I played AC1 quite a long time ago, i liked the Lore, but never quite finished it.

watched my SO play Black Flag, Syndicate, Unity, and also like the setting (City) and the feel of the games.

I got into AC heavily with Origins. the setting just really grabbed me as well as the storyline. my favourite is the poison darts, allowing you to conquer an entire large fort with almost no trace ro requirement for Combat, which i've come to feel is the major selling point to me, stealth. even after playing through Odyssey I've found myself looking back to Origins with more joy, but the scale of Odyssey does have a lot going for it, and it's just about possible to clear some of the large forts unseen.

i think with all 3, the weaving of the local religion and gods into the Lore has felt brilliant, and the tombs in AC:Origins are just so atmospheric and beautiful.

Odyssey, i felt the same, only occasionally less so. headshots and the rush assassination means you can clear the larger forts almost as efficiently, but you still need to get up close and personal a lot of the time which reduces the ability to stealth the larger maps.

i was never quite sold on Atlantis, but Elysium and Haders were stunning. looking out off the cliff in Elysium at the waterfalls was staggering the first time i got there.

I liked the sea combat, even though as i'll say later about Valhalla, that just didnt' feel very assassiny.

and then Valhalla comes along.

Origins and Odyssey, you could grind a lot, but if you mixed up the storyline and side quests i never found them particularly onerous, and exploration was enjoyable.

with Valhalla, there's just something about the more open spaces without the denser city areas of Origins and Odyssey which just came alive for me that in this case don't. the obligatory combat where you *have* to just wallop people, with support no less, just feels so anti-assassiny. the constant requirement to get supplies, materials and so on to unlock certain abilities feels more strained and unnecessary compared to Origins and Odyssey. it just feels like they took a lot of the careful consideration and strategy of the previous 2 episodes, and said "forget that, just go in there and start splitting heads". "oh and forget being subtle, we're not going to *hide* our dagger, we're going to wear it on the outside because we want to flash the fucking thing about.

sorry, what?

I can imagine if some of the rumours ive seen about the next instalment (Mongolia?) are true, then i hope they at least allow the options of returning to more stealthy completion of targets, and for gods sake, lose the whole major battles and out in the open crap. you have to wonder if the developers thought "we have an engine allowing us to do big battles with lots of people or boats in, and by god we want to use it!"

so i havent finished Valhalla on the PC yet, but i've found myself playing Origins again just because it's so much more interesting and engaging.