YMMV / Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

• Accidental Innuendo: During Cairn challenges, Eivor has auditory flashbacks to their childhood where they call back to conversations with their parents. Young Eivor's reaction to being so high up is... well;
  Young Eivor: Whaa! I've never been so high.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • How malicious is Loki/Basim? He's got an honest excuse for his hatred of Odin, yet never bothers to explain to Eivor - who appears to be unaware they're Odin reborn - why he hates them, and instead skips instantly to attempted murder despite Eivor being innocent of Odin's actions. His escape plan gets Layla killed, but not only does she still live in the Grey, he's also spent a milennia with a device that can calculate every possible future, making it possible that this was needed to save the world later on. Once he's freed into the modern day, his plan to reunite his family is vague enough that it's unclear if it's a Deadly Euphemism or not. The fact that he's an Assassin who are usually the heroes of the franchise and appears to actually follow their tenets also raises some questions.
  • Because Dag rarely interacts with people other than Sigurd and Eivor, his character is a bit hard to pin down, especially since his dislike of Eivor is present even in the first mission. Are his criticisms of Eivor's temporary leadership justified (if maybe awkwardly written), is he a Hypocrite who projects his own insecurities on Eivor, or is he just jealous of Eivor replacing Dag as Sigurd's closest friend in the past? Hell, with the end-game confirmation that Eivor is canonically female, you could even argue that he's just a misogynist who hates having to work for a woman. Essentially, it's hard to tell if Eivor's actions really affected Dag's view on them, or if he already disliked Eivor and is just coming up with excuses to justify it.
  • Eivor's disdain for her father. Do they genuinely believe he was a coward, or is this simply a cover to avoid grieving for someone they felt abandoned them for no reason?
  • Did Ivarr actually kill Ceolbert? Or did he only claim so to drive Eivor into a rage so she would give him a true Norse Death as he desired?
• Angst? What Angst?: When being told by the Reader that her body in the real world is dying from radiation poisoning, Layla simply reacts with a "Oh crap, I'm dead" look with little emotion and quickly moves on to continue to find a permanent solution to save the world in the Grey.
• Awesome Art: The game was first teased with an eight-hour livestream of BossLogic creating a digital painting of Eivor with various scenes of the setting in the background.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Vinland/Saint Brendan's Island has gotten some love, due to its beautiful untamed wilderness looking and feeling completely different from Norway and England, while also providing an interesting (and to some, refreshing) switch to a survival-based No-Gear Level with a focus on stealth and exploration. Being a Origins Episode for some parts of Assassin's Creed III also helps its case.
  • The Animus Anomalies are fondly looked at due to them allowing the game's parkour system, which some feel is restricted by the mostly flat game world, to truly shine. Each one requires precision timing on your jumping, sliding, and climbing, and completing each one reveals them to be a call-back to Assassin's Creed II's The Truth video. Completing the Anomalies gives the player a look at the end of the world, as seen by the Norse Isu, as well as the circumstances that allow for Odin and Loki to be reincarnated.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Ivarr killed Ceolbert to frame Rhodri, because of course he did. No one else has a solid motive but him, and he has shown time and time again that he will do anything to kill Rhodri. Even when the player figures it out, Eivor doesn't until The Reveal, which is after you are forced to help Ivarr ruin the peace you worked so hard to build. You have no choice but to fall for the trick, even if you didn't.
  • Alfred is the head of the Order of Ancients. By the time you'll get to the point where it's revealed to Eivor (the absolute end of the main game), it's pretty obvious, even assuming you missed the trailers showing him as one of them, given there are no other candidates left. However, this does hide the reveal that yes, he is the head... and has been working to bring it down from the inside.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • As with most Assassin's Creed games, the most common advice for players is to first scout the entire map for viewpoints and harbors, ^note Viewpoints and harbors both provide fast travel locations; viewpoints help with exploration, while harbors are often good fishing spots. before searching for World Events which do not require combat.
  • For the Orlog mini-game, the most common strategy is to only take dice rolls which give the player God Favor tokens, or steal them from your opponents. Also, the God Favor most commonly recommended for use is Thor's.
  • For the "chasing piece of paper" minigame, the ability "Blinding Rush" slows time down, allowing Eivor to grab the paper before it floats away from its starting position.
