make a too short of game and make people feel like they aren't getting enough hours out of the game, but who knows really.
In conclusion: if you want GTA ancient Greece where you can just fuck around and grind for dozens for hours and occasionally do some quests to strangers then this is the game for you. If you want an Assassin's Creed game, or a story driven game where you can blast through an interesting story and then move on to the next game, stay away from this one. It's a generic Ubisoft open world bash that I would rate much higher if it didn't have "Assassin's Creed" in the title because now I just feel like I've been tricked and thus I will only give it a 5/10
