Assassin's Creed Valhalla Reminds Me Of Playing Black Flag

I genuinely tried to stealth my way through most encounters in the first hour of my three-hour preview demo of Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I'd crouch among the sparse bushes and use a mixture of well-placed arrow shots and instant-kill hidden blade assassinations to carefully chip away at an outpost's defenses. But it wasn't exactly easy and it felt like I wasn't adequately responding to the situation at hand.

Perhaps additional abilities, additional enemy types, and new environments in other parts of the game will allow Eivor to pull off more types of silent kills and make stealth a more enjoyable option, but the placement of enemies in most of the encounters I experienced in the demo seemed to encourage fighting out in the open over skulking in the shadows. So for the latter two hours of my time with the demo I decided to do just that.

Frankly, it made for a far more satisfying experience. By the end of the demo, I was having a much better time than I was at the start. Choosing to confront foes head-on reminded me of my time with Edward Kenway, the protagonist of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. As a pirate who only becomes an Assassin in the final few campaign missions of the game, it makes sense that Edward solves many of his problems as a pirate that's making the most of the tools of an Assassin, as opposed to an actual trained Assassin--and this is reflected in the combat and mission structure. Some are enjoyable and others (like the mandatory stealth and tailing missions) are less so. Black Flag is at its best when you play it as a scrappy pirate who sails around in search of treasure and ships to pillage, only turning to the tools and strategies of the Assassins as another method in Edward's vast arsenal. In those moments when Black Flag affords you the agency to pull from both Edward's combat and stealth abilities, it's a better game--Black Flag is perhaps the only released entry in the Assassin's Creed franchise where I regularly transition between both combat and stealth as the two playstyles flow together in a satisfying way.

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