• Complete Monster: The Dawn of Ragnarok DLC features these two:
  • Surtr of Muspelheim was a Isu warlord whose fiery wrath brought ruin across the nine realms. Marrying Sinmara for mutual power, Surtr led a campaign of genocide and death, slaughtering the elven realms, butchering countless millions, and enslaving the dwarves of Svartalfheim to work to death. Kidnapping Baldr to get at Odin, Surtr cares nothing for his own family, horrifically abusing his own children and plotting to drown the realms in blood to rule them forever.
  • Sinmara is the wife of Surtr and proves to be just as monstrously sadistic as him. Serving as Surtr's right-hand woman, Sinmara would lead Surtr's army to invade Svartalfheim, massacring countless innocence before killing Frigg in front of her lover Odin and imprisoning their son Baldr, who she would torture to death by force feeding Baldr mistletoe. Sinmara would also oversee the enslavement of the dwarves for Surtr, having them work themselves to death and torturing those into compliance, while creating puppet soldiers from the Muspels slain by her enemies or by her own experimentation on them to keep the populace in line. When Odin discovers Baldr's corpse, Sinmara brags about Baldr's suffering before killing her own stepdaughter, Eysa, and killing off several of her own soldiers when battling Odin for the final time.
• Demonic Spiders: The bandits/Jotun roster contains two examples. That both are the primary source of hostile fire attacks is probably not a coincidence.
  • Hurlers are ranged combatants that deploy a variety of powerful fire-based area attacks at any range with lethal accuracy. Overlooking even one of them before attacking their camp makes the battle ten times harder because they don't care about burning their own buddies to a crisp, merrily firebombing you from afar while you're bogged down by melee fighters. And like most ranged enemy types, Hurlers run away when you try to catch them in melee, all the while continuing to blast you with fire bombs.
  • Madmen are somehow even worse. Their main attack is a cone-shaped fire blast with huge range that deals enormous damage, staggers Eivor and sets them on fire for even more damage. If you make it into melee, prepare to catch another very powerful fire blast to the face. Madmen in general have ludicrous damage output while being fairly resilient themselves, making them one of the most dangerous enemies in the game, but what really makes them annoying is the way their insane move and attack animations seem to actively taunt the player during the entire engagement.
• Designated Villain: King Aelfred the Great. Although he is King of Wessex and the Grand Maegester of the English Order of the Ancients, he doesn't really do anything "evil" beyond oppose the protagonists, which is perfectly reasonable when they're invading Vikings. He even outright despises the Order and works with Eivor to drive the last vestiges of the group out of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Britain.
• Disappointing Last Level: The final battle against King Aelfred, the canonically last English antagonist in the story, is nothing but a bog-standard skirmish against a bunch of bog-standard mooks in a burning village, so basically nothing different from any of the dozen monastery raids you'll have done before. Many previous region arcs provided much more spectacular climactic battles. After all the buildup prior to this battle, realizing that no Big Badass Battle Sequence is about to follow can feel extremely disappointing. That the actual Final Boss is a simple Puzzle Boss fought in an admittedly cool Very Definitely Final Dungeon might only rub salt in that wound regardless of the impressive setting.
• Epileptic Trees: The fact that one of Juhani Otso Berg's ancestors was a Viking has led to speculation that they'll appear in the game, despite that Berg’s ancestor was shown to be a part of the Lindisfarne raid, several decades before the game’s events.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Some people have commented being uncomfortable with the game whitewashing and glamorizing the Vikings, owing to their tendency to Rape, Pillage, and Burn in real life, The thing is, the franchise is practically built on Historical Hero Upgrade, going back to the first game by turning the Order of Assassins, a sect famous for assassination and intimidation, into a group of heroic freedom fighters. Arguably the most popular installment in the franchise, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, was about 18th century pirates (another group often glamorized in pop culture).
    • What made Valhalla unique, however, was the matter of viking colonialism, something that isn't typically associated with pirates and is a hot-button political issue. While in previous games themes of colonialism are generally part of the historical background and portrayed negatively, in Valhalla the raiding and subjugation of a foreign land is a central narrative theme in which the player must actively participate throughout the entire game, and moreover is portrayed mostly positively, with the vikings depicted as "explorers" and "settlers" on a virgin land.
  • Then there's the matter of historical accuracy coming to a head in terms of game design. As detailed in A Detail Diatribe on How Historical is Assassin's Creed, while the world design always took a few creative liberties to go with theming for the world conflicts, many of the early games put in some serious work to make the world feel proper, and yet still be historical in presentation. A balance between Rule of Cool and Shown Their Work. However, this is the point where the cultural idea of a viking finally overtook what vikings were more like, and thus that special sauce from the early series has finally been lost.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Vikings and The Last Kingdom, two historical drama series set in 9th century Dark Age Europe with Scandinavian Viking raiders as the main protagonists. It also helps that Valhalla has a similar cast of characters from both shows and even some of the same personnel.
