Because my family always owned XBoxes (my brother started with the original XBox when it came out) and I never liked the old Playstation controllers (but love the XBox one), there wasn't any thought I needed to waste on which console to get, when I picked up my first.

Since then, however I've been looking for story games, and a lot of friends have convinced me that I needed to try out a couple of titles that where all Playstation exclusives (The Last of Us, Horizon, God of War, Death Stranding, etc.), so I decided to get one, once the next console gets released - that was the Playstation 5, and when it came out I was still busy playing the Assassin's Creed games, so I decided to get a PS5 when it was on sale... however that never happened, as it was scarce and only got more and more expensive.

But this Easter there was an sale, where I got the new version of the Playstation 5 for ~100€ cheaper, so I had to buy it.

Only having one game (Syndicate) I was delighted to find, that there was already something pre-installed, and I thought that it was just a simple game with not much to offer (similar to those VR games), but turns out, I was totally mistaken.

Astro's Playroom is "mostly" a 3D platformer, where you control this sweet little robot in a "robotic" world, through different "hardware themed" rooms that consists of 4 levels to pass through. Each of these levels features slightly different play styles, sometimes the game turns into a 2D game, sometimes you need to fly through an area, sometimes it becomes a jump and run game. Each of these play styles comes with its own set of controls, utilizing the full potential of the controller; including the integrated mic, the gyroscope, the different triggers (with and without resistance), and even the touch pad.

And I have to say, this controller is actually quite impressive, to the point that it's a shame that most games will probably never utilize 80% of its capabilities (at least all those games that will strive to be cross-platform).

Besides that, the game is really fun, you get to hunt for a lot of cleverly hidden collectables that will keep you engaged, it is full of cute little ideas that are fun to explore, and (last but not least), it is full of references throughout the history of Playstation and gaming. I - being someone that was never really involved with the Playstation - recognized some artifacts and games, and had a lot of fun, identifying and remembering them. I cannot start to imagine how much fun and nostalgia this is for someone who was playing with this platform for decades.

It took me about 4 hours to play through the "main story", and additional 3 hours to find all the gimmicks and gadgets and do all the races once, etc., which again is quite impressive for a game that is completely free to play, and basically a tech demo. And to not get bored, there are 10 races you can do afterwards, where you can try to improve your performance for yourself, or compared to the rest of the world in speed-running some of the passages that you already played in the game (I scored every race around place 200.000; with the top players needing half to a quarter of the time I needed).

Who would have thought, that a free and basically tech-demo game could be so much fun? And who would have thought that a company making money with selling a console (for which they don't even really need any marketing anymore), would put so much love and energy in something that is basically a tech-demo? Heck even the credits where fun! How could I give anything else than 5 Stars? I've paid money for worse!

I played and reviewed this game already once - though I now came to learn, that I chose the wrong "version" of the game (the XBox actually came with the Deluxe Edition that has some additional content, though I am not quite sure what that is). However, it has been more than 3 years now, since I played this, and for the review I couldn't even think about all the details anymore, but remembered having fun with it. Plus, I just came to know that there was a sequel released - so I planed to play this one once more, and so I did. Last time I also didn't go for the 100% and did miss a couple of things (it was my first ever XBox, Star Wars and Story game in a very long time).

This game is a great Star Wars story and one of the better Star Wars games out there. I tried a lot of them, and never was happy - except for the old Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy; but those are two decades old now. Fallen Order is in many ways similar to the old Jedi Outcast story - instead of Kyle Katarn, we play Cal Kastis (is this name similarity really coincidental?), a former Jedi in hiding that has to re-learn all the tools and traded of becoming a Jedi - which, also for him, happens not by choosing, but by chance. Different to Kyle Katarn, we don't get to play the first half with normal weapons, but start with out light saber right away and never even are allowed to pick up another weapon. But, as with Kyle, Cal has a ship and a crew and gets sent on a mission; a mission that could potentially change the galaxy forever...

All in all, this is a great game; its fun to play, the settings are great, it feels like a perfect Star Wars game - Cal travels the Galaxy on the trails of an old Jedi, tracing his steps to learn a secret that could potentially change the balance of the Galaxy again, after the Emperor took over control just a couple of years ago and formed the Galactic Empire into an Empire. While we do so, we have to solve a lot of puzzles, fight some ancient and natural enemies and are hunted by the Empires typical troops, as well as some highly trained Jedi hunting Inquisitors. On the way we learn some new tricks, and make some new (unusual) friends and see both beautiful and cute creatures, as well as terrible and frightening ones.

Game play and story wise this game is mostly great fun; but it does some things rather unusually and here's where my critizism starts:

1.) This game will force us to visit places we've already seen over and over again; this is part of the concept. Sometimes the story takes us back, other times we just learned some new tricks that will allow us to access places that where previously inaccessible. This is both a unusual and in some ways great idea, as well as a horrible idea. On the plus side, it lets us explore the galaxy - and the designers put some thought into a lot of places, that are actually fun to explore - sometimes there are even story elements that link to things you can explore in the world; also some of the secrets are hidden really well - and if you find them you'd be both amazed by the clever hiding place, but also a bit angry at the designers for hiding it so well :D My biggest criticism is that after you visit a planet a second or third time and have to visit it again, because now you finally have that new ability - it gets a bit stale and boring. Especially because there are now fast travel points, or anything. You always land at the same spot, you always need to walk the entire way, and of course you'd probably forgotten half the places where you actually knew something was hidden, but couldn't reach it. So what starts out as a great idea soon turns into an annoying one, especially if you try to reach those sweet 100%.

2.) This somehow adds to the 1. point and only gets really annoying once you try to reach those 100% and try to walk through the same parts the second or third time: The map feature is a mess. I appreciate what they try to do and had to accomplish - the world desing is beautiful and clever and you really appreciate all those details that you could make out from afar turn into something you'll get to traverse - on different levels. For the first time - you always know where you've been and are only interested in where to go next which is clearly mapped on your map. But that second time, when everything is explored and there are no more markers, this map actually seems more like a handicap than an aid: Trying to figure out how to get form A to B on Dathomir or Zaffo is a real pain, and the map does more bad than actually help. Which is a shame.

