I came into the AC franchise sideways, starting off with a free copy of AC3 for the WiiU, then trying to get into AC1 and failing, then Black Flag hooked me and I went back and played through AC1 up through 3 again, and then jumped to Origins and now Odyssey. I still haven't played Unity or Syndicate or any other minor titles. Having said all of that, Origins is the most fun I've had in an AC game so far. I do love the vibe of the Ezio series, which felt more "assassin-ish" with the signature outfits and induction/training of assassins in the Brotherhood, etc. As far as just settling into a game and getting caught up in being in there, though, Origins takes the cake for me.

Now to compare Origins (roughly 200 hours and 100% completion) to my current playthrough of Odyssey (around 100 hours so far and really no idea about completion):

Origins had a nice combination of open-world aspects without it feeling like a WoW-grade live service game. Odyssey IMO leans a bit too much into this for my liking. I enjoyed how Origins had an established set of quests for each area, easily identifiable locations that needed exploring/looting, and a defined story path side quests. Odyssey...well I'm honestly not even sure when I'm on the "main story" because there are so many ways that the side content is thrown at you that it all very much jumbles together. It doesn't help that a bunch of (what I am assuming are DLC) high-level quests have been jammed into my quest log from the moment I started, with no reason for them to be there for the first 40 levels of gameplay. The various "Help Wanted" type mission boards scattered around the map giving quests that range from "that guy over there" to "all over the Mediterranean" in terms of location seem really messy, and there are clearly a LOT of "live service" type activities popping up, reminding me of Daily Quests in WoW. Really high potatoes to meat ratio.

In Origins, I had a handful of random Wild animal attacks, the occasional "avenge player X death," and once in awhile a roaming Phylakes to fight. In Odyssey, not only are there the constant attacks from wild animals and roaming Athenians/Spartans/Bandits, but there are also Mercenaries on your ass CONSTANTLY. One of the biggest complaints I have about Odyssey is how the whole bounty system on me works. Some areas rack up "crime points" for every item I loot, and in other areas it doesn't seem to matter. Yes, there are red dots vs white dots to warn me, but there doesn't seem to be any logic to it whatsoever. In nations I fought to switch to Athenian control, I will find Spartans who are neutral to me vs Athenians who attack me on sight. There are seemingly random areas where as soon as I set foot in them, I am attacked. These aren't just forts and leader houses; some are public areas like temples, markets, workshops. Casual citizens walking around will just up and attack me when I enter. It's not that these are hard to fend off, there's just no logic to it. Yes, you can repeatedly pay off bounties on yourself to keep the never-ending tide of mercenaries at bay, but if I do all my crime in secret (I play stealth heavy), no one should know it's me to put a bounty on in the first place. It seems to me that if you pull off your criminal activities without ever getting spotted, there should be no increase on your bounty line.

Both games lack in vanish mechanics. I know Kassandra isn't even a Hidden One, much less an actual member of the Brotherhood, but if you're going to have the AC label, you should at least be able to act like an assassin if that's your play style. Yes, I know there is a skill in the assassin tree for Odyssey to do a flash-bang stunner and hide, and the top of the tree has a mechanic for it, but what happened to smoke bombs and blending into crowds? There's enough fantastical shit going on in these games that you really can't make much of an argument for not handwaving a way to make these things commonly available.

Crafting in Origins was a challenge but one with enough variety to be engaging. Crafting in Odyssey is just "smash every ship, grab every olive tree, kill every wild animal you see, because you can never have enough leather or wood." It's reductive, monotonous, one-note lootspam, and applies only to your boat aside from level upgrades on gear. I personally really liked how in Origins I could upgrade my quiver, ranged damage, melee damage, hidden blade damage, health, etc. ... all through crafting upgrades to myself.

Maps were better in Origins. Almost every item on the map had an icon that made sense. In Odyssey half the markers on the map are false flags making you think something needs attention that is just a random named place. And shipwrecks are excessively similar looking to boat docks, and both are often along the coast. Finding marked quest locations on the map is also inferior in Odyssey, as in Origins you always had an arrow pointing off screen to show you which way to pan to find your target.

Traveling...I have a hard time really saying how I feel about travel in one game vs. the other. In Origins, you didn't have to flit around from island to island, so you didn't often need a boat. However, if you did need one, you could almost always find them along the coast, or if you just jump in the water, some fisherman would always gravitate towards you so that you could conveniently steal his boat for a minute to get across the Nile or a lake or whatever. I know that the Adrestia (your ship) is intended to be a huge part of Odyssey, and for the most part it succeeds, but something about the layout of the fast travel points vs the docks misses the mark. I spend enough time legitimately traveling from point to point in this game. I feel like I should be able to more effectively use sync points to jump from point to point and get to my ship more easily a lot of the time. On the one hand, it makes sense that you need to spend a lot of time getting from one island to another or even from one side of one island to another, but on the other hand just running, climbing, riding the horse, or sailing from one point to another all the time *as a means of travel* makes doing those things far less enjoyable when you are intended to be doing them as a main part of the gameplay. I spend so much time using my ship to get to an island on the other side of the map that the ship combat I loved in Black Flag feels tedious when it happens in Odyssey.

Ship combat is nice to see re-introduced in Odyssey. Part of me feels like they tried to do too much by including almost as much ground exploration as Origins while also cramming in nearly as much ship content as they had in Black Flag. OTOH, it makes for a really robust, large experience. I think if the story structure wasn't so muddled, it would feel less like bloat. There's so much to do in so many different directions that it's almost paralysis due to an excess of options. I don't mind the scale of the game, but it would feel better if there was anything that really took you around the map in any sort of logical way. They are riding the line between "open world" and "story driven" badly, IMO. It's a less severe version of what I disliked most about BOTW where there was one main objective and the game just goes "it's a big world out there, kid, go figure it out." I guess true open-world games really aren't for me.

Combat plays similar between the two games, but I preferred Origins' simpler method of using talents to augment all of your basic moves and weapon types over the Odyssey skill tree giving birth to actual abilities that are keybound separate attacks (PC here, keyboard/mouse player 4lyfe). I can see how it would play better on a controller, but shoehorning the game into a more controller-centric style seems like a miss for me. That having been said, there's a lot to like in the trees themselves. I enjoy how it's possible to do entire builds that are more devoted to the three combat styles (bow, hack/slash, assassin), and there are some really stunning animations and moves. But why does a Greek mercenary of this time period not even have the option to carry a shield?!

Conquest battles are my jam. Some of the most fun I have in Odyssey is taking on every one of those that pops up, even though they get a bit repetitive. They remind me of a better version of the (too-frequently spawning) Shadows of the Pharaohs from Origins. If those had only happened once in awhile instead of every few minutes, they would have been really fun. So far, the spacing of these battles seems to be really nice, giving me a break in the regular action at good intervals. I do wish I could more easily fast travel to the starting NPC for each of them, but most are *fairly* close to a sync point.

Character appearance I am torn on. I do like that the various sets of gear in Odyssey have their own distinct appearances, but there's a lot to be said for Origins' setup of having outfits be totally independent of the actual gear you are wearing. This one is still a toss-up for me.

So...having said all of that...for those of you who have played all three of the newer generation of AC games: what do you think my opinion of Valhalla is going to be? I'm sure I'm going to get it and play it eventually, but I'm curious to know what you guys think my opinion of it is going to be so I know if it's likely going to be worth picking it up now, or waiting until I finish Odyssey and all the other games I haven't played yet and picking it up cheaper in a year or so.