Now with 40% more Witcher.
The problem with Assassin's Creed lies in the fact that it's an yearly franchise that rarely skipped a year, which translates to a lot of stagnation. AC 2 was great, Brotherhood and Revelations not so much. With 3 they changed up things, and while some people may not agree with me on how good it actually was, with 4 they expanded on everything that made it great. Unity was great fun, but let's be honest, it was more of the same. Syndicate was more of the same but without the wow factor. Assassin's Creed Origins brings another shake up to the series, taking more than a little inspiration from The Witcher III, effectively turning the series into a RPG, for good or bad.
Well, at last we get a proper Egypt game, that's cool. You play as Bayek of Rivia, I mean, Bayek of Siwa, who is pretty much an Assassin before the Assassins. Bayek is an interesting character, sure, he is another vengeful hero, like Ezio, but he is much less of a rogue, being deeply devoted to his wife, Aya. Aya is sort of a secondary character, and you play as her for some very short bits, but they missed the mark with her completely. She is like Kratos, consumed by anger, and she only thinks about The Mission, about The Creed. So, not only is she unlikeable, but the few times you play as her you're stripped of your hard earned equipment as well as your experience points and the abilities you worked for, now being forced to play as her. You're not even properly told of what abilities she has, you sorta have to try things and see if she can do them or not. Apparently, Bayek was supposed to die early on the story and you'd play as Aya, and that probably would've worked better since we could've gotten a more sympathetic portrayal. You don't need to look far to see how much people disliked her on Youtube comments, and it makes sense, she's very unlikeable and in gameplay she is a huge step down from how you've been playing. Kratos works as an angry character because we get glimpses into his humanity, even at his most unlikeable, during God of War III, he'd still take Pandora as a substitute for his daughter. We've got a new modern-day protagonist, and we saw too little of her to make heads or tails of her, as of now, can't say I care about her, she seems a bit too arrogant for my tastes. That said, the modern-day segments are mercifully short.
Look, I've made fun of Ubisoft for pretending to be woke and then making Evie Frye 'Weak but stealthy' as opposed to her brother, who was 'strong' because he is the dude, I'm all in for diverse portrayal of characters. However, I think they tried TOO hard with this game. Most of the Warriors Bayek meets are women, there's even a female Gladiator. And then men take them seriously, the Lanista boasts about her as his finest Warrior. It feels very unauthentic for the era, an era in which sexism ran rampart. And I can't help but feel slightly disappointed considering how much attention to detail they pay when it comes to recreating these past eras. If it was up to me, I'd have a fewer number of female warriors, but better developed, and have the men in the game actually comment upon it in a negative way, and then have these women join Aya's pre-Assasssin order, a place where they could be accepted beyond the societal norms of the era. I think it'd be a better work around in order to have strong female characters, but still make sense for them during the era. I just think there were better ways of having their cake and eat it too, y'know?
Alright, final complaints about the story... I felt it started off very promising, but for whatever reason it felt a bit... forgettable? It starts with Bayek's son getting murdered by an order of people code-named after animals("The Snake"), and it's all about him and Aya trying to bring them down. This order would be the precursor to the Templars. But as a whole, this whole Hidden Ones vs The Order isn't as interesting as it should be, and despite them being precursors to the Assassins and Templars, it feels too far removed from them. I liked Bayek, and I liked this depiction of Cleopatra, but I think the rest of the characters were forgettable, Caesar was a complete wasted opportunity, he was so lame and left no lasting impression.
Well, the script is a bit of a bust, luckily the game fares a bit better. For starters, Egypt is MASSIVE, and it has a ton of "?" signs on the map, just like The Witcher 3, which hide side activities. Mostly having to do with finding hidden treasure or finding treasure AND defeating X amount of Captains and Generals inside an enemy encampment. Beside the trademark Ubisoft busywork the game offers about 150 side quests, which is massive. As much as it borrows from the Witcher, I can't say most side quests were very memorable or interesting, but, hey, if you like the game you won't find any shortage of stuff to do, and I can appreciate that. I cleared 120 missions, including side missions, and felt satisfied enough, even if I didn't finish every side mission.
Gameplay has seen the most changes since AC 3. This is an a RPG, so now you obtain XP and level up. You have a skill tree made up of three branches, and you can level up on forever, there are three skills, one for each branch, that can be leveled up as much as you want, letting you dump all those bonus Skill Points you get after you reach level 40. One thing I didn't like about this system is that they went about it exactly like Xenoblade. If you try to attack an enemy that's 5 levels above you or higher you'll deal chip damage, while they can easily massacre you in one or two hits. That said, the game clearly defines the recommended level per area on the map, so if you veer where you shouldn't it's completely on you.
Parkour has been further simplified since Syndicate, just press X once and you'll be able to freely climb up however you see fit, and hold Circle for Bayek to make his way down a building. It works pretty well, I think. Since it's an RPG, now there many different weapons to equip, from double swords, to axes or spears, as well as different types of bow. There's not a whole lot of different weapons for each type, and there are no modifiers, the only thing that changes is its level. You can only equip weapons of your own level, and you upgrade weaker weapons up to your own level at any Blacksmith, for a hefty fee. In my case, by level 20 I had already found the Rare dual swords, single-handed sword, bows and shield I wanted to use for the rest of the game, so every five levels I'd go the blacksmith and upgrade them to my level.
Combat is fun, for the most part, but it got a bit boring by the end. R1 is your weak attack, and R2 is your strong attack. L1 makes Bayek adopt a defensive position that blocks most basic attacks in front of you, but for the red-tinted attacks you gotta dodge, with square. By the end of the game, after I was level 40, the game quickly devolved into mashing R1, or pressing R2 to break their defense and then mash R1. Or, if it came to the big enemies or enemies with Tower Shields, hold R2 to charge an attack, dodge, and then press R2 to break their defenses and mash R1. Also, R1+R2 every now and then to use my super move. It devolved into something that was super repetitive, although it never felt completely devoid of fun.... except when the game forced me to play as Aya and deal little damage to my enemies.
Speaking of Aya, she gets 3 naval battle sections, and these were pretty fun, it's a shame there's only three of them. Going back to the combat itself(Quite a rollercoaster, eh!) I think that adding proper special moves and the such would've eased the repetition. I mean more moves besides R1+R2, something like... hold R2 and every face buttons performs a different ability, governed by some kind of cooldown meter. That would've been really neat.
Lastly, while Ubisoft took their time to make this game, or so they say, it's still filled to the brim with bugs. Some bugs tanked the framerate and forced me to restart, this one time Bayek FUSED to a column I was trying to climb, and one time I fell below a pyramid, dropping below the game's world itself. Nothing game breaking, thankfully.
I think Assassin's Creed Origins offers an interesting new direction for the series, but it's become so time consuming that I don't know when I'll continue with Odyssey. I think there's a lot to like about the new combat, and Egypt provides some gorgeous vistas. Sadly, the story was uninteresting, and the sidesquests didn't fare much better. As far as combat goes, this isn't a bad first attempt, but I hope they expand upon it. Still, despite how I felt the game left something to be desired on many different fronts, I still think the game is more than a sum of its parts, y'know? When you bring every piece together, it makes for a fun way to pass some time.
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