Game completed: Assassin's Creed Odyssey

When I decided to take a break from the Elder Scrolls Total War mod I started AC Odyssey which I've been curious about for a while. My curiosity peaked when Kassandra showed up in Valhalla. So off I went. 

When I was growing up, and especially as a teenager, I had a very intense interest in Greek mythology and Ancient Greece, so it was a lot of fun to experience that old passion as a living world. Sokrates is just as annoying in-game as he is IRL. Philosophy is not my thing. 

Kassandra, however, was an extremely loveable character and I enjoyed playing her way more than I thought I would. Her entire quest to save her family was really captivating, but I did it the long way around. After I found Myrrine and she said "I'll see you in Sparta" I went off and completed the entire world; every location, every side quest, every available achievement, and even Legacy of the First Blade DLC. And then I went to Sparta to finish the main quest xD She really had to wait a long time. 

Legacy of the First Blade gets a lot of flak for not suiting Kassandra, but she does mention more than once throughout the game that she wishes for a normal life away from mercenary work. And so she tries that. Makes perfect sense in my book. It goes to poop, but sets the stage for Origins (which I'll play at some point). 

I got very attached to Brasidas and was so sad when I couldn't save him. Even googled if it was possible to save him, but it's not. I never liked Alexios and I blame most of it on the fact that I think they gave him the wrong voice. 

As usual I had a lot of fun flirting and sleeping with every available character. Kassandra gets around xD Especially the side quest with the two brothers both vying for her love was a lot of fun to play. And the side quest where literally everything that can go wrong does go wrong is also hilarious to play. 

It took me a while to get used to warring at sea, but once I got the gist it was a lot of fun. And I spent a substantial amount of hours on the seas.

After I finished the main quest and did the side quests that popped after the main quest was completed I decided it was time for Kassandra to face her destiny and started up the Fate of Atlantis DLC. Elysium was a pretty meh experience imo. Iirc there are two tales of how Persephone became Hades's wife and they chose to go with the least flattering one. In the better of the tales both Hades and Persephone were smitten with each other and Hades gave her an apple as a gift, which Persephone then ate as a rebellious act against her mother, Demeter, which bound her to the Underworld forever. But Ubi just up and chose the more well-known version where Hades thinks she's hot, kidnaps her and then forces an apple down her throat so she can't leave. Lovely. Anyway, working with Hekate and Adonis to bring Perspehone down was a lot of fun.

Then came the Underworld and I just loved Hades. His look, his voice, his antics... He's amazing! Every cutscene featuring him had my finger hovering above the screenshot button so I could take as many shots of him as possible ^^; The Underworld was gnarly though, and it's supposed to be so that was good. Meeting Phoibe again was heart-warming. Charon was a cool dude. Kassandra's sense of humour in this dreary place was on-point.

Finally we arrive at Atlantis and it's absolutely beautiful to look at, but there's some really nasty stuff going on. I decided to run around and complete all the places before I did the quests and then do the side quests before the main quests, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. 

And then the game bugged out on me. After I deposed Atlas the next quest just didn't show up. Tried reloading an older save and redo the whole previous quest, but that didn't get it to work. Tried restarting the game, but the quest didn't pop. Tried restarting my whole computer because sometimes that does the trick, but no dice. Tried verifying my files on Steam, had no effect. Tried fast-travelling back and forth, still no quest. Tried portal-jumping from Atlantis to the Underworld to Elysium to Atlantis, but the quest still refused to pop up. Having exhausted all of my options that didn't require me to restart the whole DLC and lose all of that progress I decided to just watch the end on Youtube. I had about one hour of playthrough left. 190 hours in and 92 out of 93 achievements. Literally everything on every map completed and I can't finish the game. 

I found one old thread on Ubisoft support forums mentioning this problem, but it was from September 2021 and left unsolved. I made a thread on the game's Steam forum and Ubi actually replied to it asking me to verify my game files and provide a video showing the problem. I did all of that and they haven't got back to me yet. It's been three weeks.

So yeah, my amazing stint in Ancient Greece ended as a flop instead of with a bang. Today (well, yesterday now) I decided to give up and uninstall the game.