Assassins Creed: Odyssey
Well, I'm level 27 now, and I can safely say that this is one of favorite games in recent memory. Although, I can understand why some gave it up after a certain point. For some reason, at around level 15, the game seems to be out of ideas for a rather long time. You discover a new land, with all sorts of question marks to uncover, but it seems aimless because there are no meaty side missions popping up. This goes on for like at least three or four more levels, where it just seems your options are "main quest" or bullshit missions where your tasked with taking out one of a billion enemy bases, or literally just delivering some trinket from point A to B. I was about ready to write it off as another UBI open world game, where they front load the game with interesting shit, and then just phone it in. You start to think "I guess this is it. Well, it was fun for a little while at least".
However, once you get to level 19 or 20, all these mission markers start popping up everywhere, and you're right back into Skyrim mode. All of a sudden, the game fleshes itself out, and the missions are meaty and fun. And it hasn't quit after that lull. I'm getting "rare" achievements for just completing some of these quests, that you would think would be par for the course for anyone that played the game. People simply gave up before the game came back around, and I can't really blame them. It's really odd design, and maybe it's because I'm playing on "explorer mode", which is the game's default setting, that these missions didn't start showing up on the map earlier and at least show you that there is more to come. That doesn't make sense though, because you don't need to get the bird out to scout these missions. They just start popping up. It's like they just didn't have anything for those three or four levels. I honestly don't understand what the criteria is for these missions to start showing up on the map. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, other than just putting in the time.
So yeah, it's still awesome, but it does ask the player to get over a very substantial hump, where fatigue might set in, to keep it going.
Other than that, I gotta say, this game is one of the best looking games I've ever played. Yeah, they reuse a lot of assets, but every area has something unique in between it all. Given the size of ridiculously huge map, I'm very impressed at how it still manages to offer up unique locales. This ain't 500 flavors of the same thing, like "Just Cause". They put a damn good effort into making every area feel distinct in some way. I'm constantly blown away at the level of detail in this.
