Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (2020): The Review

Overview

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla fully embraces the Viking fantasy with a scale and confidence that makes Eivor’s journey incredibly easy to get lost in. From its breathtaking landscapes and atmospheric settlements to its memorable cast of allies and rivals, the game constantly delivers the feeling of carving out a legend across a living world packed with things to discover. The sheer amount of content can sometimes become exhausting, and the technical rough edges occasionally disrupt the sense of immersion, especially when the grind starts to overshadow the excitement of exploration. Still, when Valhalla finds its rhythm, it becomes an absorbing historical epic filled with adventure, ambition, and enough unforgettable moments to justify every hour spent in its world.

Score: 7,5 out of 10

The Positives ✅

There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes with leaving home knowing you may never truly belong there again. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla understands that feeling surprisingly well beneath all its axes, raids, and mythological spectacle. At its core, this is a story about migration, identity, and the uneasy process of building a future on unfamiliar soil while dragging the weight of your past behind you. The Viking fantasy is obviously the immediate draw, storming monasteries, sailing through rivers, carving alliances across England, but what stayed with me most was the quieter emotional undercurrent running beneath all the conquest.

Eivor is one of the strongest protagonists the franchise has produced in years largely because they feel torn between multiple worlds constantly. Warrior, poet, leader, believer, outsider, Eivor spends much of the story trying to reconcile those identities while navigating an England fractured by politics, religion, and violence. Unlike some earlier Assassin’s Creed protagonists who often felt defined by a single dominant personality trait, Eivor carries this constant tension between brutality and introspection that makes them genuinely compelling. They can be savage one moment and surprisingly reflective the next.

And honestly, the world itself is breathtaking. Ubisoft’s recreation of Dark Ages England feels melancholic in a way many open worlds rarely attempt. Mist-covered forests, crumbling Roman ruins, muddy villages, endless coastlines, candlelit monasteries, there’s this constant sense that you’re wandering through a civilization caught between collapse and rebirth. The map isn’t simply beautiful in a conventional sense; it feels ancient and weathered, as though history itself is slowly eroding into the landscape around you.

The settlement system especially gives the journey emotional grounding. Ravensthorpe gradually evolving from a small camp into a thriving community creates a stronger sense of personal investment than many Ubisoft open worlds typically achieve. Watching merchants arrive, buildings expand, relationships form, and your people slowly carve out a home in hostile territory gives the story an emotional center beyond simple conquest. It transforms England from a checklist-filled map into somewhere Eivor genuinely wants to belong.

Combat also feels satisfyingly brutal for the most part. Compared to the more hitbox-focused style of Odyssey, Valhalla leans harder into weight and impact. Axes crunch through armor, shields splinter apart, and finishers erupt into gloriously excessive violence that makes every raid feel chaotic and visceral. Dual-wielding different weapon combinations especially adds variety to encounters, allowing players to experiment with wildly different playstyles depending on whether they prefer speed, raw power, or complete insanity.

The side content deserves more praise than it often receives too. Ubisoft wisely scaled back some of the bloated traditional side quest design and replaced much of it with smaller “World Events” that feel more spontaneous and self-contained. Some are funny, others tragic, and many simply strange in ways that make England feel more human and unpredictable. They rarely overstay their welcome, which helps exploration remain engaging far longer than expected.

The soundtrack and atmosphere also elevate everything enormously. Jesper Kyd, Sarah Schachner, and Einar Selvik created one of the franchise’s strongest musical identities, blending Nordic instrumentation, ambient melancholy, and sweeping orchestral pieces into something that constantly reinforces the feeling of wandering through a mythologized version of history. Sailing through fog-covered rivers while distant chants echo across the water remains one of the game’s most immersive experiences.

The Negatives ⚠️

As strong as Valhalla can be at its best, it also embodies nearly every exhausting excess Ubisoft open-world design became known for during this era. The biggest issue is simple: the game is far too long. Not “big” in an exciting epic sense, but genuinely overextended in ways that eventually dilute the emotional momentum of the story itself.

