Assassins' Creed: Odyssey: PS4 Review

Assassins' Creed: Odyssey: PS4 Review

Released by Ubisoft

Platform: PS4

The Assassins' series was growing stale in many ways.

Starting to be consumed only by its own sense of mythology, the run got a boost with a year off and the release of the Origins game set in Egypt last year.

Returning to the annual release window, Assassin's Creed Odyssey's open world scope and the diving further back into the past to embrace mythology sets the gaming bar purely on fun and fiction, rather than fact.

Set in 431BC Ancient Greece and with a variant of the Peloponnesian War unfolding in front of you, you get to play a female or male mercenary cycling between Athens and Sparta.  Not just that, various side missions pop up as well, giving you the chance to either grind away for XP or simply concentrate on the story quest. From tracking down thieves to escorting people, these quests are largely unimportant to the game, but do build a sense of story and world within.

It's fair to say that Assassin's Creed Odyssey is a game to dive into.

While the size of the open world does mean from time to time that horrific glitches occur - there's been occasions where riding horses through walls is entirely possible but defies every sense of logic going - the scope for losing yourself in the game is immense, and time consuming.

Progression is sometimes slow, and to be frank, the gaining of XP is necessary so that you can deal with bounty hunters who tirelessly stalk you (and all of whom have a higher level than you) but it's a bit of a chore to have the gameplay so strictly tied to this.

But some of the skills offered as rewards are worth it.

Chiefly, the chance to get a power up that gives you the propensity to kick like Gerard Butler in 300 called This Is Sparta elicited more than a snigger first up. Later, it became obvious this is quite the tool to have in a fight as well, giving more than a little credence to its use.

The cut scenes and stilted conversations still jar a little, and detract from the game in someways, even though they're a necessity, but again this is a minor niggle.

Ultimately, Assassin's Creed Odyssey is a game that targets epic, and largely achieves it for a playable and disposably enjoyable outcome.