So I've been playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey and I really enjoy it so far.
It's the best playing game in the series. The combat is skill based and weighty and takes cues from the Souls series, which you all know is my jam. The world is massive (maybe too big), and it's a beautiful game graphically. The story is interesting and I like the addition of dialogue choices. They've really tried to go all in the with the RPG elements, and I dig it.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuut...
The leveling system seems to have borked the game a bit, and I think the motives behind it are a bit questionable.
Enemies only a level or two above you become damage sponges that take a ton of hits to kill and the game doesn't reward you with enough gear to constantly stay up to par. You can upgrade your gear at a blacksmith but that costs of a lot of gold, resources, and materials which need to be located and collected in the open world. The costs are high enough to be pretty prohibitive.
Of course, there's an easy workaround. You can just buy gold and crafting materials from the in-game store for real money.
Each area in the game has a specific recommended level range, and each quest has a level recommendation. The quest will be much more difficult if your character doesn't meet the recommended level. For example, the area I'm in has is recommended for level 7-10 characters. My current quest to continue the story recommended to be done at character level 10. In order to reach that level, I had to do every single side-quest in the region, including locating each location and completing each location objective. I had a few quests from a quest board that may have helped but they were timed and I didn't finish them the day I got them, so they became unavailable. It's been a pretty tedious process. I like sidequests, but I don't enjoy being forced into them when I want to focus on the story.
But you can speed that up by purchasing an XP booster for real money so that your character permanently levels up faster.
The game is probably the best the series has ever been, but it seems as though its design is weighed down by flaws purposefully implemented by the developers in order to push you to spend more money on it. It's a 60 dollar game that is designed to push you toward further spending microtransactions. I played Origins, and I don't remember the leveling system being this restrictive in it.
I know there was a bit of a kerfuffle over this when the game released, and a lot of people said that they didn't feel it was grindy at all. But, man, I am feeling it now at the beginning. I bumped the difficulty down from Hard to Normal, but it didn't particularly help. I'm hoping the game gets better about this as it goes on because I really like how it plays.
What are your thoughts, ERA?
It's the best playing game in the series. The combat is skill based and weighty and takes cues from the Souls series, which you all know is my jam. The world is massive (maybe too big), and it's a beautiful game graphically. The story is interesting and I like the addition of dialogue choices. They've really tried to go all in the with the RPG elements, and I dig it.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuut...
The leveling system seems to have borked the game a bit, and I think the motives behind it are a bit questionable.
Enemies only a level or two above you become damage sponges that take a ton of hits to kill and the game doesn't reward you with enough gear to constantly stay up to par. You can upgrade your gear at a blacksmith but that costs of a lot of gold, resources, and materials which need to be located and collected in the open world. The costs are high enough to be pretty prohibitive.
Of course, there's an easy workaround. You can just buy gold and crafting materials from the in-game store for real money.
Each area in the game has a specific recommended level range, and each quest has a level recommendation. The quest will be much more difficult if your character doesn't meet the recommended level. For example, the area I'm in has is recommended for level 7-10 characters. My current quest to continue the story recommended to be done at character level 10. In order to reach that level, I had to do every single side-quest in the region, including locating each location and completing each location objective. I had a few quests from a quest board that may have helped but they were timed and I didn't finish them the day I got them, so they became unavailable. It's been a pretty tedious process. I like sidequests, but I don't enjoy being forced into them when I want to focus on the story.
But you can speed that up by purchasing an XP booster for real money so that your character permanently levels up faster.
The game is probably the best the series has ever been, but it seems as though its design is weighed down by flaws purposefully implemented by the developers in order to push you to spend more money on it. It's a 60 dollar game that is designed to push you toward further spending microtransactions. I played Origins, and I don't remember the leveling system being this restrictive in it.
I know there was a bit of a kerfuffle over this when the game released, and a lot of people said that they didn't feel it was grindy at all. But, man, I am feeling it now at the beginning. I bumped the difficulty down from Hard to Normal, but it didn't particularly help. I'm hoping the game gets better about this as it goes on because I really like how it plays.
What are your thoughts, ERA?
