So I started playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey a few nights ago. It has been a love/hate relationship. For starters the beginning of this game is insanely difficult, even on Easy. Once past the sort of tutorial with King Leonidas, the game gave me two thugs to kill. That was no problem. So I thought ok, I can do this.

Then I was out walking admiring the scenery and a wolf attacked me. Ok, no big deal. Pretty much RPG 101 is fighting either rats, or wolves. The next thing I knew I was dead. The wolf hit me once, and I lost 90% of my health. I hit it about 4-5 times, which took it down to about 60% of its health. Then it hit me again, and it was over. I reloaded, thinking maybe it was a fluke. It was not. I tried it about 6 times, and died in two hits every time.

*sigh*

So I went back to an older save, and avoided that area with that particular wolf. I killed some bandits, no sweat. A few hours later I almost paniced when I ran into several wolves. But I killed them all. So I figured, ok, this is getting better.

Then the game says a bounty hunter is after me, named Talos (maybe he was looking for his Stormcrown?). I ran into him shortly after, and it was the same story. He hits me twice and I am dead. I hit him a dozen times, and it barely moves his health bar. So I reloaded from an older save, and avoided him. Hours later I try attacking him again, and again, I die about a dozen times. Hours later I figured out that I was doing a lot more damage with a bow. So I tried that against him, and died about a dozen times. So reload to earlier again, and hours later tried for a fourth series of times. After about the 4th time I was able to kill him using just the bow. My guess is that he had about 30 - 40 times my health.

*sigh*

I have no idea if this is indicative of the entire game or not. What makes it more difficult is that there is no command console, and no mods aside from reshades and graphics tweaks. Ubisoft - the game company - is one of those rabid microtransaction lovers. They want you to spend tons of money in their game store to avoid grinding your toon. So they cut off any way of them losing money by making modding or using the console impossible.

Normally this would be a no-brainer for me. I would just delete the game and forget it. But the truth is the game world is just beautiful. I love just walking around and looking at things. I am also deeply impressed with the lengths they went to in order to accurately depict Ancient Greece. This is the real deal. Statues and temples are not pristine white edifices. They are painted in bright colors. People wear the right outfits, down to the wide brim hats. The homes, the lamps, the amphorae, it is all right.

So I am plodding along, hoping these weird lopsided combats are not common. I have had a lot of fights that worked out just fine. Others not so. The sharks in a sunken temple were another insanely frustrating experience. But enough about that.

Edit: After playing a few days, I can definitely say that the game gets a lot easier once you get past Talos, and reach 5th level or so. You can take on packs of enemies the same level as you and defeat them so long as you are paying attention and use some tactics, like keep moving so they cannot all gang up on you at once.

Greeking out

A view from up high (atop a statue of Zeus)

Let's go boating!

There are giants beneath the waves

Uh oh, found the edge of the Truman Show

The last AC game I played was Black Flag. I’ve considered playing Origins and Odyssey, but frankly I have enough to play right now.

Cool, I'm glad one of us has tried an AC game. I've always said that if I discovered the original Assassin's Creed on Playstation 3 years ago, chances are I wouldn't have played Oblivion first. I'm glad I came across Oblivion first. Because later I learned AC's got a fixed protagonist. My nephew later got the original game. It's got some great features (such as, the cities are actually crowded, even if they're mostly generics, this was impressive to see). But overall, I'm glad Bethesda ruined me first.

Yes that does sound ridiculous..... getting pwned by a frickin' wolf in the early part of the game, on Easy. I'm with you there. I also can't do games anymore in which my character dies over and over. Tomb Raider is like this. But at least in TR games, these deaths are due to trying to figure out some insane puzzle while doing flips in mid-air. There is some reward once we finally get Lara's gymnastics right.

I agree the gameworld does look incredible, and your character looks sexy. Well, good luck, hon! Thanks for sharing.

The game is going a lot better now. Once I made it to 5th level is eased up a lot. Now I can fight multiple foes the same level as me and win without too much trouble. So I am hoping it was only the very beginning that was so insanely difficult.

