Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Legacy of the First Blade - Episode 3: Bloodline Review (PS4)

The third and final instalment in Assassin's Creed Odyssey's Legacy of the First Blade series, Episode 3: Bloodline ties everything together quite well. After Episode 2: Shadow Heritage ended with your hero controversially starting a family, this next chapter opens on a sweet note as your character attempts to live out a quieter life.

However, with enemies still lurking behind the scenes, it's only a matter of time until the peace is shattered and your misthios is once again thrown into the fray. It's a predictable turn of events, but one that carries a surprising amount of raw emotion. You get to see a different side of Alexios or Kassandra as everything begins to unravel, but before long, you're back to hunting down more of those pesky cultists.

As with the previous episodes, the mission structure of Bloodline does little to shake things up, but that's largely fine since Odyssey's gameplay loop remains rock solid. Having said that, we do wonder whether Legacy of the First Blade would have outstayed its welcome, had it been released as one big expansion instead of being split into three parts.

The episodic format has paid off, then, and to be fair to the plot, it's done a good job of ramping up the tension despite being broken into pieces. By the end of Bloodline, Odyssey's place in the Assassin's Creed timeline has been solidified -- in part thanks to some well written, thought-provoking dialogue -- and a welcome extra dimension to Alexios or Kassandra has been established. While the conclusion can seem a little too convenient when you stop to really think about it, Legacy of the First Blade has definitely enriched Odyssey's overall narrative.

If we had to level one complaint at Bloodline, it would be that the episode's final boss is underwhelming. There have been some cool encounters peppered throughout this DLC series, but the big baddie doesn't quite live up to the billing. With the game's next DLC series heading to Atlantis, we're hoping that the development team can let off some creative steam.