• Game-Breaker: Can be found here.
• Genius Bonus: While the legendary weapons are not marked on the map, knowing about the myths surrounding them provides some direction. Certain versions of King Arthur's story claim he died on Salisbury plain, also known for housing Stonehenge; the sword is hidden in a cave not too far from it. Gungnir, on the other hand, was supposedly forged by "The sons of Ivaldi", led by the dwarf Dvalin, who is also stated to be one of the four deer who eat from the Yggdrasil; the spear is found on an alternate path in the same cave as the Yggdrasil.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • Any and all aggressive wildlife, for one simple reason: animals are nearly impossible to stun. Almost any human enemy can easily be stunlocked, making even Elite Mooks manageable once you've broken through their defenses, but predators couldn't care less about what you do to them until they drop dead.
  • Pike-wielding enemies are this as well, considering not only do they have quite large hit boxes, but as soon as you close in for light attacks they immediately put guard up, which renders your attack pointless. The only way to break their guard is with a heavy attack which depletes stamina, which is also needed for dodging their long reach. Pretty much the only option for melee is to dodge to their back and attack until they put guard up, before another dodge to the back.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • At least on PS4 version 1.04, the weapon rune "Overwhelmed Fury Rune" is misspelled as "Overwhelmed Furry Rune".
  • Nodens' Arc, a legendary bow, was unlocked early by players with a combination of smashing a pile of rocks and Save Scumming. Ubisoft's Twitter expressed amusement towards this but clarified that this is not the intended way to do it. The proper method was later found to be to strike that same pile of rocks, at sunset, with Excalibur.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The game's treatment of Christianity vs Norse religion can be a bit funny to anyone familiar with the eventual Christianization of Scandinavia.
  • A couple of times, goodhearted Saxons will display their goodheartedness by accurately noting that Eivor and the Raven Clan don't sound like the other Danes do, due to them being Norse/Norwegian. This is despite both actors for Eivor being Danish, and their speech in the game featuring their heavy Danish accents.
  • As several people have pointed out, Randvi's hairstyle is more or less directly lifted from Kassandra and just recolored blonde. The Odyssey-Valhalla crossover actually made this a minor plot point, with people mistaking Kassandra for Randvi because both women have the same hairstyle.
  • The game ends with Eivor claiming a final victory over King Alfred, forcing him to flee. The game ends with the Vikings seemingly victorious, but mere months after this final mission, King Alfred would rally his troops and deliver a sound defeat to the Vikings, forcing Gudrum to convert to Christianity and instituting the Danelaw, halting the Vikings and spelling the beginning of the end of their reign in England.
• I Knew It!:
  • Following Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, the two most heavily speculated upon eras for the next game were The Viking Age and Feudal Japan. The former's proponents were proven right. The title that was most speculated upon however, "Assassin's Creed: Ragnarök", was disproved.
  • While not outright comfirmed, the fact that "The Reader" - a being found in the same digital space Juno was trapped in - is voiced by Nolan North using the same voice he uses for Desmond suggests that the long-standing fan theory that Desmond's mind outlived his physical body is indeed correct.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Some have complained that the game simply gets way too easy after a certain point. Assuming you're appropriately-leveled, the raw stats Eivor has will allow you to steamroll normal enemies while taking very little damage, and even when they can damage you, you can just instantly pop some rations and restore your health multiple times per battle.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Loki is the Isu beloved of Aletheia and was once a great ally to the Norse Isu until their leader Odin sought to murder Loki's innocent son Fenrir for being his prophesized killer at Ragnarok. Wanting to be with his son, Loki smuggles him into Asgard during an attack by the Greek Isu and swears vengeance on Odin for binding him in chains. He nearly sabotages Odin's quest for immortality by revealing his plans to Jupiter and murders Odin's sons Balder and Heimdall before using Odin's solution of rebirth through Yggdrasil to survive the solar flare. Reborn countless millennia later as the Hidden One Basim ibn Ishaq, he finds Tyr reborn as Sigurd Styrbjornsson and masterminds the recovering of his memories while turning him against Odin reborn as Eivor Wolf-Kissed. Seeking to murder Eivor and Odin at their weakest, he ambushes them when they find Yggdrasil but gets caught in the machine during the fight. A millennia later, he sends a message through time to the Assassins to draw in Layla to take his place so that he can reunite his family in modern times.
