As the second work in the Assassin's Creed series mythological trilogy, although Odyssey has a good reputation established by "Origins", because each is responsible for different development groups, even if it inherits the infrastructure and gameplay of the previous game, the overall style is very different. Not only has Odyssey evolved in terms of combat, improving the overly earthy combat in Origins, but it has also made all sorts of changes to the RPG element, and this time, we'll talk about what's known as the pinnacle of the Assassin's Creed series.
A more RPG-like experience
Assassin's Creed has been a complete makeover since The Origins, simply to follow the industry trend toward ARPG, and the mechanism inherited by Odyssey has also further advanced towards the RPG experience in many ways.
Compared with the single main line of "Origins", "Odyssey" is obviously a reference to the 2015 game "The Witcher 3", whether it is the main line or the side line in the game, there will be a large number of dialogue choices, some links will even directly affect the ending, and some will have an impact on the current or ending of the event. For example, an event in the middle of the game will make you decide whether to assassinate or not, which will directly affect the main line of the game, and even let you choose whether to kill someone not long after the game prologue is over. Indeed, Ubisoft's games are generally insufficient in depth compared to RPGs of the level of "The Elder Scrolls" and "The Witcher", but if you are not so deliberately asking for comparison, I personally feel that it is a good experience, which greatly enhances the sense of substitution, no longer just looking at the plot, but feeling empathetic to interact and make choices.
At the same time, the complete story of "Odyssey" needs three lines to interpret - family, artifact, and religion. If you only play the family line, you may not be able to feel what the protagonist's bloodline, his true life, or the cult that has a huge impact on his own destiny and family really is. Under such a mechanism, combined with Ubisoft's consistent good open map, the level system inherited from Origins and the equipment skill system, plus the exploration of the map, the Greek islands and naval battles, the mercenary wanted and the main branch line, the overall play has a feeling of exploring ancient Greece. Riding the seas on a boat, protecting people from the threat of the gods, and even exploring the secrets of the Isu and mythical creature battles, etc., the RPG experience provided by Odyssey is quite good in these aspects.
Fully evolved battles
"Origins" is the first time to change to ARPG, and "Odyssey" is a great improvement on its basis, the following is divided into 3 levels:
skill
The skill of this piece of "Odyssey" can be said to be quite a comprehensive improvement, compared to "Origin" most of them are just the design of ability improvement, "Odyssey" not only sets some of the necessary passive or ability directly into another unlock, the active combat skills and "Origin" can be said to be earth-shaking. Melee combat alone has spartan kicks, shock waves and even bursts or continuous attacks with broken spears, and there are also arrow rain, explosive arrows, continuous shooting, etc. In terms of range, the choice also allows Odyssey to use skill disk switching, and players can freely match their favorite fighting styles.
This design makes the combat and stealth experience of "Odyssey" greatly surpass "Origin", "Origin" not only lacks melee skills, but also the range is almost the use of predator arrows to the end, resulting in the "Origin" combat experience is too mediocre. And "Odyssey" is not only quite smooth and refreshing, but also the player's active attack options are quite numerous, in a battle I can attach fire to the sword, can explode, can shock waves, can fire arrows rain or even explosive arrows, compared to the "Origin" monotonous block and weak strong attack attack and lack of active skills, combat fun and refreshment are not the same level at all.
Action richness and performance
Although "Origin" is also an excellent work, its action richness and performance are really a bit insufficient, and the end is obviously two, and the light and heavy attacks of each weapon are separate and the number of segments is small. And the ridiculous design of a weapon that costs air bars is actually just a poke in the past, or even the ridiculous design of using explosive gas as a strong attack technique, which makes the combat experience of Origins very bad for players who care more about variability and performance richness. And "Odyssey" has almost no problems in this regard, in addition to several kinds of active combat skills, spending air to attack the "Origin" completely in the performance and number of segments, the performance of the finishing technique also sees at least three kinds, and the sense of dungeon and sound effects are also in place, so that the combat experience of "Odyssey" is very refreshing and good.
Equip the system
Although the equipment system of "Origin" also has skill enhancements, not only is the number of skills small, but the weapons and equipment skills are obviously still testing the waters, which are all single advantages and do not have the overall planning and set matching feeling. In this regard, "Odyssey" not only has a large number of skills can also be replaced by an additional blacksmith, but also the design of the suit effect and various skills is closer to the RPG, such as liking to use fire attack to find all the equipment that strengthens the fire attack, and there is a design such as assassin damage +15% that is obviously matched with long range or assassination, so that the equipment system of "Odyssey" is more fun and deeper than that of "Origin".