The alliance arc structure, while conceptually interesting, becomes incredibly repetitive over time. Region after region introduces new political conflicts, local rulers, betrayals, and alliances that often blur together after dozens of hours. Some arcs are genuinely compelling, but others feel like mandatory filler standing between the player and the actual central narrative involving Sigurd, Basim, and the Hidden Ones. The pacing suffers enormously because the game constantly interrupts its strongest storylines with hours of loosely connected regional politics.

Combat, while satisfying initially, also starts feeling repetitive the longer the game stretches on. Enemy variety simply isn’t diverse enough to sustain such an enormous runtime without encounters eventually blending together mechanically. Raids especially lose some excitement after repeated assaults begin following nearly identical rhythms across different locations.

Stealth, ironically for an Assassin’s Creed game, remains one of the weakest parts of the experience. While social stealth technically returns, it rarely feels mechanically meaningful compared to earlier entries in the series. Detection systems can feel inconsistent, enemy AI often behaves erratically, and the game generally pushes players toward open combat far more frequently than careful infiltration.

The RPG systems are also strangely bloated while simultaneously feeling less meaningful than they initially appear. The massive skill tree looks overwhelming at first glance, but many upgrades offer fairly minor statistical changes rather than dramatically altering gameplay. Gear progression similarly becomes less exciting over time because the game encourages players to stick with upgraded equipment for long stretches rather than constantly discovering transformative new loot.

And honestly, the map itself occasionally becomes exhausting to engage with despite how beautiful it is. Ubisoft’s obsession with sheer content density means England constantly floods players with icons, collectibles, activities, mysteries, and objectives until exploration starts feeling less like discovery and more like maintenance work. There were absolutely moments where I loved wandering through the world naturally, and others where the sheer scale became mentally draining.

The Experience 🎮

Playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla feels like living inside a saga someone is desperately trying to preserve before history swallows it whole.

That’s what stayed with me most. Beneath all the raids and political conflicts is this lingering sadness surrounding cultures in transition. The Norse settlers arrive in England searching for stability, purpose, and land to call their own, yet there’s constantly this awareness that their identity itself may slowly erode in the process. Eivor spends much of the game balancing conquest with belonging, violence with legacy.

And honestly, the atmosphere carries the experience through many of its weaker stretches. There’s something deeply immersive about riding through fog-covered English countrysides while ruins from older civilizations crumble quietly in the distance. Valhalla constantly feels haunted by history. Roman remnants litter the landscape, pagan beliefs clash against Christianity, and every kingdom seems built atop the ruins of something older and half-forgotten.

At the same time, the game became emotionally exhausting in ways I wasn’t always prepared for. Not because the story is relentlessly tragic, but because the sheer scale of the experience starts creating fatigue eventually. There were stretches where I became fully absorbed in Eivor’s journey and others where the endless cycle of alliances, raids, and regional conflicts made the pacing feel almost overwhelming.

Still, certain moments lingered with me long afterward. Quiet conversations around campfires. Sailing through frozen rivers while music echoed across the water. Wandering through abandoned ruins at sunset. The strange dreamlike mythology sequences. Eivor reflecting on fate, glory, and mortality. Valhalla is often at its best during these quieter moments rather than its loudest spectacles.

The relationship between Eivor and Sigurd especially gives the story its emotional backbone. Underneath the political drama and Isu mythology is a deeply personal story about loyalty, admiration, jealousy, and fractured brotherhood. That relationship grounds the larger narrative whenever the scale threatens to spiral too far outward.

By the end, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla didn’t feel like a perfectly paced masterpiece. It felt like an enormous, messy, occasionally exhausting Viking saga filled with moments of genuine beauty scattered between stretches of excess. It’s too long. It’s bloated. Some systems feel undercooked. But it’s also atmospheric, emotionally sincere, visually stunning, and strangely meditative in ways I didn’t fully expect.

And honestly, few games make wandering through history feel this tangible, even when they occasionally get lost inside their own ambition.