Recent reviews by grumpyrogue

A Nostalgic Time Capsule — With a Fresh Coat of Paint

If you loved Oblivion in 2006, this remaster brings it back almost exactly as it was — quirks and all.
The radiant AI still leads to awkwardly charming NPC behavior, and yes, a few of the old bugs survived the trip. But the soul of the game — exploring Cyrodiil, joining guilds, and forging your own story — remains untouched and as captivating as ever.

Visually, the remaster impresses. The Unreal Engine is well-utilized, and if you’re running a capable system, you’re in for a treat. On my Ryzen 5800X, RTX 3080, and 32GB of RAM, I’m getting between 90–100 FPS indoors and a wider range of 50–70 FPS outdoors. Additionally, outdoors there are occasional stutters still happen during zone transitions, however I was able to find a Nexus Mods Performance tweak that replaces the "Engine.ini" file and seems to have ironed most of that out.

Combat (especially melee) also feels noticeably improved. There’s more weight and impact now — a satisfying upgrade over the floaty feel of the original. It won’t rival modern action-RPGs, but it’s a big step up from what we had in 2006.

What Oblivion still does better than many modern RPGs is offer freedom and personality. The world invites exploration without hand-holding. Questlines like the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild remain genre-defining. NPCs follow daily routines, environments hide clever secrets, and there’s an earnest weirdness modern games often lose in pursuit of polish.

That said, one major downside is the lack of robust mod support. While some players will still find ways to tweak and customize the game, it’s clear this remaster won’t receive the same thriving modding community that past Bethesda titles enjoyed. And for many fans, modding is a huge part of what keeps these games alive for years after launch.

If you’re expecting a full remake, this isn’t it. But if you want a respectful visual overhaul with tighter gameplay and that unforgettable Oblivion magic intact, this remaster delivers — warts and all — and I love it for that.

This is what VR is about. I played this game with my nieces and we all had a blast. The phone app functionality brings the entire game to a new level. Very interesting concept and fun way to bring multiplayer to the VR space, even if you only have 1 VR unit for multiple people.

I have tried Assassin's Creed games on and off since the very first game back in 2007 on the Xbox 360. After that I tried 2, 3 Black Flag and the more recently Origins. Each game always met my expectations in regards to visuals and fluidity of game controls, but aside from that I always found myself bored by the formulaic progression and lack luster stories the game provided. Once I got past the first few hours, I found that each game was pretty much just repeating itself - with incremental progression. Because of this, I was never able to beat any of the games. I would usually make it to the third or fourth act and call it quits.

AC Origins started to break away from this formula. I played Origins for quite some time and I really saw a lot of potential, but unfortunately I still got bored before I could complete the game. The story itself was not that compelling and the level of grind didn't really help. Despite those complaints, I still felt that the installment was a step in the right direction.

AC Odyssey is another incremental (albeit large) step forward. At the time of writing this review I am about 40 hours into the game and I can tell I have barely scratched the surface. I am playing the game on the most difficult setting (Nightmare) and this is causing the progression to be slower than most people would experience. I play on this setting because I feel the challenge keeps me truly engaged. Each battle I have I am risking death. On this settings all enemies scale with you, which keeps you in constant peril despite your level. This is my preference, but for people who do not enjoy level scaling there are options to change the scaling on other difficulty levels. While I haven't completed the game just yet, I do feel that I've gotten a good enough feeling for what to expect going forward and I must say that I am having a lot of fun. I have every intention of finishing this AC game.


