From the very first trailer, this game always looked gorgeous. And in the opening hours, you're treated to so much vibrant beauty in every detail of this game's historical open world. From the rippling leaves around every tree, to the grasses blowing in the wind, to the rainbow of flowers adorning every mountainside, the game is visually quite stunning.
Another big draw for the game is that almost every side quest is fairly unique and provides not just a throwaway couple of lines of dialogue but full, well written stories with detailed characters. There are a few thrown in for comedic effect and some that don't really lead to satisfactory conclusions. But for the most part, the side quests are where most of my memories of this game will lie.
The main storyline is a little less memorable though. It's not really bad or told poorly, but it's just entirely too predictable. Throughout the game, your character is faced with many choices of morality and forced to decide whether to honor tradition (fighting Mongolians in broad daylight), or sink to the depths of cowardace (cutting throats in the dark.) It seems pretty good as a mechanic, I thought, "If I want the good ending, I have to do a lot of fights where I'm outnumbered and announce my arrival so I can ensure that it's gonna be as hard as possible?" But that's not actually how it works. You could approach every encounter in a semi truck with machine guns blazing but the cutscenes will still scold you for choosing a dark path. There are some weather effects if you go around slicing too many throats but there's really no effect on the plot.
Another kind of disappointing thing is the difficulty. The combat starts out slightly challenging but after the first couple of upgrades, it gets to be trivial and monotonous. Every enemy has a specific weakness and there isn't really any challenge in switching to the proper stance. It's like playing rock parer scissors but you can see what they're gonna throw in advance. The stealth is more fun but the AI loses sight of you too easily and chalks up almost everything to "the wind". You can murder a dude like 10 feet from another dude, step behind a stick for five seconds while he investigates, and be back to full stealth without any sort of penalty. It's better than being overly punishing but it never got me very engaged.
The rest of the game is just early Assassin's Creed with a fresh coat of paint. The open world template is followed to a fault. If you're looking for a time sink, there's plenty of random side stuff strewn all throughout the giant map, and it tells you what it's gonna give you in advance which is nice.
It's pretty and it's good. It's pretty good. I'm glad I played it.
Another big draw for the game is that almost every side quest is fairly unique and provides not just a throwaway couple of lines of dialogue but full, well written stories with detailed characters. There are a few thrown in for comedic effect and some that don't really lead to satisfactory conclusions. But for the most part, the side quests are where most of my memories of this game will lie.
The main storyline is a little less memorable though. It's not really bad or told poorly, but it's just entirely too predictable. Throughout the game, your character is faced with many choices of morality and forced to decide whether to honor tradition (fighting Mongolians in broad daylight), or sink to the depths of cowardace (cutting throats in the dark.) It seems pretty good as a mechanic, I thought, "If I want the good ending, I have to do a lot of fights where I'm outnumbered and announce my arrival so I can ensure that it's gonna be as hard as possible?" But that's not actually how it works. You could approach every encounter in a semi truck with machine guns blazing but the cutscenes will still scold you for choosing a dark path. There are some weather effects if you go around slicing too many throats but there's really no effect on the plot.
Another kind of disappointing thing is the difficulty. The combat starts out slightly challenging but after the first couple of upgrades, it gets to be trivial and monotonous. Every enemy has a specific weakness and there isn't really any challenge in switching to the proper stance. It's like playing rock parer scissors but you can see what they're gonna throw in advance. The stealth is more fun but the AI loses sight of you too easily and chalks up almost everything to "the wind". You can murder a dude like 10 feet from another dude, step behind a stick for five seconds while he investigates, and be back to full stealth without any sort of penalty. It's better than being overly punishing but it never got me very engaged.
The rest of the game is just early Assassin's Creed with a fresh coat of paint. The open world template is followed to a fault. If you're looking for a time sink, there's plenty of random side stuff strewn all throughout the giant map, and it tells you what it's gonna give you in advance which is nice.
It's pretty and it's good. It's pretty good. I'm glad I played it.