I am almost finished with the starting island. There are a lot of unmarked quests. Like tablets you sometimes find that will prompt you to go a certain place. And if you do there is a reward there. They don't show up in your quest log. But the tablets do remain in your inventory, and get a check mark once you fulfill them.

I found I do a ton of damage with a bow and arrow. It is especially good when clearing out large groups of enemies. I post up in a high spot, and start picking them off. Headshots do extra damage. The only downside is that you have to always hold down a key to use the bow. You do not select a weapon like in other games. The default attack is always with your melee weapon, unless you hold that bow key down. That is annoying.


The ruins of Odysseous' palace are decorated with RL Bronze Age Cretan art

I love the towns

The attention to detail is fabulous

The historical accuracy is incredible

Bigger boats

You start the game with Ikaros - an eagle

Ikaros can go in first and scout out locations

He can mark all the bad guys for you, so you have them on your hud at all times

The wilderness areas are very bucolic

Even the pig farm looks incredible

I'm enjoying your adventure through ancient Greece. I'm glad the game lets you choose your gender now and that bows seem pretty effective. Bowgurl ftw!

In addition to the eagle, you also get a horse right off the bat. I do not ride it much, since I prefer walking. But it is handy for when you need to travel a long distance over a previously explored area. But I am pretty sure I have seen vids online of people using horse archery.

Last night I finished out the starting island. That ended with me getting a ship. So I spent a while sailing, and getting into ship battles. That was... interesting. But it mostly just confused me. I think they have had ships and naval battles in the series since Black Flag (the Henry Rollin's game), and they put it in every game since just because they have it. Granted, since Ancient Greece means a lot of islands, you do need a way to get around the sea. One thing for sure, the naval combat is way better done than Pillars of Eternity 2!

Black Flag naval battles are really fun! Of course, in that you had cannons. How are naval battles fought in Odyssey? Ramming? Arrows? Boarding?

It is a combination of all those. You have ramming of course, which only damages an enemy ship. You also have arrows and javelins you can shoot at enemy ships. Finally you board and fight.

Sounds fun! Not terribly different from Black Flag, in that regard. Your pics and commentary on the game has made me more seriously consider checking it out! I may get it for PS4 though, since there doesn’t seem to be mods for it.

The mods are all cosmetic. However, there are some trainers. I found one called AC Odyssey Tweak Pack. It hacks the .exe file of the game and allows you to make some tweaks. I used it to double the experience I get. This game seems to be all about forcing you to grind your Toon. Or pay money in micro-transactions to avoid that. For example Ubisoft also sells things like experience boosters. I say fuck that.

Hmmm that’s interesting! I definitely wouldn’t pay for faster experience gain either. Like ESO gives away so many experience boost items but they also have purchasable ones in the store. I’m like “do people really buy these?”

So I have progressed in the game. I went to Megaris, the first province after the tutorial island (which really is not a tutorial, it is you figuring out on your own how things work). The world map is divided up into these provinces, and each has its own character level. Thankfully that is written on the map, so you know where not to go when you are low level.

One thing I really like is there are no load screens between provinces. It all takes place seamlessly. Even when you are sailing from one part of the world to another. It is not like other games where you go to the Strat Map and click on it to travel there either. You travel in the regular game world even when on your ship. So that feels really nice, especially after the 5+ minute load times I get in Fallout 4 when I enter or leave a building.

The game is set during the Peloponnesian War, which was a big war between Athens and Sparta at the end of the 5th Century BCE. It was basically a Greek World War, as it eventually brought in every city in Greece on one side or the other. The way the game seems to work is that the war is going on in every province. One side will own the province, and the other side will be attacking it. You can intervene personally on either side. You can go straight to a conquest battle to determine the owner. Or you can soften up one side by destroying its war chest, supplies, and assassinating its leader in the province. Then you can go into the battle with the odds better on your side.

You can also keep doing this back and forth in the same province. In fact, you can continually yo-yo between supporting one faction and then the other. No one seems to mind. Which kind of stretches the credulity.

