Assassin's Creed Valhalla - First Impressions

I have played about 12 hours of the latest Assassin's Creed game Valhalla and I just wanted to share my thoughts so far. 

Your story in the game begins in snowy Norway and its beautiful mountain vistas. Valhalla is definitely a good looking game. The world feels familiar to AC Odyssey in many ways but the mountains bring more verticality to the world. 

How you explore the world is a bit different, it feels less cluttered. There are not as many icons covering the game map. The main character Eivor (I choose the male version) is charismatic enough but he is no Kassandra. So far, the supporting characters are not that interesting but this is early in the game so we will see. 

One thing that surprised me, was how quickly the story proceeds to England from Norway. If I hadn't explored anything on my own, the stay in Norway would have only been a couple of hours. My guess is that you will return there, later in the story.

So far, I have travelled and set up camp in England and explored the world around the camp. I'm still not wholly convinced that it's good. In my opinion they have added some of the worst parts of other open world games instead of removed them. 

For example, I didn't like managing the camp in Red Dead Redemption and I'm not a fan of it now. I'm not a fan of raids either. I like going stealthy and apparently you can't raid larger chests or open heavy doors alone so you need your crew, and they are anything but stealthy. I get it, they are vikings, they raid and shit but not having the option to go stealthy in an Assassin's Creed game is not ok.

Like the Cult of Cosmos in AC Odyssey, the Order of the Ancients are back. These are assassination targets you reveal by discovering clues. I assassinated two of these already and they're quite fun.  

There are also a lot of caves, ancient roman sites, mysteries and artifacts that you can find and explore. I like these but there might almost be too many of them.

I recently played AC: Brotherhood (the remastered version) and I can see now hat there has always been problems with the Assassin's Creed games. Many things about them simply feel like chores. Yet there has always been something that makes you see past these chores. Hopefully, I will find this thing in AC Valhalla soon, so that it feels worth playing.