When Assassin’s Creed Origins launched last year it was already a gigantic game. This week it just got bigger with the release of its first DLC expansion, “The Hidden Ones.” In this expansion, we catch up with our pal Bayek several years after the events of Origins, as he overlooks The Hidden Ones. Things seem to be going well when he is called to Sinai to deal with a Roman invasion plot uncovered by the Creed.
The best thing about this DLC is easily the hours upon hours of gameplay it adds to Origins. Origins was fantastic and offered a meaty game and this DLC is just more of that. It doesn’t offer anything new gameplay or mechanics wise and that’s totally okay. I loved and enjoyed Origins so if you’re telling me I’m just getting more Origins that’s good enough for me.
The expansion is well worth the price for the amount of content received. The DLC costs about $9.99 USD (or equivalent) and you receive more than a few hours of the main story as well as a bunch of new side quests, weapons to unlock, and more. The DLC also adds more challenging missions and enemies to face as well as a few huge fortresses to tackle. The difficulty can be annoying at times but it is welcome.
Unfortunately, I found the DLC (as well as the main game) to be an ugly, buggy mess. I wish I could tell you that the bugs were all funny or silly little glitches but some of them were pretty annoying. Getting detected through a wall or through a building definitely has to be the worst of the worst for me. When this happens the game just gets frustrating and I’d have to walk away. The AI has its own issues as well on both ends of the spectrum. From immediately attacking me for no reason to just standing there and not fighting back, this game might have the most unbalanced AI of an Assassin’s Creed game to date.
Finally, the loading times. Can these be fixed, please? It really ruins the flow when I have to sit around for 1-2 minutes for the game to load. Also when using Senu, the delay from switching back to Bayek can take up to 10 seconds sometimes, more than enough time for Bayek to get the snot bashed out of him with me not being able to do anything about it.
“The Hidden Ones” serves as a perfectly fine addition to both Assassin’s Creed Origins and the Assassin’s Creed mythos. It doesn’t add anything new and it’s just an extension to Origins but that’s fine. If you loved Origins then there’s a good chance you’ll love the expansion as it’s just more of a good thing. Unfortunately as the fun carried over from the base game, so did a majority of its bugs and AI issues. The AI can be severely unbalanced at times and just a pain, in general, to face in combat. All that in consideration, the DLC costs $10 and is well worth the price for what you get gameplay wise.
