THE BIGGEST FUMBLE IN THE HISTORY IN THE FRANCHISE (So far). The animators, the environmental artists, and character designers went wild with this one, while the writing department and level designers just came in to work to collect cash and nothing else. The atmosphere is impeccable, ruined by the story and characters written by hacks for drooling infants. Every second scene you should ask yourself what is that character doing, what is his motivation for being here, and by the end of the story or even at that moment the answer in 95% of cases is: "... it doesn't make sense or matter, eat the delicious slop you drolling infant."

Why doesn't the enemy kill you when they catch you? No idea.
Why does Connor just walk up to people and get immediately caught (EVEN THOUGH HE KNOWS OTHER PEOPLE LIVES ARE IN HIS HANDS AT THE MOMENT) instead of doing the whole "Assassin" thing? I have no idea, neither did the moronic writers of this travesty of the story.
The whole Daniel Cross plot line in the modern day is just fucking yikes, how are you not embarrassed to write something like that after I assume studying some kind of writing-related subject at some university.
There are so many gripes like that, gripes that did not apply to AC 1,2,Bro,Rev.

The game is also buggy, it's no Unity at launch, but this is... 12 years after the launch, so these bugs are there to stay. Out of the first 5 AC games, this one is BY FAR the buggiest and most frustrating.

And this hot, stinking, liquid shit is sitting on top of some actually decent food on your plate. I liked the homestead missions and how you develop it, even if it's fucking worthless gameplay-wise. I liked the little hunting side missions and especially loved the frontier side content when you delve into Scooby Doo mysteries. I liked the frankly complex hunting system, even though there are no real incentives to ever interact with it. I like the IDEA of the protagonist, but the writers made him completely bipolar. In one scene he will randomly lose his temper over nothing, while in others he's as patient as Budda, what the fuck was going on in that writing room? Because the writing is just so bad I don't even know who is Connor supposed to be!? He supposedly cares about his tribe, but you get almost no interactions with them after the prologue bits, he sure TALKS about doing all this for them but then he doesn't fix any of their problems ever and just kills bad men that he doesn't like instead? Sometimes he gets caught by walking straight into his assassination target and telling him "Hi I'm Connor here's my id, I'm an assassin I will assassin you with this hidden blade over here, could you come closer so I could assassinate you real good?", and then in other scenes, he fucking swims out with no boat into the sea to take on an entire armada and does so no problem. Is he Smart? Skilled? Lucky? Compassionate? Naive? You tell me, there's at least one scene to prove each and at least one to disprove each. You can't nail a single characteristic, such is the magnitude of the bad writing present in this game.

This game was brave for reworking the combat system, it was brave for bringing the storyline into such a wildly different place and time than the previous titles, and it was brave for trying something completely new. And that bravery is the only thing keeping this game from getting a straight-up negative score in my mind. If it was written better, I have no doubt in my mind it could reach the greatness of 2's story or maybe even surpass it, but it never stood a chance with that team of writers, producers, directors, whoever was responsible for THAT story.

this may be the most directionless spaghetti-on-the-wall game in the series. an unnecessarily complex trading and crafting system with the clunkiest ui ever devised. taking over forts lowers the tax rate, just in case connor needed to be motivated by bourgeois concerns too. an annoying lockpicking minigame. an underground maze game to unlock fast travel. a bunch of surprisingly challenging minigames. the boat!

the story is somehow even more of a patchwork mess than ac2. once again there are a bunch of awkward time jumps where character development seems to happen offscreen, most notably in sequence 9 where connor suddenly reveres washington and the ideals of the revolution, rather than incidentally crossing paths because the templars are involved. connor has six different motivations and juggles them from scene to scene. the haytham conflict doesn't work because they just talk past each other. daniel cross is wasted. desmond's ending is an awkward comprimise clearly borne out of internal arguments at ubisoft.

mission design is generally highly scripted, and the ui really pushes constraints such that they feel less like bonus objectives and more like stage directions that would be embarassing to fail. this generally works when it encourages slow careful play, but is annoying when it demands getting a certain amount of a certain type of kill. mission design tends to get worse as the game goes on, and the final sequence is just wretched. the captain kidd missions are dollar bin uncharted.

despite all this, the game really won me over! for one, the environments are detailed and beautiful. there are lots of cool little bespoke animations for connor and npcs (my favorite is npcs holding doors open for you). crowds are more varied, and blending is more organic. dangerous rooftops in cities encourage navigating crowds, while dangerous ground in the frontier encourages treerunning.

the weather system is cool. connor and haytham are both incredible character designs. a lot of sound effects and voice lines are strangely compressed, but overall there is a great audio atmosphere that makes up for the lack of ambient music. i loooove the boat, it's a relatively simple game of positioning and timing that explodes with the sound of waves and cannon fire and screaming.

in general i would say ac3 has fantastic base mechanics. the parkour is the best in the series, the routes are easy to read and allow for smooth horizontal and vertical movement at speed, without sacrificing the ability to do slow precise movement. the little sidestep you can do on the ground maked it much easier to navigate around corners and crowds. treerunning showcases the strengths of the system, with the modular trees making it easy to trace a path without looking too inorganic.

combat dispenses with the idea that ac is about anything other than an animation showcase for counters, and lets you build fast killstreaks with the fear system. if assassin's creed is to be a game about chases and arena fights, you can't get better than the ac3 model.

