We take the last chapter of Eivor as an opportunity to test Assassin’s Creed Valhalla again: Is the controversial 2022 series instalment a better game?
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has entered a well-deserved retirement in 2022 after two years. At the very least, publisher Ubisoft has announced that it will not be releasing any more content for the already extensive Viking adventure with the update to version 1.6.2 released at the end of November.
Fittingly, the update entitled “The Last Chapter” tells a small crossover story to the sequel Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which will be released in 2023. On the other hand, we experience an epilogue in which protagonist Eivor leaves England and his/her settlement behind and sets off into an uncertain future.
Table of Contents
Extended River Raids
Let’s first take a look at what all has happened with the patches. Over the course of last year, Ubisoft added river raids as its own little game mode. As part of a quest in our village of Hræfnathorp, we build a Jomsviking hut and go on raids through English waters with a longship and crew.
Ubisoft has continued to work on the balancing on these instanced – i.e. taking place on separate river maps – company excursions since then. Thus, since update 1.2.2. not only are the possible rewards adapted to the respective alert level and difficulty. In addition, the attack power of the Jom Vikings has been optimised so that it also corresponds more to the respective level of the warriors.
Currently, the river raids are therefore pleasantly challenging, because we have to keep more than one eye on our maximum of eight AI companions. If they go down, we restore them by using a meal, but we can only take a limited number of them with us. Due to the vulnerable team, we are forced to think smaller and also to break off attacks sometimes.
The implementation of this game mode at the beginning of 2021 was a good idea on the part of Ubisoft, because the longship lost more and more importance in the main game due to revealed fast travel points. The fact that the developers also took care of the balancing afterwards is very good, because the looting still offers a pleasant challenge for stronger characters, including individual rewards. We are currently causing fear and terror on a total of six rivers and are continuing to expand our longship as well as the Jomswiking Hall, because Ubisoft has also increased this and provided more variety.
The crux of the difficulty
In many of the patch notes the points “Balancing”, “Difficulty level” and “New abilities” are written. The fact that Ubisoft has repeatedly touched these up over the course of time was bitterly necessary. When running through the main game and conscientiously exploring and completing the side quests, Eivor quickly became quite strong – not to say too strong. To deal with this problem, there is now a great deal of flexibility in setting the difficulty.
Updates instead of DLCs
In this post-test, we cover the content and changes that have moved into the game through the free updates. We have our own tests and ratings for the extensive DLCs “The Wrath of the Druids”, “The Siege of Paris” and “The Signs of Ragnarok”.
For one thing, there is now a new difficulty level with “Nightmare”, which once again turns the numbers: We add a normal amount of damage, but suffer 200 percent more than usual and meals heal 40 percent less health points. In addition, the reaction time for parries is shortened.
On the other hand, we have the possibility to freely set the individual parameters and thus craft our very own requirements. While we praised the fact that secret assassinations with the hidden blade were finally deadly again in the test, Ubisoft later took this change back. The default setting is now again that a successful assassination depends on the enemy level.
In the options, we also determine to what extent enemies should scale with our own level and adjust all important values: incoming and outgoing damage, regeneration or meal effect.
Players can also set absurdly high values for the battles. Ubisoft chooses the path of least resistance here instead of fundamentally working on the balance. But at least there are these customisation options. Regardless of whether you just want to be shallowly entertained or are looking for a challenge, both are possible. Even better: Changing the settings works almost any time, only in a few places like the arena of Nilfheim is the option blocked.
Otherwise, the possibilities of AC Valhalla’s skill tree, which continued to grow in parallel, could hardly have been absorbed. On the one hand, updates for the individual nodes were added in the course of the updates to make room for new weapons such as the greatsword, sickle and scythe. For another, many new learnable skills also sparkled in the already very extensive skill firmament. Eivor also finds more new talents while exploring the world. For example, the skill “Precise Axe Throw”, which allows the hero to make a precise throw with the axe at the enemy’s weak spot, can be found in the river raids.
Rune customisation and equipment templates
New options are also available in the composition of equipment and the use of runes. Since update 1.5.2 we have the possibility to build an armoury in Hræfnathorp. We then create templates for our equipment in the inventory screen, where we store up to five combinations of armour and weapons with different focuses.
This enables us to react quickly to changing requirements and, for example, to change from a close-fighting berserker to a master assassin or to darken the sky with projectiles as an arrow-slinging ranged fighter. Those who only ever cultivate one play style will shrug off the new function. But those who like to experiment will be happy about more comfort in maintaining the inventory.
In addition, the way rune benefits work has changed in recent updates. Runes now only affect the weapon they are attached to. This only applies to weapons and not to armour, and there are still some global values.
For example, it is possible to wield a weapon with runes for more damage in the left hand and a bludgeon with bonuses to stun in the right hand. Ubisoft says it has also removed the limitation that made perks and rune perks in diamond form no longer stackable after a certain threshold.
In principle, these changes to the composition of equipment are very welcome. Especially the definable equipment templates make sense. Whether and to what extent the exact matching of the runes to the play style is important depends primarily on the chosen difficulty level settings. With greater challenge, more options and optimisations are welcome.
Around the topic of runes, there is also a completely new building for our village: In the rune forge (from village level 4), we transfer the advantages of our current equipment into new runes in exchange for silver and are thus even more flexible when it comes to character development.
The Forgotten & Tombs of the Fallen
Some of the materials we need to construct and upgrade the new buildings, such as the armoury, are obtained from the river raids. This is good in that the newly added content works like its own little clockwork and does not interfere with the looting progress of the main game.
