I loved Odyssey, could not stand Valhalla. The combat is absolute dog water in Valhalla. I don't feel like an assassin...just a brute with a bunch of other brutes beating up stupid AI. The stealth element is all but gone and that really pissed me off. Can't believe this is the fastest selling AC.
...this doesn't make any sense at all, stealth wise valhalla improves on every aspect from odyssey.
It even has guaranteed assassinations like older AC games, which odyssey does not have.
If you are talking about raids, well those are...well raids, but even those can be done with stealth if you want, just park the boat near the camp and then assassinate everyone.
There are also many story missions where the game gives you a choice between going in loud with your allies (with the risk of them getting injured/dying) or going in alone in stealth.
And then there are the distrust areas, where you try to avoid guards and can blend in with crowds, again just like older AC's
I've played it for 90 hours so far, and the raids are a tiny fraction of it, the fact that the game returned with the guaranteed assassinations from older games, means I spent 90% of my time stealth killing enemies.
It also doesn't have those magnetic mercenaries from odyssey, who could easily ruin a stealth attempt on a base.
Headshots actually being headshots and assassinations being guaranteed, means stealth is actually a viable option now; if your level and gear level wasn't high enough, or you didn't have the right engravings, it could literally become
impossible to stealth kill enemies in Odyssey.
Heck I went back to odyssey for the true ending/crossover mission, and a bunch of level 70 enemies were impossible to stealth kill without being gear specifically for assassin damage, having the engraving for 100% damage but 25% health cap,
and also still require using ability meter for a critical assassinate.
Heck this story mission even added gear that has the engraving for "guaranteed assassinate if gear level is same or higher than enemy", basically finally adding to the game what valhalla has by default.
And really, if you want to be a brute in odyssey, it's far easier to do so with all the wild abilities you get later on. You can basically just run into camps/bases and kill all enemies around you by pressing two buttons, become invincible by using the spear stab ability, and then just kill everyone again by pressing two buttons; infinite dodging also means you can just slow down time forever.
Any "difficult" combat in odyssey was purely because of level gating turning enemies into damage sponges and doing two hit kills.