Docky
2019
Hey you, did you like Far Cry 5? Imagine that but grindy, also with a god awful story. Also with way worse gameplay cuz it's all level based so y'know...get ready to use 500 bullets to kill one dude that's a higher level. WOOO.
New Dawn is def the worst FC game, the game is only fun when you're doing outposts and you got the best guns, which will prb happen about 7 hours into the game. And even then there's only like 10 outposts that you gotta do 3 times each because ofc.
I played it coop and it was pretty boring, HOW DO YOU MAKE FAR CRY COOP BORING? HOW?!
Well by making the game feel really soulless and rushed.
The game is really buggy, which would be a negative in a better game but here the bugs were the funniest parts of the game so oh well. One time my character started the swimming animation mid air for some reason and I was stuck in the air and it looked like I was swimming, it was weird but me and my friend couldn't stop laughing about it. Another time a wolf just started running in a circle around me which was hilarious.
FC New Dawn feels really pointless as a game, after the ending of FC5, making another game where it's revealed that practically most if not all of the characters somehow survived and are ok feels...unnecessary and makes the ending less effective.
There's plenty of times where you could have killed the main villains (which for far cry standards are abysmal btw) and yet you didn't cuz...reasons?
Fr there's a part where they ask you to put your guns in a stash and come in and handcuff yourself or they'll kill some dude (spoiler alert, they still shoot the guy so whatever) and...ok what possible consequence would it have if the character went mhm...nah fuck that and went in and started shooting both of them. It's so fucking stupid.
The way you just kinda stand and stare at characters as they die at the end is really fucking awkward too...
Idk what else to say, if you liked 5 or 4 or 3 or primal or 2 or 1...you prb won't like this one lol. And if you didn't like those either than you still won't like this one lol.
New Dawn is def the worst FC game, the game is only fun when you're doing outposts and you got the best guns, which will prb happen about 7 hours into the game. And even then there's only like 10 outposts that you gotta do 3 times each because ofc.
I played it coop and it was pretty boring, HOW DO YOU MAKE FAR CRY COOP BORING? HOW?!
Well by making the game feel really soulless and rushed.
The game is really buggy, which would be a negative in a better game but here the bugs were the funniest parts of the game so oh well. One time my character started the swimming animation mid air for some reason and I was stuck in the air and it looked like I was swimming, it was weird but me and my friend couldn't stop laughing about it. Another time a wolf just started running in a circle around me which was hilarious.
FC New Dawn feels really pointless as a game, after the ending of FC5, making another game where it's revealed that practically most if not all of the characters somehow survived and are ok feels...unnecessary and makes the ending less effective.
There's plenty of times where you could have killed the main villains (which for far cry standards are abysmal btw) and yet you didn't cuz...reasons?
Fr there's a part where they ask you to put your guns in a stash and come in and handcuff yourself or they'll kill some dude (spoiler alert, they still shoot the guy so whatever) and...ok what possible consequence would it have if the character went mhm...nah fuck that and went in and started shooting both of them. It's so fucking stupid.
The way you just kinda stand and stare at characters as they die at the end is really fucking awkward too...
Idk what else to say, if you liked 5 or 4 or 3 or primal or 2 or 1...you prb won't like this one lol. And if you didn't like those either than you still won't like this one lol.
2020
Doom Eternal is the closest thing to perfection you can get from a first person shooter.
With the amount of enemies, the fact you don't get much ammo and the sheer speed of how things went it made for the most engaging shooter I've played in a long time, if not ever. Whether I was shooting demons or looking endlessly for secrets, I was not once bored or out of the experience and I ended up getting all the little toy collectables, the albums, all the upgrades, did all the mission challenges and just overall did everything there was to do, I never do that shit in video games, collecting collectables is the thing that always keeps me far away from even attempting to 100% a game but here I actively looked for all of them.
This game feels like it was made to simply be a lot of fun and every decision made was to keep you engaged with it's combat which is very refined and feels a lot better than in Doom 2016, it's also more brutal, longer, more action packed and lacks the little moments of boredom that 2016 had in it.
I don't mind the addition of cutscenes and making the game...well not more story focused, but just have more story in general, personally thought the story was fine and that's more than I could ask for in a Doom game given that...I couldn't care any less about whatever was going on story wise in Doom 2016 (not necessarily a negative, the Doom Slayer himself didn't seem to care about it either) but here...well I also didn't care much but I was following the plot and not zoning out whenever someone was talking with me. Cutscenes being included also means that there aren't any parts where the game's pace slows the fuck down so that robot guy (forgot his name) can talk to you for 3 minutes in his office.
The multiplayer is cool, it's like reverse Evolve where there's 3 demons vs one Doom Slayer. It's a cool little time killer that I honestly didn't care much for but I enjoyed the little time I played with it and it’s a LOT better than the MP in doom 2016.
I remember when this game dropped, I downloaded it legallyn’t to try it out for an hour or 2 before I bought the game, what happened is that I beat the game and didn't play anything else until I made sure that I had beaten it because it was just that mind blowingly good and addicting.
Now I got the game on steam and replayed it, just as good as the first time, maybe even better. I also got the DLC which I’m looking forward to playing.
My only issue is that the gameplay loop has been so perfected that there really is nowhere to go but down from here if they choose to make another Doom game anytime soon, if it becomes any more complex it'll be too much but if the next one goes for something a little more back to basics it might seem like a downgrade, and if they add nothing then it’ll feel pointless.
But at the same time it says a lot about how much I loved a game if the only negative I have about it is that it’s so good no sequel can even dare to match it.
With the amount of enemies, the fact you don't get much ammo and the sheer speed of how things went it made for the most engaging shooter I've played in a long time, if not ever. Whether I was shooting demons or looking endlessly for secrets, I was not once bored or out of the experience and I ended up getting all the little toy collectables, the albums, all the upgrades, did all the mission challenges and just overall did everything there was to do, I never do that shit in video games, collecting collectables is the thing that always keeps me far away from even attempting to 100% a game but here I actively looked for all of them.
This game feels like it was made to simply be a lot of fun and every decision made was to keep you engaged with it's combat which is very refined and feels a lot better than in Doom 2016, it's also more brutal, longer, more action packed and lacks the little moments of boredom that 2016 had in it.
I don't mind the addition of cutscenes and making the game...well not more story focused, but just have more story in general, personally thought the story was fine and that's more than I could ask for in a Doom game given that...I couldn't care any less about whatever was going on story wise in Doom 2016 (not necessarily a negative, the Doom Slayer himself didn't seem to care about it either) but here...well I also didn't care much but I was following the plot and not zoning out whenever someone was talking with me. Cutscenes being included also means that there aren't any parts where the game's pace slows the fuck down so that robot guy (forgot his name) can talk to you for 3 minutes in his office.
The multiplayer is cool, it's like reverse Evolve where there's 3 demons vs one Doom Slayer. It's a cool little time killer that I honestly didn't care much for but I enjoyed the little time I played with it and it’s a LOT better than the MP in doom 2016.
I remember when this game dropped, I downloaded it legallyn’t to try it out for an hour or 2 before I bought the game, what happened is that I beat the game and didn't play anything else until I made sure that I had beaten it because it was just that mind blowingly good and addicting.
Now I got the game on steam and replayed it, just as good as the first time, maybe even better. I also got the DLC which I’m looking forward to playing.
My only issue is that the gameplay loop has been so perfected that there really is nowhere to go but down from here if they choose to make another Doom game anytime soon, if it becomes any more complex it'll be too much but if the next one goes for something a little more back to basics it might seem like a downgrade, and if they add nothing then it’ll feel pointless.
But at the same time it says a lot about how much I loved a game if the only negative I have about it is that it’s so good no sequel can even dare to match it.
2019
I want to love this game so much.
It has so much shit I really like. The story is very interesting and had me really interested in it's world. The level design is outstanding and never feels dull or predictable. The combat is fun and I loved the abilities and oh my god the destruction...
But holy shit this game is broken, I somehow went through an open door and got stuck and had to restart. My map would sometimes disappear and I had to restart to get it back otherwise I had no idea where the fuck to go. And now the shittiest luck struck me, I died, had a power outage, and now the game crashes every time I click on "Continue Game", so I guess I'm just gonna stop playing :(
It's a shame, the core gameplay and the story were really cool to me and I enjoyed my time overall but I don't really care enough to start over 11 hours in or spend an hour reinstalling it and hoping it works.
Idk maybe I'll give it another chance in the future :(
It has so much shit I really like. The story is very interesting and had me really interested in it's world. The level design is outstanding and never feels dull or predictable. The combat is fun and I loved the abilities and oh my god the destruction...
But holy shit this game is broken, I somehow went through an open door and got stuck and had to restart. My map would sometimes disappear and I had to restart to get it back otherwise I had no idea where the fuck to go. And now the shittiest luck struck me, I died, had a power outage, and now the game crashes every time I click on "Continue Game", so I guess I'm just gonna stop playing :(
It's a shame, the core gameplay and the story were really cool to me and I enjoyed my time overall but I don't really care enough to start over 11 hours in or spend an hour reinstalling it and hoping it works.
Idk maybe I'll give it another chance in the future :(
So essentially this game is a generic 3rd person liniar shooter with god awful cover mechanics, predictable AI, boring uninteresting “gritty” story that wants a pass because it calls itself "ugly" so suddenly it's ok that the whole game is just you killing Chinese people over and over and over again and totally different from every other game in which you do stuff like that.
Almost no variation in where the missions take place and also 80% of the missions look and feel identical to each other. Unlikeable characters that aren't even interesting to watch and a really brief run time of about 4 hours in which all you do is just shoot people, NOTHING ELSE.
It also feels like a very unambitious and pointless game that doesn't strive to do anything different with it's gameplay and the whole gameplay loop is just go to cover, peak out to shoot enemy...go to the next cover and repeat and it's gunplay feels very mediocre, half the time it sounds like you're using toy guns and there isn't much impact or much variation in the guns and even then all but 2 guns are worthless most of the time (shotgun and pistol).
Also for some reason shotguns are better than assault rifles at long range so there isn't really a reason to use any other weapons, it boils down to using your shotgun then using the other weapons when you run out till you find another shotgun or ammo for your shotgun.
It’s a shallow game with nothing to offer in terms of an interesting narrative, or interesting/fun gameplay loop (cover shooting shouldn’t be the ONLY thing you do in a game, even the cliche and boring helicopter sequence is essentially just popping out of cover and shooting enemies before going back in cover and repeating that), or anything. This game offers NOTHING, it’s just a soulless and bland game made because the first game sold enough to warrant a sequel and there’s NO innovation or anything to make it stand out…
Oh right my bad they made the camera shake really hard and put in some filters that made me think I needed to clean my glasses at first, it’s headache inducing for the first 2 hours before it loses its effect then you just become numb, you zone out during the shootouts and try not to fall asleep during the cutscenes.
Kane And Lynch 2: Dog Days is lazy, its a 3rd person liniar shooter because that’s what was trendy with a visual gimmick that is supposed to sell you on the game alone because otherwise this game is not worth fucking shit.
