ASSASSIN’S CREED VALHALLA: DAWN OF RAGNAROK Review - A Familiar Myth

PS5 review code for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök was provided by Ubisoft.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is, amazingly, almost two years old at this point, and Ubisoft has committed to keeping the game alive with new content through its second year of life. Dawn of Ragnarök is the first of these new expansions, and it makes an earnest attempt to differentiate itself from the initial season pass offerings.

Unfortunately, Dawn of Ragnarök doesn’t quite hit the heights at which it was aiming. Returning to AC Valhalla still feels good, but that’s more a testament to the quality of the original title than anything Dawn of Ragnarök brings to the table.

Story

Dawn of Ragnarök wastes no time dropping you into its story, and the jarring rush of the introductory mission often made me feel like I’d missed an important cinematic or drawn-out exposition dump. Havi and Frigg’s initial attempt to save their son, Baldr, from the clutches of the fire giants of Muspelheim ends in bitter defeat, kicking off what is essentially one giant fetch quest.

The story in Dawn of Ragnarök isn’t bad, but it very rarely ascends to the level of previous Assassin’s Creed games or expansions. It feels at times like it’s chasing the ghost of the Fate of Atlantis storyline from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and it never quite reaches the level of that episodic storyline.

The real problem here is that the majority of Dawn of Ragnarök’s story is spent powering up a random MacGuffin over the course of several story missions. While this object is intimately tied to both Havi and Surtr’s history, it just feels weird to spend hours upon hours hunting down random characters and going through all this backstory while Baldr is literally being tortured a few miles away.   

That said, there are some bright spots throughout Havi’s adventure in Svartalfheim that kept me engrossed long enough to make my way through the roughly 10-hour story. The fire giant Eysa was one such bright spot, and I only wish she’d shown up sooner in the campaign. She’s one of the most complex and compelling companions in the entire game, and the story missions she’s involved in are easily the best in the expansion.

Dawn of Ragnarök boasts a collection of interesting villains as well, but none of them are given enough screen time to really expand as characters. Sinmara is the central antagonist Havi must contend with, and she lives up to her title as the Queen of Muspelheim with vigor and zeal. Oddly enough, Surtr is the one, truly disappointing villain, as he only has two brief appearances in the whole expansion.

The other disappointment is the lack of content around Eivor, the Isu, or the present-day story. The marketing for Dawn of Ragnarök indicated that there would be revelations about those plotlines, but Eivor is barely featured in the expansion, and there’s no mention of the Isu or modern-day narrative whatsoever.

As uneven as the journey might have been, Dawn of Ragnarök manages to stick a satisfying, if a bit shaky, landing. The final act of Havi’s time in Svartalfheim is emotionally poignant and powerfully ironic, as the future he’s been dreading finally rears its ugly head. The strangely abrupt cut from a violent cinematic to scrolling credits threw me for a loop, but a post-credit scene does an adequate job of wrapping things up while teasing another adventure yet to come.

Gameplay

Dawn of Ragnarök makes a few interesting additions to the AC Valhalla formula that shake things up in some fun ways, but they ultimately don’t do enough to differentiate this from the game I first played in November of 2020. I still found myself relying largely on powerful stun attacks and quick time dodges to navigate combat encounters, and found the new abilities to be little more than reskinned versions of existing powers.

The one major addition in this DLC is the Hugr-Rip, a special tool that allows Havi to steal special Jotun and Muspel powers from fallen adversaries. While it’s a little unwieldy at first because of the stingy timers on each power and the limited supply of hugr, once I upgraded this little tool I found myself using it to engage with enemies in some very cool ways.  

In combat, the Hugr-Rip allowed me to resurrect defeated enemies to fight at my side, assassinate enemies at a distance with teleporting arrows, and even freeze groups of enemies with ice-imbued weapons. The Power of the Raven also makes scaling tall structures and traveling over inconvenient obstacles much easier, with the only downside being that it’s not available outside of Svartalfheim.

The coolest implementation of the Hugr-Rip, though, is how it allows the developers to create intricate and genuinely challenging puzzles that require the use of specific powers. One of the coolest I found was a frozen mansion that required me to teleport around multiple vantage points before I could slip through a metal grate and claim the treasure inside.

These types of activities were among the best Dawn of Ragnarök had to offer, but they were few and far between while traveling across Svartalfheim. The world feels small and surprisingly empty, and the mysteries that were so well-designed and captivating in the base game have now largely been reduced to simple rescue missions.

There’s also a new arena, where Havi will fight enemies of old for the viewing pleasure of the Valkyrie, Kara. These bouts are some of the toughest in the game, especially with added modifiers to up the difficulty. While there are rewards to earn for repeated attempts, the grind to accrue enough currency is long, which makes this feel more like a testing ground for combat lovers than another way to level up.

Audio and Visual

The music is as lovely as it’s ever been, with sweeping orchestral compositions backing every scene with invigorating splendor. The music team over at Ubisoft always does a remarkable job with these games, and AC Valhalla was no exception. I did encounter a few audio glitches that cut out character dialogue close to the end of the story, but these issues were minimal and didn’t impact my overall experience.

While the visuals also impress, there’s not much visually about Svartalfheim that feels very fresh or new. For a mystical realm of mythological figures, it looks an awful lot like a slightly reskinned England or Norway. It also doesn’t help that the character models still look stiff and awkward, especially in the facial animations. New characters like Sinmara and Eysa fare better than others, but they’re still not great for a current-gen title.

What Could Be Better

The easiest and quickest improvement Ubisoft could make for this game is to reduce the price. This expansion is fundamentally not worth $40 USD, no matter which way you look at it. That’s the same price as the base game’s Season Pass, which included both Wrath of the Druids and The Siege of Paris, both of which are comparable in size to Dawn of Ragnarök.

I also would have liked to see a wider range of activities that felt unique to Svartalfheim, even if that meant making sacrifices in other areas. I’d rather have interesting interactions with the world than hunt down another hundred metal ingots. It would also have been nice to see more clearly how these events will factor into Eivor’s life and what Basim’s reaction to learning all of this will be in the present day.

Verdict

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Dawn of Ragnarök, even if it didn’t wow me. It relies a bit too much on the bones of the base game, but it offers a neat mechanic with the Hugr-Rip that shakes up both combat and exploration. Dawn of Ragnarök is a decent enough experience that, unfortunately, doesn’t do nearly enough to justify its steep price tag.