3.) Power levels. This is probably my biggest issue with the game. The Game offers:
- Story Mode
- Jedi Knight
- Jedi Master
- Jedi Grandmaster

According to the games own description, "Jedi Knight" is for beginners, "Jedi Master" for people who have played similar games, and "Grandmaster" for people who want a challenge. So I thought to myself: "Jedi Master it is" - I had played this game once, I've also played myself through Batman and the entire Assassins Creed series, which are all pretty similar, and just finished Hellblade so I should be fine, right?

Well... nope. Especially in the beginning with Cal not having much power and life, Jedi Master is rather hard; manageable for most parts, yes, but there are parts that seem impossible, and for the end bosses I did not make any damage at all. So after constantly switching between "Jedi Master" and "Jedi Knight", I ended up sticking to "Jedi Knight" - which was okey for 80% of the time - but there are those few instances (Kashyyyk, where all of the sudden you face 4 giant spiders and two horned slugs, that all beat you up at once), where even Knight is so challenging that it'll ask all of you - which is fine except that your life resource is really limited and stim packs cannot be recharged etc., so you'll probably fail if you use them up all at once just after leaving that meditation point 100m ago.

Story Mode on the other hand is really boring for 80% of the time. So yeah, I feel that the balancing is way off, and this is actually adding to a lot of frustration. Story Mode is too easy and not fun, Knight works for most parts, Master is unplayable, and I didn't dare trying Grandmaster. Reading up on this I heard a lot of people comparing it to Dark Souls but more frustrating. So yeah, this is a shame.

And last but not least, it's all in all a really short game, which also offers not much after finishing it. But all in all it is still a really great game, even though I had a lot of points I criticized I'd say its a fun game worth playing, especially now, with prices being at an all time low and with Jedi Survivor as its successor that will continue the story started here.

After needing 35h the first time around (and being new to the X-Box), this time it took me 42h, but not only did I finish the story once more, but this time also got every chest, every secret, every entry on the database, and after seeing that I only missed 4 XBox trophies, I even went as far and did all of them as well. Plus I found a bonus area I totally missed the first time around (Venator Wreckage) and after maxing out every item on the skill tree I stumbled upon some additional fighting challenges I also didn't know existed before - and did all of them as well, scoring 1-2 Stars for each of them as well. So yeah, something you'd finish in 1-2 weeks time (max).

Wow. What an incredible game!

Its an independant AAA game, set in the viking age, with a girl traveling to Hel to ask back the soul of her loved one. This game is just incredible and absolutely insane in what it tries you to experience, and I feel the less you know, the better. It's a really short game, but with great graphics and an incredible fighting system - gruesome and scary.

Just give it a try. I downloaded it when it was for free on Gamepass (it still might be), but I'd even pay for this one (and considering getting a physical copy for my collection).

Incredible game.

There I was - finally finnished with all the Assassin's Creed games. Celebrating, thinking about making a list, ranking them somehow, maybe write a review or some key points - hm... could there be a service like trakt.tv, or letterboxd.com or goodreads.com, but for video games? Oh cool there is. Now where is this list of AC games...

...

Wait a minute. What's Freedom Cry? Why didn't I play this? Shit. I must have mixed it up with Liberation. Shoot. Okey, let's get into this - otherwise my completionist brain will bug me for the rest of my life.

That's how I came to play Freedom Cry, a DLC for Black Flag 2 years after finishing Black Flag, and right after playing Mirage. As such, I feel incapable to rate it fairly; as I am missing the context of what Black Flag was and how Freedom Cry felt in that context, and coming form that game.

What I can tell you though is how I felt playing this: The story features Adéwalé, former quartermaster of Edward Kenway, now on a mission for Templars on the Caribbean sea. One such Templar he suspects in one of the ships they are hunting. They manage to enter the ship kill everyone and retrieve a strange package that is heading for Port-au-Prince. However, more Templar ships arrive and sink the ship and Adéwalé has to build up a new crew, get a new ship and find out what's happening in Port-au-Prince.

Storywise this DLC makes hardly any sense - until the end the secret of what's in the package is not revealed; there are some theories on the internet, but the game won't tell me. What the game will tell me though is who this is meant for. We meet this person, but decide not to give here the package, even though we are sure she is probably no Templar. Instead we do some tasks for her, so that we can trust her(?) for which she expect us to hand over the package once we're done with the task(???) - but instead we do them, meet up with here, give her another: "Nope" and then we do a new task???????? Wait - what's happening here - what am I missing?

The other tasks all feel weird, too. On the one hand we always talk about leaving as soon as we can to do Assassin's work. On the other hand we start liberating slaves; but only if we are not asked to - if asked, we say that we cannot do any more and need to leave as soon as possible...

It's all weird, the dialogues and motivations of the people didn't make any sense at all, so let's rather talk about gameplay and mechanics:

I was feeling a familiarity and had good vibes as soon as I heard the loading screen and menu musics for Black Flag - then you get thrown into a naval mission and it's instantly fun and works as if you never left the game. Wow. I actually missed this. Coming on land - not so much. The parkour and climbing was horrible, fighting was too, but once I had the controls back for kills and counter-kills this became much easier. The different plantations where a "fun" addition, that made sense and was feeling good to play. Also liberating slave ships had some new aspects to naval fights to it. There was also hunting and whaling, but they didn't make any sense at all, as they where not needed for anything; and there was one underwater diving-mission which was fun to do as well. Missions had restrains that would give you the 100% and those where easy to meet. The town felt lively though also unconfortable with all the slave punishment, slave huntings and slave auctioning, but terrifyingly accurate for that time period where for every free man there where 3-4 times the number of slaves hold or marketed in Port-au-Prince.

And basically that's it - we sink a couple of ships, we upgrade our ship, we free a couple of slaves and do a couple of meaningless pick and place and tailing missions only to then kill the Gouvaneur. Storywise this is forgettable, but setting-wise it still felt somewhat important and a gruesome reminder of what was done to people at that time. So even if I felt able to rate it - this last point would heavily weigh on the plus side on a game that otherwise had only mediocre to minus points.

As a DLC directly played after Black Flag this might be nice for some additional playing hours (though Black Flag was long enough to be satisfying on its own); as a stand alone this would be a pure disappointment. Please don't pay any money for this!

And that's it: now I truely did it. All ACs played in crhological order! Now which series should I tackle next?

