As the last planned expansion in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s first season pass, The Siege of Paris feels like the series going out with more of a whisper than a shout. New and interesting activities are in short supply while content that is functionally identical to the rest of the main game flows like wine. And even the return of the fan favorite more open-ended assassination missions and strong character performances can’t save the story from feeling run of the mill at best.
As with the previous expansion, Wrath of the Druids, two new visitors to Ravensthorpe arrive with the intention to butter Eivor up and convince them to sail to a faraway land and solve their problems. After a little wining and dining, Tolk and Pierre, charming representatives of the Elgring Clan, succeed in commissioning the Wolf-Kissed to ship off to Francia and help in their plight against the Mad King, Charles the Fat.
9th Century France’s visuals didn’t immediately shock in the same way that Ireland did in Wrath of the Druids. The rolling grassy hills and river-webbed deltas look almost identical to much of England from the base adventure. Where Ireland’s color palette and geography felt like you were entering an old and mysteriously untamed place, Francia’s wildlands felt disappointingly simple. Simple can still be beautiful of course, and the parts of the country where King Charles had rampaged into blackened craters almost felt more devastating thanks to how familiar they felt. That said, if you put a location from Francia side by side with one of the regions in the middle of England, I’d be hard pressed to tell you the difference.
The general flow of quests and side activities in Siege of Paris was also disappointingly familiar. Every location had the same menu of things to do, kill, and discover, all playing out the same way they always have. More of the same can be entertaining, but Francia is missing the flourish that Ireland had in this regard. Duels with the wandering Frankish Nobles and exploring Roman Excavation sites don't differentiate themselves from vanilla Valhalla’s equivalents. Rebel Missions, the expansion’s new activity, are shallower versions of the same “find this, kill that” quests too, just shortened significantly and featuring AI controlled rebels to help you complete your tasks. You can grind through these events pretty quickly to earn deniers, a currency you can spend on upgrading your rebels or purchasing new armor and runes, but none of its rewards are compelling reasons to do so outside of compulsive box checking.
The already solid combat of Valhalla has at least been given a bit more life with the addition of a new weapon type, the scythe. Scythes are two-handed weapons that are quicker than the other two-handed options. They’re great for mobs of enemies and single targets alike, and I was very surprised at how much fun I had whirling those things around the battlefield. In contrast, I never once had fun dueling against the new enemy type, the Heavy Cavalry. These mounted Frankish knights absorb tons of damage, have massive reach, and are immune to many of the movement and displacement abilities you have that make combat so enjoyable in the first place. Whenever they were dropped onto the field, they were always the most dangerous thing there and the last thing I could finish off, which provides a bit of new challenge at the cost of added frustration.
The story itself is slow to start and isn’t going to blow minds by the end of its 10-hour runtime. The conflict between Norweigian vikings colonizing a foreign land and the local tyrannical monarch using ruthless tactics to stop them is pretty similar to many of the other stories told in Valhalla so far. The interesting wrinkle of the Catholic church being subverted by radical cultists is a subplot that is teased, but remained a case that was never truly closed by the time I finished the last quest.
That said, some excellent performances from key characters like King Charles and Count Odo really elevate the simple story of a plucky rebellion versus a powerful tyrant. Charles’ presence specifically fills every scene he’s in with a profound cloud of tension that makes you feel very worried about anyone else sharing a space with him. He’s the most memorable Assassin’s Creed villain in many years.
There’s also a plague raging through Francia, but it doesn’t loom very large over the proceedings, and the only time I noticed it was when I encountered rat swarms in the sewers of Paris and surrounding ruins. These swarms are lethal if not dealt with, but the process of dealing with them is annoying. Attacks can chase them off but cannot damage them, so unless you shepherd them into sewer grates and block them off, they will pester you to death. I'm glad they were such an infrequent encounter.
The main story missions also feature a handful of Infiltrations, open-ended assassination tasks retooled from Assassin’s Creed Unity’s Black Box missions (coincidentally, also based in France). These are welcome additions to the formula, adding multiple avenues of progress to your target and the freedom to complete missions the way you want to. They offer some hard to miss prompts to get you started before branching into various opportunities to gain intel and find shortcuts that you wouldn't get otherwise. Infiltrations also often result in particularly brutal cinematic assassinations if you follow all of the leads correctly. It’s not quite Hitman-levels of freedom, but the relative openness is a call back to the series’ history that I didn’t know I missed until now.