Story

The story so far is passable at best. As I indicated earlier I have not finished the game, so I can not attest to the entirety of the plot. From a general story telling perspective the main campaign seems like it could shape up to be fairly interesting. So far the side quests are no better than any standard MMO fetch quest. Each quest typically involves you killing some people. The killing itself isn't really the problem, since the combat is always engaging; however, it is a little far fetched when your solution to literally everything is to kill a group of people. For example, I just spoke with a woman who was singing a song and a couple men in the crowd said some rude things to her. In my mind I would expect maybe she would want me to go rough them up a bit and make them apologize. That option isn't even considered - the first words out of my mouth were, "oh they were rude to you? No problem, I'll stab them all in the head for you." What's worse is every citizen is completely fine with this conflict resolution route. I realize it's a game about Assassin's, but what kind of monster society has your common citizen totally fine with you murdering entire groups of people for the most petty offenses? It doesn't ruin the game, but it really does make the side quests no more than a brainless task to get experience.

The choices in the game also don't seem to have much weight, at least not so far as I can tell. The discussion tree is done well though and the voice acting for the main characters is top notch. If the series continues to go in the RPG direction, I believe they are seriously need to improve this aspect of the game. For AC Odyssey don't expect The Witcher levels of story telling.


Combat

This is probably one of my favorite aspects of the game. The fighting controls are very responsive and there is a lot of customization you can do with your skill trees and armor. It's also easy to reset your skill trees for a small sum of gold so you can really play around with which fighting style is yours.

The only real complaint I have is the fact that choosing to be exclusively an Assassin type class isn't always compatible with the game. For most quests you can go through an entire stronghold and take out guards quickly and silently. This game play can be fun and exciting, especially when a guard catches sight of you, starts to yell and then you throw a spear through his/her face before they can alert the others. I feel like this is how Assassin class is meant to be played. However; there are conquest battles that are required throughout the game, as well as ship battles when you dock an enemy ship. These battles do not work for the sneaky Assassin class simply because there is nowhere to hide. In my opinion this makes being a true 100% Assassin not a viable option. Luckily, it's pretty easy to make yourself a hybrid class in order to get past those types of battles.


Exploration

The exploration in this game is fun. In fact it's very fun. One of the biggest problem I've had with Ubisoft games in the past is their incessant need to post a map marker every 10 feet for absolutely anything that you might look at. This always let me to feel that I was playing a list checking simulator rather than an exploration game.

AC Odyssey tries to fix this by introducing an exploration mode that eases back on the map markers and instead allows you to explore in order to find the secrets of Greece. That's not to say map markers are completely missing. If you accept a quest, you will still see a marker of the area or person that you need to kill. For other things, there are question marks to indicate there may be things of interest in that area and then at that point you can use your Eagle or Athena's sight when you're in the area to scope out potential enemies or treasures.

There are also documents you find that will provide clues where to find Engravings (aka custom weapon/armor stats boosters). These can't be found using your Eagle from above. Instead you have to read the document and then figure out how to get to the area based off the clues (e.g. go north of the pond to a crossroad, take a left until a big rock and then look under the corpse of a dead goat to find your reward).

This combination of exploration gives a much better sense of achievement than the previous games. It's still a little easier than I prefer; however, I feel Ubisoft is going in the right direction. Also, I should mention - the map is absolutely HUGE. You have a horse and a warship with crew to get around. The warship is a simple game mechanic, but very fun. Nothing puts you in a better mood than your crew cheering victoriously and singing sea shanties after an explosive sea battle.


Gameplay ]

This topic is pretty much covered by my combat and exploration sections, however, I will say that the general gameplay loop is varied enough that I haven't found myself getting bored. Sure, you do end up doing a lot of the same things from each area - and expect that's not going to change as I get further in the game; however, there are so many things to keep you occupied that if you get bored doing any single thing, you can just take a break and do something else. Tired of questing? Go storm some forts and disrupt the balance of power in a region. Sick of doing that? Roam the country side finding hidden caves and treasures within. Tired of that? Go hunt for Alpha animals. Go help random strangers (albeit fetch quest style). Go sail the seas and destroy pirates, merchants or Spartans alike. Want to earn extra rewards - try some of the daily quests that give you special currency for legendary gear.

Admittedly, nothing in the game hasn't been done in another game before, but there is enough of it to keep things varied for hours.


Final Verdict
It's a good game - I recommend it.

Pretty much the best game ever made!