Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Siege of Paris Review – A lot of blood for too little silver

Even with a few hiccups here and there, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is one of the best open-world games released last year, with a compelling story and a huge world to explore. The great experience of the main game was further expanded a few months ago with the Wrath of the Druids expansion, which brought Eivor to Ireland to contend with a mysterious cult that not only threatened the rule of the Irish High-King, but also of his cousin from Barid. Now, Ubisoft’s open-world game is about to expand even further with The Siege of Paris, the last expansion planned for this year. While this new expansion tries to bring back elements of previous Assassin’s Creed games, the story isn’t quite as immersive as in the previous expansion.

The Siege of Paris is set in Francia, an empire first united under Charles the Fat in the 9th century. Unity doesn’t mean peace, though, as Danes and Normans continue to plunder the Sienne, while the Chieftain Sigfred and his Elgring clan prepare for another siege of the city of Paris after Ragnar Lothbrok’s original sack. To make this siege a success, Sigfred invites Eivor to Francia, although the leader of the Raven Clan has a very different goal than Sigfred: to convince Charles the Fat to give up his ambition for England.

The story of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Siege of Paris comes with the same themes that we have seen in the main game and the previous expansions, such as rules that hide more than a few secrets, a powerful group that works from the shadows, the Bellatores Dei here in Francia, and treachery abounds. The characters are generally not particularly well developed, often they are exactly as they appear: Charlemagne is as cunning as he seems, Sigfred as bold as expected, Count Odo shows from his first appearance that he strives for something more than just defend Paris and so on. The plot itself is nothing special either, as some twists and turns can be seen from miles away. In this regard, the Wrath of the Druids expansion was much more fun because the new characters had great chemistry with Eivor, and the Irish setting made for some intriguing story developments. The problem with The Siege of Paris is that the setting isn’t all that interesting, and there’s nothing beyond the Christian zealots Bellatores Dei that makes Francia feel different from England. That’s not to say the story is terrible, as it progresses decently throughout its 10 hours, just that after over 80 hours in the game, you need something else to feel fully engaged.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Siege of Paris doesn’t change much in the gameplay experience either, expanding what we’ve already seen in the main game and the first expansion, such as introducing new skills and abilities, a new weapon type, the Scythe, and a few new enemy types. The biggest change to the experience is the Infiltration missions, a modernized version of the black box missions featured in earlier installments in the series. During these missions, players must kill specific targets, but have the freedom to do so however they wish, and also have the option to unlock additional kill events by further investigating the targets. It’s a nice hark back to previous Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and definitely the highlight of the experience. It’s just a shame there aren’t more of them.

While not as big as the Infiltration missions, the second major addition to the formula is the Rat Swarm. A new element in navigation puzzles (and the main focus of one of the new ranged abilities), these swarms will damage Eivor once they come into contact with them, forcing players to swing their weapons to make them retreat within rosters or find another procedure. They’re not a major nuisance, but they’re still a welcome addition that plays well with the setting.

For the rest, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Siege of Paris isn’t that different from the main campaign. You move from one area to another to complete missions, find riches, complete small sidequests that give more information about the environment, raid locations for loot and sync with viewpoints to reveal more of the land and Fast Travel options to unlock. Francia’s map isn’t that big actually, which is somewhat disappointing, so it won’t take you long to find everything there is: completing all the main story missions and clearing all side content, including new Rebel side missions that Eivor must complete to get the further weakening Charles the Fat’s hold on land takes no more than 15 hours.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Siege of Paris is arguably the weaker of the two expansions, due to its predictable story and characters and lack of any major new gameplay mechanic, other than Infiltration missions. After tens of hours in the game, dozens of synchronized Viewpoints and hundreds of corpses left in Eivor’s wake, more of the same is certainly not enough.

PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ax52RAFx0Y