  • King Alfred of Wessex is the Grand Maegester of the the Order of the Ancients and a devout Christian who plotted to destroy the Order for using his religion for their own nefarious purposes and secretly worshiping the Isu. Alfred uses the order's resources to fend off the Viking Invasion while sending clues to Eivor and the Hidden Ones about the whereabouts of the Order's members on many occasions, eventually working directly with Eivor to get rid of the Ancient members in Wessex. Alfred then banishes Eivor from Wessex when they refuse to convert to Christianity, later luring Eivor and Guthrum's combined forces into a trap, killing off many of their allies. Exiling himself to Athelnay, he encounters Eivor again after ridding the Order of Ancients from England where Alfred tells them about uniting England under one religion while creating a new order around it. This dream would come to fruition when Alfred returns from exile and retakes his kingdom from Guthrum establishing the foundation of a unified Kingdom of England and the creation of the Templar Order.
  • Wrath of the Druids DLC: Eogan mac Cartaigh, the Abbot of Armagh, is the highest ranking Christian leader in Ireland, yet secretly converted to druidic paganism and founded the cult known as the Children of Danu. Seeking to undermine the devout High King Flann Sinna, he arranges for raiders to steal holy texts and raid monasteries to lay the blame on Flann's Viking allies, and further manipulates him by arranging for his Irish army to be poisoned and laying the blame on the conspicuously healthy Norsemen. Having the northern kings stall peace negotiations, Eogan entraps and wipes out much of Flann's army while using his druidic servants to steal weapons and equipment to prepare for the coming siege of his temple. While ultimately defeated, Eogan fights to the bitter end and uses his last words to reveal Flann's pagan advisor Ciara was once a Child of Danu. This legacy of distrust drives the two apart and fuels Ciara's own desperate attempt to drive the Christians from Ireland, just as Eogan always wanted.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "[X]" is with us!"^note Eivor's battle cry of after seeing a vision of Odin and his raven in the World Premiere trailer has become a reaction image, most often used when it's discovered that a celebrity is One of Us.
  • Valhalla's "Gameplay" reveal. ^note As part of the debut of the Xbox Series X launch lineup, Valhalla's gameplay reveal was touted as the big point of the presentation. Not only was it shoved into the end of the demonstration, but the actual gameplay consisted of a few seconds of Eivor running and posing, with the rest just being a marketing trailer. Ubisoft and Microsoft alike received a fair share of mockery online for the false advertising.
  • "Assassins - Creed Valaha"^note When Stephanie Economou won a Grammy for the game's soundtrack, the announcer horribly mispronounced the game's name, apparently thinking it was an album called Assassins by an artist named Creed Valaha.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The classic Hidden Blade sound effect makes a return after being absent for half a decade.
• Narm:
  • Shaun's occasional snark in the early titles notwithstanding, AC codex entries are normally serious, no-nonsense affairs, but the ones in Valhalla often seem to try and fail spectacularly to sound humorous. Much of the codex comes across as if written by a teenager. However, the Codex entries for Syndicate were written in a similar manner, so there is some precedent.
  • To some, female Eivor's voice acting feels like she's trying way too hard to sound badass, with the result of just sounding ridiculous instead. On the contrast, male Eivor speaks with a soft voice and only a very light Nordic accent, which itself is jarringly in contrast with every other Norse character as he inexplicably sounds more like the people they're invading. You basically have a choice between someone trying to sound too much like a Viking, and someone not trying to at all.
  • Female Eivor's pronunciation of "malaka" when she's getting drunk with Kassandra. Granted, it's meant to be bad, but it's so off from what Kassandra said that it's almost as if Eivor heard a completely different word. Male Eivor, on the other hand, is just slightly off from Kassandra's pronunciation, making the moment genuinely funny when he starts giddily repeating it after finding out it's a swear word.
  • When Basim, a badass Assassin only ever shown wearing their trademark outfit, appears in the present day, the fact that he's now wearing jeans and a shirt with a cheesy moon-and-wolf motif on the chest can make it very hard to take any of his scenes seriously.
  • While there is definitely nothing wrong with Christian Svensson's performance as Ubba, anyone who recognizes his voice as the one from the NPC guards from Skyrim will have a hard time taking Ubba seriously, or at the very least spend the whole game wondering if he's going to mention arrows in knees at some point.
  • After a while, raiding monasteries may give the impression that not a single town in the game allows tools/construction materials in the hands of peasants, as if some secret conspiracy of monks is scheming to keep it all to themselves for some reason.
