Assassin’s Creed Valhalla review: A Viking quest worth sinking your axe into

Enlarge / In Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Eivor reps the Raven Clan while storming 9th-century England the only way a Viking knows how: By swinging axes, making pals, and drinking mead. (credit: Ubisoft)

Before I go into everything about Assassin's Creed Valhalla-the writing, the action, the open-world jank-I want to offer an unusual preface. Basically: Gosh, I like this game.

It's a rare earnest turn for me, especially when I'm talking about open-world Ubisoft games. I try to find a fair-and-balanced way to talk about their hours of gameplay, and I respect the heck out of how their multi-studio teams slam together so many moving parts into a giant, playable romp. But personally, I can get bored with them-same fetch quests, same ho-hum mechanics and checklists, year after year. After playing only a few hours of these games, I feel less like an adventurer and more like an errand boy or girl. None of their high-end rendering or historical references can change that feeling.

Yet the Assassin's Creed series has been evolving into AC Valhalla's shape for some time, which we last saw from the character-driven surprise of 2018's AC Odyssey. This year's model is undeniably messy and imperfect, and it doesn't surpass Ghost of Tsushima as my favorite open-world romp so far this year. But it earns my recommendation for getting enough things right-and doing so with more nuance than a phrase like "a more RPG-like Assassin's Creed" implies.

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