There are also a bunch of side quests going on in each province that you can do. Plus a bunch of Pan-Greek quests. I took a Destroy Bandits quest that requires me to wipe out 10 bandit camps. There are not that many camps in any one province. So you have to do this all over the world until you make the number.

There is also a main quest that seem tangential to the war. It starts by forcing you to fight for the Spartans in Megara, and helping them to take the province from Athens. I suspect that this is mainly to show the player how the whole War system works. Then at the end you meet the Wolf of Sparta, who is very strongly connected to your character's backstory. No spoilers, so I won't say more.

This is a game where you do not pick your character. You can chose between male or female, but otherwise your name, appearance, and history is given to you by the game. From what I can see, the main quest is hip deep in your history. I have not met them yet, but there is a cult out there doing something. I suspect it is led by a family member. The way it looks is that you have to stop the cult, and might have a chance to redeem your kin.

I also strongly suspect that your character is a demigod, and that Zeus is your father. You start with an eagle companion. And you were thrown off a cliff as a child, but somehow did not die.


You start the game with a horse. You can pick from three, and there are addons to change their appearance. This is the Mykenean

I think these NPCs with the gold shields and crowns are bosses

I love these little boats

At the end of the starting island you get a big ship

Kassandra

I got to watch a sea battle up close

The scene with the sea battle is impressive.

The ship with the blue sail and Owl insignia is Athenian. The black sailed one is a pirate. When ships sink, they don't just disappear. They actually go to the bottom, and you can swim down to them and loot them. There is usually one or two chests on the deck of every ship with loot in it. Dead bodies will also float in the water, and sharks will come in to eat them.

Something else I keep forgetting to mention is that the game only allows 20 manual saves. After that you have to start overwriting old saves. It also has quicksaves, and I think 5 slots for them. Plus there are about 5 autosaves.

Unlike a lot of games also on consoles, there is no checkpoint system where you can only save at. You can save the game anywhere. However, you can't save in combat, or when you are within what the game considers combat zones (like a bandit camp). So you have to manually save outside of a place you are about to sneak into. Not after you go in.

A bowgirl with a horse! Woot! Even though you only get to choose gender, that close up shows that your character really does look good.

Glad to see you enjoying the game, SubRosa. I very much enjoyed it myself - the current formula for AC games is something I've become quite a fan of.

Done some more Assassining in Ancient Greece. I figured out the ins and outs of conquest battles. Each territory can have one. So start one you first have to weaken the faction that currently controls it. You do so by destroying their war supplies, stealing their treasury, and assassinating their regional leader.

The war supplies are chests full of stuff, that you need to burn with a torch. Be sure to loot them first. Then equip a torch by holding down the T key (in this game a single key press is often not enough. Instead you often have to hold the key down for several seconds to do things, like fast travel or save). Often war supplies are found in fortresses, or in the region's leader house. Every territory has one of those. So that is your best place to start. Sometimes you can do the supplies, steal the treasury, and assassinate the leader all right there.

Once you have done most of these things you can initiate a conquest battle. The irony here is you can join in on either side. Even the side whose leader you just murdered. Whoever wins, controls the province afterward. It is harder to win as the invading army, but the rewards are richer.

The secret to winning these battles is to concentrate on the enemy captains. Often the game will give you a message on your hud telling you to kill them. But even if it does not, you still need to go look for them. They will be there. They will have a gold shield icon floating over their head. Ignore the regular soldiers attacking you, and concentrate on killing them. Usually after you kill two captains a mercenary will show up to attack you. Obviously kill them. They are always hostile. Then after that go back to killing captains.

I found that the Overpower Bow ability works great in these things. Aim at a captain, use that, and the area effect will often not only kill him, but all the bad guys around him. Then use regular attacks to build up your adrenaline until you can use it again.

However, I just now found out that even after you take a province for one side, the ownership can flip later on without you being involved. I took Megaris for Athens, and then later Phokis for Athens, and both have flipped back to Sparta all on their own. There is no warning this is going to happen, or even an invitation to join a battle. The game just does it all on its own.

So really conquest battles are pointless, except for loot and experience. But seeing as you can get plenty of that just exploring, the whole thing now feels like a waste of time.