I had stopped to believe myself that I would ever reach this goal; after starting this journey - mentally - in 2017, and finally beginning the quest in 2020, it took me four years to get through every Assasin's Creed mainline title, and finally catch up with the series. So here we are. The - for now - final and newest addition to the Assassin's Creed line-up, the last to be made in the periode two of Assassin's Creed (as the next titles will again follow a "new design philosophy" that will apparently combine the best elements of the previous two periodes and combine them with their new idea of an interconnected hub). Also a Game that wasn't conceived of one, but rather as yet another DLC for Valhalla.

Thank God it got blown up into its own title. Mirage is the prequel to Valhalla; we get to play Basim, who is an NPC in Valhalla that turns out to be quite an important character for the story and the finale. Knowing what his role is, we already have a pretty good idea about things that we learn about him in Mirage: his weird dreams and visions of a monstrous Jinni that haunts him can only mean one thing...

But he is still young and doesn't understand it. Basim is a young street thieve that lives in a kind of thieving community run by a merchant who deals in stolen goods and sells his thieving services to people who need it - like those Hidden Ones that often want strange things stolen. With his best friend - Nehal - he gets on such a mission, but this time it gets terribly wrong, something strange happens, people die and he and Nehal need to flee the city. The thieving community gets killed and Basim looses Nehal in the trouble and gets taken in by the Hidden Ones, after they see what has happened and what he has brought them. Now Basim learns to become an Assassin - the training is hard, but he finally becomes an Initiate, and gets send back to his home town of Baghdad - in the time of the Islamic Golden Age under the Abbasid Caliphate - to find out things about a conspiracy that is taking place in Baghdad.

Mirage is in its entirety a homage to the entire series. The setting reminds us of Assassins Creed, with all the Bureaus, the gathering of information, the impossibility to take on multiple guards which forces us to be sneaky. It's also an homage to the Assassins Creed II series with the parkour, the notoriety level the wanted posters and announcers we can use to change this. It's further on an homage to Assassins Creed Unity - there is not one way to get in, not one way to assassinate - find opportunities and possibilities to achieve your goals. And it's an homage to Revelations; build your own tools, and change them to your liking. All combined in a periode two game play and setting, with an updated beautiful artwork and hit box fighting system, but with a much reduced availability of weapons as was the case in periode one games (basically you just have a sword and dagger but will collect about 6 different ones with different abilities to complement your play style). And a direct link to Valhalla. But also to all Assassin's Creeds that used ability trees (starting from Unity).

The map itself is dense and the game rather short, but coming from three massive titles that where real time sinks I was actually pretty happy about having a small game. Its less "ungided" even though you have choices of where you want to go and proceed next, and it is a vibrant and living world, with a lot of side activities and fun to play.

I was already intrigued by the Basim character when he first appeared in Valhalla, and after finally knowing what and who he is, and what special ability he has that will probably make him important for further games to come (at least form a modern-day perspective - if modern day will still exist in period three games?), he is defiantly a character worth to have a backside story to. And even though you might think you know where this is leading to, you actually don't and in the end get really surprised by some twists and turns the story will still take.

What can I say - I had a lot of fun with this game, both gameplay wise, as well as story wise - it is the best of Assassin's Creed accumulated in one game that has a beautiful map, an interesting time period I knew nothing about but learned a lot through playing this game; and I just loved that after having played 300 hours of Odyssey and Valhalla, that Mirage just asked me to invest 60 hours for a 100% complete game experience. I totally loved this one and hope that this is the game Ubisoft will take as a blueprint when designing the next titles.

Valhalla follows Odyssey as the third period two development games, and the twelfth major Assassin's Creed installment of them all. After two stories that were set in BC times, we're finally traveling forward in time and getting back to a period that isn't far away from the foundation of the historical Ḥashshāshīyīn and the Knight Templar orders.

But first we get into the modern-day story. It's 2020 and Earth seems to see its next catastrophe. Desmonds meddling with the Isu temple to avoid the Earth being destroyed by sun flairs has actually continuously been strengthening the magnetic field of the earth, which has now become so powerful that it negatively affects the planet. Layla therefore travels with Shaun and Rebecca to New England where they find a Viking body of Eivor (who by the way again is canonically female [the surname is 'Varinsdottir' = daughter of Varin - regardless of the gender you pick; male should have been Varinsson] -- once again, shame on you, Ubisoft), and this will lead Layla to 873 AD, to the Viking expansion to Anglo-Saxon England.

Eivors brother Sigurd returns form a long excursion and returns with the foreigners Basim and Hytham, both members of a strange order. During the game, Eivor learns more about this order of the Hidden Ones and their enemies, the Order of the Ancients, even gets to learn some tricks from Hytham, and also learns that a high ranking member of the Ancient Ones is a rivaling clan member and someone Eivor was already looking forward to kill. After this is done, Sigurd and Eivor have to flee their home and join the Invasion of England. However in this process Sigurd gets captured by the Ancient Ones, and now Eivor does not only have to secure their clan and make sure to have alliances with all the other surrounding territories, but also try to find Sigurd and defeat the Ancient Ones who pose a great thread. Hytham is a great help in providing intel, while Basim joins on field missions and teaches Eivor a bit in the ways of the Assassins.

While this game actually ties the series back to the Assassins Creed, Eivor is far from being an Assassin, and as with Kassandra, it not only feels weird to play her stealthy; it also doesn't make much sense, as Eivor is best when she is allowed to wield her two axes or bash in heads with her shield, use her rage and stomp enemies to the ground. The fighting has become much more gruesome and gritty, with the ability to now hack away pieces of the enemies, like their arms, legs and heads. Other than that it does not deviate far enough from Odyssey that I was rather disappointed to have yet another hack and slay Assassin's Creed - as this is not what I initially signed up for and as this is - at least for me - not where the strength and fun of the series lies (there are a lot of better hack and slay type of games - I just now finished Hellblade which was just incredible in its fighting sequences and which Valhalla does not compare to at all, regarding complexity and therefore challenge and fun of the pure fighting scenes). So I was a bit turned down by this. Even more so as in the beginning you aren't able to do much more. You only get the hidden blade later, and all the abilities have to be gained by progressing in the story (and not via skill tree). The fighting is a bit harder though, not as crazy as Odyssey - but in the end game we are rather overpowered once more.

