As a historical novelist and former high school English teacher with over 700 books in my home devoted to ancient Greek literature, history and culture I had to try this game.

I should mention that I am pushing 60 years old and although I like strategy games like Creative Assembly’s Rome II, I’m not a fan of ‘gopher’ games that make you run around collecting items, rescuing damsels in distress, delivering messages, and murdering politicians to level your character. The whole premises seems rather tedious and unimaginative.

So right from the start I expected to hate Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Combine that with the fact that I’d never played an Assassin’s Creed game before, and I am not the most nimble finger clicker, I was prepared to spend a good portion of my playing time getting my head lopped off.

None of that happened. Well, yeah, there is a pretty steep learning curve here. I did spend a lot of my initial hours zigging when I should have been zagging, and with my opponent’s spear in my head, but I stuck with it and eventually even an old poop like me was able to figure out the mechanics.

What kept me going was the sheer majesty of the game and the beauty of the surroundings.

I’ve been to Athens, Sparta, Argos, Mycenae, Delos, Aegina, Hydra, Crete, Melos (now Santorini), and dozens of other locales on the campaign map multiple times. I’ve walked around the ruins at Delphi, strolled the docks of Piraeus and walked through valley of Laconia for research for my books. I wanted to see these places at they might have looked 2,500 years ago and that for me is the true joy of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

The team at Ubisoft deserves a lot of credit. They did their homework. Sure, you’d expect to see historical figures like Pericles, Socrates, Alcibiades and Archidamas in a game about the Peloponnesian War. But that anyone outside of academia even knows who Brasidas, Aspasia, Herodotus and Pausanias were, is impressive. Kudos to you.

I’m probably an oddball gamer because I was not motivated by stabbing people in the back to gain levels and steal loot. The entire idea of stabbing people in the back goes against the grain of the Greek ethos of ‘kleos’ or honor. What kept me going was the desire to see more of the world that Ubisoft created.

I wanted to visit the Athenian Acropolis and see the Propylaea, Erechtheion and Parthenon as they were shiny and new, instead of in piles of rubble. I wanted to gaze up at Phidias' statue of Zeus in Olympus (one of the wonders of the ancient Greek world that no longer exists), speak to the Pythia at the temple of Delphi, and see the five villages of Sparta as they might have looked. Getting to walk the streets of Athens, Argos and Elis was like taking a trip back in time. Magical.

Okay, the game isn’t perfect. The pronunciation of common names like Pericles and Socrates and the character’s accents were maddening. I can only guess that Ubisoft believes we’ve Americanized the real pronunciations, or at least I hope that’s what they were thinking. Ultimately it’s a minor annoyance.

The hoplite battles were a major disappointment. The Greeks fought in a phalanx formation. Shoulder to shoulder. Shield to shield. The battles here are a 300 movie style free for all. Oh well, guess you can’t have everything.

Also I could not fathom how Alexios and Kassandra could be descended from Leonidas, but have no connection to the Agiad royal family. By rights they should have been Pausanias’ cousins, but they’re not. I don’t know who they are. The whole Pythagoras-is-my-father thing is rather bizarre and makes no sense at all.

I won’t go off the charts here listing the historical inaccuracies that drove me batsh!t crazy, as it serves no purpose. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed the game.

If you ever wanted to unravel the labyrinth of the minotaur beneath King Minos palace at Knossos, get drunk and sing songs with Socrates at an Athenian symposium, feel the Aegean Sea roll beneath your feet on the deck of a trireme, or stare out in wonder at the lights twinkling over Attica at twilight, try this game. You won’t be disappointed.