Take that shit away and it’s a worthless unlikeable shitfest of meaningless violence with no ambition or point to make, the characters never grow, they are the same at the start and end with nothing learned which makes them completely uninteresting to watch since you know they won’t really grow or become better/worse people, they’re pretty much fucking evil with how many people they kill in this game and it’s all supposed to be okay because the devs said it’s an “ugly” game. I mean christ the last mission only seems to exist to pad out the pathetic game length (me getting the game for less than 1$ doesn’t excuse it being a 4 hour long game that costed 60$ at launch)
This game is no different from Medal Of Honor 2010/Warfighter or any other meaningless shooter in which you just shoot foreigners, if this shit can get revived and seen as some unique misunderstood piece of art then get ready for when we will all start praising Fallout 76 because not putting in human NPC’s is actually a novel concept that worked out a lot better than people say it did and wasn’t just them going guys look at all this work we didn’t put in
I don’t get this game, I’m with the critics that hated it back when it came out and nothing will prb make me switch sides. If you like it, good for you, but personally I feel like a lot of the praise the game gets doesn’t reflect the actual game when you sit down and play it yourself. It’s not fun, it’s numbing, I didn’t enjoy a second of this game no matter how much I tried, fucking hell at least Medal Of Honor 2010 had one ok mission that was sorta memorable, this couldn’t even achieve that, the infamous mission in which you’re naked in the streets isn’t that much different from the other missions if you really think about it, yeah you’re still just going from cover to cover and shooting people so there isn’t much to make it memorable outside of it sounding really funny on paper.
In other words, 1/10, fucking abomination of a game and the worst game I’ve ever played, Ride To Hell at least was funny in how bad it was.
Almost no variation in where the missions take place and also 80% of the missions look and feel identical to each other. Unlikeable characters that aren't even interesting to watch and a really brief run time of about 4 hours in which all you do is just shoot people, NOTHING ELSE.
It also feels like a very unambitious and pointless game that doesn't strive to do anything different with it's gameplay and the whole gameplay loop is just go to cover, peak out to shoot enemy...go to the next cover and repeat and it's gunplay feels very mediocre, half the time it sounds like you're using toy guns and there isn't much impact or much variation in the guns and even then all but 2 guns are worthless most of the time (shotgun and pistol).
Also for some reason shotguns are better than assault rifles at long range so there isn't really a reason to use any other weapons, it boils down to using your shotgun then using the other weapons when you run out till you find another shotgun or ammo for your shotgun.
It’s a shallow game with nothing to offer in terms of an interesting narrative, or interesting/fun gameplay loop (cover shooting shouldn’t be the ONLY thing you do in a game, even the cliche and boring helicopter sequence is essentially just popping out of cover and shooting enemies before going back in cover and repeating that), or anything. This game offers NOTHING, it’s just a soulless and bland game made because the first game sold enough to warrant a sequel and there’s NO innovation or anything to make it stand out…
Oh right my bad they made the camera shake really hard and put in some filters that made me think I needed to clean my glasses at first, it’s headache inducing for the first 2 hours before it loses its effect then you just become numb, you zone out during the shootouts and try not to fall asleep during the cutscenes.
Kane And Lynch 2: Dog Days is lazy, its a 3rd person liniar shooter because that’s what was trendy with a visual gimmick that is supposed to sell you on the game alone because otherwise this game is not worth fucking shit.
Take that shit away and it’s a worthless unlikeable shitfest of meaningless violence with no ambition or point to make, the characters never grow, they are the same at the start and end with nothing learned which makes them completely uninteresting to watch since you know they won’t really grow or become better/worse people, they’re pretty much fucking evil with how many people they kill in this game and it’s all supposed to be okay because the devs said it’s an “ugly” game. I mean christ the last mission only seems to exist to pad out the pathetic game length (me getting the game for less than 1$ doesn’t excuse it being a 4 hour long game that costed 60$ at launch)
This game is no different from Medal Of Honor 2010/Warfighter or any other meaningless shooter in which you just shoot foreigners, if this shit can get revived and seen as some unique misunderstood piece of art then get ready for when we will all start praising Fallout 76 because not putting in human NPC’s is actually a novel concept that worked out a lot better than people say it did and wasn’t just them going guys look at all this work we didn’t put in
I don’t get this game, I’m with the critics that hated it back when it came out and nothing will prb make me switch sides. If you like it, good for you, but personally I feel like a lot of the praise the game gets doesn’t reflect the actual game when you sit down and play it yourself. It’s not fun, it’s numbing, I didn’t enjoy a second of this game no matter how much I tried, fucking hell at least Medal Of Honor 2010 had one ok mission that was sorta memorable, this couldn’t even achieve that, the infamous mission in which you’re naked in the streets isn’t that much different from the other missions if you really think about it, yeah you’re still just going from cover to cover and shooting people so there isn’t much to make it memorable outside of it sounding really funny on paper.
In other words, 1/10, fucking abomination of a game and the worst game I’ve ever played, Ride To Hell at least was funny in how bad it was.
2019
Metro Exodus for me was shaping up to be a very disappointing experience, thought the plot alone was almost enough to ruin the whole series and the fact it was going the "semi open world" route worried me.
But surprisingly enough, I think it's actually the best in the series. It retains the great atmosphere and story of the other games but without many of they're issues, which means that the gameplay isn't just fineee.
I thought the gunplay was quite great in this one, the way you unlocked attachments for guns was also cool, you don't buy them but get them by looting guns that enemies drop. You can change attachments on the fly now which makes adapting from stealth to combat a lot easier when you can just change to a suppressor when you want to play it stealth and then change to something else when you fuck up the stealth and shit goes to hell.
The backpack and crafting system is implemented extremely well and though I miss using bullets as currency (which was a mechanic with A LOT of potential and was really interesting but oh well), I also like how it is in this game, you don't just pause the game to go to a menu where you can craft stuff but rather take out your backpack in game and then you can craft stuff, it keeps you vulnerable and doesn't break immersion.
Influences from Far Cry 2 can be felt heavily on how the map works for the open areas and the gun jamming thing.
Pulling up your map is, well literally just pulling up a map in front of you, something I wish more games implemented personally. And you have to clean your guns now when you get to a crafting bench otherwise your gun will jam which is a nice twist on gameplay when you're in a really tense moment and then suddenly your gun stops working and you panic and don't know whether to fix it or just switch to another one. Though I have to say, it prb won't happen often to you, for me it only happened like twice in the first 3/4th of the game and a bunch of times in the last mission.
The semi open world aspect of the game will prb be the make or break for most people and for me it’s a make, because it’s actually really well done and doesn’t just go into OK HERE’S THE MAIN OBJECTIVE BUT ALSO HERE’S 6895329532 MARKERS ON THE MAP THAT ARE ALL JUST COLLECTIBLES AND COPY PASTED SHIT! territory, you gotta find the side stuff yourself usually or you’ll be told about them and then the markers appear on your map, there’s only a couple of side missions per area and they are usually either around where a main mission takes place or it’ll be on your path. They’re pretty alright as side quests go and I enjoyed the ones I did.
The train sequences were a huge highlight for me. The game really comes alive in these scenes, the writing is great, the characters are all likeable and it’s really hard to not care for them by the end, they’re all doing something or have something to tell you, it’s not always something deep or important but that’s kinda what makes them so nice, it feels like a friend telling you a story, not a piece of information for the 5 people who want to know everything about the lore or whatever.
The only issue for me is...well Artyom himself, the loading screen narrations are all interesting but the problem is, he never talks outside of them, it’s always been something unique to the metro games but it always felt more like a useless restriction rather than something that adds to the story, especially here when a lot of great scenes could have been elevated into amazing if Artyom just fucking talked or responded to the characters. But oh well as it is, not that bad, at least he talks over the loading screens which is always cool to hear.
The attention to detail in this game is almost insane at points, not just in terms of environment and graphics but also in dialogue and in game stuff, like getting different dialogue if you killed/didn’t kill enemies, if you holster a weapon while talking to someone, that someone might acknowledge it and act differently afterwards. Hell in one of the areas, if you kill enemies you’ll end up getting a bad ending (you’ll get told a bunch to not kill enemies during that part though so you’ll prb figure out that you aren’t supposed to do it lol).
During certain fights, you can notice the enemies dialogue changing as you pick them off, going from them being confident and sure that they’ll kill you to slowly losing that confidence and getting scared, sometimes the last enemy/enemies will even put down their guns and surrender, begging you not to kill them. Seeing that shit happen and not having it be a scripted sequence is simply amazing.
The Metro games up until this game have all been just a bit short of reaching the 10/10 level for me because if the gameplay itself isn’t that great, then the story and atmosphere can only get me so far. But since now the gameplay is great and the atmosphere and story didn’t take a beating, it reaches that level for me.
Really looking forward to seeing where the series goes from here, I hope the next one can be just as good or even better than this one somehow.
But surprisingly enough, I think it's actually the best in the series. It retains the great atmosphere and story of the other games but without many of they're issues, which means that the gameplay isn't just fineee.
I thought the gunplay was quite great in this one, the way you unlocked attachments for guns was also cool, you don't buy them but get them by looting guns that enemies drop. You can change attachments on the fly now which makes adapting from stealth to combat a lot easier when you can just change to a suppressor when you want to play it stealth and then change to something else when you fuck up the stealth and shit goes to hell.
The backpack and crafting system is implemented extremely well and though I miss using bullets as currency (which was a mechanic with A LOT of potential and was really interesting but oh well), I also like how it is in this game, you don't just pause the game to go to a menu where you can craft stuff but rather take out your backpack in game and then you can craft stuff, it keeps you vulnerable and doesn't break immersion.
Influences from Far Cry 2 can be felt heavily on how the map works for the open areas and the gun jamming thing.
Pulling up your map is, well literally just pulling up a map in front of you, something I wish more games implemented personally. And you have to clean your guns now when you get to a crafting bench otherwise your gun will jam which is a nice twist on gameplay when you're in a really tense moment and then suddenly your gun stops working and you panic and don't know whether to fix it or just switch to another one. Though I have to say, it prb won't happen often to you, for me it only happened like twice in the first 3/4th of the game and a bunch of times in the last mission.
The semi open world aspect of the game will prb be the make or break for most people and for me it’s a make, because it’s actually really well done and doesn’t just go into OK HERE’S THE MAIN OBJECTIVE BUT ALSO HERE’S 6895329532 MARKERS ON THE MAP THAT ARE ALL JUST COLLECTIBLES AND COPY PASTED SHIT! territory, you gotta find the side stuff yourself usually or you’ll be told about them and then the markers appear on your map, there’s only a couple of side missions per area and they are usually either around where a main mission takes place or it’ll be on your path. They’re pretty alright as side quests go and I enjoyed the ones I did.
The train sequences were a huge highlight for me. The game really comes alive in these scenes, the writing is great, the characters are all likeable and it’s really hard to not care for them by the end, they’re all doing something or have something to tell you, it’s not always something deep or important but that’s kinda what makes them so nice, it feels like a friend telling you a story, not a piece of information for the 5 people who want to know everything about the lore or whatever.
