Before last night, I had never played an Assassin's Creed game. I had a lot of preconceived notions about the series primarily based on assumptions and a few scattered bits of information I'd managed to glean from other people's impressions. I'd heard some pretty good things about Assassin's Creed Odyssey, though, and so I decided to pick it up on sale (along with Assassin's Creed Origins, in fact).
I'm not far in yet, but it seems really good. I'm surprised at just how much of an RPG it is. My impression before was that the series was more action with some stealth elements, but Odyssey has leveling, a skill tree, gear, and dialogue choices. I decided to start my run by picking Kassandra as my playable character and I'm glad I did because she seems really fun. My favorite moment so far involves her hiding behind a wall in a cave pretending to be the voice of the god a down-on-her-luck villager was praying to. My first impression of her is that she's tough-as-nails but maybe a little unhinged. Of course, my dialogue choices seem to affect her characterization in subtle ways too, but we'll have to see how that pans out as I progress further in the game.
The gameplay itself feels pretty good. I'm not totally sold on the melee combat but there's more to it than, say, Horizon Zero Dawn. Sneaking up on people and taking them out feels great, but I would expect no less from a game called Assassin's Creed. I like that assassinations require just a simple button press if I'm positioned properly. It's not binary, though. If my damage isn't high enough or my skills not developed, I may not necessarily take them out with my initial strike and then I'll have to brawl with them before they go down. And of course that means I might attract more enemies.
I'm definitely not used to the Assassin's Creed gameplay loop yet. Although I've only played for a couple of hours, I've been in a lot of situations where I attracted a whole gaggle of armed foes to my position and become quickly overwhelmed. I expect as I progress further in the game I'll get a little better at avoiding undue attention and defeating enemies quickly and quietly, one at a time. I know that if I so choose, I have the ability to develop Kassandra into more of a brawler, but I think I'll definitely follow the more traditional assassin route. I've already put a point into a poison that I can coat my weapons with. I really enjoy the rogue archetype, so I think that'll be a lot of fun.
I'm not completely familiar with how Odyssey differs from other games in the series, but this one is very open-world. It's very pretty to look at too and feels great to explore. I don't have a sense of just how big it is, but climbing around broken pillars and clambering over mountains feels like a dream. There's less of a sense of stamina management like Breath of the Wild, so I feel like I can acrobatically dart from place to place without a care. It seems like a very fun game that I expect I'll have a lot to say about once I play some more. I'm probably not going to fully commit to it until I've finished Breath of the Wild in a satisfactory way, but I think it's safe to say this will be my main focus after that.
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