Stabbing Guilt...Literally

Assassin's Creed:  Odyssey is proving to be a massive undertaking.  Sadly, after many more hours of play, I've barely advanced my main storyline progression--damn you enticing question marks!  At this point, I've stabbed so many poor Athenians, Spartans, bandits, cultists, mercenaries, and various other baddies that I've started feeling a bit guilty about it.  I've even started to try to avoid killing people (which never turns out well--usually I end up getting spotted by the guards anyway and the killing turns from a silent, orderly assassination-fest into a chaotic bout of ducking, dodging, and running).  Here's a good indication of my murderousness:

That's right, I've advanced the main storyline by 9% in one week and I've killed 1,323 people.  Sheesh.

Mostly, I'm still having fun, but I will admit that I've found myself getting a bit bored with my personal game of question mark/checklist checkoff.  Like I mentioned last week, the world of ancient Greece is stunningly beautiful, but after I've cleared out my 30th military base (that looks oddly similar to most of the other bases) I find myself getting antsy.  I've also found myself feeling a little weird about killing people in an urban area--it feels wrong to stab someone in the middle of a marketplace (yes, you are playing the role of an assassin--I get that) and I've been steering clear of bounties where you kill civilians.  I'm loving Kassandra as a character, but it does feel quite ruthless to be blatantly stabbing...well, everyone.

Even though I have had those strange, misplaced feelings of guilt, that hasn't stopped me from my ridiculously murderous desire to Spartan Kick anyone and everyone off of any slight incline.  Why is it so stinkin' fun to boot someone off the side of a cliff?  Am I a horrible person for enjoying it so much?  One of my highlight Spartan Kicking moments came in the Forge of Hephaistos (a cultist camp located in a cave within a volcano) where I was accidentally spotted by a patrolling cultist (and a captain at that).  After some brief sparring, I noticed that el capitan was standing right on the edge of the boiling, lava filled cauldron, so I decided to give him the boot.  Much to my satisfaction, he landed perfectly in the lava--no loot, but a much easier fight!  (And, I also have to yell "this...is...Sparta!" like every time)

It's a big, beautiful world in ancient Greece...but it can get boring.

Something that I'm still trying to figure out is the loot system.  Epic gear (purple) seems to have better stats than legendary gear...but, legendary gear can form sets that seem to give out some seriously potent set bonuses.  I've accumulated a bunch of disparate set pieces and now they're all sitting at different levels.  It seems to cost a good chunk of resources to upgrade legendary pieces to your current level.  I have a bad feeling that by the time I finally do get a set together that it's going to require a ridiculous amount of resources to upgrade it to my character level.  Is it even worth it?

Assassin's Creed:  Odyssey seems to suffer from the "open world" problem--Ubisoft have re-created this gorgeous world, but it becomes the main focal point and the story gets lost in the background.  I really wish that each zone/area had more of a story built into it or some sort of chaining quests/missions to make the huge world more interesting.  I always refer back to The Witcher 3, because it's one game where I feel like they succeeded in adding in enough story that the open world didn't start to get old--each area had a story to go with it.  It doesn't necessarily need to be linear (which is like a bad word now), but it needs something to break up the drudgery.

I'm still having a lot of fun (even with my guilty assassin's conscience) and foresee myself spending many, many more hours adventuring in ancient Greece.