This is the last Assassin's Creed game I played on release before stopping the series. I never finished, and it has been 9 years since I played the original, so I can't comment on how different the remastered version was. Right off the bat though coming from playing the games before this in the series, the models for the present-day characters seemed ... off. I can't place it they just didn't look like their typical characters to me like Ubisoft did a slight redesign on everyone including Desmond. The early game was not very engaging to me and I didn't care for Haytham at all. However, once it switched to Ratonhnhaké:ton I did enjoy things more. Major pro to this game is being able to pet the animals, essential feature. I enjoyed playing through Ratonhnhaké:ton's life from childhood and it was a nice way to introduce the character. Hunting was fun and a great way to earn money early game. I also loved how big and exciting a lot of the battles and combat sequences felt. The simplified fast travel and assassin recruit missions were a nice quality of life improvement that saved a lot of time. The land convoy system at the homestead was bugged so badly for me that it was unusable. Most of the side missions weren't as fun to me as the other games however the homestead missions were a stand out for me and I really enjoyed them. Speaking of bugs, there were a lot more that I noticed in this game than in previous iterations. You'd think they would have fixed them in the remastered version but sadly it made the game unenjoyable at points. The captain kidd missions were fun but not as great platforming sections as the tombs in previous games. While the game's graphics looked wonderful, the new lighting in the remaster made some areas near impossible to navigate and should have been accounted for in certain areas that result in playing in complete darkness unable to see anything. The present-day story was pretty interesting getting to travel to different places and really utilize Desmond's skills, along with for the first time making me like Shaun Hastings. The ending though ... not much I can say about that. Along with this Ratonhnhaké:ton didn't really get a satisfying ending nor a story that really focused on him as a protagonist which coming after Ezio wasn't the best move. I appreciate that we at least got an epilogue for him though. I still really enjoyed the gameplay and the story, but it's hard to compete when the Ezio trilogy did so many things better.

In regards to the Tyranny of King Washington DLC, I had a lot of fun with all the different animal powers. The eagle flight ability was so incredibly satisfying to use and movement felt fluid. Again even in the DLC I was getting bugs. Pretty annoying HUD bugs kept plaguing the screen, and the ending cutscene looked like it wasn't rendered in the remastered graphics and was maybe the original but I'm honestly not sure what happened aside from it looking noticeably worse than the rest of the game. I actually did enjoy the story, but wish we had something that wasn't just an alternate universe. Regardless the gameplay was really fun and diverged itself from some of the typical Assassin's Creed formula.

Reviewed on Jan 31, 2024


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