On the plus side, the loot is reduced massively, making the few weapons you own really valuable and upgrading it a necessity - which also doesn't come by easy, so you really tend to think about what weapons you want to play and how you want to upgrade them. New weapons can only be found in special weapon chests, and the same goes for abilities that are now learned via books of knowledge that you need to find in the world - and I really liked this approach. There are still collectible set items so you also pay attention to that, and every gear is aligned to an animal that basically represents one of the three ways of playing (stealth, ranged, or melee). The skill tree uses the same codes, but boy o boy was that "tree" convoluted. In the beginning I read what each option given does, and tried to make sensible choices, but soon I got fed up, because it was so unstructured and large - in the end I just randomly picked according to the code that fitted my gear. This was no fun at all.

The main story was also quite strange. While or main quest should have been to save Sigurd and eradicate that Order of Ancients, we rather build up our town, visit the neighboring kingdoms and try to forge an alliance by helping them out with their problem - all the while Sigurd was getting tortured and brought nearer to death with every passing day. The land itself is vast and for the most parts empty; it's also not as varying as the other two games where; but given its an accurate modeling of England at that time there isn't much you could have done to change that.

There are certain world events though, that where distributed over the map - small funny encounters you'd have with people who sometimes had serious and even heartbreaking problems, other times where outright silly, and sometimes even aggressive outcomes towards you as the player. These where amongst the most fun and memorable encounters in the game, and it was a shame that there weren't more of these. This would have made exploring the world more fun. As it is, it feels really stunning and on the one hand you love to go explore, but on the other hand you know that there is nothing of interest to come. In that regard I would have loved Valhalla to be more like RDR2, where it would have been even fun to see certain buildings or scenes that tell a story by just being there, where you have to guess what might have happened. I felt that there where one or two of those, but for the most time nothing to see, other than emptiness.

There is however a thing that bothered me even more - and it is a continuation of the problem I already encountered with Odyssey and that I coined the "alignment issue". To progress in the story, we need to make alliances with neighboring kingdoms. We do so by visiting them, doing tasks for them, and finally gaining their trust; however we also need to proceed by gaining materials which we can only do by brutally raiding monasteries. So we do a main quest and ensure the loyalty of a region, which is christian, by actually working with the priest there - and then we raid his monastery? There where even quite enjoyable side quest where you helped a priest, where you had philosophical discussions and actually had a bonding moment - only to then having to raid his monastery. This felt so wrong and so out of line. Raiding monasteries was also on of the dullest and most repetitive tasks in the game - but you had to, to progress in the main story. I really didn't enjoy this at all. It also felt quite stupid, as there was only one way to do it: With your raiding party. So no sneaking around and eliminating the enemies. It had to be done in a large scale fight - and the reason behind this: You needed another person to open the chests - it was impossible to do on your own. Now your raiding party weren't the best fighters and sometimes also not the most helpful. I had situations where I waited for minutes at a chest until finally someone of my crew came along to help me. This further reduced my fun in doing this.

Then there where these request by your towns people. E.g. the shop asked you to bring rather stupid items and carry them over half the map to the person asking for them. Or the Fisherman asking for a multitude of different fish that not only where hard to find and catch - but also came in three different sizes. I spent a lot of time trying to get together all the fish to reach the 100%, only to later find out that due to bugs some fish didn't even exist -.- Wow. Even after multiple upgrades and introducing all the different patches and DLCs did they neither add the fish to make this possible, nor did they just remove those requests. Bummer.

Another type of challenges, the mastery challengers where also partly unbeatable - I did one of them a multitude of times - there where just to few enemies, or my Eivor already too strong. The internet suggested cheating by setting the difficulty to lowest or highest settings for certain of these challenges, but even with those there was one challenge I wasn't able to master, because with the given number of enemies it was impossible to kill the required number by fire and the additional required number by falling - there just weren't enough enemies. This led to added frustrations - and after already spending so much time in the game, I just wanted to get over with it already. First Assassins Creed where I didn't even try to attempt the 100% anymore. But well - as there isn't any account to 100% anyways and the game says you managed 100% by simply finishing the main game.... guess they know themselves that this game got so vast that it would be impossible to ask this from the players. To gain some legendary weapons, there where also River-Raids - these where a different kind of monastery raids, only that this time you'd raid an entire river, so monasteries, villages, military buildings, etc. These rivers where located in England, Ireland, Dublin and even Germany and France; and they where a bit more fun, as you'd have a little bit more tactics to consider; however they soon also became quite monotone - and unfortunately to get all the gear and abilities hidden in those rivers you'd had to do a couple of them multiple times; this was the most grindiest and most unfun part; but actually manageable. Unfortunately they spoiled some events that where only released later in the DLCs, which was another weird aspect of these.

I did most of the other tasks, however, and have to say, the rewards weren't as satisfying as they used to be - a lot of things (like finishing all hunting requests, upgrading all gear, etc.) wouldn't even make you gain a an achievement.

So in the end, the world was great and the overall story decent - but I never felt totally emerged into the world, and this was partly due to its vast emptiness, partly due to frustrations, but also because it missed the vibrant live you experienced in the other games. I feel like I didn't even experience much of what it means to have been a viking - other than the things I already knew. There was one mission up in the north that finally gave me a little bit of that feeling, but other than that? Was it really all just raiding and partying? Or was there more to viking life, to their culture, their economy, how they build stuff, etc.?

So the most fun I actually had was playing in Eivors drug induced visions, where Eivor takes on the role of Odin and we get to experience an interpretation of the Viking believes and mythology, as we play the events that lead to Ragnarök. This was in parts more fun than the main game, and yet it felt weird as these visions where not all possible to do at once, but also so long that it fragmented the stories so much that I wasn't sure what I was doing last in either worlds.

I also had problems following the Isu story. Now they are apparently all Viking Gods? And the catastrophe that wiped out the Isu now was used as an opportunity to mix their DNA with humans, so that they could resurface as anyone of us in any time and just to keep up their personal fights in now human form? And somehow the Order of Ancients knows of this and tries to bring it out from humans that have the right DNA? I feel like my head is starting to hurt regarding the strange turn this all took.

