Highly anticipated: Assassin's Creed Valhalla has proven incredibly successful since its launch last week, and for good reason: it's easily one of the best Assassin's Creed games to date, and not just on consoles. Despite more than a few performance problems, the game has become Ubisoft's most successful PC launch ever.
In just one week, Valhalla has become not just one of the highest-rated games of the season, but also a top-seller in Ubisoft's catalog. It's managed to shift more units in week one than any other Assassin's Creed game – across all platforms – in the history of the franchise.
"We are truly delighted by the enthusiastic response from players and want to thank the fans for their incredible support," said Assassin's Creed Valhalla producer Julien Laferrière in a statement. "Launch is only the beginning and we have robust content plans for Assassin's Creed Valhalla that will keep players immersed in their epic Viking saga for a long time to come."
Speaking personally, I've enjoyed Valhalla much more than any of the recent Assassin's Creed games I've played. I didn't particularly like either Origins or Odyssey, feeling that their side content was too repetitive to be worth my time. However, with truly engaging, bite-sized side quests, Valhalla feels like the culmination of a lot of this series' best ideas, and that's a sentiment many other players seem to agree with.
Of course, Valhalla's quality alone is probably not the only factor in its early success. As one of the few examples of a third-party game that's been optimized for both current and next-gen consoles, Valhalla was almost guaranteed to be a hit. Fans are buying it for the Xbox One, the Xbox One X, the PlayStation 5, the PC, Ubisoft+, streaming platforms like Stadia, and more.
With such widespread availability, it would've perhaps been more surprising if Valhalla had somehow flopped. Regardless, we're certainly happy that Ubisoft Montreal's hard work has paid off here. If you haven't tried the game yet yourself, it's well worth a look. As per the usual, it'll run you $60 ($50 on Amazon) if you choose to buy in now.
You may also consider playing it through Ubisoft's aptly-named Ubisoft+ service, which gives you access to the company's entire game catalog for $15/month. With that said, if you're a PC player, it couldn't hurt to wait for a few more performance patches and bug fixes before jumping in.