This review contains spoilers
Ever since 8th grade, I’ve wanted to play this game. The release coincided with my American History unit in school (one of my favorite historical eras) and for whatever reason I was so hyped to experience this game and was the main reason I wanted to play through the entire series in the first place. After playing the game however, it is rife with serious flaws that’s almost ruin the experience.
The twist of Haytham being a Templar is one of the greatest reveals in the series, but the pacing of the story is so awful. You go for 6-7 hours playing as Haytham with pretty boring tailing / stealth missions only for the game to practically restart when you start playing as Conner and many of the games tutorials repeat as the story rebuilds it’s momentum. This leads to imho one of the clumsiest and sluggish first acts in modern gaming.
Once you are set loose upon the open world however, the activities can be so fun. Sailing and naval battles are added here, and while Black Flag would expand upon this mechanic greatly, it’s fully functional and super fun here and some of the games best missions involve it. I felt the process of unlocking fast travel points through the tunnel systems throughout New England was far too arduous a task and disrupted the flow heavily, so I didn’t bother for the most part. Hunting in the country side is simple but fun and selling pelts to trappers and starting your own trading business has fun advantages.
When the story finally reaches a head, the conflict between Haytham and Conner is settled far too quickly to feel satisfying and the game ends somewhat abruptly (check out Conners deleted final monologue on YouTube if you can, it would’ve added so much to the story and themes if they had decided to keep it in the game). This is also where I stopped caring about the modern day story as I felt Desmond’s death was handled so badly it killed any motivation I had to keep up with the present day timeline.
Despite all of this, stealth and combat is a lot more fun in this game and there are still plenty of missions worth playing through and the remastered version smooths over some gameplay quirks of the OG release (plus all the DLC), so this game gets a cautious recommendation from me if you’re a fan of the series or the colonial/revolutionary time period.
The twist of Haytham being a Templar is one of the greatest reveals in the series, but the pacing of the story is so awful. You go for 6-7 hours playing as Haytham with pretty boring tailing / stealth missions only for the game to practically restart when you start playing as Conner and many of the games tutorials repeat as the story rebuilds it’s momentum. This leads to imho one of the clumsiest and sluggish first acts in modern gaming.
Once you are set loose upon the open world however, the activities can be so fun. Sailing and naval battles are added here, and while Black Flag would expand upon this mechanic greatly, it’s fully functional and super fun here and some of the games best missions involve it. I felt the process of unlocking fast travel points through the tunnel systems throughout New England was far too arduous a task and disrupted the flow heavily, so I didn’t bother for the most part. Hunting in the country side is simple but fun and selling pelts to trappers and starting your own trading business has fun advantages.
When the story finally reaches a head, the conflict between Haytham and Conner is settled far too quickly to feel satisfying and the game ends somewhat abruptly (check out Conners deleted final monologue on YouTube if you can, it would’ve added so much to the story and themes if they had decided to keep it in the game). This is also where I stopped caring about the modern day story as I felt Desmond’s death was handled so badly it killed any motivation I had to keep up with the present day timeline.
Despite all of this, stealth and combat is a lot more fun in this game and there are still plenty of missions worth playing through and the remastered version smooths over some gameplay quirks of the OG release (plus all the DLC), so this game gets a cautious recommendation from me if you’re a fan of the series or the colonial/revolutionary time period.