This means that even with a 100 per cent completed score with completely emptied monasteries, we can tackle the new content without any problems. However, the reverse is only true to a limited extent: After starting a new game, we must have arrived in England and have first upgraded our village to at least level 3. Afterwards, the corresponding notifications appear in the quest list – individually, of course, there may be other requirements.
Less obviously integrated are the graves of the fallen, which have found their way into the game with a total of six locations since update 1.6.1 (previously there were already three graves). In the tradition of the exploration dungeons in Assassin’s Creed 2, Eivor explores the eponymous tombs, solves puzzles and captures valuable equipment. The entertaining caves are a nice change – as a free bonus anyway. To find the first tomb, we have to approach the worried villagers at the harbour of our settlement.
Fans of Rogue Lite games may want to keep an eye on “The Forgotten Saga”. Once the village is on level 3 and the quest “Into the World of Dreams” is completed, Everold appears and starts the free chapter. In the guise of Odin, we travel to Niflheim to search for Baldur’s soul in arenas that are always built the same way but randomly filled with enemies and equipment.
When we die, we keep the skills and attributes we have learned in our own skill tree, but otherwise we start a new run with completely random equipment. During a run, we make decisions and try to overcome the four areas, including four bosses, in the best possible way.
As a free expansion, the mode is great and has a lot of appeal due to the limitation in equipment and (initially) abilities. However, it also wears out a lot because the first worlds become very easy with a little practice and thus boring with repeated play. Those who permanently die in world 3 or 4 already need great self-motivation – this also applies to the rest of the game anyway.
An epilogue without a real goodbye
Besides equipment optimisation and well-made but ultimately generic game modes, there are also interesting expansions for “classic” players. Already a year ago, the free crossover DLC “Interwoven Stories” was released, in which Eivor meets Odyssey protagonist Cassandra on the Isle of Skye.
The short story turns out to be a real fan service and provides some nice moments especially for veterans. In addition, Ubisoft was not above creating its own small open world, which is in no way inferior to the main game in terms of quality. This approximately two-hour adventure also begins in Hræfnathorp and is definitely worth a look.
Fan service should also be the update announced as a grand farewell to Eivor with the promising title “The Final Chapter”, which appeared with version 1.6.2 at the end of November. In the two-part free expansion, Eivor completes a short quest alongside the mysterious Roshan. Fans know her, of course, as Basim’s former mentor from the trailers for the sequel Mirage. We will possibly find out in 2023 why she is heading to England and what the two assassination targets to be completed are all about.
On the other hand, Eivor is coming to the realisation that she wants to continue to deal with her or his Odin side. To do so, Eivor wants to leave her clan and her village in England and set out for new shores. In terms of gameplay, we rattle through four memory segments in which we say goodbye to more or less significant figures of the campaign. However, the bond between the characters experienced during the farewells is hardly felt by the player. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla already does too little narratively in the main game to be able to credibly pick up the respective threads here.
Please don’t misunderstand, “The Final Chapter” is a free DLC that brings not only a mission but also the farewell of the protagonist. Ubisoft didn’t have to do that. But it’s also nothing special. In a way, the epilogue is even unsatisfactory, because anyone hoping for answers about the further path, the supposed insights or even the death of Eivor is literally left alone.
Since the epilogue is about memory fragments of the Animus, you can continue playing after Eivor’s departure and complete open tasks. If you still haven’t had enough after that or want to learn more about the real Vikings, you can start a Discovery Tour, as you did in Origins and Odyssey. Here we move around the map and complete guided tours, during which we learn a lot about the historical background. The mode is free for owners of Valhalla, everyone else pays 20 euros.
Content hui, technology not quite yet
In terms of content, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 2022 is quite a bit more extensive than when it was released two years ago. The free expansions provide many hours of gameplay, and the rewards that could be earned during the individual festivals (Easter, Christmas, Halloween) are now available to everyone. In addition, there are cosmetic items for the 15th anniversary of the series and one premium item per week is free in the Animus Shop.
Technically, a lot has changed as well. While we had to devalue the game by five points at release, Ubisoft has made improvements here. For this review, we played through Valhalla once completely and stumbled across almost no annoyances. We thought the technical problems such as quest bugs and crashes had already been eliminated in our last test update in 2021. But in the meantime we are again suffering from random crashes, which sometimes did not occur for hours, but then several times in the course of a single evening. Also in the (mixed Steam Reviews) this problem is mentioned again and again.
Due to the very fairly set save points, hardly any progress is lost in the non-reproducible crashes, but they should still be mentioned. Little things, such as Eivor dancing silly around characters until the button to address them appears, are also noticeable from time to time, but are not annoying.
Editorial conclusion
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is not a fundamentally different game in 2022 than it was at release two years ago. For many of you, this realisation may be as surprising as a longhouse in a Viking settlement, but those who were bothered by the original weaknesses will most likely continue to be bothered by them. Everyone else will be happy to know that Ubisoft has brought a lot of free content to the game-loving public over the past two years, in addition to extensive major DLC.
The new content does justice to the core mechanics of the main game – exploration, combat, leveling – and offers more of the same. Although I spend practically hours doing the same thing in Valhalla, Ubisoft still manages to provide variety with the updates. The river raids are a central element of these “sideshows”, because I use the resources captured there to make new buildings like the armoury and rune forge accessible.
Playtime and scope are given another big boost with the new content, and those who are fans of the series will definitely get their money’s worth. The crossover DLC to Odyssey provides nostalgic flair and the adventure with Roshan makes you curious about Mirage. Only the epilogue misses its mark, as it ends at the moment when I hope for final answers.