A flat plot
The plot of the Assassin series is honestly excluded from the second-generation trilogy, and the rest is quite dependent on personal subjective preferences to correct, and there is no plot that most players recognize as particularly good. "Odyssey" can be said to be more subtle in this regard, as mentioned earlier, "Odyssey" splits the plot into three, the main force is the family lineage, from the beginning to understand that the young self was caused by the oracle to break the family and go into exile, and when he became an adult, he engaged in mercenary work to earn money and make a living, and embarked on a journey to find his life.
The family line personally feels that it is decent, along the way slowly understand the actions and manipulations behind the cult, after finding the mother and adoptive father, determined to face up to their childhood trauma, and even plan to find their siblings, experienced the sacrifice of Phoebe like a sister, or the death of Pericles and Brasidas, all of which make people empathize with the ruthlessness of the chaotic world. But the final cliff recognition always feels that the change is still too fast, the moment of receiving the task just feels that the protagonist wants to return to the original location to ease the emotions, once the past found that the siblings used by the Divine Sect were coincidentally present, and then a series of dialogue choices after the change of heart to a family reunion, the laying out and transformation is not enough, can not help but make people feel a little abrupt.
And the Divine Sect Line is basically similar to the bounty of things in the whole process and there is not much plot and performance, the most is to collect a variety of clue files to see, to finish all of them also need to take a lot of effort, and finally waiting for the player is someone when escaping athens, after a dialogue still does not have much sense of reality, the whole game does not perform the part she mentioned, so the player's feeling is extremely weak, and even just feel that it is to find a step to end the plot quickly. The artifact line is even more strange, the cause is that your mother told you that the beginning was not your real father, and then after finding someone, she inexplicably told a bunch of mysterious things to ask you to find the artifact. Although it is interesting to find the side of the artifact and fight the mythical creatures, in the end, people will give you the scepter out of nowhere, obviously with the purpose of getting involved with the modern line and the Isu people that the Assassins have always had. In the end, although it is very emotional to see the protagonist in modern times, the artifact line really has an inexplicable feeling.
In general, players can indeed feel the cult manipulating the Greek world behind their backs, feel the pain of sibling separation and family breakdown, and in the process, there are bloody performances like the hot springs at the beginning, the surprise of meeting Brasidas for the first time, the feeling of finding their mother and the mystery of their own origins, the complicated feelings about siblings, and so on. But the player will only see a few encounters with the siblings and no intersection of dialogue, there is no obvious shot to describe the confusion of the siblings, the only bridge section is only the dialogue in prison after making the right choice at the end, such a laying and the sudden and sharp turn of the final reunion task, can only say that this is a fairly ok story, so hastily ended and forcibly helped the modern line to continue, people feel a little sorry.
Familiar open-map gameplay
The Ubisoft-style open map believes that without further ado, the second part of the mythological trilogy is naturally highly similar to Origins, but I want to emphasize that if you have a deep prejudice against such a game mode, you naturally cannot draw other conclusions.
Odyssey is designed to keep you fully engaged, with a variety of exclamation points and sidelines mostly with a certain dialogue script and story background, and various locations on the map that allow players to thrive. For example, think about how to use your current skill equipment to invade and complete the goal of a fortress, such as exploring underwater treasures while enjoying the scenery brought to you by the game, such as fighting against various mercenaries to enjoy the excitement of battle, and so on. The Odyssey has a very large Mediterranean world for players to explore, a bird's-eye view of the area that helps you understand the surrounding area, and a pleasure to sail between islands. Therefore, whether the mentality can be correctly integrated into the game world and enjoy the fun, or whether it is subjective and subjective is called a sense of homework, is a matter of opinion.
epilogue
"Odyssey" has a huge and detailed ancient Greek world, refreshing and changeable combat and ARPG experience, decent plot and mainstream open map gameplay, plus two DLC also have three chapters, while the game's main line dialogue choices affect the outcome and process slightly different, these are the "Odyssey" different from the previous "Origins", making people feel more that I am playing the protagonist, rather than simply looking at the story. Although there are problems with the separation of the plot and the subtle level of the story, it is still a superior work.