Assassin’s Creed Odyssey First Impressions: Better than the Origins

Assassin’s Creed returned after a small hiatus with Assassin’s Creed Origins last year in October, which got pegged as the possible revival of the game series. Origins brought the series back in time to around 49 BCE to when the Assassin’s Creed was found in Ancient Egypt by Bayek of Siwa, and his wife Aya of Alexandria. One year on, we are all set to get another Assassin’s Creed game, which takes us further back in time by 300 years, and this time to Ancient Greece during the time of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Greece. 

Ubisoft claims that the choice of character does not make any difference at all in the gameplay, and is purely visual. I chose to play with Alexios because we have seen Kassandra in almost all the gameplay videos till now. The demo set us up with a levelled up character that has some of the skills already available, and we start off with some cinematics and our first glimpse of the new conversation system which according to the devs will make the storyline unique based on our choices in dialogue.

For the first time in Assassin’s Creed, players will be given dialogue options and can select how their character responds to the world. In the demo, I chose to be empathetic towards the situation and tried to get to the bottom of the mystery with a cool head.

I took some time to get used to the changes in combat. Most notably, the shield is gone and you must either dodge or parry attacks by pressing RB and LB at the same time. The second biggest change is the fact that your weapons have active skills that are mapped onto the face buttons. I had abilities such as spartan kick, self-heal, arrows with increased damage and so on unlocked. Even though I did not get a chance to fully explore the skill tree, whatever little I saw assured me that there will be plenty of options available to you, no matter the playing style. These skills use up 1 bar of your stamina, which can be refilled by taking part in combat. Due to the above, combat was proving to be quite challenging, but intense at the same time. In addition, some of my favourite attacks from Origins were either not unlocked or not in the game. But the fights in Odyssey were especially stressful and rewarding. Combat flow was mostly the same -dodge, look for openings and try to thin the numbers.

Now for the appearance, the visuals and the graphics of the game seem way more refined when compared to the previous game. The in-game Greece during daylight simply looks stunning. Players could easily stop playing for a while just to gaze at the beautiful setting when on a high cliff.

Besides the visuals, the gameplay has also evolved further with the new game from Origins. The AI seems to better recognize the player, and execute offensive tactics better like flanking and taking turns to attack. And to counter this the players now have quite a few new abilities in their arsenal, prime among those is the new kick that sends even captains flying.

After playing the demo of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, I convinced that the series is going in a direction that will not be well received by a certain section of the fans. But in order to evolve and continue to provide unique gameplay scenarios, it needs to consistently add new systems and mechanics to keep the interest high. I am extremely pleased with the transition into a full blown RPG and cannot wait to see whether it manages to fulfil the checkbox of what the audience requires from this genre, without alienating the older fans of the franchise.

All this seems like a promising upgrade that you must play to understand better and explore how this can become a positive addition to the Assassin’s Creed series. Keep an eye out for for our detailed review.

The game is scheduled to be released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on October 5, 2018.