There were also a couple of DLCs - and what was really annoying: While the Open World actually worked quite well as every part is independent and this time there really is no order in which you can do them - there is actually an order in which you should do the DLCs as they'd otherwise spoil the end. BUT they are indistinguishable from the non-DLC content and for these you don't have any order clues - so once more, grep out your phone while playing and surf the net for guides that tell you how to do all of them in the proper order. Oh boy... You didn't had these problems, of course, when you bought and played the game right from the beginning - but to my knowledge you'd then be fighting with much more bugs... so which is the better way to go?

As for the DLCs - Valhalla gives as a lot - and I mean, really a lot! Most they've ever done

- Wrath of the Druids: Eivor is asked by some Viking relative that settled in Ireland to visit Dublin where she gets to meet some Irish druids and one of the most intriguing characters of the entire series: Ciara ingen Medba. There where some new mechanics, and haunting enemies (which where unfortunately spoiled int he River raids already), and a really captivating story, which made this so much fun to play; not the least also because it got an incredible Irish soundtrack with some incredible singing passages, that just made the events in the game so much more epic.

- The Siege of Paris: After returning from Ireland, another related Viking that was raiding France. This one was probably the worst of the new DLCs - it feels like the biggest one-to-one copies form the original game, and the few new mechanics are rather monotonous and feel like chores quite soon (Resistance side missions) or are just plain annoying (plague rats). Most of it is rather grindy; only Charles the Fat and Count Odo as unsympathetic villains stand out. But all in all this is mostly no fun and really forgettable.

- A Fated Encounter: The name already gives it away, and if you look it up, you'll see which two people will meet: Eivor and Kassandra. It's a typical Crossover: two heroes meet, fight it out, then realize that they would be better working together as they both have the same goal and than destroy the evil. It's not much, game play wise, but I thought it was really fun seeing those two meet and especially the scene after they finish their mission is really great and fun to watch - and gives the character of Kassandra so much more weight in understanding what her duty is and what it will cost here to fulfill it. I really hope to see her in other games as well! Its nothing big or noteworthy other than that it is a nice reminiscence to Odyssey.

- Dawn of Ragnarök: This DLC further extends on the Story that started with Eivors Visions. After seeing the imprisonment of Loki's son Fenrir, getting the Mead from Jotunheim that will resurrect the Aesir after Ragnarök, we get to experience the Story of Odin and Friggs son Baldr being kidnapped by Surtr, and how Odin is defeated in an attempt to free Baldr from Surtr, a broken Odin is left in Svartalfheim, where he aids the dwarfs defend themselves against the invasion of the Muspels. Dawn of Ragnarök is basically rather similar to the main game, with the exception of a new power: The Hugr-Rip - an artifact build by the dwarfs that allows you to steal the hugr of certain enemies you defeated, giving you the look and power of said enemy. Want to walk through fire or lava? Use the hugr of a Muspel. Want to freeze your enemies? Use the hugr of a Jotun. Want to teleport? To turn yourself into a raven? To raise the death? Find the enemy that can do it, kill him and rip out his hugr. The bracelet can store two of these hugrs at a time that you can use as long and often as you have power, which is another thing that can be collected by killing enemies or finding other natural power sources. This gives the story a new spin on the game play that is fun enough to keep you engaged with the story; the world however feels a bit too large with two many side quests, things to collect and events. And there is even an Arena that has some pretty hard and challenging fights which you need to win to gain some legendary set items; however this gets a bit repetitive soon, as there are just too many of these round you need to go to get the entire set. It's not a must-play, but can be fun, if you get this included in your edition.

- The Forgotten Saga: I guess this one you'll either love or hate: The story is about Odin trying to reach Hel and demand from here to release Baldr who died in Ragnarök; to reach Hel, he has to go through Niflheim, which consists of Kaldstad, Døkkerland and Nidheim to finally reach Helheim. The clue: Odin can take nothing with him, but when he starts a run, he'll get assigned a random weapon and a random ability. We then fight ourselves thorugh the realms, killing enemies that will allow us to open chests containing either a new ability, a new weapon, health or memories. Should we - on the way die - we get respawned right at the beginning of the first realm. We keep nothing of the items we earned from our run, and start with zero - except for our memories, which we can use to either take one-time charms with us, or level the ability tree. And it is regradless where you die - you'll always start at the beginning. At the end of every part of Niflheim there is a big endboss, that becomes more dangerous - and every region has its own set of rules, enemies and ways to move around - but also people who might help us. The more often we pass through a region the more chances we get to do some side quests that will ease our passing or give us some additional bonuses. And I needed something between 10 and 20 runs and with every restart, there was another animation, other reactions and different dialogues to be had, so this actually really doesn't get boring. And once you reach the end, this is soooo satisfying. I really loved this Groundhog Day approach; for me it was really something. But I guess there will be poeple who do this once or twice and loose interest after that or get so frustrated that they stop playing. It's a different kind of grind.

- The Last Chapter: This felt more like a cut sequence then a game; we finally get to know why Eivors body is not burried somehere in England but actually in New England in the US. And then we get a link to the present day -- and finally this story is brought to an end.


In some ways Valhalla is really great, and me being a great fan of vikings (I even got back into Magic the Gathering after 20 year, just because of their viking-inspired Kaldheim set) I really wanted to like this game. And there are fantastic aspects of it. But on a gameplaying level there where too many things that bothered me; I think its best described as quantity over quality. And this had me from having fun and being excited about this game to finally just wanting to be done with it, and even stop caring about the 100% completion rate. That's why I cannot give it more than 3/5.

After the thrilling success of Assassin's Creed Origins that started a new period of development for Ubisoft that means different styles of games for us, Assassin's Creed Odyssey is more of everything we already got in Origins: More missions, more map, more story, more gameplay, more time difference to any other Assassin's Creed, more weapons, more enemies, more choices.

More good? We'll see...