The only issue for me is...well Artyom himself, the loading screen narrations are all interesting but the problem is, he never talks outside of them, it’s always been something unique to the metro games but it always felt more like a useless restriction rather than something that adds to the story, especially here when a lot of great scenes could have been elevated into amazing if Artyom just fucking talked or responded to the characters. But oh well as it is, not that bad, at least he talks over the loading screens which is always cool to hear.
The attention to detail in this game is almost insane at points, not just in terms of environment and graphics but also in dialogue and in game stuff, like getting different dialogue if you killed/didn’t kill enemies, if you holster a weapon while talking to someone, that someone might acknowledge it and act differently afterwards. Hell in one of the areas, if you kill enemies you’ll end up getting a bad ending (you’ll get told a bunch to not kill enemies during that part though so you’ll prb figure out that you aren’t supposed to do it lol).
During certain fights, you can notice the enemies dialogue changing as you pick them off, going from them being confident and sure that they’ll kill you to slowly losing that confidence and getting scared, sometimes the last enemy/enemies will even put down their guns and surrender, begging you not to kill them. Seeing that shit happen and not having it be a scripted sequence is simply amazing.
The Metro games up until this game have all been just a bit short of reaching the 10/10 level for me because if the gameplay itself isn’t that great, then the story and atmosphere can only get me so far. But since now the gameplay is great and the atmosphere and story didn’t take a beating, it reaches that level for me.
Really looking forward to seeing where the series goes from here, I hope the next one can be just as good or even better than this one somehow.
Y'know maybe it's just the way I played it that made it hard for it to click with me.
Since 2019 I've been installing it, playing it for a few hours then uninstalling it after I got bored, repeat that every few months... till today when I installed it. Played for 2 hours and beat it, it was inevitable I guess.
Anyways that's still 30 hours played so it's not like idk wtf the games about or how it plays so how is it?
It's okay. The game has a mediocre and forgettable story that wastes Bayek and his voice actor who really is the only saving grace for the story.
Also the prize for the most predictable revenge story goes to this game, as soon as I saw that Bayek had a kid I thought so is it gonna be one or 2 missions till he dies?I'm pretty sure it was one.
Ugh okay let's just get to the important part...gameplay is fine, combat is fine, it's just fine...idk what else to say about it because it's the type of game that's hard to really dislike because it's simply decent enough to be inoffensive, it never makes me feel anything while playing it neither positive nor negative. It's a decent enough time but I felt rather numb whenever I played it which is a first for this series.
I've both liked and disliked games in this series but it wasn't till Origins when I found one that just makes me feel no strong emotions about it.
Back in 2017 this must have been a breath of fresh air for the series, I still remember the hype for it, which weirdly enough died down when it came out so I just never bothered to pick it up for another 2 years. Nowadays most see it as the beginning of the end for the series, and I disagree because that was Syndicate but this was the start of what is arguably the series' worst eras.
So now I guess I'm done with Assassin's Creed? I beat all the one's I own, which is like all of them besides Valhalla. I enjoyed going through them, it took me a shockingly little amount of time to get through them tbh.
Anyways, I had fun playing and reviewing most of these games, maybe Origins will click with me someday but given how I felt about it, or rather how I didn’t feel about it, I can’t go higher nor lower than a 5/10.
Since 2019 I've been installing it, playing it for a few hours then uninstalling it after I got bored, repeat that every few months... till today when I installed it. Played for 2 hours and beat it, it was inevitable I guess.
Anyways that's still 30 hours played so it's not like idk wtf the games about or how it plays so how is it?
It's okay. The game has a mediocre and forgettable story that wastes Bayek and his voice actor who really is the only saving grace for the story.
Also the prize for the most predictable revenge story goes to this game, as soon as I saw that Bayek had a kid I thought so is it gonna be one or 2 missions till he dies?I'm pretty sure it was one.
Ugh okay let's just get to the important part...gameplay is fine, combat is fine, it's just fine...idk what else to say about it because it's the type of game that's hard to really dislike because it's simply decent enough to be inoffensive, it never makes me feel anything while playing it neither positive nor negative. It's a decent enough time but I felt rather numb whenever I played it which is a first for this series.
I've both liked and disliked games in this series but it wasn't till Origins when I found one that just makes me feel no strong emotions about it.
Back in 2017 this must have been a breath of fresh air for the series, I still remember the hype for it, which weirdly enough died down when it came out so I just never bothered to pick it up for another 2 years. Nowadays most see it as the beginning of the end for the series, and I disagree because that was Syndicate but this was the start of what is arguably the series' worst eras.
So now I guess I'm done with Assassin's Creed? I beat all the one's I own, which is like all of them besides Valhalla. I enjoyed going through them, it took me a shockingly little amount of time to get through them tbh.
Anyways, I had fun playing and reviewing most of these games, maybe Origins will click with me someday but given how I felt about it, or rather how I didn’t feel about it, I can’t go higher nor lower than a 5/10.
The problem with Syndicate isn't that it doesn't do anything right but rather that the things it fucks up are deal breakers.
Not being able to jump and the parkour being reduced to its shallowest form, combat being one button for attack, one for dodge and one to break guard and the enemies taking forever to die. A lighthearted story with a whole lot of cringey jokes doesn't work too well with a setting this grim and depressing. They scaled down on the side content but that doesnt mean quality over quantity but rather the same 4 copy pasted missions in every district, sometimes more than once, the average collectables and the fight club thingy that's fine but not memorable.
But oh well it does some things right, for starters it gets the stealth right. Being able to crouch is thankfully back though having 2 equippable items isnt back so your options are once again more limited. You can use the rope launcher to get yourself from point to point and it makes stealth more dynamic even if otherwise the rope launcher amounts to nothing but press R to skip the parkour.
And it has a few decent missions ig? The blackbox missions are cool yet very easy and feel like a downgrade from Unity since the parkour and combat aren’t as good even if the unique kills and the opportunities are arguably more consistently useful. Besides those there’s the carriage chases which are silly fun and...that’s it tbh.
I want to like Syndicate, I really do, it was one of the first AC games I ever played and the 2nd I finished, I loved it back in early 2017 when I first finished it but going back, it doesn’t hold up to me.
I get why it’s fun to some but idk I found most of it rather boring.
Not being able to jump and the parkour being reduced to its shallowest form, combat being one button for attack, one for dodge and one to break guard and the enemies taking forever to die. A lighthearted story with a whole lot of cringey jokes doesn't work too well with a setting this grim and depressing. They scaled down on the side content but that doesnt mean quality over quantity but rather the same 4 copy pasted missions in every district, sometimes more than once, the average collectables and the fight club thingy that's fine but not memorable.
But oh well it does some things right, for starters it gets the stealth right. Being able to crouch is thankfully back though having 2 equippable items isnt back so your options are once again more limited. You can use the rope launcher to get yourself from point to point and it makes stealth more dynamic even if otherwise the rope launcher amounts to nothing but press R to skip the parkour.
And it has a few decent missions ig? The blackbox missions are cool yet very easy and feel like a downgrade from Unity since the parkour and combat aren’t as good even if the unique kills and the opportunities are arguably more consistently useful. Besides those there’s the carriage chases which are silly fun and...that’s it tbh.
I want to like Syndicate, I really do, it was one of the first AC games I ever played and the 2nd I finished, I loved it back in early 2017 when I first finished it but going back, it doesn’t hold up to me.
I get why it’s fun to some but idk I found most of it rather boring.
Nobody has to really say anything about this game’s launch anymore I feel, it’s been 7 years and we all know the tale. Ubisoft really were never the same after what happened with Unity and Watch Dogs…2 games that came out after so much hype only to disappoint everyone, what was supposed to be one of Ubisoft's greatest years ended up being its weakest.
But what if I told you, that beneath all of that, once you dig into it, AC Unity is actually one of the best if not the best Assassins Creed game?
I know I know it’s one of those hot takes that’s getting colder and colder everyday but for good reason. The parkour system in this game is like no other really, I don’t think I’ve yet to find another game where you can climb the same building on the same side at least 13 times and each time do it ever so slightly different, nothing mindblowing in that regard but it's the small details that make it not get stale, now there’s interiors in the world, and there must be thousands of them, sure some repeat but it's not enough to where you can say MAN HOW MANY TIMES AM I GONNA SEE THIS EXACT INTERIOR AGAIN?, it's barely noticeable, jumping out of them feels like a risk as you never truly know what you’ll end up landing or where your character will go but god damn does it feel satisfying when you jump onto the building right in front of you and see Arno barely reach it and being a few moments away from falling only to catch the damn thing.
Simply put, the parkour is really fluid, smooth and fast if you get good at it, it's more momentum based than other games, it feels cinematic in the way the other games wanted but with more control given to you so you yourself can make it cinematic, and the addition of being able to free run up and down (with up also being a jump button and down also being a vault button) adds more depth than one could imagine, now you have double if not more the options and ways of getting around using parkour, with animations that I can only describe as mindblowing-ly good. Animations just flow into each other seamlessly as you jump around trying to look as cool as possible. Chaining together the coolest animations becomes a challenge in itself and it’s the type of challenge you’ll do simply because it’s fun not because of any reward.
You could say it’s easy to pick up yet hard to master. You could practice for dozens of hours and still find new tricks to do. The game doesn’t hold your own when it comes to what you can do, it gives you the basics and the rest is up to you to find on your own.
But what good is an amazing parkour system if there isn’t a world where you can use it effectively? Well you see Unity also has the best open world ubisoft ever created, it’s sheer amount of detail is still astonishing to me, the amount of npcs on screen is insane, every minute you’ll see hundreds if not thousands of NPC’s on streets either doing their thing or rioting. Scaling buildings is fast and satisfying, the game makes you think more and make more decisions on the fly to make your journey to the next mission quicker. Though it's good enough you might just continue running along doing cool tricks and having fun till you find yourself on the other side of the map because it’s just THAT damn fun.
The level design is the best in the series. One of the things that help it stand out is the opportunity system. One mission took place in a sewer, so I was able to start a riot above to draw out some of the guards making my entry safe, and I sabotaged the chimneys above, making it way less visible inside the sewers so my escape from there was also safe. It's things like this that really make Unity's level design stand above the rest of the series for me, though not every opportunity was great or that useful, enough of them were to say the system works. In another mission I was presented with the place where my target would arrive and the game told me to hide in a bush though it’s implied that you don’t have to do that right away. So I did the opportunities, I saved a bunch of prisoners and they stood to camp the basement to guard it then distract the guards at the end to make my escape easier and another, though a bit silly, was a map that showed me exactly where my target was heading and how, a bit stupid, but so useful, using eagle vision now I could see where he’d go, so I hid in a haystack right where he was so when he’d arrive I’d just have to wait. It feels amazing to do these things and no other game in this series quite accomplishes this feel.
Though I must say that the opportunity system doesn’t mean that now there’s only 3 ways a mission can go. Missions can go in any way you want them, they are the most open and least liniar they’ve ever been.
