Game completed: Assassin's Creed Valhalla

I loved this game. It took me 132 hours to complete. I wasn't planning on getting this game. I was going to keep working on my backlog until Cybperunk dropped and then dive straight into that. But then I figured why not and bought Valhalla and started playing. And it was amazing.

The game starts right away and I thought I had been an idiot and missed the point where I could change whether Eivor was male or female. But I figured I could try to play as a man since that's where the game starts; with a boy. But after just a few minutes I realised it would be way too jarring for me to have a man with a grandmother's name. But just as I was about to restart and try to figure out where to decide on Eivor's gender the cutscenes ended and I was able to choose. Phew!

Female Eivor has recieved a lot of criticism for being too manly, too try-hard, too butch, but I loved her. She was rough, sure, but she had to grow up rough. She played with the boys and she grew up a warrior, which wasn't all that unusual for the time. 

The story intrigued me from the start and I wanted to keep it going, but I can't move on to a new zone until I have completely covered the zone I'm in and getting every single collectable, every single side quest, and explored every inch of the map. So it was over 10 hours before I actually completed the prologue and left Norway for England.

Once we got to England the story really kicked off. The whole Order layout reminded me of Shadow of Mordor and I really enjoyed working my way through it. I did not expect that part of the game to end as it did.

The first time I travelled to Asgard I thought it was so cool! And it was after that first trip that I started to suspect where the story was headed. Except I absolutely did not figure out Basim's role in the whole thing and so was pleasantly surprised at how the story unfurled. In hindsight I really should've seen that coming smh. 

The side things to be done in each zone consisted of wealth (ingots for equipment improvement, skill books, equipment and materials for upgrading your settlement), mysteries (cairns, flyting, offering altars, legendary animals, treasures of britain, daughters of lerion, lost drengr, fly agarics, world events, standing stones and animus anomalies), and artifacts (flying papers, rigosogur fragments, treasure hoard maps, roman artifacts and cursed symbols). The wealth and artifacts were mostly just go here and figure out how to pick up the thing. Mysteries were usually either battles or tiny side quests. I ended up hating cairns, offering altars, animus anomalies and flying papers. Still, I did them all. Cairns is always at a place with a great view requiring you to stack stones into cairns the way RL Vikings did, and I hated it because it always took too much damn time and they always fell over :@ Offering altars weren't that many, but some of them asked for fish and I despise fishing in any game. Flying papers required you to chase after a flying paper over the rooftops of towns and I suck at jumping puzzles, which is also why I hated the animus anomalies because they were jumping puzzles deluxe. 

The game broke my heart so many times as so many characters grew close to you just to be taken away, and it always made me so sad. But I also got to sleep with a bunch of people and that always made me giggle :3 Eivor's conquests in my game became Randvi, Broder, Petra, Vili and Tarben. I really wanted a relationship with either Vili or Ubba, but I had to make do with Tarben. 

Towards the end I made sure to pick up both Excalibur and Mjölnir (Thor's Hammer) so I ended the game wielding Excalibur in one hand and Mjölnir in the other. So badass! :3

I finished pretty much everything, but Uplay says my completion is at 91%. The only things I haven't done are the fishing deliveries (because I hate fishing), the hunting deliveries (because I couldn't be bothered), the dice games and the drinking games (because again I couldn't be bothered). Maybe when the DLCs drop and I have a reason to play it again I'll work on completing those as well. 

When the game ended I both felt like I was happy that it was done and like I needed way more. Can't wait for the DLCs!!!

I haven't played all of the previous AC, but I've read up on them enough to know the protag's names and their general roles in the grand scheme of things. I really appreciated all of the nods to Altaïr, Edward Kenway, Desmond, Bayek and Kassandra :3