The first new difference to any previous Assassin's Creed game (including Origins) is that we can choose our gender at the beginning of the game - we either play as Alexios or as Kassandra. The sad thing about this: The developers initially wanted to have this game be played as Kassandra, which would make Assassin's Creed the first (well not entirely - but the first main) title in the series that lets you play a female Assassin. However, some forces in Ubisoft deemd this a bad idea and were scared this could harm sales. So instead, they decided to take the intended villain - Alexios - and turn him into the main character and make Kassandra the villain. This was revealed only much later - the marketing material featured Alexios prominently, but when comparing both character dialogues and game-play situations, Kassandra feels more organic and better to play than Alexios. There is also the possibility to let the game choose for you, and while it suggest that this is done by chance, this "mechanic" will always choose Kassandra. So, please - play this as Kassandra. And shame on you, Ubisoft, to cower away from a female lead role. Aveline was great, Evie was great - I am a male player and loved them both and had great fun with them as characters, and I don't know any gamer that would base his decision to play a game solely on the gender of the character you play. Really, shame on you.

Choosing Kassandra as our main protagonist, we first get to experience the modern-day story where Layla - our former Abstergo researcher who now turned Assassin and her team consisting of Victoria Bibeau, Kiyoshi Takakura and Alannah Ryan try to find another Isu artifact: "The Staff of Hermes Trismegistus". This search leads her to Kassandra, a anciant Spartan mercenary and descendant of Leonidas, who in the Peloponnesian War finds out that both here parents as well as her persumed dead brother still live. Her brother, however, is a pivotal part of a strange cult, named Cult of Kosmos, and an member of that cult hires Kassandra to kill her own father (who left her to die as a child). Wanting only to drink and offer her fighting services to the highest bidder in the Peloponnesian war, Kassandra soon learns that the Cult was conspiring against her family for a while and soon finds herself trying to regain her family and destroy the Cult.

Kassandra is no Assassin (how could she be? We learned that Bayek founded the Hidden Ones which are the prototype Assassins in 40 BC and is also the inventor of the hidden blade, and now we are 400 years in the past - Origin of the Origin?) and here goals are not aligned in any way with those of the Assassins. Instead she's only out for her personal gain and in that sense has more in common with Edward Kenway. And that's not the only thing she shares with him (more on that later). She is therefore a hard to get and hard to understand character; which makes this game even more difficult to play, as Odyssey is also more role playing. You learn this right on the get go, and probably the hard way. One of the missions make you choose: Kill a sick girl who is hunted by strange and shady guys? Or let her live and kill the attackers? You'll probably do the same that I did - and then learn that your decisions have consequences, when a plague strikes your island and spreads even beyond it into the Greek world. Had you killed the girl, you would have spared the people of the Plague. Wow. That's heavy. And there are loads of these decisions to make. You finally find your target and it turns out that it's your father - you have a hard talk with him, you are angry and you can decide: Kill him? Or spare his life but make him run away? This will actually influence the ending you get - there are 9 different ones, and only one of those is a true happy ending. And there are a multitude of decisions that will influence the ending. Wow. I was lucky to get all the decisions right it seems - my girlfriend had a really unsatisfying ending. After finding this out, I had two choices: Either try to guess what the game will probably redeem as good actions, or go into full role-playing mode and decide the way I thought a person like Kassandra would. So who is Kassandra and how should we play her? Well, it's complicated. On the one hand she's the tough warrior that kills without mercy. On the other hand, though - she has a little girl, Phoebe, who she looks out for. She is a proud Spartan of noble decent. Then again she sells her sword for the highest bidder - be it Spartan or Athenian. She speaks of honor, but lives with thieves and swindlers. I found her really weird and really needed to find my way into her. But once I had a feeling for this weird character (that was nothing that I expected), she was fun to play and the further you progress in the story the more you get invested with her story. And I probably played her reasonable enough that I got to enjoy the best of the endings. Pew :D

Being set in Greece, there is probably equal amount of Land as there is Water, so we need (and have) a ship. That's the other similarity to Kenway - we commander a ship; but its a Greek trireme. And unfortunately naval fighting was dumbed down from Black Flag to the extend that it didn't really feel enjoyable to get into long battles. Also there wasn't really much to explore on the water, so the huge water masses where more of an annoyance, that you needed to cross in order to get to the next area; and as soon as you reach it: find a synchronization spot to fast travel... well. Remember how they where placed evenly in former games, so you could easily fast travel around the map. Here they aren't. There might be a couple of synchronization spots close by, and then none where you would have wanted one to not having to do sea travel.... pew. This does not seem thought through at all. I mean, why do I need these Sync points if not to reveal the map and fast travel? And map revealing isn't done by sync points anymore, so it's just fast travel. Then how does one island have four of them so close by that you actually stumble upon them, and another island does not get any, so you always need to go there by boat if you need to?

The map is also full of items - so many that it could rival some of the newer Diablo titles; most of your loot will be junk and unusable, and in the End you're be trying to collect set items anyways, so what started as a seemingly good idea in Origins got totally convoluted and no fun at all in Odyssey - you get the Set items by eliminating certain end boss enemies, so looting anything else soon feels like a waste of time - you'll do it anyways to strip them for parts and materials that you can use to upgrade the items you really need. There is also a huge engraving system to further personalize your items and you can even transfer certain effects from one weapon to another - but these effects are limited and repetitive, so in the end, you'll end up choosing the one set that meets you needs the best an engrave it with something that further compliments your play style. I actually had more fun with the period one games, where new weapons where sparse but once you found a new weapon it was most definitely something you would be happy about; here I hauled in massive amounts of weapons on each run only to have them destroyed for their resources (this probably took some hours of the entire time I invested in this game). I was also disappointed by one of my favorite new mechanic in Origins: The Bow and Arrows. They are nearly identical to the ones in Origins, only that this time around, Kassandra could basically craft them whenever she wanted - giving you possibly endless Arrows to begin with (of course you needed the crafting materials for it, but those where so cheap that you basically never ran out); this meant that every X shots you'd go into the menu, craft new arrows, and continue. This also meant, that working with the predator bow seemed overpowered, but therefore added the annoyance to pause your game every time you ran out of arrows. I opted to not use the Bow at all, because of this, and because it also wouldn't allow to explore what Kassandra brings to the table.

What she does bring to the table is a Spartan fighting style that is of course not sneaky and also not based on range attacks but mostly on brute force. She can wield two weapons, give out different screams, dash forward towards an enemy, jump high into the air to crush down on them, or simply kick them with the infamous "spartan kick". Playing here as a meele attacker feels the most intone both with her look and feel as well as the setting and the other warriors around here - making this the Assassin's Creed that is not only farthest away from the Assassins in time period but also in play style. For the first couple of upgrades these abilities look grate thoug. Later however, they become quite overpowered and look unrealistic. This can only be explained by accepting that Kassandra is possibly a demigod.

