Valhalla is the worst of the ancient AC games, Fenyx has it beat on all fronts except maybe the IQ.
In Valhalla, Ubisoft has somehow managed to bungle all 3 core mechanics of an Assassin's Creed game, which is exploration, combat and stealth.
Stealth is completely useless most of the time since the slighteset mistake, even on the lowest difficulty, results in everyone in a 5-mile radius immediately knowing exactly where you are.
'Difficult' enemies have unblockable attacks that you have no time to react to and have to facetank so you get one-shotted if your level is too low and have to heal if you are not.
Healing must be farmed or bought and it's ridiculous how much you have to gather in order to be able to heal once.
The Order of the Ancients silhouettes tell you exactly who the member is because they are not hidden properly, so as soon as I looked at who the leader was because I got a clue, the game immediately spoiled it for me, same as at least one other character whose Order allegiance was supposed to be a twist. In Odyssey you only knew the gender of the member they all looked identical and wore a mask on the Order screen and got uncovered when you found out their identity.
Arrow racks only give you a couple of arrows and you have to find multiple to refill.
The story is a mess with zero memorable characters aside of the protagonist, everyone is a caricature or a stereotype.
The parkour is once again completely forgotten and it is always faster to just run on the ground to your next objective.
The combat itself feels the least responsive of all the 3 latest AC games, to the point where I just switched to the Fidelity mode on my PS5 and I see no difference whatsoever in the combat responsiveness from the 60fps Performance mode.
Ubisoft bragged about how the game doesn't have levels and you can technically tackle more difficult zones if you're good enough, which is complete bullshit, 'levels' is just called 'power' and you give yourself 2 boring stat boosts every level instead of the game doing it automatically. Enemies also have a power level and you get absolutely obliterated if you're below the recommended range for a boss or a zone. Most of the time by bullshit mechanics like I mentioned previously.
You make alliances with regions and can then raid them immediately afterwards without any sort of consequence whatsoever.
Most of the 'choices' you have to make are the game basically asking you to flip a coin and decide who to murder without enough proof.
If you want to just chill with your vikings while sailing on a river and listen to songs/stories, you get interrputed every two minutes as soon as you get close to a spot that can be raided (even if you have raided it before).
You can't see all the stats of the items available to be bought.
An end-game character doesn't play any different from a character after the tutorial. Most skills are useless because they take too long to execute and deal too little damage.
It's really baffling how disjointed the game feels as a whole. It's like 5 different people made decisions regarding different gameplay systems and never talked to each other, which is possible given that a hundred studios work on each of those games now.
I thought after Odyssey Ubisoft can't produce anything more antithetical to everything Assassin's Creed was and they would instead build on the good parts of Origins, but instead we got this mess.
Fenyx is a breath of fresh air. Combat is basically ripped from Odyssey but it's simple and does its job, the exploration is fun, as you upgrade your character you feel tangibly stronger because you can glide further, climb higher, tank more hits and deal more damage. It feels like a coherent game with a specific vision.