  • When Eivor makes their final attempt to convince Sigurd to reject the false Valhalla Lotus-Eater Machine simulation and accept his mortality, they decide to lead with "cows die" as their first argument. It's a direct quote from the Old Norse poem 'Hávamál', but without that context it comes off as a bizarre non-sequitur.
  • If Hunwald dies during the final battle, you have to inform his wife Swanburrow. If you have upgraded all of your farms at this point, you will be telling Swanburrow this while there are pigs and chickens going crazy in the background, turning a tragic scene into something darkly hilarious. Especially when it sounds like the animals are laughing at Swanburrow's breakdown, as they just keep getting louder.
• Padding: As usual for the series, most of the game's content isn't relevant to the plot and only serves to add dozens of hours of play time that you must put up with in order to level up your Player Character enough to get on with the actual story.
• Paranoia Fuel: Some Jotun enemies can shapeshift into animals, which they love to use to ambush Eivor in the wilds of Jotunheim. Traveling this particular map in peace becomes pretty much impossible after the first time you've been jumped by a bunch of deer that suddenly turned into murderous ice giants out for your blood.
• Rooting for the Empire: Given that national hero King Alfred was immediately pitched as the game's antagonist, a number of fans (both British and otherwise) have pointed out that as much as the devs want to push back against the demonization of the Vikings and put their actions into context, that doesn't mean that the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms and Alfred don't have a right to defend their lands against Viking invaders. The actual game makes this a bit more palatable by having Alfred be a case of Good All Along and trying to destroy the Order from within, only for Basim's plan to force him to ally with them to prevent the Vikings from burning England to the ground.
• The Scrappy:
  • Dag definitely falls into this, and it probably the biggest example. His aggressiveness and insubordination come seemingly out of nowhere once the player reaches England and starts building alliances and only gets worse as the story progresses. He claims his grievances are that Eivor is attempting to usurp Sigurd's position, that Eivor is poor at decision-making because they are too hot-headed and focused on their own personal glory, and that they don't put much of an effort into finding Sigurd once he is captured by Fulke. These are especially perplexing and annoying because: A) Eivor is only following Sigurd's wishes for building alliances, B) it was Basim who agreed to track Sigurd and send word when he had found where Fulke was hiding, and C) Dag is a member of Eivor's longship crew and thus has been by their side through everything and had first hand witness to everything they have done for the clan and their decisions which tend to put the clan first instead of their own personal wishes. Overall, it seems more like he is being insubordinate just because Sigurd left Eivor in charge whilst he was away instead of Dag. Add to this the fact that Dag is guilty of the very thing he accuses Eivor of: he immediately jumps to a violent solution to a problem, is a braggart who makes many unbelievable claims such as personally scaring off Kjotve the Cruel and having women beg him to take them to bed, and also promotes raiding and plundering despite Raven Clan being in a weak position and unable to defend itself if retaliated against.
  • The Builder in the Asgard arc. He's annoying, constantly overstates his abilities, and makes a few very moronic decisions. Like making the player lead an entire horde of Jotnar into a magic death-shield to test if it works, only for it to malfunction, resulting in the player having to fight off an entire army, when one target would have sufficient to test the shield. Which does make sense when it's later revealed that he's actually Jotnar, but still. You basically have to go along with everything the guy says even when it's obvious that he's setting a trap.
  • Ivarr. Granted, he's supposed to be unlikeable, but the player has no choice but to go with everything he wants. No matter what you do at the negotiation with Rhodri (even if you pay Ivarr to stay calm) he will ruin the peace talk by murdering Rhodri's brother. You can't do anything about it besides mildly calling him out after. He then ruins the peace again by murdering Ceolbert and framing the Britons, so that he can have his "revenge" on Rhodri. Even if the player knows he did it, Eivor doesn't. Similar to the above examples, it's not so much that Ivarr's unintentionally unlikeable, but that you are forced to fall for his obvious tricks by the gameplay.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Similar to Odyssey before, Valhalla gates most of its plot behind Beef Gates, forcing players to grind hours of side content just to get on with the story, or be very skilled with parrying and dodging (as high level opponents can kill Eivor with one hit).
  • Speaking of side content: Valhalla's side quests are no longer tracked in the quest log. You get absolutely no HUD hints as to what you're supposed to do or where you're supposed to do it. Carefully listening to the quest giver is the only way to get a handle on their task, but many side quests don't have a quest giver or even clearly stated goals, leaving you to figure it all out by yourself. This often results in minor tasks taking up a disproportionate amount of time, which completely defeats Ubisoft's attempt to dial back the Padding by reducing the number of side quests.