The combat is for the first time in the series, great, it’s slower and weightier, it’s harder but more satisfying. The animations are brutal and so are the finishers yet it also feels natural and at least a bit realtistic. It doesn’t simply do the job like in the other games but is actually enjoyable on it’s own. There’s multiple types of weapons and each type has its own move set, your average weapon types like the one handed, the heavy and the long but there’s also rifles that once you equip you can’t equip either a pistol or weapon and you just smack enemies with it, kinda funny. Useless but funny. The guillotine guns are also pretty cool though you need to do the Dead Kings DLC to get it, I’m pretty sure that the dlc is free so you really should play it because it's definitely worth it.
The progression in this game is great IF, you upgrade the Cafe and buy the other properties and do the missions for all of them (2-3 and their all really simple and to the point, one shouldn’t take more than 3 minutes, 5 at max). After you do that you’ll get 40+k per hour, besides that you still get enough from missions to get around though the Cafe stuff is required if you want the best gear with the least amount of grinding. You can also pause the game, alt tab and do something else for an hour then come back and collect your reward if you want. I alt tab a lot so I found that out fast.
In this game you can really make your assassin look the way you want with the gear pieces that you can buy, each have their own stats that DO matter a lot actually and you should buy the ones that help your own play style. Though sometimes it does feel like a sacrifice to go for the gear that helps you the most rather than the one you think looks the coolest, it’s not like there’s a lot of gear that looks bad. Most of it looks amazing actually. And hey if you don’t care about all that bullshit you have outfits you can unlock, they include ones for every previous protagonist, most of which you can find in these yellow chests on the map, there’s only a few of them so collecting them isn’t too bad. There’s also some other lesser outfits ig.
The story is flawed however I enjoyed it. The way the game starts is great, the first few hours on a story level are amazing, Arno has all the charm and personality of Ezio dare I say, the plot is compelling, Arno and Elise have chemistry, the part you play in prison serves as a good tutorial for combat. They put in the game a small city simply for the first hours before you get to Paris and then in a single level again later on, a bit much I’d say, and sure it doesn’t look too different from Paris, but still. I didn’t even know this but you can actually go back there by fast traveling. Don’t think there’s anything to do there but it's cool.
When you join the assassins is when things go to shit I guess, y’know it’s almost funny how much the assassins treat Arno like shit, and also Arno loses half of his personality as soon as he joins and turns really serious fast. It’s weird and comes out of nowhere when he’s suddenly without the charm and wit we see at the start though he doesn’t lose it completely.
When the game becomes a hit list it’s kinda lame story wise but in concept it makes sense, Assassin’s Creed games have always had hit lists at their core story wise, though here it becomes exclusively a hit list so it is a lot less compelling. It reminds me of AC1 but not in a good way.
Story picks up again once Elise shows up again, sure their relationship is toxic and Elise basically turns into Connor at his most WHERE IS CHARLES LEE at parts but they still have chemistry and are entertaining to watch most of the time.
It’s kinda interesting seeing how far Elise is willing to go to avenge her father, especially at the end of the game. The ending is cool, I won’t spoil it but it does redeem the middle section and the occasional great moment makes it so it never gets properly bad or even mediocre but it's never consistently great sadly. One of those occasional great moments has the be “the escape”, writing wise Arno’s and Elise’s relationship is at its most likeable as you chase her on roofs as she’s in a hot air balloon of all things, it's one of the most memorable moments in the story and the last cutscene is one of the most romantic moments in the series, had the cutscene not glitched and resulted in it looking weird af maybe it would have been better but oh well.
Also I noticed this thing where like...the first few times you meet with Elise its like half of their dialogue is them talking about past events when they were kids and it’s all essentially hey remember when we did this, though we’re never really shown these events nor are told about them prior so it feels like being with 2 friends and they’re making inside jokes and you don’t really understand them but they assume you know about them somehow.
There’s some interesting moments and themes, an Assassin being in love with a Templar is a pretty obvious plot for a game in this series at this point but for a reason. Having Arno bring Elise to the brotherhood to seek help in her revenge was a great moment, it plays out as you’d expect though. I loved the ending, felt earned and the silence as Arno...does a thing I won’t spoil, felt very impactful to me. His monologue afterwards was even better. Not a perfect story and it has its low points but it works for what it does and executes its ideas well enough. Could have been better but as it is. It’s good.
There’s these random helix missions or whatever that pop up sometimes throughout the story and they’re pretty cool, useless, but still really cool. Climbing the statue of liberty and the eiffel tower was pretty awesome tbh.
The side content is solid-great. Well more like “I don’t really mind this”-great. There’s the companion missions that serve as little fetch quests but I like that you just press E and then instantly you get a marker on your map, no loading screen or repetitive small cutscene. They’re all really fast, some took less than a minute to complete. There’s the Paris stories which serve as okay-good side missions, most are standalone stories but there’s some like the ones for that old lady that can predict the future and that one cult that serve as some of the more interesting ones.
The other helix missions that are there amount to just you picking up data then going to an assassin and ‘rescuing them’ and they’re...whatever, I don’t really mind them since you get Altair’s suit for completing them so there’s a nice reward to them but they are mostly boring as it’s just the same place but with a different gimmick like wow now there's a tornado here. They aren’t very memorable to say the least.
Also there’s events that happen in the world at random that you complete if you want, they’ll usually take like a second to complete, do enough of them and you’ll get a prize, simple enough though it makes things a bit more immersive. You can catch thieves, kill templars that are about to kill people/have just killed someone, defend a person from a templar, scare off bullies and give money to poor people. They aren’t really anything to write home about on their own but they make the game better by simply being there, going to a location and while on your journey jumping from a roof onto a murderer and saving someone feels great.
But I’ve said the best for last, the riddles...and even better, the murder mysteries.
Essentially hidden beneath the Assassins Creed gameplay, there’s an entire Sherlock Holmes game, a somewhat short one but still. Essentially you’ll be presented with the scene of a crime, from then the game will highlight certain items that you should inspect for more info and clues, though not every clue is highlighted and there are some that you can find on your own, find enough clues, piece things together and you can accuse someone of the crime, accuse correctly and you win, accuse wrongly and your prize gets smaller. Simple enough yet they’re a lot more interesting and hard to put together than you might assume given that Ubisoft aren’t exactly known for making challenging games. The riddles are also really great, the concept is simple: you get a riddle, figure out where it leads, another riddle appears, do that till you get to the final destination, 18 of those and you’ll unlock a special suit.
These are way more fun than they should, opening up wikipedia pages and looking for info about certain places to know where to go next and spending hours on end on these missions really makes finishing them all the more satisfying even if...the reward for doing them all is just an Altair reskin. Oh well they’re still fun to do.
The biggest issue is the one talked about the most and the one that earned its initial reception. The fucking bugs, don’t get me wrong, game’s playable and in much better state than when it came out...but there’s still a lot of bugs. I can’t defend this too much, they’re either funny or kinda inconvenient when you get stuck on fucking air and have to just fast travel somewhere. Not a deal breaker but they do impact the game a bit.
Also I have to say, this is one of the best looking games...ever, climbing a building and looking down to see hundreds if not thousands of NPCs rioting on the streets is a site to behold. Somehow this 7 year old game still looks next gen, they pushed this engine so much that it’s still arguably the best looking game in the series, even Syndicate...ESPECIALLY Syndicate, looks a lot worse than this game somehow.
The co-op is fun if you play with friends, awful if you play with randoms and almost impossible if you wanna do them solo so be warned, even if they let you play solo it doesn’t mean the missions were made for that and you’ll most likely find them impossible to do.
Before I end the review, let me make something clear, I don’t consider Unity a great game because of it’s awful launch and reputation making it easy to root for it. I consider Unity to be great because of its outstanding gameplay and world that also features a good story and some of the best side content Ubisoft ever made.
No Assassin’s Creed game has ever beaten this game in any regard outside of story for me. It might not be perfect but for me, it’s an all time favorite.
But what if I told you, that beneath all of that, once you dig into it, AC Unity is actually one of the best if not the best Assassins Creed game?
I know I know it’s one of those hot takes that’s getting colder and colder everyday but for good reason. The parkour system in this game is like no other really, I don’t think I’ve yet to find another game where you can climb the same building on the same side at least 13 times and each time do it ever so slightly different, nothing mindblowing in that regard but it's the small details that make it not get stale, now there’s interiors in the world, and there must be thousands of them, sure some repeat but it's not enough to where you can say MAN HOW MANY TIMES AM I GONNA SEE THIS EXACT INTERIOR AGAIN?, it's barely noticeable, jumping out of them feels like a risk as you never truly know what you’ll end up landing or where your character will go but god damn does it feel satisfying when you jump onto the building right in front of you and see Arno barely reach it and being a few moments away from falling only to catch the damn thing.
Simply put, the parkour is really fluid, smooth and fast if you get good at it, it's more momentum based than other games, it feels cinematic in the way the other games wanted but with more control given to you so you yourself can make it cinematic, and the addition of being able to free run up and down (with up also being a jump button and down also being a vault button) adds more depth than one could imagine, now you have double if not more the options and ways of getting around using parkour, with animations that I can only describe as mindblowing-ly good. Animations just flow into each other seamlessly as you jump around trying to look as cool as possible. Chaining together the coolest animations becomes a challenge in itself and it’s the type of challenge you’ll do simply because it’s fun not because of any reward.
You could say it’s easy to pick up yet hard to master. You could practice for dozens of hours and still find new tricks to do. The game doesn’t hold your own when it comes to what you can do, it gives you the basics and the rest is up to you to find on your own.
But what good is an amazing parkour system if there isn’t a world where you can use it effectively? Well you see Unity also has the best open world ubisoft ever created, it’s sheer amount of detail is still astonishing to me, the amount of npcs on screen is insane, every minute you’ll see hundreds if not thousands of NPC’s on streets either doing their thing or rioting. Scaling buildings is fast and satisfying, the game makes you think more and make more decisions on the fly to make your journey to the next mission quicker. Though it's good enough you might just continue running along doing cool tricks and having fun till you find yourself on the other side of the map because it’s just THAT damn fun.
The level design is the best in the series. One of the things that help it stand out is the opportunity system. One mission took place in a sewer, so I was able to start a riot above to draw out some of the guards making my entry safe, and I sabotaged the chimneys above, making it way less visible inside the sewers so my escape from there was also safe. It's things like this that really make Unity's level design stand above the rest of the series for me, though not every opportunity was great or that useful, enough of them were to say the system works. In another mission I was presented with the place where my target would arrive and the game told me to hide in a bush though it’s implied that you don’t have to do that right away. So I did the opportunities, I saved a bunch of prisoners and they stood to camp the basement to guard it then distract the guards at the end to make my escape easier and another, though a bit silly, was a map that showed me exactly where my target was heading and how, a bit stupid, but so useful, using eagle vision now I could see where he’d go, so I hid in a haystack right where he was so when he’d arrive I’d just have to wait. It feels amazing to do these things and no other game in this series quite accomplishes this feel.
Though I must say that the opportunity system doesn’t mean that now there’s only 3 ways a mission can go. Missions can go in any way you want them, they are the most open and least liniar they’ve ever been.
