u/Lopsided_Prior3801

AC Odyssey is one of the open-world RPG games within the AC franchise, focused as much on melee combat as stealth and assassination, while also adding in some sailing and naval combat. It's often put in the same bracket as AC Origins and AC Valhalla.

Odyssey is one of the better-rated games in the franchise, but it wasn't for me. This game almost hits the mark. There is a LOT that Ubisoft did right here. But playing in 2026, this game feels very underwhelming and repetitive. After giving this game a proper shake for 20 hours recently (and this is my second attempt), I'm just not prepared to spend another 130 slogging through the rest of the content.

Pros:

• Great graphics and art direction for a 2018 game that absolutely holds up in 2026. From that era, probably only RDR2 is better looking for an open-world game.
• Beautiful and very large open world to explore. (So large it's intimidating.)
• Wonderful history tour of Ancient Greece that also immerses you in their mythology.
• Runs at a smooth and locked 60fps on current-gen consoles. (I played on Xbox Series X.)
• No shortage of content and quests.
• Solid protagonist in Kassandra. (Didn't try Alexios.)
• Solid voice acting, cutscenes, and story (so far).
• Some of your choices seem to actually matter.
• Technically, it's been a mostly bug-free, polished, and smooth experience (at least on console).
• Often available with all DLC on a massive discount for very cheap.

Cons:

• The 'wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle' idiom applies to so much of AC Odyssey. Or perhaps 'jack of all trades, master of none'. This is because AC Odyssey is three okay games in one. The sailing and naval combat is okay but not great. The RPG-based melee combat is okay but not great. The stealth, parkour, and assassination game is okay but not great. The mechanics for each are not as deep as other AAA games (including other AC games) that just focussed on one of these areas.
• Combat has no weight to it, gets repetitive quickly, and isn't helped by spongey enemies with giant health pools. Melee combat here is a bad souls-like.
• The skill tree seems very promising and I don't deny some of the skills are highly satisfying, yet it doesn't seem to add up to something greater than the sum of its parts. There is not the same "dance" to combat as better AC games and other open-world combat games. This is partly because the game interrupts its own flow at times by making you build adrenaline and wait for the cooldowns on skills. (I could see how this might get better at higher levels if I kept playing.)
• Parkour isn't as deep as other AC games. Parkour mostly involves holding "A" and letting the game figure out the rest. The world also doesn't have as much verticality as other AC titles. Other AC games do parkour better, and while many other open-world games that don't do parkour do better traversal of the open world through other means.
• Stealth mostly involves crouching in bushes, whistling, and creeping up behind enemies. This is, again, simpler than other AC titles.
• Assassination is often frustrating as it's stat-based. Getting the drop on an enemy and stabbing them through the heart or cutting their throat means nothing if they're a higher level. (Okay, apparently if you focus exclusively on assassination, this changes at higher levels.)
• The open world is large but also empty and sterile. There is little to interact with outside points of interest.
• Very grindy, very repetitive. This game wants you to spend 200 hours with it. But the towns and points of interest become very repetitive, as does the process of clearing out forts. The levelling system is very padded. This game doesn't respect your time.

A lot of other people seem to love this game, and I can't deny it's well made in many ways. The 2018 critic reviews on Metacritic rated the game 83%. Recent Steam user reviews also put the game at 83%. However, the user reviews on Metacritic are a significantly lower 6.9/10.

I agree with that last rating from a gameplay perspective, even though I rate the production values of the game much higher (again, especially for 2018). Perhaps if I'd played this game in 2018, I would have been blown away. Something about the fundamental gameplay loop in AC Odyssey just leaves me cold--it's a touch too simplistic, repetitive, and with a lack of tactical meta-level to it.

I thought I would love this game given what I'd read from so many other players and my affinity for most open-world RPGs. Oddly, I now feel like one of those AC purists who hates on the AC RPG games because they want to go back to the original stealth/assassination style of gameplay that the franchise was built on. I'm now wondering if I should give AC Unity a try instead.