Finished it last night. I’ve really enjoyed it l. Think it was “meatier” than Odyssey but I did love the scenery in Greece more.
Also after the first 10 hours or so I rarely used the boat again. Once you’ve hit a few synch markers it’s almost always much quicker to navigate around using them and the horse, which felt like a bit of a shame. Sailing from island to island and having naval battles was fun in Odyssey.
Much prefer the characters and the story in Valhalla.
Yeah, Greese was admittedly very beautiful. In terms of pure beauty, I agree that it's more beautiful than Valhalla. The game world in Odyssey just didn't feel as cohesive - for want of a better term - to me though as does that of Valhalla. Even right down to the simplest things, like the really high frequency of wild animal attacks in Odyssey or watching two Spartans in mortal combat with a pig, it all just felt so slung together and unauthentic, with something like Red Dead's world as an example being of the other end of that particular spectrum.
I agree on the characters too. Odyssey's were both badly written and in the case of the male protagonist, Alexios (who I stupidly stuck with for too long to restart) really badly voiced. It was a bad combo that really detracted from immersion of the game for me. Odyssey's story was also extremely cringy in parts. The whole "this was grandfather's spear" being a one line catalyst for wiping out eighteen years of brain-washing was head-in-hands ridiculous, even taking into account that we're talking about Assassin's Creed games here.
As for using the longboat, what I was surprised at in this game is how bad the water looks compared to that in Odysssey. It's ugly to the point where it's horrible aliased look puts me off using the boat.
Valhalla isn't Witcher 3 or Red Dead, but it feels that with Valhalla it's getting there. Unfortunately Darby has now left Ubisoft, which doesn't bode well.