The combat is for the first time in the series, great, it’s slower and weightier, it’s harder but more satisfying. The animations are brutal and so are the finishers yet it also feels natural and at least a bit realtistic. It doesn’t simply do the job like in the other games but is actually enjoyable on it’s own. There’s multiple types of weapons and each type has its own move set, your average weapon types like the one handed, the heavy and the long but there’s also rifles that once you equip you can’t equip either a pistol or weapon and you just smack enemies with it, kinda funny. Useless but funny. The guillotine guns are also pretty cool though you need to do the Dead Kings DLC to get it, I’m pretty sure that the dlc is free so you really should play it because it's definitely worth it.
The progression in this game is great IF, you upgrade the Cafe and buy the other properties and do the missions for all of them (2-3 and their all really simple and to the point, one shouldn’t take more than 3 minutes, 5 at max). After you do that you’ll get 40+k per hour, besides that you still get enough from missions to get around though the Cafe stuff is required if you want the best gear with the least amount of grinding. You can also pause the game, alt tab and do something else for an hour then come back and collect your reward if you want. I alt tab a lot so I found that out fast.
In this game you can really make your assassin look the way you want with the gear pieces that you can buy, each have their own stats that DO matter a lot actually and you should buy the ones that help your own play style. Though sometimes it does feel like a sacrifice to go for the gear that helps you the most rather than the one you think looks the coolest, it’s not like there’s a lot of gear that looks bad. Most of it looks amazing actually. And hey if you don’t care about all that bullshit you have outfits you can unlock, they include ones for every previous protagonist, most of which you can find in these yellow chests on the map, there’s only a few of them so collecting them isn’t too bad. There’s also some other lesser outfits ig.
The story is flawed however I enjoyed it. The way the game starts is great, the first few hours on a story level are amazing, Arno has all the charm and personality of Ezio dare I say, the plot is compelling, Arno and Elise have chemistry, the part you play in prison serves as a good tutorial for combat. They put in the game a small city simply for the first hours before you get to Paris and then in a single level again later on, a bit much I’d say, and sure it doesn’t look too different from Paris, but still. I didn’t even know this but you can actually go back there by fast traveling. Don’t think there’s anything to do there but it's cool.
When you join the assassins is when things go to shit I guess, y’know it’s almost funny how much the assassins treat Arno like shit, and also Arno loses half of his personality as soon as he joins and turns really serious fast. It’s weird and comes out of nowhere when he’s suddenly without the charm and wit we see at the start though he doesn’t lose it completely.
When the game becomes a hit list it’s kinda lame story wise but in concept it makes sense, Assassin’s Creed games have always had hit lists at their core story wise, though here it becomes exclusively a hit list so it is a lot less compelling. It reminds me of AC1 but not in a good way.
Story picks up again once Elise shows up again, sure their relationship is toxic and Elise basically turns into Connor at his most WHERE IS CHARLES LEE at parts but they still have chemistry and are entertaining to watch most of the time.
It’s kinda interesting seeing how far Elise is willing to go to avenge her father, especially at the end of the game. The ending is cool, I won’t spoil it but it does redeem the middle section and the occasional great moment makes it so it never gets properly bad or even mediocre but it's never consistently great sadly. One of those occasional great moments has the be “the escape”, writing wise Arno’s and Elise’s relationship is at its most likeable as you chase her on roofs as she’s in a hot air balloon of all things, it's one of the most memorable moments in the story and the last cutscene is one of the most romantic moments in the series, had the cutscene not glitched and resulted in it looking weird af maybe it would have been better but oh well.
Also I noticed this thing where like...the first few times you meet with Elise its like half of their dialogue is them talking about past events when they were kids and it’s all essentially hey remember when we did this, though we’re never really shown these events nor are told about them prior so it feels like being with 2 friends and they’re making inside jokes and you don’t really understand them but they assume you know about them somehow.
There’s some interesting moments and themes, an Assassin being in love with a Templar is a pretty obvious plot for a game in this series at this point but for a reason. Having Arno bring Elise to the brotherhood to seek help in her revenge was a great moment, it plays out as you’d expect though. I loved the ending, felt earned and the silence as Arno...does a thing I won’t spoil, felt very impactful to me. His monologue afterwards was even better. Not a perfect story and it has its low points but it works for what it does and executes its ideas well enough. Could have been better but as it is. It’s good.
There’s these random helix missions or whatever that pop up sometimes throughout the story and they’re pretty cool, useless, but still really cool. Climbing the statue of liberty and the eiffel tower was pretty awesome tbh.
The side content is solid-great. Well more like “I don’t really mind this”-great. There’s the companion missions that serve as little fetch quests but I like that you just press E and then instantly you get a marker on your map, no loading screen or repetitive small cutscene. They’re all really fast, some took less than a minute to complete. There’s the Paris stories which serve as okay-good side missions, most are standalone stories but there’s some like the ones for that old lady that can predict the future and that one cult that serve as some of the more interesting ones.
The other helix missions that are there amount to just you picking up data then going to an assassin and ‘rescuing them’ and they’re...whatever, I don’t really mind them since you get Altair’s suit for completing them so there’s a nice reward to them but they are mostly boring as it’s just the same place but with a different gimmick like wow now there's a tornado here. They aren’t very memorable to say the least.
Also there’s events that happen in the world at random that you complete if you want, they’ll usually take like a second to complete, do enough of them and you’ll get a prize, simple enough though it makes things a bit more immersive. You can catch thieves, kill templars that are about to kill people/have just killed someone, defend a person from a templar, scare off bullies and give money to poor people. They aren’t really anything to write home about on their own but they make the game better by simply being there, going to a location and while on your journey jumping from a roof onto a murderer and saving someone feels great.
But I’ve said the best for last, the riddles...and even better, the murder mysteries.
Essentially hidden beneath the Assassins Creed gameplay, there’s an entire Sherlock Holmes game, a somewhat short one but still. Essentially you’ll be presented with the scene of a crime, from then the game will highlight certain items that you should inspect for more info and clues, though not every clue is highlighted and there are some that you can find on your own, find enough clues, piece things together and you can accuse someone of the crime, accuse correctly and you win, accuse wrongly and your prize gets smaller. Simple enough yet they’re a lot more interesting and hard to put together than you might assume given that Ubisoft aren’t exactly known for making challenging games. The riddles are also really great, the concept is simple: you get a riddle, figure out where it leads, another riddle appears, do that till you get to the final destination, 18 of those and you’ll unlock a special suit.
These are way more fun than they should, opening up wikipedia pages and looking for info about certain places to know where to go next and spending hours on end on these missions really makes finishing them all the more satisfying even if...the reward for doing them all is just an Altair reskin. Oh well they’re still fun to do.
The biggest issue is the one talked about the most and the one that earned its initial reception. The fucking bugs, don’t get me wrong, game’s playable and in much better state than when it came out...but there’s still a lot of bugs. I can’t defend this too much, they’re either funny or kinda inconvenient when you get stuck on fucking air and have to just fast travel somewhere. Not a deal breaker but they do impact the game a bit.
Also I have to say, this is one of the best looking games...ever, climbing a building and looking down to see hundreds if not thousands of NPCs rioting on the streets is a site to behold. Somehow this 7 year old game still looks next gen, they pushed this engine so much that it’s still arguably the best looking game in the series, even Syndicate...ESPECIALLY Syndicate, looks a lot worse than this game somehow.
The co-op is fun if you play with friends, awful if you play with randoms and almost impossible if you wanna do them solo so be warned, even if they let you play solo it doesn’t mean the missions were made for that and you’ll most likely find them impossible to do.
Before I end the review, let me make something clear, I don’t consider Unity a great game because of it’s awful launch and reputation making it easy to root for it. I consider Unity to be great because of its outstanding gameplay and world that also features a good story and some of the best side content Ubisoft ever made.
No Assassin’s Creed game has ever beaten this game in any regard outside of story for me. It might not be perfect but for me, it’s an all time favorite.
Now my favorite one, Assassin's Creed Uni- wait what is this?
A 5 hour totally not a standalone expansion for ac4 in which you play as a templar? That sounds sick!
But well it's quite bad. The gameplay feels tired and gets old quickly meanwhile the story is utterly atrocious. Though with a nice start and cool ending, everything in between that is...not great.
Shay is likeable and his motives are understandable as...we'd all leave our friends if they made us destroy an entire city and kill thousands of innocents...but joining the templars and fighting to enslave humanity so fast is quite stupid.
One minute he's all about freedom then he's all about order with no second thoughts...or really much thought put into it.
This never gets brought up once in the game either and this game doesn't go for the anti hero story but actually wants you to go with the story and plot thinking that the templars are the good guys. If you title this simply as 'Rogue' and make someone who never heard of Assassin's Creed play this game they'll never figure out that the Assassins are actually the good guys. It's simply unlikeable on a fundamental level.
In this game they basically just swapped colors between the templars and assassins and that was it. The templars are perfect and do everything right and are the good guys and the assassins are the bad guys who do everything wrong and are all gonna be killed by you and your cast of forgettable friends including....that guy with...y'know the one with like...the funny voice or something?
Well Haytham is in this game quite a bit but he lacks his charisma and personality and only gets it back right at the end of the game because ofc he does ONLY at the end.
You see with AC Brotherhood and Revelations what kept me going was the fact the stories were still good-great, even if the gameplay got old at least the story was there to drive me to keep playing as I wanted to see what would happen to Ezio.
But when you don't really change much about the gameplay and offer a story that wastes it's potential with unlikeable and forgettable characters where even then at the end it’s all for nothing since AC3 happens and undoes everything in this game and THEN at the end you find out in the modern day setting that you're going through Shay's memory just because someone wanted to send that footage to the assassins so he could shitpost them or something…
That's when you've got yourself a lazy shitty and forgettable game not deserving of the "underrated" label. Mostly forgotten and ignored for good reason.
A 5 hour totally not a standalone expansion for ac4 in which you play as a templar? That sounds sick!
But well it's quite bad. The gameplay feels tired and gets old quickly meanwhile the story is utterly atrocious. Though with a nice start and cool ending, everything in between that is...not great.
Shay is likeable and his motives are understandable as...we'd all leave our friends if they made us destroy an entire city and kill thousands of innocents...but joining the templars and fighting to enslave humanity so fast is quite stupid.
One minute he's all about freedom then he's all about order with no second thoughts...or really much thought put into it.
This never gets brought up once in the game either and this game doesn't go for the anti hero story but actually wants you to go with the story and plot thinking that the templars are the good guys. If you title this simply as 'Rogue' and make someone who never heard of Assassin's Creed play this game they'll never figure out that the Assassins are actually the good guys. It's simply unlikeable on a fundamental level.
In this game they basically just swapped colors between the templars and assassins and that was it. The templars are perfect and do everything right and are the good guys and the assassins are the bad guys who do everything wrong and are all gonna be killed by you and your cast of forgettable friends including....that guy with...y'know the one with like...the funny voice or something?
Well Haytham is in this game quite a bit but he lacks his charisma and personality and only gets it back right at the end of the game because ofc he does ONLY at the end.
You see with AC Brotherhood and Revelations what kept me going was the fact the stories were still good-great, even if the gameplay got old at least the story was there to drive me to keep playing as I wanted to see what would happen to Ezio.
