Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the last game that needed additional content at this point, but this week it got some, and since I’m still fresh in the game I thought I’d jump back in and watch it.
That stuff arrived in the form of “River Raids,” a new game mode that adds three new little areas of the map for you to visit, all in spots on the west side of Britain that the base game never ventured. Actually, ‘explore’ is the wrong word here, because you hardly ever do that.
Instead, these new areas are all built around thin corridors of the river, with the idea that they are designed to utilize and crank up the monastic robbery system of the main game, lining the banks of these rivers with farms, military bases and, yes, more monasteries to cut your way through. There is a lot of river, a thin strip of land on which to set up these attack targets, and that’s it. Indeed, there is so little land that you cannot even summon your horse.
G / O Media can receive a commission
River Raids is not something you can just do in the middle of your existing game. Rather, they exist as their own stand-alone game mode, accessed by building a few unique structures related to them in Ravensthorpe, then taking the option to start one (sort of like leaving to go to Vinland ).
It’s an interesting concept. River Raids is supposed to be a never-ending game mode where you can just jump in your boat and steal some stuff whenever you want, because even if you burn down a site it will soon be rebuilt and you can loot it. all over again.
However, my problems with this stem from the fact that there is almost nothing to force you to do so. The only thing remarkable items available here include a complete set of armor and weapons modeled after St. George, with the armor scattered randomly in chests found in military camps and a sword your prize for defeating a ‘champion’ in a disappointing battle at the end of the third river.
When all that was found, and it only took me 3-4 cruises to do it, I had no interest in returning to mode. I didn’t need the resources that you can farm by repeatedly raiding the same locations, and it’s a shame that many of the raids target a certain type of resource – “foreign supplies” – that can only be used to buy cosmetics and upgrades in River Raid mode (however, if you buy it here, you can at least apply the cosmetic models to your regular ship later).
There is no story to elaborate on outside a few short conversations with River Raids’ mascot and instigator Vagnor, and as I said with the three new maps so small and without anything other than attacking targets, there’s little exploration either.
And mugging was never that much fun in the first place? The real strengths of Valhalla’s gameplay included the stealth encounters, the environmental puzzles and the larger siege battles. Raids felt like a mix of all three falling short on all three accounts, and that’s even more so here as many of these raids are smaller and less interesting.
Indeed, it sometimes feels like the only reason this exists is to give sailing a little more time in the spotlight, as it was underused in the main game (beyond surprise, raids).
Look, River Raids is a free update, it doesn’t hurt to try it out and see if you love it more than I do. But more grind for the sake of grinding is the last thing this game needed