Assassin's Creed Valhalla - The Way of the Berserker (DLC) (Xbox Series X)

The Way of the Berserker is a paid DLC mission pack for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, dropping a crossover character named Bjorn - a Berserker on a blood-soaked quest for revenge - directly into your existing playthrough. It is short, self-contained, and about as narratively ambitious as a saga chapter scratched onto a runestone. If you came looking for branching choices or consequences that ripple through Ravensthorpe, look elsewhere. This is Ubisoft in pure spectacle mode: hit things hard, hit things often, follow Bjorn through a linear sequence of combat encounters and cutscenes, collect your reward. Mechanically, the DLC leans into Valhalla's existing axes-and-adrenaline combat loop rather than adding anything genuinely new. Bjorn brings a specific berserker combat style that encourages aggressive, relentless offense, which does at least push you away from the stealthy assassin playstyle the base game occasionally rewards. If your Eivor build was already a melee-focused bruiser, this content slots in comfortably. If you were deep in a stealth-archer fantasy, the DLC gently ignores that and asks you to charge in screaming anyway. The encounters are competently designed - no complaints about technical execution - but the encounter variety is thin, and the whole thing clocks in at two to three hours on a first run. The writing is the biggest sticking point for anyone who cares about narrative payoff. Bjorn has a clear motivation and the revenge framing gives the arc a beginning, middle, and end - which is more structure than a lot of Valhalla's side quests manage, to be fair. But the dialogue rarely surprises, the emotional beats are telegraphed well in advance, and Eivor mostly serves as a passenger with occasional input. For a game whose base campaign does occasionally deliver genuine character moments, this DLC feels like a competent but forgettable commission. It does what it says on the box and nothing more. Who actually gets value here: completionists working through all Valhalla content, players who specifically enjoyed the base game's combat and want a structured excuse to do more of it, and fans of the Berserker aesthetic who will appreciate the thematic framing even if the writing does not fully deliver on it. If you bounced off Valhalla's pacing in the base game, or if you primarily play for worldbuilding and character depth, this DLC does not fix those issues - it is a short detour, not a reinvention. The mixed review score on Steam reflects that split pretty honestly: people who wanted more Valhalla got more Valhalla, and people who wanted something special were left flat. Monika, Scout Team