  • The skill tree would be considered fairly decent if it weren’t for the fact that everything beyond the first few skill nodes is shrouded in fog, meaning a player not only cannot know what path to follow to get each skill, but also cannot know what the skills even are. All skill points can be refunded at any time for free, which mitigates most issues with this design, but it’s still an unnecessary annoyance that takes effort to work around. In Patch 1.04, this was mitigated by the skill tree revealing the positions of all passive skills.
  • All but the initial upgrades to Eivor's arrow quiver and ration bag require fabric, a rare resource only found in minor treasure chests in mid-to-high level regions. It not only makes it impossible to fully upgrade these two until fairly late into the game; it also forces players to religiously loot every minor chest they come across even if they wouldn't need the iron and leather that're the chests' primary content. This was later adjusted in the 1.0.4 Patch so that fabric is sold at Ravensthorpe once it reaches Level 6 development.
  • The much-maligned "chasing after escaping scrap of paper" mechanic is back, more annoying than ever due to the game's overly aggressive parcours snapping. Thankfully, it's entirely optional, and they can be cheesed this time around.^note The papers now stay still for 10 seconds upon reaching the end of the course, allowing players to just memorize the place and go wait for it through a faster route. The papers are also slowed down by Blinding Rush, which makes it possible to grab them as soon as they start moving.
  • Some of the side activities like stone cairns, standing stone puzzles and sacrificial altars aren't exactly popular, mostly because of their finicky controls and/or negligible rewards.
  • Hunting can be this for two reasons: firstly, the animal parts you need for the missions at the hunter's cabin have so sparse a drop rate that you could have slain 10 or more animals before you get even 1 animal part. Secondly is the animals themselves which can fall into one of three categories: rare to spawn (such as stags which are the only way of getting antlers both large and small), very easily missed or incredibly fast (such as rabbits and foxes), or incredibly aggressive bordering on Demonic Spiders such as lynx and bears.
  • Gathering supplies to build your settlement can be very annoying when you realize there are less than five monasteries that can be raided in the first region, while the others are all about level 90. This is despite the early regions only being level 20.
  • While it was confirmed to be a bug and fixed in 1.04, horses slowed down when Eivor entered combat, which made all random encounters (especially aggressive lynxes, which are faster than horses) a nightmare.
  • Zealots can be very annoying to deal with, mostly due to the fact that the areas they inhabit can be much lower level than the Zealots themselves. One of the first Zealots that can be encountered in the game is level 90 and hangs out in a level 20 area. It's even worse if you encounter a Zealot while raiding a monastery because their health bar will replace the compass, making it harder to find the Supplies you're trying to steal, not to mention that if they're significantly higher-level than you are, they can make the raid absolute hell.
  • Fire damage and explosions are nearly impossible to predict or avoid. Sometimes, just being close to fire will make you ignite. Other times, objects that otherwise wouldn't explode blow up upon hitting them, which can be especially annoying if you accidentally hit a random jar while in a fight. Explosions can also be caused by your own crew during raids, meaning that you can be killed by your own men if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time
  • By default, "Assassination" and "Melee" are mapped to the same button. While this isn't new to the series, this game prioritizes melee over the hidden blade unless the assassination prompt is present - this can lead to a multitude of So Much for Stealth situations, made worse by the game sometimes choosing melee even when the prompt is present. ^note This can at least be migitated by remapping the controls (which even the console versions allow), but the remap system has a tendency to get tangled in itself.
  • On the topic of assassinations, the game's stealth mechanics as a whole have been criticized, to the point where many players just don't bother since there's usually no real drawback for going loud. The detection mechanics are commonly cited as the worst offender due to their general unpredictability - sometimes enemies can't see Eivor in hiding spots until they're practically touching them, sometimes they see through grass etc. no problem; sometimes the enemy detection meter fills slowly even if Eivor's in their clear view, other times even a brief glimpse of them will cause an instant detection; sometimes the distance and field of view of the enemy is important, other times enemies can notice Eivor regardless of distance and even when they're not facing them; sometimes enemies investigate whistling, other times they just look at Eivor's direction but don't move. In short, whenever they work they're considered to be generally fine, but at their worst they become a Luck-Based Mission that's less predictable than Orlog. Fortunately, Ubisoft seems to have caught on, and in December 2021 introduced several quality-of-life improvements to the stealth mechanics that actually seem to improve the experience. However, even after the update, these issues still persist, just to a smaller degree. Stealth is still generally hard to predict.