Man I was really into that right up until the second to last paragraph, lol. At least let us take part in a battle before it goes flipping over to the other side!

Walking on moon beams

Athenian trireme

An underground shark

Temple of Apollo

Kassandra mounted up

Ramming

Ship at rest

Just an ordinary street

Harvesting salt

Your game looks fabulous!

On that first picture, where is the other moon? Oh. . . nvm.

I had an interesting conquest battle last night, for the islands of Kos and Samos (they are combined into a single province). Instead of a land battle, it was a sea battle! It was a lot more fun than the land versions. Basically it was just my ship vs. 4 or 5 Spartan ships. It was tricky at first, but once I started to whittle them down it went pretty easily.

Sailing and ship combat is a lot of fun in this game. Once you get your trireme the Adrestia, you can start to upgrade it. There are a bunch of different areas you can improve. The Hull is a big one, it is basically your ship's health. It also determines how many lieutenants you can have. So I have put most of my effort into raising that. Rowing is another, basically it is how long your rowers can go without needing a rest. The Ram is how much ramming damage you do, etc...

I have built up my Hull, Rowers, and Ram. Now I do a ton of damage ramming. I do not even bother trying to board. I start out ramming, which usually cuts down an enemy ship to half its health. Then I hit it with arrows and back off. Then I go in for one more ram. That usually cuts the enemy ship in two and sinks it. When an enemy ship sinks you get a bunch of crafting supplies.

The crafting supplies in the game are almost entirely used for your ship. Some like wood are used for making new arrows. But mainly it all goes into the ship. There is Wood, Iron, Ancient Tablets, and Orichalcum. You will come across a ton of Wood and Iron just walking around the world. So they are never in short supply. Ancient Tablets are really rare, only found in a few preset locations. They are only used for upgrading your ship. You can also occasionally buy them from blacksmiths. Orichalcum is only used by a single merchant in the game, who can use it to make special items for you. I met him once, but have not bothered to really look into what he can make.

Today I tried out The Cheat Engine, which has a plugin/table for AC Odyssey.

I have never used it before. But it worked pretty easily. It is a memory hack. So you start your game, then Alt + Tab back to your desktop and start the Cheat Engine. Then you click on the Select Process To Open button and pick out the game. Then you click on the button right next to that to load the table above.

From there you can edit some things in your game. You can add some item packs, but it looks like not every individual item. I think most of these are micro-dlcs they want you to pay for. You can also edit your crafting supplies to give you however many you want. I used it to give myself more shards of the Spear of Leonidas, and more leather (since I do not like killing animals to get it).

If you want to add multiple items like the shard pieces, you can just click on the box for it, then unclick it, and click it again. As many times as the amount you want.

As this automatically updates the game as it is running, you don't save anything in the Cheat Engine interface. You can just turn it off when you are done. The changes you make will be saved when you save you game as normal.

The reason I was looking for this is tied into how the abilities work. Many of them are capped by the current level of the Spear of Leonidas. It is really just the broken off head of the spear, which you use as an offhand dagger. The only way to upgrade the spear, is to go along the main quest and find and kill Cultists. The Cult of Kosmos are the arch bad guys in the story. They are a secretive cabal manipulating the Greek World from behind the scenes, and it is implied that they engineered the Peloponnesian War, which is taking place during the game. Each Cultist has a shard which you can use to upgrade the spear.

I really found this process clunky. It is a mostly open-world game. You can travel anywhere you want. But each region does have a minimum level listed for it. That is the minimum level of all the foes in the area. So you don't want to go to the places above your current character level. It lists all these on the in game map, which is nice. So unlike Fallout New Vegas the game won't just kill you if you try to walk straight north to Vegas when you start. It at least warns you that you will be in over your head.

But as I was just exploring the open world, I was lagging behind in the main quest. Because I was not searching for Cultists. So I have been getting to points where I had ability points I could not spend, because I had not upgraded the spear high enough. This is why I looked into the Cheat Engine and the Inventory Editor table above. It allowed me to upgrade the spear and spend all those points I could not use, and keep exploring the world at my leisure.