But when you don't really change much about the gameplay and offer a story that wastes it's potential with unlikeable and forgettable characters where even then at the end it’s all for nothing since AC3 happens and undoes everything in this game and THEN at the end you find out in the modern day setting that you're going through Shay's memory just because someone wanted to send that footage to the assassins so he could shitpost them or something…
That's when you've got yourself a lazy shitty and forgettable game not deserving of the "underrated" label. Mostly forgotten and ignored for good reason.
This game is god damn wonderful.
I was gonna give it a 9 because the first hour or so is kinda meh but there's a cheat in this game that makes Edward talk like the most cliche pirate ever and it's glorious in every sense of the word.
There isn't really anything like the feel of sailing and hearing your crew sing some shanties, or like entering naval combat against a ship thats way better than yours, let alone 2, and managing to win against all odds, that shit really makes you feel like the most badass pirate possible.
An infinitely better story than in 3 with the most memorable characters in any AC game and the best ending in any AC game also make this game worth playing for the story alone let alone the ridiculously fun naval combat.
Only complaint is that the combat is too easy but it was still pretty satisfying and it did the job well enough.
I was gonna give it a 9 because the first hour or so is kinda meh but there's a cheat in this game that makes Edward talk like the most cliche pirate ever and it's glorious in every sense of the word.
There isn't really anything like the feel of sailing and hearing your crew sing some shanties, or like entering naval combat against a ship thats way better than yours, let alone 2, and managing to win against all odds, that shit really makes you feel like the most badass pirate possible.
An infinitely better story than in 3 with the most memorable characters in any AC game and the best ending in any AC game also make this game worth playing for the story alone let alone the ridiculously fun naval combat.
Only complaint is that the combat is too easy but it was still pretty satisfying and it did the job well enough.
2012
Assassin’s Creed 3 is the last in the Desmond saga and first in the Kenway saga.
This was supposed to serve as the series big finale sorta, wasn’t the case as we all know but at least for Desmond’s story this is the end.
And it is felt in certain areas, it definitely feels like they were working on this for a long time and wanted to make this game huge, not just in world size but also in it’s features and the things it gives you to do. Almost to a fault, actually scratch that, very much to a fault.
No simple way to say this, there’s too many features and mechanics here:
There's the homestead which you can upgrade by doing homestead missions and there's 37 of them, there’s supplies such as wood that you can get, also you have a trading system for your supplies, a weirdly in depth hunting system where you can hunt and skin animals then sell that for money, a ship system with combat included, little board games, a downright awful pick lock minigame and I don't say that because I suck at it...well also because of that but it is really boring and tedious and your average AC shit, combat, stealth and parkour. I probably missed a lot of stuff like the liberation and fort missions and how you can use your allies not just to assassinate but also riot, disguise as enemies and pretend to take you in and ambush enemies.
After certain missions you can interact with characters that were part of set mission to get some dialogue and it does help flesh out the characters and their stories in places where it'd just feel like useless exposition if they were part of the main story and not optional, I do appreciate that.
Let’s get to my complaints now:
In the story all the battle missions are terrible and way too scripted and linear, one is just you on a horse going from 3 different points and pressing E when the enemies come near, it’s practically impossible to lose if you know how to move…Another one is just the scene from brotherhood where you defend your place with cannon’s except worse here.
There’s also the one that at first I thought would be like in the trailer but instead it’s just you going from cover to cover waiting for enemies to reload and it’s so lame...you most likely won’t even care about what’s going on during these battles, they’re here just so you can say they’re in the game.
Viewpoints have been entirely nerfed as they don't reveal the whole area or even a big chunk of the area you're on, just like a small-ish circle around it, to reveal the map you just have to walk around, I like the fact the map can be revealed by you just walking around though, it makes sense and if you don't want to do the viewpoints it means you won't always be lost as after a while you'll have discovered enough of the map by just walking and running around to not feel the need for the viewpoints but I still wish they revealed a bigger part of the map overall as they feel kinda useless.
Obvs there’s the stupid useless collectibles. Too many of them to count but one of em is essentially collecting pages for some book and for some fucking reason they just fly around and you have to catch them?
I get that they wanted to make collecting collectibles more engaging than just walking to it and either pressing E or walking into it but man it just made me not want to collect em, tbf I don't see why anyone would want to collect these like they are still collectibles in a ubisoft game but still I'd sometimes pick em up if I ran into em in previous games, here I just ignored them 100% of the time.
Now...the bugs, this game is fucking broken even now. I’d often see enemies just spawn in front of me in the open world, if you finish someone off near a wall there's a chance they'll just clip through the wall and glitch out.
One time near the start of the game, the mission marker disappeared so I had to restart the game although soon I discovered just fast traveling fixes it sometimes.
Wait, did I say “one time”? My bad I meant AFTER EVERY 1-3 MISSIONS IN THE GAME. It’s so annoying and I lost so much time just having to fast travel and hope the god damn mission marker would appear again, it almost made me quit the game after a while.
I hate how everytime things get interesting you have to do one of those shitty modern day missions, seriously, fuck Desmond, especially in this game, best part of the modern day bs is when Desmond's dad punches him because he was being really whiny and annoying.
Also these missions just feel like very generic action set pieces, they don't belong in an AC game imo, it doesn't have to strictly be stealth and/or fighting a few dudes but this shit gets stupid fast and it takes me out of the experience when one minute i'm hunting a target or doing a mission with Connor and then another i'm jumping from a building and parachuting onto the enemy base as Desmond for some shit I don't care about.
Well at least Shaun continues to be a sarcastic asshole so there's one positive to these parts.
There's this part at the start of a sequence where Connor is narrating and as he does he's also talking with Achilles and it's a bit of a mess as you don't know what to focus on, idk what happened there but it often times overlayed the narration with the dialogue (though the narration was quieter ig) and idk if it’s a bug or just really bad audio design but something was def wrong.
When you're tailing an enemy (ofcourse there's tailing missions here and yes they are as tedious as before) you actually just have to look away from them for a second for that stupid timer to appear where if it reaches 0 and you aren't looking at the dude again you lose,
fr just look away during a tailing mission and it'll appear, who even thought that was a good idea? Ik i'm nitpicking really hard rn but it genuinely bothered me especially when I was above the guy I was following and I’d have to move and risk getting spotted and having to restart.
Connor is pretty disliked as a character from what I’ve seen and for good reason since for most of the game he is really boring and dull though I do feel the need to say that later on, around sequence 9 he does get much better and more compelling and while near the end of the game his dialogue just becomes WHERE IS CHARLES LEE, it’s still better than when you meet him as a kid or when he’s a somewhat whiny teen.
I’d say it takes too long to become an actual Assassin since it happens at the end of sequence 5 I believe (there’s 12 in the game so it’s just about halfway through it) but ig it does make it so you feel like it’s earned and you do spend the first few sequences as Haytham, who is a much more interesting and likeable character, part of me wishes he was the main character, idk maybe they could have made him an Assassin that went...for lack of better term, rogue. It would probably be more interesting than what we got I guess.
Also the game is too focused on the american revolution side of things during the middle of the game, yeah it takes place in that time period ofc it can’t just skip over it but still, it doesn’t feel like you’re seeing and experiencing Connor’s story but merely being bored by a shitty documentary or like you’re in the middle of History class. Just not as interesting, fun and exciting as it should be.
So is that enough whining?
Okay let’s get to what the game does right because there’s a reason the score isn’t a 0.5/5
The combat is also a lot more satisfying even if it continues to just be press E to win when there’s a red triangle above the enemy and space near an enemy when it’s yellow, though there really is nothing like going Rambo on 10+ guards, getting a kill combo then seeing 3 of them aim their guns at you just for you to grab one of their friends and use him as a meat shield just before running straight into the others and killing them. It is much easier to pull off than it sounds but it still feels really satisfying.
I like how in New York you can burn blankets with smallpox, kill rabid dogs and carry civilians that have it to a doctor, it’s cool to see stuff like this in the game, makes the side content stand out a bit more even if it's just either pressing one button or pressing one button walking a bit then pressing it again. You can go to a group of civilians and press “E to riot” (laughed the first time I saw that tbh) and I think this would be really cool if you could use it to help you escape from guards but you can’t use it while in combat, I tried it once but it didn’t work idk maybe it was just a bug but there was potential for something really cool there if it just let you start a riot while in combat.
The parkour is a bit watered down but still works really well and feels good to use, the parkour system for the trees is mostly cool to use although a bit inconsistent, nothing game breaking. The open world feels alive as per usual and there’s a lot of detail everywhere making it fun to run around and explore in between missions.
This is the first game in the main series that is on a different engine and it shows, the graphics obvs look better but also the whole feel of the game is different and it really feels fresh for the series, especially coming off of 3 essentially identical games.
I said there were too many features but that’s not too say they are all bad, all of the stuff the game tries to do (safe for the lock pick minigame) is either just fine or good, and yeah I do wish it was more focused and we got like 5 amazing features and mechanics instead of 30 decent ones but managing to not make all of them feel subpar is an accomplishment in a way so there’s props to be given.
The first part where you play as Haytham is great, you see him slowly fall in love with who will become Connor’s mother and it really humanizes him as a character and his sense of humour and personality shines through, even later on when he meets with Connor he’s still really enjoyable, prb one of my fav characters in the whole series honestly. Achilles is also a pretty good character, he’s the former Assassin that trains Connor and he really brings life into the story whenever he’s on screen.
I also like how they try to portray the Assassins vs Templars issue as a more morally grey thing than simply good vs evil...well it is still good vs evil but a little less, Connor just kinda says u wrong in different ways after every assassination when the target explains their reasoning and how “it’s for the greater good”. At least they tried to do something more interesting I guess.
The liberation missions are cool, at times they feel like filler content just put on the map at random, and they probably are, but I like how if you do enough of these you’ll unlock special liberation contracts where you also meet a new character in each one that you can then summon to help you fight.
Guess in a way you can see this like the brotherhood mechanic but with actual characters that you can interact with and aren’t just random people you meet on the street. You also get to do homestead missions for them I believe, there Connor also shows some more personality, life and humour which is nice, wish it was in the main story more than in these missions but it is what it is.
The game does get better as it goes after you become an Assassin though the middle part of the game drags on a bit. Last few sequences are great imo and almost make up for how awful the middle can be at points, almost.
This was my first AC game back in around 2015-2016, it got me interested in this series which at this point I’ve been a fan of for years so in certain aspects it does hold a special place in my heart but revising it now I can’t help but feel underwhelmed and it’s issues are a lot more apparent now, I can’t call this a bad game, it does too many things right to be a bad game imo, and even mediocre I don’t know if it fits with it because I still enjoyed more things about it than I didn’t even if my review would imply otherwise, but a good game it is not, it’s disappointing in a lot of ways but as a whole it’s just decent.
This was supposed to serve as the series big finale sorta, wasn’t the case as we all know but at least for Desmond’s story this is the end.
