This is my least favorite game that I have still bothered to finish anyways. It's a good setting trapped in the shittiest game ever.
Part I: Setting
The setting is the good part of this terrible game that kept me playing it for 2 fucking months. It's the ancient world. There are no games that take place in the ancient world except shitty RTS games that I don't like. Alcibiades is in the game and he's gay and hot.
Part II: Fake Ass RPG Mechanics
This game is an RPG where you're forced to play the role of an utterly insane man who wants everybody to hate him. It takes place during the Peloponessian War, and it heavily advertised that back in 2018. But you can't actually choose a side in the war. No, instead this game forces you to do something far more sinister, far more fucking stupid. Practically every other chain of quests in the main line has you switching sides, instead. You kill hordes of soldiers for both Sparta and Athens, but nobody cares. What I'm saying is that this is a game where you're forced to play as a radical centrist. It continues on into the faction conflicts within the DLC.
I'm going to guess what happened here is they originally made the game with a faction split, but the fucking AAA slop factory cowards that they are, they became afraid that players would miss content by picking a side, and it would only be 60 hours per playthrough, not 80. Since Ubisoft is run and staffed by the worst guys you know, they couldn't possibly allow this. So instead, they made a nonsensical story which they could advertise as ‘deep’ and ‘rich’ because it's just long.
Sure, RPGs aren't all about factions, but the lack of choice regarding the central tension of the game reflects its absence elsewhere. Additionally, every ‘romance’ and ‘companion’ in this game is weird as hell and hollow. You kinda just do some quests for them, maybe fuck, and they become a permanently bricked NPC on your ship with no lines of dialogue ever again. I'm not going to elaborate on side quests and shit, but just know that the game's final, true ending only gives you a single choice which is rushed and makes no sense, alongside some questions which clarify fucking nothing.
Part III: Gameplay
The combat in this game is like Dark Souls combat but really shitty. This is the first game in many years that I've decided to play on easy, because the difficulty settings don't matter if you want to make the game more skillful or interesting. They just change the health of enemies, and how the level scaling works.
And oh, the FUCKING level scaling, how I hope the fraud who worked on it breaks his hands so he never works on a game again. If an enemy is 4 levels above you, it’s fucking over. They're going to take ~20 stabs each, just for basic guys. Hard generally places enemies 2-4 levels above you, always. Medium has them 2 above or equal to you. Easy has them equal or 2 below. Sure. this fucks active melee combat, but at least stealth is fine?
No, of course not. The evil ass level scaling makes the otherwise fine stealth bad if you're not playing on easy, because you can't even stealth kill basic guys in one hit, leaving them to just go and alert everyone else.
In the assassin game, by the way.
Part I: Setting
The setting is the good part of this terrible game that kept me playing it for 2 fucking months. It's the ancient world. There are no games that take place in the ancient world except shitty RTS games that I don't like. Alcibiades is in the game and he's gay and hot.
Part II: Fake Ass RPG Mechanics
This game is an RPG where you're forced to play the role of an utterly insane man who wants everybody to hate him. It takes place during the Peloponessian War, and it heavily advertised that back in 2018. But you can't actually choose a side in the war. No, instead this game forces you to do something far more sinister, far more fucking stupid. Practically every other chain of quests in the main line has you switching sides, instead. You kill hordes of soldiers for both Sparta and Athens, but nobody cares. What I'm saying is that this is a game where you're forced to play as a radical centrist. It continues on into the faction conflicts within the DLC.
I'm going to guess what happened here is they originally made the game with a faction split, but the fucking AAA slop factory cowards that they are, they became afraid that players would miss content by picking a side, and it would only be 60 hours per playthrough, not 80. Since Ubisoft is run and staffed by the worst guys you know, they couldn't possibly allow this. So instead, they made a nonsensical story which they could advertise as ‘deep’ and ‘rich’ because it's just long.
Sure, RPGs aren't all about factions, but the lack of choice regarding the central tension of the game reflects its absence elsewhere. Additionally, every ‘romance’ and ‘companion’ in this game is weird as hell and hollow. You kinda just do some quests for them, maybe fuck, and they become a permanently bricked NPC on your ship with no lines of dialogue ever again. I'm not going to elaborate on side quests and shit, but just know that the game's final, true ending only gives you a single choice which is rushed and makes no sense, alongside some questions which clarify fucking nothing.
Part III: Gameplay
The combat in this game is like Dark Souls combat but really shitty. This is the first game in many years that I've decided to play on easy, because the difficulty settings don't matter if you want to make the game more skillful or interesting. They just change the health of enemies, and how the level scaling works.
And oh, the FUCKING level scaling, how I hope the fraud who worked on it breaks his hands so he never works on a game again. If an enemy is 4 levels above you, it’s fucking over. They're going to take ~20 stabs each, just for basic guys. Hard generally places enemies 2-4 levels above you, always. Medium has them 2 above or equal to you. Easy has them equal or 2 below. Sure. this fucks active melee combat, but at least stealth is fine?
No, of course not. The evil ass level scaling makes the otherwise fine stealth bad if you're not playing on easy, because you can't even stealth kill basic guys in one hit, leaving them to just go and alert everyone else.
In the assassin game, by the way.