Assassin's Creed: Odyssey
/Structure
Locking ping behind a talent is pretty garbage
I kind of like how the game forces you to progress the story before investing multiple points in skills. It feels a little gross, but it forces you to try more different skills
The Spartan vs Athenian thing is kind of neat, but Spartan towns are bullshit. Press 1 wrong button and you have an entire town trying to run you down when you just wanted to talk to a guy
I kind of dislike how you just don’t have a side in the war, so you can be working for the spartans, then you travel 10 feet and the spartans are your enemy and the game is telling you there’s a spartan leader you should kill
I feel like there are just way too many quests in this game, and I have a hard time telling which ones are procedural, daily, whatever. There’s just a lot of stuff, and it feels like there isn’t an awful lot of structure , so it’s all over the place, and you don’t get those satisfying loops
I wish there was a way to “finish” an area, but it doesn’t seem like it’s even properly possible to do in this game
I feel like bounties legitimately make the game worse. I can sit down and play for a few hours and make no progress because everything I do is a bounty, and all I’ve accomplished is outleveling the “real” content
You hit max level pretty easily, and once you do, it feels like all progression basically stops immediately. Really demotivates me to continue interacting with the game world.
I don’t understand why it is that, the further I get into the game, the fewer mercenaries I see. If anything, I’m more outfitted than ever to take them on, and care more about climbing the ranks now that I can see the tip of the mountain. And NOW I have to hunt them out.
Gameplay
It still feels very strange to me, to not have a sprint button, I feel like I’m always running a bit too slowly
I do really like the mechanic of the hawk becoming better the more things you synchronize, it’s gameplay isn’t super strong, but it’s a clever system, and adds to realization
Why is ping on hold dpad up? It seems so unintuitive to have it on a button you can’t press (easily) while walking
I don’t even really know what stealing does or does not do, I feel like I can’t make a real decision
I feel like the camera zooms in so close that I can’t see anything, especially in caves and such
REALLY not down with losing exp / discoveries / etc when you die, it makes it completely not worth your time to try and take on content that’s higher level than you, even by a couple levels
I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to have mercenaries spawn out of literally nowhere when you are in combat with another mercenary, but it’s the most annoying thing, and it just wastes so much of your time
Having like 10+ second long loading screens just to start a conversation is kind of ridiculous
There’s something really off about the rhythm of combat, I find I’m constantly caught in my attack animations, and don’t actually have a chance to react to what my enemy is doing
I really wish they did something more interesting with conquest battles than just sticking you on a battlefield to kill 30 of the same enemy in a row
Death in this game is honestly just very punishing, you can die to something stupid and easily lose like 5+ minutes, and not even know where the game is going to load you. Sometimes you have to re-do entire camps
I question just about every part of the mercenary system, like how can I honestly have ⅕ wanted level and see 3 new mercenaries home in on my position in the span of 5 minutes?
Basically every one of the game’s systems are tied into the cultist system, it’s actually quite clever. It encourages you to complete locations, do side quests, rewards you the best loot, ties into the plot lines, is required for ability progression, upgrades your leonidas spear
When I complete a set of gear, it subtly upgrades all the components of the set to your current level, which is just really thoughtful and I appreciate it a lot
UI/UX
I feel like there’s a bit of an overload of information on the inventory screen, there’s just a lot of numbers presented without context
The abilities page has so many icons, and I have no idea what half of them are here for, what are these things on the bottom? In the corners?
I wish the map had a smooth zoom
I feel like the map icons don’t stand out quite enough, the map is pretty detailed and artistic, the icons kind of disappear against the chaos
The equipment tooltips feel like they have a lot of information that’s kind of hard to parse. It’s not grouped very well, and it looks like it’s just different colours and font weights all over the place
I kind of hate the way icons and such have a kind of elastic-y movement easing when they move around, it makes it kind of hard to track where they actually are
Why does the quest screen not automatically open up to my currently tracked quest when I open it ?
Having loot that can be “stolen” feel like it just doesn’t work. I just want to mash triangle and get stuff, the red “steal” text doesn’t even come up until I get close. It’s less about making a choice and more about how much do you accidentally steal, especially if loot is nearby someone you want to talk to or something
Untracked quests could really use stronger callouts. Their icons are less emphasized than most icons on the map
Storyline quests need to be much more strongly emphasized, they look exactly the same as normal quests on the map, which is already pretty weak
Why would you show me a clamped icon for a message board I didn’t choose to track when there aren’t even any quests on said message board
I wish I could press a button to open to my inventory when I get a loot popup, I want to see more about the sick purple item I just got
The map takes so damn long to open, good lord
I really wish it was easier to distinguish the border of different areas, especially since it seems like high level areas are so frequently adjacent to low level ones
The icon that appears next to dialogue options when you are lying really… doesn’t indicate that very well? I can’t tell what it’s even trying to tell me
I find having icons on the compass actually kind of confuses me, I can’t decide sometimes if I should be looking at the compass, or the clamped icons on the screen, when I’m figuring out which direction to move. Especially confusing since the personal waypoint doesn’t appear on the compass
Why do war supply icons continue to be displayed on the screen when an area already has 0 fortification
I wish completed quests were displayed in the world (or at least the compass) from a farther distance. It’s kind of a pain to have to go into the map just to turn in a quest
A lot of attention is pulled towards the mercenary screen, but I feel like you don’t really get anything of value from actually looking there for the most part
I wish I didn’t get “new” icons on the inventory screen unless I got an item that the system considered an “upgrade” (ie. it has a green arrow). This game throws so much shitty equipment at you, you never DON’T have something “new”
The way damage stats are displayed when you have multiple slots are confusing. To me, the primary weapon slot should be the left value and secondary should be the right. But the secondary slot is physically to the left of the first slot. It makes sense why it is that way, but it still confuses me
I wish there was a way to review conversations when prompted with a dialogue option, I often lose focus for a couple seconds, and have no concept of the context of what I’m choosing to say