And it is felt in certain areas, it definitely feels like they were working on this for a long time and wanted to make this game huge, not just in world size but also in it’s features and the things it gives you to do. Almost to a fault, actually scratch that, very much to a fault.
No simple way to say this, there’s too many features and mechanics here:
There's the homestead which you can upgrade by doing homestead missions and there's 37 of them, there’s supplies such as wood that you can get, also you have a trading system for your supplies, a weirdly in depth hunting system where you can hunt and skin animals then sell that for money, a ship system with combat included, little board games, a downright awful pick lock minigame and I don't say that because I suck at it...well also because of that but it is really boring and tedious and your average AC shit, combat, stealth and parkour. I probably missed a lot of stuff like the liberation and fort missions and how you can use your allies not just to assassinate but also riot, disguise as enemies and pretend to take you in and ambush enemies.
After certain missions you can interact with characters that were part of set mission to get some dialogue and it does help flesh out the characters and their stories in places where it'd just feel like useless exposition if they were part of the main story and not optional, I do appreciate that.
Let’s get to my complaints now:
In the story all the battle missions are terrible and way too scripted and linear, one is just you on a horse going from 3 different points and pressing E when the enemies come near, it’s practically impossible to lose if you know how to move…Another one is just the scene from brotherhood where you defend your place with cannon’s except worse here.
There’s also the one that at first I thought would be like in the trailer but instead it’s just you going from cover to cover waiting for enemies to reload and it’s so lame...you most likely won’t even care about what’s going on during these battles, they’re here just so you can say they’re in the game.
Viewpoints have been entirely nerfed as they don't reveal the whole area or even a big chunk of the area you're on, just like a small-ish circle around it, to reveal the map you just have to walk around, I like the fact the map can be revealed by you just walking around though, it makes sense and if you don't want to do the viewpoints it means you won't always be lost as after a while you'll have discovered enough of the map by just walking and running around to not feel the need for the viewpoints but I still wish they revealed a bigger part of the map overall as they feel kinda useless.
Obvs there’s the stupid useless collectibles. Too many of them to count but one of em is essentially collecting pages for some book and for some fucking reason they just fly around and you have to catch them?
I get that they wanted to make collecting collectibles more engaging than just walking to it and either pressing E or walking into it but man it just made me not want to collect em, tbf I don't see why anyone would want to collect these like they are still collectibles in a ubisoft game but still I'd sometimes pick em up if I ran into em in previous games, here I just ignored them 100% of the time.
Now...the bugs, this game is fucking broken even now. I’d often see enemies just spawn in front of me in the open world, if you finish someone off near a wall there's a chance they'll just clip through the wall and glitch out.
One time near the start of the game, the mission marker disappeared so I had to restart the game although soon I discovered just fast traveling fixes it sometimes.
Wait, did I say “one time”? My bad I meant AFTER EVERY 1-3 MISSIONS IN THE GAME. It’s so annoying and I lost so much time just having to fast travel and hope the god damn mission marker would appear again, it almost made me quit the game after a while.
I hate how everytime things get interesting you have to do one of those shitty modern day missions, seriously, fuck Desmond, especially in this game, best part of the modern day bs is when Desmond's dad punches him because he was being really whiny and annoying.
Also these missions just feel like very generic action set pieces, they don't belong in an AC game imo, it doesn't have to strictly be stealth and/or fighting a few dudes but this shit gets stupid fast and it takes me out of the experience when one minute i'm hunting a target or doing a mission with Connor and then another i'm jumping from a building and parachuting onto the enemy base as Desmond for some shit I don't care about.
Well at least Shaun continues to be a sarcastic asshole so there's one positive to these parts.
There's this part at the start of a sequence where Connor is narrating and as he does he's also talking with Achilles and it's a bit of a mess as you don't know what to focus on, idk what happened there but it often times overlayed the narration with the dialogue (though the narration was quieter ig) and idk if it’s a bug or just really bad audio design but something was def wrong.
When you're tailing an enemy (ofcourse there's tailing missions here and yes they are as tedious as before) you actually just have to look away from them for a second for that stupid timer to appear where if it reaches 0 and you aren't looking at the dude again you lose,
fr just look away during a tailing mission and it'll appear, who even thought that was a good idea? Ik i'm nitpicking really hard rn but it genuinely bothered me especially when I was above the guy I was following and I’d have to move and risk getting spotted and having to restart.
Connor is pretty disliked as a character from what I’ve seen and for good reason since for most of the game he is really boring and dull though I do feel the need to say that later on, around sequence 9 he does get much better and more compelling and while near the end of the game his dialogue just becomes WHERE IS CHARLES LEE, it’s still better than when you meet him as a kid or when he’s a somewhat whiny teen.
I’d say it takes too long to become an actual Assassin since it happens at the end of sequence 5 I believe (there’s 12 in the game so it’s just about halfway through it) but ig it does make it so you feel like it’s earned and you do spend the first few sequences as Haytham, who is a much more interesting and likeable character, part of me wishes he was the main character, idk maybe they could have made him an Assassin that went...for lack of better term, rogue. It would probably be more interesting than what we got I guess.
Also the game is too focused on the american revolution side of things during the middle of the game, yeah it takes place in that time period ofc it can’t just skip over it but still, it doesn’t feel like you’re seeing and experiencing Connor’s story but merely being bored by a shitty documentary or like you’re in the middle of History class. Just not as interesting, fun and exciting as it should be.
So is that enough whining?
Okay let’s get to what the game does right because there’s a reason the score isn’t a 0.5/5
The combat is also a lot more satisfying even if it continues to just be press E to win when there’s a red triangle above the enemy and space near an enemy when it’s yellow, though there really is nothing like going Rambo on 10+ guards, getting a kill combo then seeing 3 of them aim their guns at you just for you to grab one of their friends and use him as a meat shield just before running straight into the others and killing them. It is much easier to pull off than it sounds but it still feels really satisfying.
I like how in New York you can burn blankets with smallpox, kill rabid dogs and carry civilians that have it to a doctor, it’s cool to see stuff like this in the game, makes the side content stand out a bit more even if it's just either pressing one button or pressing one button walking a bit then pressing it again. You can go to a group of civilians and press “E to riot” (laughed the first time I saw that tbh) and I think this would be really cool if you could use it to help you escape from guards but you can’t use it while in combat, I tried it once but it didn’t work idk maybe it was just a bug but there was potential for something really cool there if it just let you start a riot while in combat.
The parkour is a bit watered down but still works really well and feels good to use, the parkour system for the trees is mostly cool to use although a bit inconsistent, nothing game breaking. The open world feels alive as per usual and there’s a lot of detail everywhere making it fun to run around and explore in between missions.
This is the first game in the main series that is on a different engine and it shows, the graphics obvs look better but also the whole feel of the game is different and it really feels fresh for the series, especially coming off of 3 essentially identical games.
I said there were too many features but that’s not too say they are all bad, all of the stuff the game tries to do (safe for the lock pick minigame) is either just fine or good, and yeah I do wish it was more focused and we got like 5 amazing features and mechanics instead of 30 decent ones but managing to not make all of them feel subpar is an accomplishment in a way so there’s props to be given.
The first part where you play as Haytham is great, you see him slowly fall in love with who will become Connor’s mother and it really humanizes him as a character and his sense of humour and personality shines through, even later on when he meets with Connor he’s still really enjoyable, prb one of my fav characters in the whole series honestly. Achilles is also a pretty good character, he’s the former Assassin that trains Connor and he really brings life into the story whenever he’s on screen.
I also like how they try to portray the Assassins vs Templars issue as a more morally grey thing than simply good vs evil...well it is still good vs evil but a little less, Connor just kinda says u wrong in different ways after every assassination when the target explains their reasoning and how “it’s for the greater good”. At least they tried to do something more interesting I guess.
The liberation missions are cool, at times they feel like filler content just put on the map at random, and they probably are, but I like how if you do enough of these you’ll unlock special liberation contracts where you also meet a new character in each one that you can then summon to help you fight.
Guess in a way you can see this like the brotherhood mechanic but with actual characters that you can interact with and aren’t just random people you meet on the street. You also get to do homestead missions for them I believe, there Connor also shows some more personality, life and humour which is nice, wish it was in the main story more than in these missions but it is what it is.
The game does get better as it goes after you become an Assassin though the middle part of the game drags on a bit. Last few sequences are great imo and almost make up for how awful the middle can be at points, almost.
This was my first AC game back in around 2015-2016, it got me interested in this series which at this point I’ve been a fan of for years so in certain aspects it does hold a special place in my heart but revising it now I can’t help but feel underwhelmed and it’s issues are a lot more apparent now, I can’t call this a bad game, it does too many things right to be a bad game imo, and even mediocre I don’t know if it fits with it because I still enjoyed more things about it than I didn’t even if my review would imply otherwise, but a good game it is not, it’s disappointing in a lot of ways but as a whole it’s just decent.
The last of the Ezio trilogy, the one that's considered the worst one, I had doubts going into it, and all my worst fears were confirmed, for the first sequence of the game.
That first part is seriously abysmal, right from the first enemy in the game, instead of punching him the game decided that I was going through him and things only got worse as the game just looked like fucking ass, it looked like a PS2 game in that first mission down to the little cutscenes. The fact they also set up a decent enough villain and then killed him off in the first mission also upset me a bit, that carriage chase was lame too, seemed a bit out of place and the way Ezio just shrug it off like there weren't 50 ways he should have died there took me out. Well I was not enjoying it to say the least.
But then after that, when you get to Constantinople things really get going as you get introduced to Yusuf and the other characters, then die down when you have to do the infamous tower defense minigame, but then it picks up again as that minigame has not been seen after, seriously I never had to play it again.
The game sees Ezio on his last journey and come into his own more so since for the first time, his motivation is not to avenge the death of a family member but rather to find the knowledge left behind by Altair. In the game you get to play as Altair in certain sections and let me tell you, these are easily the best parts of the game, it's not even close for me. Sure I didn't enjoy AC1 overall but seeing Altair back and playing as him again was a real throwback...to a few days ago, still. You get to play with him from before the first game, right after, and then throughout his life right till the end. I won't spoil what happens since I think the game is worth playing, or at least watching on youtube.
The gameplay is basically identical to the one of the 2 previous games but a bit more polished in certain areas, the parkour is better and faster/more convenient with the addition of the hookblade and the brotherhood mechanic alongside the whole property stuff has been expended on a bit. Now your Assassin's have ranks and it is nice to see one of your own level up, and it is a bit sadder when you see one of em die, or 3 if you got ambushed by a lot of enemies and panic spammed T to summon them as you tried to escape just for that to fail and lose half of them...
Anyways, I enjoyed the story quite a bit and the side content wasn't too bad either, the little I've played of it, I try to stay away from the side stuff like the plague when it comes to Ubisoft games not called Far Cry 3 y'know.
I'd say this game is a bit underrated, not the best nor the worst the series has to offer and I think it's often overlooked as it is imo an improvement upon Brotherhood.
Right also the modern day stuff... happens, cool to actually see Subject 16 (not a spoiler, you see him like right at the start of the game) after having them talk about the guy so much in the last 2 games, Desmond still sucks though.
