Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the last game that needed additional content at this time, but this week has come out anyway and since I’m still cool in the game, I thought I’d jump back come in and check it out.
These things came in the form of ‘River Raids’, a new game mode that adds three small areas of the map that you can visit, all in places on the west side of Britain that the base game never ventured into. In fact, “explore” is the wrong word here, because you’ll do almost nothing of it.
Instead, these new areas are built around thin river corridors, with the idea that they have been designed to take the main attack system of the main game monastery and line it up, aligning the banks of these rivers with farms, military bases and, yes, there are more monasteries to make their way. There’s a lot of rivers, a thin strip of land to put these attack targets on, and that’s it. In fact, there is so little land that you can’t even summon your horse.
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River Raids is not something you can do in the middle of your existing game. Rather, they exist as their own stand-alone game mode, accessible by building a couple of unique structures related to it in Ravensthorpe and then the option to embark on it (it’s like going to Vinland).
It is an interesting concept. River Raids is supposed to be an endless game mode, where you can only get on your boat and steal things whenever you want, because even if you burn a place on the ground it will soon be rebuilt and you can loot it. again.
My problems with this, however, stem from the fact that it hardly forces you to do so. The only notable the items available here are a complete set of armor and weapons following the model of St. George, with the armor randomly distributed in the chests found in the military camps and with a sword the prize for defeating a “champion” in a battle disappointing encounter at the end of the third river.
Once I found all of this, and it only took me 3-4 cruises to do it, I had no interest in getting back into the modality. I didn’t need the resources you can cultivate by repeatedly attacking the same locations, and it’s a nuisance that many of the raids focus on a certain type of resource – “foreign supplies” – that can only be used to buy cosmetics and upgrades to River Mode Raid (although if purchased here, you can later apply the cosmetics to your regular boat at least).
There is no story to expand on some brief talks with the mascot and initiator of River Raids, Vagnor, and, as I said, with the three new maps so small and with nothing but assault targets, there’s little exploration either.
Also, the raid has never been so much fun? The real strengths of De Valhalla the game was their stealth encounters, their environmental puzzles, and their biggest siege battles. The raids felt like a mix of the three that fell short on all three counts, and that’s even harder, as many of those raids are smaller and less interesting.
In fact, it is sometimes felt that the only reason it exists is to give the navigation a little more time in the crosshairs, as it was little accustomed to the main game (out of, surprise, raids).
Watch, River incursions it’s a free upgrade, there’s no downside to trying it out and seeing if you spend more time on it than I do. But more grinding for the sake of grinding is the last I needed this game.