But given that Kassandra is now Assassin, it feels okey, even enjoyable as it is a deviation of the standard formula - something different to the ever so sneaky approach and a fresh perspective in the overall world of Assassin's Creed. It is still tied in to the world in a couple of ways; of course Alexios and Kassandra are - as their predecessor Leonidas - people with precursor DNA in them, that give them special abilities. And the ominous masked Cult of Kosmos is actually a branch or predecessor of the Cult of the Ancients. But Kassandra has a also a very special role - similar to the Sages that got introduced in the second half of the periode one games. And she is directly linked to Layla and also to Aya. So this really is a prequel in the sense a prequel should be: Something totally different, and not the same old story with other people.

My two main issues with the game are however the following:
First, her alignment. I get that she's a sell-sword that is just interested in making a fast buck. But it still feels weird that we can - with the blink of an eye switch our loyalties. We could be doing a spartan main mission and be "spartan aligned" but still weaken the Spartans and fight on the Athenian side of a battle, which has no effect what so ever on the mission. We could even destabilize a region under spartan control and still fight for the Spartans in the end. All the dialogues, all this talk about family, about honor, about being a pride descendant of Leonidas feels absurd when you can play like this and sometimes even have to. And why would an Athenian army even allow a Spartan aligned person in their ranks? Why would the Spartans open-armedly take her back once she betrayed them and helped the Athenians? This just felt so weird for me. There is also a whole (stupid and repetitive) series of kill-and-fetch series you do for a Spartan military leader; and then get the same missions mirrored for the Athenians. Wouldn't a real game that gives you choices but then has consequences make you choose one of them and make the other become your enemy? It was just weird and annoyed me the whole time. I tried to avoid battles all together as good as I could - but for leveling and fighting other Mercenaries they where good opportunities - and they also allowed you to reach some achievements (and, as stated, sometimes even where part of the missions).

And second issue was the unguided open world approach. Different to Origins this time you didn't get any pointers of what would make most sense next at all. You literally get thrown into the ocean and from there can try to go whatever way you want. However, there are Quests that depend on each other and that need to be done in a certain order, or that open and/or close quests once you do them in a different order. There are also quests on islands and territories that just feel wrong if you do them before doing something else first. And last but not least, you plan to explore an island, do all the quest there and then suddenly stumble upon something impossible to do at your current level, so you leave and need to return later, making the whole experience more fragmented and less fun to play and explore. And it might have been that this was just me - but I actually started googling this mid-game, and realized that a lot of people had this problem, and there where even more people who spent hours to compile guides that would give you the perfect order to visit the areas and do the quests, so that you have the best game and story experience. Wow. I actually sat down, reading a guide while playing the game, just to know where to go next, so that I would have a nice experience exploring the world and doing the quests in an order that made sense for the story line, because the game "suggests" that I am free to do whatever I want but actually punishes me when I do it the wrong way. This, to me, felt really bad. For someone who likes to play the entire game and reach 100%, the approach that Odyssey gave me felt really unpleasant. Origins did a much better job by giving a sense of direction and then just letting you move on and on; later games like Valhalla managed to have actual freedom of movement on the map, and Mirage gave hints on a best way to proceede while still allowing to move around freely and making the order not care storywise. Odyssey is the only game that - at least for me - did not work at all as a unguided open world game.

But even besides all these criticism I cannot deny the positives; there is a beautiful world out there to explore. The map is incredible and the world looks stunning and beautiful and as with Origins you get emerged into everyday Greece of that time and feel like being there and taking it all in, due to buildings, social events, etc. You feel the wonders, the greatness, the presence of the Gods that Greeks must have felt in that time. And the story of Kassandra is interesting, dramatic and touching - and especially the ending in the DLCs give her so much more depth and emotions. It is a beautiful story. This is combined with a beautiful soundtrack and - to me - one of the best songs in the series: "Odyssey" that unfortunately got totally underused in favor of the Ezio song (which for instance played in the menu and the map).

With this I feel bad giving the series less than 4 points, even though the overall experience is still worse than most other games in the series.

There where three DLCs;
- Legacy of the First Blade is a series of three DLCs that introduce us to Darius and his Natakas - two Persians who are hunting for some Cult that is pretty similar to the Cult of Kosmos and after trying to set foot in Persia now tries to undermine Greece.
This story is in parts strange and useless, but adds to the flavour of the story - it's the DLC that I like so much because it gives Kassandra a bittersweet ending.

- The Fate of Atlantis is the largest of the three and compares to Origins Afterlife worlds - only this time we get to Elysium, the Underwold and Atlantis. This DLC allows the world designers to freely express their interpretations of the different aspects of Greek believe as well as on Atlantis which is both Greek- and Isu-related in design. We learn that Atlantis is one of the cities where the Isu lived together with their Human slaves, and Kassandra is to stop the fate of Atlantis of being drown because Humans and Isu finally stop getting along. This last section for me was the weirdest, because I found it difficult to fit into everything we have known so far about the Isu, but it was still a fun DLC with a lot to explore.

- Those Who Are Treasured is the cutest and most fun of the three DLCs, storywise, as it tells a vacation story that includes Kassandra, Barnabas and Herodotos, and takes place on Korfu. It is a comparably small DLC that tells a story that does not add at all to the general game lore and as such feels like a self-contained side quest; but it was really fun.

Not knowing that there actually was a DLC for Syndicate that I didn't yet own, I moved on from it after finishing the main game and the "Dreadful Crimes" and "Last Maharaja" DLCs, and started Origins. Only when I was half way in, I realized that there was this "Jack the Ripper" DLC, so I picked it up after Origins - which was a shame as it was much harder to get back into the old control and fighting style. Still, I enjoyed every minute of it.

Jack the Ripper plays 20 years after the conclusion of Syndicate. Evie married Henry and migrated with him to India, but gets called back to London to assist Jacob in solving a series of gruesome murders in Whitechapel; only to find Jacob missing. Evie then tries to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper, and has to use some of his techniques as well. We also get to play as Jack the Ripper (there's a constant switch between those two), and get to be really gruesome, while also getting the glimpse into a disturbed mind.