  • While River Raids lacking any kind of saving is fine on paper, this leads to one major problem; there is no autosave when you arrive at the river, and so if something goes wrong (whether it's your fault or not), Eivor is sent all the way back to England. Unfortunately, on some systems the loading screens in and out of rivers can take well over a minute, and the combination of losing potentially large amounts of progress and time, having to sit through not just one, but two slow loading screens just to retry, and the already somewhat repetitive gameplay cycle of the game-mode, means that simply turning off the game can feel like the better option. This also causes a massive Morton's Fork to the player; Either go on multiple short trips and sit through the equally numerous loading screens, or go on long trips and hope the game doesn't crash, bug out or otherwise screw you over.
  • On the topic of raiding, guiding the longboat through the rivers of England is incredibly tedious. The boat turns very slow, often leading it to go into the riverbank, and reversing is also very slow. While in previous game, making a u-turn was fairly easy, here you have to essentially parallel park just to turn the boat around.
  • Also during raids, your vikings will not stop burning shit. Even if you happen to be on the structure they're burning. This is especially frustrating if there is a chest in a locked house, and the only way in is through the roof, as you will be set on fire. Adding to the fact that fire damage is harder to stop then previous games, and even being close to fire will make you ignite, this is a very annoying aspect of raiding, especially since the vikings could just burn things after the raid is complete.
  • Remember how if you're fast enough in the other games, you can press start before death so you can reload your last save without desynchronizing? Here, if you load your last save before becoming desynchronized, the game will automatically desynchronize you upon reaching the checkpoint for absolutely no reason, making you have to reload the save twice.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Players who are used to Assassin's Creed games having relatively easy opening missions will be in for a rude awakening with the first mission in this game, where Eivor is hilariously outmatched in the first serious fight that they face, and even common enemies that are faced afterwards can be a serious challenge. The rest of the game isn't quite so punishing — and of course, it features adjustable difficulties for those who'd rather just sweep through enemy encounters and focus on the storyline — but even then, a lot of common gameplay crutches from Origins and Odyssey have either been either eliminated or nerfed, making it a somewhat more challenging experience.
• Shocking Moments: Basim replacing Layla as the modern-day playable character isn't exactly where you'd expect his arc to go to when you first see him.
• Signature Scene: Eivor and Basim's heart-to-heart at the campfire. It's one of the most emotional scenes of the game, in which Eivor discusses their possible fate if not for Sigurd, and Basim reveals that he had a son that he lost long ago. It's a simple scene, but it's one of the most well-animated, and one of the best acted scenes in the entire game. It also doubles as some very, very well done Foreshadowing to Basim's true nature.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • Its time period and setting are identical to The Last Kingdom, which also prominently features King Alfred the Great. The male Eivor is played by the same actor as Cnut, one of the series' villains. However, if the trailer is any indication, its interpretation appears more charitable to the Vikings and less charitable towards Alfred. Of course, this could be a case of Misaimed Marketing, as was the case with Assassin's Creed III, but only time will tell. Interviews with the development team indicate that they intend to portray Alfred as a nuanced Anti-Villain who wants what's best for his kingdom and his people. Additionally, the Working Title for the game was Assassin's Creed: Kingdoms, a nod of sorts to the show.
  • Similarly, it's as close as can possibly get to a video game adaptation of History Channel's Vikings with a few characters from the show appearing in Valhalla and the player can even visit the snake pit where Ragnar Lothbrok was killed. Also, Wardruna's founder, Einar Selvik, participated in the soundtrack of AC: Valhalla. Vikings has a soundtrack by Wardruna. And funnily enough, the sequel series to Vikings is also known as Valhalla just like the game. Alternatively, the game could be described as a sequel to Vikings focusing on the later period of the Norse conquest of England and what happened to Rollo, the Sons of Ragnar and other specific characters after the deaths of Ragnar and Lagertha Lothbrok.
• Squick:
  • The announcement trailer is filled to the brim with dismemberment and decapitation, but what really takes the cake is when Eivor yanks his hidden blade out of a brute’s eye. What’s left of the eye comes out with it.
  • In-game isn’t much better. Ubisoft seemed to take inspiration from Mortal Kombat, with NPCs getting their limbs and heads lopped off pretty regularly, and even having X-ray moves similar in practice to Krushing Blows in Mortal Kombat 11, where you can see Eivor’s hidden blade become drenched in blood as it cuts through skin, muscle, fat, and organs in slow-motion.