That first part is seriously abysmal, right from the first enemy in the game, instead of punching him the game decided that I was going through him and things only got worse as the game just looked like fucking ass, it looked like a PS2 game in that first mission down to the little cutscenes. The fact they also set up a decent enough villain and then killed him off in the first mission also upset me a bit, that carriage chase was lame too, seemed a bit out of place and the way Ezio just shrug it off like there weren't 50 ways he should have died there took me out. Well I was not enjoying it to say the least.
But then after that, when you get to Constantinople things really get going as you get introduced to Yusuf and the other characters, then die down when you have to do the infamous tower defense minigame, but then it picks up again as that minigame has not been seen after, seriously I never had to play it again.
The game sees Ezio on his last journey and come into his own more so since for the first time, his motivation is not to avenge the death of a family member but rather to find the knowledge left behind by Altair. In the game you get to play as Altair in certain sections and let me tell you, these are easily the best parts of the game, it's not even close for me. Sure I didn't enjoy AC1 overall but seeing Altair back and playing as him again was a real throwback...to a few days ago, still. You get to play with him from before the first game, right after, and then throughout his life right till the end. I won't spoil what happens since I think the game is worth playing, or at least watching on youtube.
The gameplay is basically identical to the one of the 2 previous games but a bit more polished in certain areas, the parkour is better and faster/more convenient with the addition of the hookblade and the brotherhood mechanic alongside the whole property stuff has been expended on a bit. Now your Assassin's have ranks and it is nice to see one of your own level up, and it is a bit sadder when you see one of em die, or 3 if you got ambushed by a lot of enemies and panic spammed T to summon them as you tried to escape just for that to fail and lose half of them...
Anyways, I enjoyed the story quite a bit and the side content wasn't too bad either, the little I've played of it, I try to stay away from the side stuff like the plague when it comes to Ubisoft games not called Far Cry 3 y'know.
I'd say this game is a bit underrated, not the best nor the worst the series has to offer and I think it's often overlooked as it is imo an improvement upon Brotherhood.
Right also the modern day stuff... happens, cool to actually see Subject 16 (not a spoiler, you see him like right at the start of the game) after having them talk about the guy so much in the last 2 games, Desmond still sucks though.
I’ve seen this game described with the sentence “less is more” a lot, and yeah it is less... but what the fuck do people mean by more? More what? More shitty tailing missions? In this 8-10 hour game I think I’ve spent at least 4 hours either following people or escorting people, in AC2 it was barely like 3-5 missions where you did this, here it's like half of them and it gets old fast.
Also while the brotherhood mechanic is cool and all I think it could have been better if these weren’t just randomly generated characters, would have been cool to just have 5-10 side quests on the map where you meet a character and make them join your cause instead of an infinite amount of bland nothing characters that you don’t really become attached too and seeing them die is more of a matter of going oh well I guess I’ll have to go find a new one after the mission is done rather than anything.
I was really disappointed by this game, I had never finished it till today and honestly I find it strange that a lot of fans hold this as the best game in the franchise. Not saying that’s not a valid opinion I just personally don’t see it, it takes AC2 and just does it again but with a more focused plot that lasts 10 hours instead of 20-30.
Still there’s strong points here, the story is great...and everything that was good from AC2 came back so 95% of your enjoyment depends on whether you liked Ezio to begin with and whether you liked AC2 in general, granted that shouldn’t be much of an issue I think most people would agree that Ezio is an amazing character and AC2 is a great game.
The modern day storyline is a bit worse than in 2 imo, mostly because there’s more of it and I find Desmond to be bland as fuck, Lucy and Rebeca just sorta exist, everytime they try to make a joke I kinda cringe though, and then there’s Shaun which I actually dig, idk I find his sarcastic remarks and jokes funny. Def the one saving grace of this section of the game.
I found the parkour to be slightly worse, idk just didn’t feel as good as in 2, the one thing I’ll give this game and not to AC2 is that the combat is much better and the stealth is also a bit better.
Good game and good sequel, but nothing that great or impressive if you’ve already played 2.
Also while the brotherhood mechanic is cool and all I think it could have been better if these weren’t just randomly generated characters, would have been cool to just have 5-10 side quests on the map where you meet a character and make them join your cause instead of an infinite amount of bland nothing characters that you don’t really become attached too and seeing them die is more of a matter of going oh well I guess I’ll have to go find a new one after the mission is done rather than anything.
I was really disappointed by this game, I had never finished it till today and honestly I find it strange that a lot of fans hold this as the best game in the franchise. Not saying that’s not a valid opinion I just personally don’t see it, it takes AC2 and just does it again but with a more focused plot that lasts 10 hours instead of 20-30.
Still there’s strong points here, the story is great...and everything that was good from AC2 came back so 95% of your enjoyment depends on whether you liked Ezio to begin with and whether you liked AC2 in general, granted that shouldn’t be much of an issue I think most people would agree that Ezio is an amazing character and AC2 is a great game.
The modern day storyline is a bit worse than in 2 imo, mostly because there’s more of it and I find Desmond to be bland as fuck, Lucy and Rebeca just sorta exist, everytime they try to make a joke I kinda cringe though, and then there’s Shaun which I actually dig, idk I find his sarcastic remarks and jokes funny. Def the one saving grace of this section of the game.
I found the parkour to be slightly worse, idk just didn’t feel as good as in 2, the one thing I’ll give this game and not to AC2 is that the combat is much better and the stealth is also a bit better.
Good game and good sequel, but nothing that great or impressive if you’ve already played 2.
2009
AC2 pretty much improves upon everything the original game tried to do.
The parkour is leagues more fun than in the original, the story is full of charm and manages to find a sweet spot between more light hearted and serious stuff unlike a lot of ubisoft games and features some of the best and most memorable characters in the series.
It feels like a really fast paced game, there isn't much downtime where you just do useless quests. Throughout the game you consistently unlock new areas and abilities to keep the game fresh all the way to the end. Also there's some ridiculously fun missions like the one where you fly into the enemy base.
My only issue with this game really is the combat which yes is a bit better but still not perfect, it turns into smashing attack really fast, after a while I noticed that sometimes if you don't engage in the fight and you have allies fighting you can just go behind enemies and kill them as if you were playing stealthily and it's kinda cheesing the game but oh well it saved me some time so I won't complain too much, also the game is really easy 90% of the time, I don't think I ever bought an upgrade or new weapon or anything throughout my playthrough and still beat it no problem.
Honestly wanted to give it a 10 because even with the combats flaws, I still enjoyed it, but my god did the game fuck it up at the end, basically it doesn't let you do the last mission until you get all of these codex pages, there's around 30 in total and I only had half of em so I had to spend half an hour getting the rest, idk I never liked when games just tell you fuck off, come back when you collected all of this shit
Oh well, still an amazing game though, hell I'd say it's worth it for the story and parkour alone.
The parkour is leagues more fun than in the original, the story is full of charm and manages to find a sweet spot between more light hearted and serious stuff unlike a lot of ubisoft games and features some of the best and most memorable characters in the series.
It feels like a really fast paced game, there isn't much downtime where you just do useless quests. Throughout the game you consistently unlock new areas and abilities to keep the game fresh all the way to the end. Also there's some ridiculously fun missions like the one where you fly into the enemy base.
My only issue with this game really is the combat which yes is a bit better but still not perfect, it turns into smashing attack really fast, after a while I noticed that sometimes if you don't engage in the fight and you have allies fighting you can just go behind enemies and kill them as if you were playing stealthily and it's kinda cheesing the game but oh well it saved me some time so I won't complain too much, also the game is really easy 90% of the time, I don't think I ever bought an upgrade or new weapon or anything throughout my playthrough and still beat it no problem.
Honestly wanted to give it a 10 because even with the combats flaws, I still enjoyed it, but my god did the game fuck it up at the end, basically it doesn't let you do the last mission until you get all of these codex pages, there's around 30 in total and I only had half of em so I had to spend half an hour getting the rest, idk I never liked when games just tell you fuck off, come back when you collected all of this shit
Oh well, still an amazing game though, hell I'd say it's worth it for the story and parkour alone.
2007
As many people said, this is in need of a remake, because as it is, it's pretty shit.
Gameplay wise that is at least, sure for it's time it was groundbreaking, but it's not 2007 anymore and this game doesn't play very well anymore.
The parkour is way too slow imo and the amount of times Altair just decided to jump off a building when I didn't want him too is stupid. The beggars and the people who just randomly push you are also really annoying and I'd rather not fail a mission because some dipshit just came up to me and pushed me in front of a guard, knocking the guard over and having me have to escape/fight, then wait...then redo the mission and hope that asshole isn't there anymore.
The combat soon turned into just counter attacking because that's the best method even if I found it sorta inconsistent, also if you knock an enemy down it'll be luck whether your character will hit him next or the dude next to him.
It's also very repetitive with every chapter being basically identical, go to the place, climb a few towers, do 3 small missions for intel, go to bureau, talk with him for 2 minutes, then go to where the assassination takes place, wait for 1-3 minutes for the bad guy to do something evil before the game lets you go after em, then try your best to kill them and avoid the rest as much as possible, then run away and report back to bureau, dialogue, then more dialogue with your leader. Repeat 9 times before the admittedly great final mission.
The first time it was fine, 2nd time it was getting sorta stale, by the 9th time it got really boring.
But the story is great, the plot twist is done really well, the last hour of the game is great and Altair is a good character with a good arc and the modern day storyline sets up things nicely for the next few games even if Desmond is the definition of bland.
So it's not all bad which is why my score isn't much lower.
It set a good foundation for the rest of the series but as a game today, it's not fun and hasn't aged very well imo.
Gameplay wise that is at least, sure for it's time it was groundbreaking, but it's not 2007 anymore and this game doesn't play very well anymore.
The parkour is way too slow imo and the amount of times Altair just decided to jump off a building when I didn't want him too is stupid. The beggars and the people who just randomly push you are also really annoying and I'd rather not fail a mission because some dipshit just came up to me and pushed me in front of a guard, knocking the guard over and having me have to escape/fight, then wait...then redo the mission and hope that asshole isn't there anymore.
The combat soon turned into just counter attacking because that's the best method even if I found it sorta inconsistent, also if you knock an enemy down it'll be luck whether your character will hit him next or the dude next to him.
It's also very repetitive with every chapter being basically identical, go to the place, climb a few towers, do 3 small missions for intel, go to bureau, talk with him for 2 minutes, then go to where the assassination takes place, wait for 1-3 minutes for the bad guy to do something evil before the game lets you go after em, then try your best to kill them and avoid the rest as much as possible, then run away and report back to bureau, dialogue, then more dialogue with your leader. Repeat 9 times before the admittedly great final mission.
The first time it was fine, 2nd time it was getting sorta stale, by the 9th time it got really boring.
But the story is great, the plot twist is done really well, the last hour of the game is great and Altair is a good character with a good arc and the modern day storyline sets up things nicely for the next few games even if Desmond is the definition of bland.
So it's not all bad which is why my score isn't much lower.
It set a good foundation for the rest of the series but as a game today, it's not fun and hasn't aged very well imo.