Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla sets a series high-water mark

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla casts you as a Viking warrior forced out of their home in Norway.

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

The past makes an excellent playground, and few games illustrate this as well as the Assassin’s Creed games, with their latest entry polishing its blade to a finely honed edge.

Developed and published by Ubisoft for PC, PlayStation and Xbox, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is the 12th game in the historical action-adventure series.

The wider framing device involves a millennia-old struggle between the forces of freedom and control, but the real attraction for the games is the detailed recreation of historical settings – and Valhalla is no exception.

The game is set (mostly) in Britain in the 9th Century AD, and casts you as a Viking warrior named Eivor, who finds themselves forced out of their home in Norway and making their way to Britain in search of a new home, fortune, and glory. The player can choose whether to be a male or female character.

What follows is truly an epic saga with some great twists, turns, surprises and plenty of adventure and combat.

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla games review

Eivor’s travels will take him all over eastern Britain, getting involved in everything from high-level political intrigue to finding lost cats. I played a male character.

Anyone who has played the previous Assassin’s Creed games will be right at home here, and I can comfortably say this is a new high-water mark for the series, combining all the good things from Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, and adding some new elements to create something that’s engaged me in a way few games have managed this year.

What makes this all the more impressive is that it’s set in an era not noted for being colourful or nuanced or indeed especially civilised, yet the game brings all three aspects to the fore.

Combat features prominently in the game and it is brutal, but you can also take a more-stealth based approach, especially when dealing with members of the secretive Order of The Ancients who have ended up on Eivor’s hit list.

It’s hard to overstate exactly how much content there is in this game, but what’s particularly impressive is how none of it feels like padding, and the progression system has been streamlined too.

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla games review

The previous game in the series sometimes came to a full stop between missions if you weren’t levelled up enough to tackle the next one, which is not a problem here. While there are certain areas one would be unwise to venture into without better equipment and abilities, the game has a clear and engaging path for the main story which means that by the time you complete one area, you will be ready for the next one.

Equipment management has also been streamlined, but I found it difficult to work out how some of the gear differed from its counterparts beyond cosmetic appearance.

The writing in the game is very good too. It’s not as well done as Odyssey, but that game had a comedic touch, taking its cues from Ancient Greek comedies, whereas Valhalla is a more serious game, but still with lighthearted moments, particularly in then World Event mini-quests.

Eivor is a likeable and pragmatic character with clear motivations, and a fitting protagonist for the game’s saga.

The dialogue choices mechanic from the previous game makes a welcome return as well, further adding to the immersion, and posing some interesting choices whose consequences aren’t always immediately clear either.

I liked the way your clan’s settlement at Ravensthorpe develops over the course of the game too. To expand it, you need to go on raids (mainly to monasteries), fighting guards and looting resources to construct new buildings at Ravensthorpe, and gain new benefits as a result.

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla games review

The developers have done an incredible job of recreating Viking Era England, from crumbling Roman ruins to Dane villages to the lush English countryside, and the game really shines on next-generation consoles. I reviewed it on the Xbox Series X and the experience was simply stunning, with 4K graphics, high dynamic range colour, and 60 frames per second all the way.

I did experience a handful of issues while playing, notably a crash to the main console menu, some quests bugging out and requiring a reload from the most recent save, and an issue with a saved game file corrupting, but being fixed on restart. The PC version of the game had some frame rate issues and generally required a bit of fiddling around in settings to get it to run well.

Ultimately, I wasn’t sure how well an Assassin’s Creed game set in the Viking Era would work, but I’ve been blown away by how good the game has turned out and how much I’ve enjoyed it.

So many different elements just come together in an incredibly satisfying way, and create an enjoyable, game of the year-worthy experience which proves you don’t need to be asleep to be a Viking.

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is an incredibly compelling voyage and one you should embark upon as soon as possible, especially if you have one of the next-generation consoles.