Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Dawn of Ragnarok Review: Waiting for the drop

Armageddon bored waiting for the end to begin.

For me, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was a title that consumed far too many days in late 2020. Alongside Miles Morales, it was Eivor’s husky voice that introduced me to the PS5 as she led me around the English countryside slaughtering enemies and hunting down every damn glowing mystery mark on the map, in between drug-fueled vision quests in Asgard.

After two expansions focusing on Ireland and France respectively, Ubisoft is going all-in on the Asgardian story with Dawn of Ragnarök, a DLC focused exclusively on Odin/Havi’s tale in the lead-up to his personal Armageddon.

To set the scene: Dawn of Ragnarök sees Havi travelling to the dwarven realm of Svartalfheim in search of one of his sons, Baldr. Kidnapped by Surtr, a warlord from the fire giant’s realm of Muspellheim, the King of Asgard must find his near-invincible son before Surtr can uncover his weakness and end him, uncovering the fire giant’s greater schemes in the process.

After a flashy initial battle against Surtr and his wife Sinmara, players will find themselves journeying across an all-new area stuffed full of diversions, collectibles, combat and new gear. While the realm of Svartalfheim is as mythical to Eivor as the realms explored in the base game, I did feel that the scope of the environment didn’t quite measure up to the splendour of Asgard. Where the scale and verticality of Havi’s home truly had wow factor in Valhalla, Svartalfheim feels more like the English countryside with occasional fantasy elements dropped in.

Mountains of pure gold can be found dotted across the landscape, with flaming chunks of Muspelheim hanging in the sky – but if you’re just travelling from A to B, you’d generally be forgiven for forgetting you’re in a realm of fantasy. There are splashes of lava and ice across the map to tell the story of the invading giants, and there’s no doubt that shifting from rolling green hills to trees blasted sideways with icicles is startling, but for me it did not sell the ‘wow’ factor of the base game’s depictions.

Helping your journey along is a new tool unique to the DLC: the Hugr-Rip. It’s a dwarven-made armband that allows Havi to extract and utilise the essence of his enemies. Many downed foes can have an inherent ability extracted after their defeat, such as being able to impersonate the frost and fire giants to utilise their elemental immunities or pass by without being noticed, or allowing Havi to transform into a crow to quickly climb to great heights or cross distances. Primarily focused on traversal, these new abilities allow you to interact with and overcome the environmental hazards at play in the dwarven realm.

Each unique power can also be upgraded at the blacksmith’s, using resources gathered from the realms’ raiding locations or enemies you’ve defeated. The way these skills have been woven into the game’s main story arc as well as environmental puzzles does provide a breath of fresh air to the gameplay, though I do wish that crow form flew a little faster.

Alongside the DLC, Valhalla has added a new Divine tier of weapon and armour quality above the previous limit of Mythic, allowing you to further upgrade your gear both old and new. As an added bonus, equipping all five armour slots with Divine gear gives Havi access to the Divine Landing passive ability, a personal favourite that was sorely missing after its inclusion in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Allowing you to fall from any height without taking damage, Divine Landing comes in quite handy given the verticality of some areas of Svartalfheim’s map. While it’s understandable (yet disappointing) not to have this divine ability carry over to Eivor’s experience in the main game, it’s far more bizarre that Havi cannot use this same skill (or the Hugr-Rip) in the other areas you play as him, including his home of Asgard.

This strange skip in game logic seems to carry through to the DLC’s story. When it comes to a Norse tale, few words are more evocative than Ragnarök to those with any knowledge of Norse mythology – it’s a big deal! A lot of heroic and dramatic stuff is prophesied to go on when judgement day comes for this pantheon, as demonstrated in 2018’s God of War and its impending sequel. Putting a word like that in the title of your game sets a certain expectation, and I have to say you should strongly temper those expectations  before starting this adventure.

While the journey through Svartalfheim overall is a fun romp, seeing you encounter faces new and old as you do your best to save both the realm and your son, the story certainly ends with an unexpected suddenness and a lack of payoff, in my opinion. The final boss battle is not what I’d call particularly epic in nature, feeling more like a retread, and the story comes to a stop almost immediately after the final blow is struck. While I won’t spoil the story beats, any allusions to the event of Ragnarök itself are relegated to a few lines of dialogue after the main questline is done. Some reference is made to how the events of the story in this DLC are related, but when it’s only mentioned AFTER finishing it does feel a little tacked on. If this DLC were part 1 of a multi-part arc (in the way Odyssey’s Legacy of the First Blade and Fate of Atlantis DLCs were) I would be more understanding, but this DLC story is being made available as a fully contained experience. My world was not Ragna-rocked.

As much fun as I had with this expansion, I do have to admit that I feel a little let down. If this were explicitly leading into another DLC story I’d be excited, but as things are I feel more like I’ve taken a running start into a brick wall with a very cool door painted on it. I can see this as a fun experience to play as part of an overall Assassin’s Creed Valhalla experience, if you were stepping into the game and all its DLC for the first time – but as something that brought me back to the game seven months after finishing The Siege of Paris, it feels like more of a promising snack than a satisfying main meal.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Dawn of Ragnarok DLC was reviewed using a promotional code on PS5, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.