I just finished Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, something I planned to be a small endeavour to kill time with. While waiting for H2 be available on EGS , so I could play the trilogy as a hole. However 123 hours later and 1% from 100%. I’m quite confident that I’m burned out by open world single player games.
It have been an exhausting experience, very good and well made, but exhausting. It’s defiantly one of the best game in the series, coming very closely to Origins and a far better entry into the series then Odyssey.
The story of Evior is very well told, I wish they would just have stuck with one gender. The character was clearly thought out to be played as female and is also the canon way to play it, just like with Odyssey. However unlike Odyssey I went with male Evior, it was easy to see myself (superficially) in him. However multiple time through out the game NPC’s referred to me as female, which was a bit odd now where I was a manly bearded Norseman in 9th England. However sadly the game and it’s marketing, box art and so on, goes to great efforts to portray Male Evior as “canon” character, just like they did with Odyssey. I sadly feels like they wanted to create two games about strong female characters, but in fear of alienating male audience they decided to be inclusive in all but name. I wished they had stuck with their vision for the Shieldmaiden Evior and trying to have their cake and eating it too. Then a longed hair and bearded Norseman like myself, would just have to look for frail masculine evaluation elsewhere.
The portrayal of the Vikings themselves is rather well made, they ain’t portrayed as these mindless beast that the Christians who wrote about them, would have you to believe. That said it’s very much Hollywood Vikings, with edgy guyliner, “Viking” beard beads and Ragnar hair, which all look very cool but is as accurate to reality as Shakespeare’s leatherjacket from ‘Shakespeare in Love’. I wish they would have taken a bit more consideration and not filled the game with 11-12 century Stave Churches in the 9th century.
The thing I enjoy most about the game is the take on Norse Mythology and the legends I grew up with as a child and putting an Isu/first civilization spin on it. This entry actually feels like it’s pushing the story forward from AC 3 and is a nice conclusion to the hole series, as well as something new.
All my endless grinding lead me to Thor’s Armor and wielding Mjölnir and Odin’s spear Gungnir. It’s save to say probably the most powerful Viking in this fantasy world.
Of course, getting hold of Thor’s Hammer and Armor can only be done, when you have completed the game, rendering it quite useless. So If I really want to enjoy this mighty weapon, I’ll kind of have to buy the expansions.
It was one of my favorite game when I was in high school and my favorite DA game. I’ve done it 5 times already, with every origins except noble human, so I think I will pick this one. But I can’t decide myself about my char… Should I make a male and doing Morrigan’s romance or a female and doing Leliana’s gay romance ? 
I think I’m even more exited to see my boyfriend playing it, than replaying it myself 
(He was a gamer already before meeting me and love science fiction, so idk how he could have missed this game, but I’m going to fix his mistakes 
)