• That One Achievement: "Stinky, But Deadly" requires the completion of every single fishing hut delivery. Between the randomness^note only one out of 19 fish species randomly spawns at any given time and place, plus ever species comes in small, regular and big sizes that're also random, the heavily bugged state and the general boredom of the Fishing Minigame, investing dozens of hours of playtime into this trophy requires some serious commitment to the game. There's also no meaningful way in-game to track how many fish of each size are needed without checking the fishing hut's quest board all the time, forcing players to maintain external lists to avoid even more tedious footwork.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The Cairn Stones in Hamtunscire is a pain in the ass for completionists. Usually, they're trial and error but this one requires the player to not only know physics, but get the stones so high up and the game's physics are unforgiving that most players will spend HOURS fighting the game before they get it done!
  • Reaching settlement level 6 to complete "A New Home" is unforgivingly tedious. By the time you are one or two upgrades away from it, you will be immensely frustrated with: a) finding the last raiding locations, b) scouring every part of England for supplies, and c) coming to the realization there are no places left to raid. The fact that there are a finite amount of supplies, and even fewer raw materials, means you could very well spend days trying to get out of level 5.
  • The Yule Festival arc released for holidays 2020. The quests for the festival which involves having to leaving Ravensthorpe results in bugged quest markers popping up in random parts of the game world thus utterly confusing players as to where they need to go to complete missions.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The transmog system is pretty much universally considered a major downgrade compared to Odyssey's. While Odyssey let you swap appearances anywhere at any time for no cost, Valhalla requires you to talk to a blacksmith (of which there's only one per map) and pay 50 silver for each item changed. Changing up your whole armor set, bow, and both weapons adds up to 450 silver. And unlike in Odyssey, there is no recurring source of income in the main game outside of very low-value enemy and animal drops. Some have accused Ubisoft of making it this way in order to encourage spending real money on silver packs in the Helix store. Not helping matters is that Immortals Fenyx Rising, made by the Odyssey team, retains the old "anywhere, anytime" system.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The fact that Eivor is Odin reincarnated has surprisingly little effect on the plot, as Odin's influence is fought off before his Split-Personality Takeover happens. As such, it comes off as an excuse to give Basim a reason to turn on Eivor. The fact that Eivor houses the mind of an anti-human sociopath while Loki becomes an Assassin in his new life also seems to build up to a Plot Twist that Loki is actually the good guy and wants to stop Eivor from becoming a monster, but instead Basim just undergoes a Villanous Breakdown and the game ends with a rehash of Assassin's Creed III's ending.
  • Had Tyr remained as Odin's son instead of being reimagined as a good friend of his, you'd have a pretty good basis for an Oldboy (2003) situation; What if Loki avenged his son by creating a rift between the two siblings and tricked Eivor into killing Sigurd, only revealing that they technically killed their own son after the deed is done?
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The aforementioned controversy about the Vikings' sympathetic portrayal versus the English they're colonizing. The crux of the issue is that the Norse had a very Blue-and-Orange Morality compared to contemporary Western culture, and didn't have a concept of such things as "good" and "evil", merely "my side" and "your side"^note notably, unlike Christianity, they didn't have a concept of an afterlife for good and afterlife for bad, instead having Valhalla (the afterlife for warriors who died in battle) and Hel (the afterlife for everyone else, which was commonly described as just being an empty nothingness), and considered raiding a part of normal society; at the same time, they still engaged in farming, teaching, and cultivating a community, and considered respect for the dead a matter of huge importance, and there was much about their culture that is barbaric to our sensibilities (the practices of slavery, raiding, and colonising) while simultaneously being quite progressive for their time (the value they placed in cleanliness and hygiene, community health, and rights of women within their society were quite higher than those of cultures around them). Trying to make a sympathetic narrative out of such a people is difficult to do so without severely whitewashing their history, but keeping their society Warts and All and portraying the Sympathetic P.O.V. from their perspective would result in expecting people to sympathize with people with very different ideas of morality.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: While it's probably not helped by the Marvel Comics version or their film series versions naturally putting their take in people's minds, the design of Loki in the game is quite jarring. The weird faux-hawk is very much not how one would envision him, and it's not even something that can be justified by historical/mythology accuracy as Loki in the mythology was explicitly described with wild red hair. A possible justification for the hairstyle is that it would make his connection to Basim much more obvious since he has long hair as well.