So I’m about 20 hours into AC Odyssey, and it’s just OK. To be fair, I find soulsbourne games to be so ridiculously engaging that any game I play immediately after is destined to feel meh.
Does anyone on here watch Skill Up on YouTube? It’s a channel devoted to video games. They post extremely well-written, long-form video game reviews. The review of ACO is provocative. (I would post a link but it is currently firewalled.) The reviewer mentioned that once you hit level ~25 in the game, the very next mission recommends a level of ~35 for completion. This means you have to grind for HOURS to fill this gap and get into the end-game content. He suggests - does not accuse in any way - that Ubisoft may have done this as a way to prompt the user to buy XP with actual cash in order to skip the grind. He also mentions that the side quests that need to be completed to gain the necessary XP to continue the story are extremely dull. Because few people will pay cash money for the XP and few people will subject themselves to an hours-long, boring, grind, few people will ever experience the end-game. The end-game, in the reviewer’s estimation, is the best part.
I dunno, I was just curious if anyone had any thoughts on this. If this was in fact Ubisoft’s plan, I find it completely despicable. As it is, I do not think I will play any more Ubisoft games. They’re all open world grind-fests with few novel ideas and poor RPG elements.