these mechanics are often let down by the main mission design, with the best missions being eavesdrops and tails that let you enjoy the atmosphere and animations. the paul revere mission also really works as a game about navigating around patrols. crouching in the bushes is balanced well with good old fashioned social stealth and observing guard movements.

but the side content is where the game really shines. hunting requires patience and careful positioning, making for better "assassination" missions than the actual contracts. almanac pages also require a more carefully planned approach than most collectibles. investigating tall tales in the frontier adds a lot of texture to the world. the boat is just awesome and it's no wonder they started building a whole game around it a year before ac3 came out.

and the homestead! the homestead is where the story is truly unlocked. connor often comes off as stubbornly naive in the main story, but it all made sense once i did the homestead. he is living in an idealized schoolhouse rock vision of american colonialism, so of course he believes in the patriots. suddenly he acquires a paladin swag: he is a guy who truly believes in something and refuses to be beaten down no matter what. it's a good flavor to mix with the mostly fatalistic tone of the main story and desmond's story, which was carried over from revelations. all the striving of men may be little more than theatre in the incomprehensible machinations of the gods, but connor is going to get a baby delivered and a wedding organized.

This was the most mixed AC game I have ever played. I didn't know if i liked it or hated it until the very end of the DLC. The answer is...I liked it overall but it has A LOT of issues. Let me explain.

First the good:

- Naval missions and naval locations were awesome! Ship combat, visiting old temples and ship graveyards while captaining the Aquila was so cool.

- Finally having animals and children so now cities feel even more alive.

- Combat took a bit to get used to but felt great after a while. The weapon variety was great and the inclusion of smoke bombs, poison darts and specially Shao Yun's ROPE DART! Hanging redcoats in trees with these was badass.

- Really liked the "Prologue" plot twist of having played as a Templar the whole time. Also loved Haytham during the whole game. Can't wait to read Forsaken!

- Loved the homestead missions and Achiles's death and funeral. These were the most human and emotional missions in the franchise yet and I found it a very welcome change of pace.

- Hunting was fun to a point. The game asks a bit too much of hunting to do all the logbooks and side activities but in short amounts it's very fun to explore the frontier or the homestead and parkour around the trees.

- Really liked how similar Desmond and Connor were. Not only because they are relatives but also because they were pawns in a system they cannot change even if they tried. Pretty depressing though.

- The dynamic weather system and day and night cycle were great additions to the franchise and visually worked great with all the main locations.

- The DLC (specially the powers) was so fun to play and a great ending to Connor's story (for now). Great final boss fight against King George. Loved how creative it was and AC needs to experiment more with alternate universes.

- Personally loved the Modern Day sections and we got to see the amount of cool shit Desmond learnt to do during his time in the animus. Also him sacrificing himself to save the world was a very fitting end to his "redemption" arc. Obviously would have liked to see more of him and maybe become Master Assassin but it was a very heroic way to die.

- Connor was fine as a protagonist. He was the Batman of the franchise and even though he was a bit more generic than Ezio and Altair, his strength and care for the people he loves and protects made up for it. His arc during the DLC was also really interesting to see and made his character even more badass than he already was in my eyes.

Now the bad:

-The amount of content in this game is overwhelming. There is just too much. The map sizes were too much, collectibles were too many, side missions were too many, even the tutorial was too long. The 40hours it took me to finish it felt like 80. I even had to do multiple breaks during the months it took me to finally finish this game. Too much of everything and probably the developers were in a lot of pain making this never-ending game. Not even counting the DLC. Yikes.

- The crafting and trade systems were a little too overly complicated. However, crafting weapons and upgrades for Connor were at least a bit cool to do.

- This was the most buggy AC game I've played 100%. The amount of bugs this game had were too many to count. Enemies got stuck, Connor got stuck, graphics and lighting also had troubles, some music didn't play during cutscenes and even during the Tyranny of King Washington DLC I've fought against texture-less enemies. Horribly disappointing.

- I found this game's codex quite boring and even I, a history buff, didn't care to read many of them relating to battles or buildings.

- I also feel that parkour got a bit downgraded compared to revelations. Movement is more automatic and "accessible" and it tended to bug out a lot more than previous installments. Even AC1...

- Characters other than Haytham, Connor and Aquiles didn't feel interesting enough to me especially compared to AC2 and Brotherhood.

- I did feel that they tried to retread a lot of what AC2 already did in regards to the revenge story and the apple's corruption during Tyranny of King Washington.

- I didn't like parkouring and exploring New York nor Boston. They didn't feel interesting enough specially after having played in Constantinople and Italy. Everything was sort of plain and visually the game mostly delivered only in the Frontier and even then it was too much with not enough to do. However I have to say that with the DLC powers I did have a lot of fun exploring Washington's New York, but that's mainly because I could just fly anywhere, if I had to parkour like in the main game I maybe wouldn't even have finished the DLC honestly.

- "FUCKING HORSES CAN'T GO THROUGH ANYWHERE. JUST JUMP, JUST DO IT. STOP BUGGING OUT PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU." (Me the 3543 times I needed to use the horse in the frontier on in the homestead.)

HOLY SHIT THIS REVIEW IS LONG.

TLDR: Lot of good, Lot of bad. However they really tried to change it all up and this is certainly a step in the right direction for future games to improve upon all the foundation that this game did to change up and modernize the Ezio formula.

3.5/5 = A game with a lot of balls in regard to how much they tried to do in only one entry. A lot of misses obviously (mainly all the bugs that plague this game) but I'm glad I played this. Now onto the next adventure...