An Athenian trireme firing upon a pirate ship

Acropolis

Find the assassin

The deep blue

Manta

Butt Kraken

That's a beautiful Athenian ship; I imagine the pirate ship did not last long.

Must be wonderful having an eagle you can send up for aerial reconnaissance.

Nice underwater and city shots.

But the Kraken shot is, um, er...

Some notes on items in this game.

First off, Odyssey is a loot whore's paradise. You are constantly getting a stream of new weapons and armor pieces. Do not get attached to any one thing in particular, because you will probably find something better in a half hour or hour. At least until you get to level 50, which was the original level cap for the game. (That was later expanded to 99 with a patch. But I don't think the items go up beyond 50 Nope, I was in error. Items do continue to level up to 99).

This is because when you get an item its stats will usually be set to your current level. Once and a while you will find something above your level, which you cannot use until you meet the level of the item. But that is rare. So as you level up, you find new gear at higher levels, with better stats.

Gear is also broken up into four types Common (gray), Rare (blue), Epic (purple), and Legendary (gold). Generally the more rare the better their stats are. But again, you have to take into account the level you got it at. A Legendary sword you get at 1st level will suck compared to Common one you get at 5th level.

You can stick with the same set of gear by Upgrading it at a blacksmith. What this does is bring it up to your current level. But this gets really expensive, really fast. I waiting until I got to 50th level, then pulled out my Legendary stuff, and upgraded it. I have played about 5 or 6 hours since, and have yet to find anything better.

Legendary items also come in a set. If you wear all items in the set, you get a special bonus.

Speaking of blacksmiths, they are the only merchants in the game you can buy and sell from. As I just said, they buy and sell weapons and armor, as well as ordinary trade goods you can pick up - amphorae, animal fangs and claws, bowls, cups, food, etc... Just sell all that stuff. They also sell crafting supplies. I highly advise you to always check every blacksmith from ancient tablets. Those are hard to find in the wild, and you need them to upgrade your ship. Blacksmiths also do the aforementioned upgrades on items.

Finally they do engraving. These are little bonuses similar to enchantments that you can put on items. Stuff like more fire damage, moving faster in sneak mode, etc... The number of engravings you can have depends on the type of the item in question. The better type, the more engravings.

Engravings become available by finding Ainigmata Ostraka, which are also rare. They look like stone tables, and when you interact with one it will give you a little mini-riddle to go to a certain place. Basically it is an unofficial quest. When you find the goal it points you toward, you unlock an engraving. All engravings have levels, so the more duplicate ones you unlock, the more powerful the enchantment is that it grants. I like doing them just because they are fun.

Sailing the Aegean

Here there be monsters

And Seagulls

The Minotaur

I used to have a little statuette just like this

Dark lands

Boarding action

Ramming speed

Great pics! That is a well done minotaur.

Gosh it's hard to imagine the fact that ramming was, at one time, an effective nautical tactic and ship bows were actually made to do it. "Aye, bring her up to ramming speed, lads!"

Acadian: The Minotaur was really cool. There are Cyclopses (it looks like there are 3) were really neat too.

The Corinthians were never as good at sailing as the Athenians. So to even the odds at one point they reinforced the bows of their ships, and then started the tactics of ramming the Athenians head on in the first pass. It helped a little, but they still could never match Athens on the sea.



Balance

Athens

Some pirates were attacking Athenian ships. So Kassandra swam out and boarded the pirate ship.

The Athenians look on as Kassandra takes out the trash

Flipper!

Who didn't let the wolves out?

A Greek town

Magnificent shots of Athens and that town. And what a neat shot of flipper in the air!

More great shots!

I love the pirate ship with the bones on the prow/figurehead - gives it a really distinctive look compared to the military vessels.

When horses fly

Gravity was not a law in Ancient Greeece

Kassandra

Cyclops

The sword in the stone

The Sea God

Kassandra again

That's a cool outfit. I'm going to have to get this game someday.

I thought your character had a flying eagle familiar - not a flying horse.