The game play was majorly extended for this DLC - we get new kind of weapons, different effects, totally new abilities and moves, new and different side missions, finally the return of the Paris Murder Mysteries, and a totally new fear system, that allowed you to strike terror towards nearby enemies by being as brutal as you can when killing enemies. This, already makes it feel much more dark than Syndicate. But of course that's not all - the entire city is toned down, there is a seriousness and fear, the music is incredible, and our main characters have aged and look more serious and worn down themselves. This all adds to a dense horror atmosphere that is only multiplied when you get to play as the Ripper himself (who is masked the entire game), realizing that he is an Assassin himself, and having a distorted view that includes his thoughts being literally written out and disappearing again on the screen while you play. And while you play you realize that all the victims are actually acquaintances of Jacob -- and so it creeps into your mind: Could he be the ripper? And if yes, what the hell did go wrong here? This only added to my overall horror.

This tiny DLC is so captivating, so scary and yet also so new and different to the main game, that it deserves it's separate rating from the main Syndicate game - I had to finish it as fast as possible and did so in a couple of hours; and it was an incredible experience, even though I was really annoyed with not having the controls down anymore and being used to the new systems Origins introduced.

This is by far one of the best DLCs out there and worth the price that they'll ask for it (which is usually about 15€, but also often on sale for half the price).

Absolutely loved it!

After buying Syndicate in 2017 and deciding that it actually was a good game but I wanted to replay all the series before continuing, I still bought every next Assassin's Creed game that got released after Syndicate and directly shelved it. Origins waited the longest until it finally saw the inside of my blu-ray drive, and I was excited for it the most, because I already heard a lot of good things about it and saw some stunning game play videos.

Since then I also learned that Origins was seen as kind of a soft reboot of the series by fans of the franchise and learned that Ubisoft themselves rather see it as their second period of Assassin's Creed games after the first periode that started with the original Assassin's Creed finally ended with Syndicate in 2015. But what brought in this change? Basically, that Assassin's Creed wasn't selling as well anymore, as expected. From original AC to Black Flag, every new title beat the older ones in units sold (that is not counting the continuations of a series, as well as taking into account that Black Flag only fell short by a tiny margin to actually beat AC III - but it still made more profit than the original and ACII and plays in the same ballpark as Black Flag). Until the infamous double release of Rogue and Unity. Unity stood far behind expectations being only on place 6 of the the rang list, and Rogue became a disaster, with the least number of units sold in the entire franchise. Syndicate, playing in a famous time period and with a lot of infamous historic characters only managed to outsell Rogue, second to last. If you ask the players, you'll often hear that there is a kind of product fatigue - since 2007 Ubisoft was releasing a title every year, and in since 2012 this became two titles - one mainline title and either an DLC (Like Liberation or Freedom Cry) or a secondary title like the Chronicles series; and with the double release of Unity and Rogue even two main-line titles. And all the while there was no real innovation in the game-play and even the story (regarding Isu and modern-day story) got convoluted to a point that people couldn't follow anymore.

Additionally, with every title released, Ubisoft pushed the timeline further to the modern day - next in line after the End of the Industrial Revolution would have been modern day, already.

So Ubisoft decided to take a break - leave two years out, and return in 2017 with the first game of their second period: Instead of stealth-action adventure games, Ubisoft decided to shift the focus to role-playing video games (though I would argue that the first period games also fit quite well in that description). The biggest changes for me in the game play are two: 1. the unguided open-world approach; where older titles would actively hinder you to reach certain areas at an early stage by putting an animus barrier around the area you can explore, or by denying you access via doors, portals, etc., in Origins and games to come you are allowed to wander freely right from the get-go. There are some hints as to what makes sense to do next (difficulty levels), but which mission you do first, which characters you interact with first or which areas you explore first is totally up to you - for better or worse. 2. the entirely changed fighting system that abandoned the "paired animation system" (i.e. when attacking an enemy both parties lock into an animation sequence during which nothing else can happen, and where the outcome is predefined by the situation and kind of attack) for the "hit box system" (i.e. you swing your weapon freely and as often as you want, and if it by chance touches the hit box of an enemy, that enemy gets an effect), which changes the entire way combats are played (allowing - amongst other things - to further categorize weapons into damage, speed and range, and allowing those weapons to be played in different modes (heavy and light)).

The other striking novelty is in the time setting and thus the story told: the four games of the second period range from 431 BC to 878 AD; the Order of Assassins was founded around 1090 AD, the Knights Templar in 1119 AD. Is this still Assassin's Creed?

Let's see how the first installment in the second period - which incidently is the 10th overall installment - holds up:

In the modern-day of origin we get to meet Layla Hassan, a young and brilliant hacker and maker who is working as a researcher for Abstergo Industires. She is on a mission in Egypt to retrieve some artifacts, but accidentally stumbles upon the mummified bodies. Instead of reporting this, Layla decides to use her modified Animus in the hopes to find out something useful that might secure her position at Abstergo.

Our main ancient character is Bayek of Siwa, on of the last Medjay in Ptolemaic Egypt under Ptolemy XIII, who does not only need to worry about an invading Roman army under the command of Julius Caesar, but also has to fend of revolutionist in his own ranks who are under the influence of his sister Cleopatra that seeks to overthrow his brother. In the midst of this, the son of Bayek and his wife Aya gets killed by a group of 12 masked men. Bayek seeks revenge and learns of the Order of the Ancients - a cult that believes in Gods called the "Ancient Ones" (which turn out to be our Isu) and try to control humanity with their gifts. This group has existed for centuries around the world. Bayek in his quest for revenge kills them with his wife Aya and the help of Cleopatra - and after that founds a group of people - "The Hidden Ones" to fight against these "Order of the Ancients" and protect the people from them - just like the Medjay of the old times did.

The story of Bayek and Aya is really captivating, thrilling and at times also heart-breaking. We get so much time with the characters and their feelings that we really start to take a great interest in them and be more engaged in the story as any other Assassins Creed has ever managed to do. I was identifying with these characters right from the get-go and knew their emotions and motivations, and it was fun playing them and exploring the world the main story and the side quests with them. The main quest is pretty straight forward - travel around Egypt to find clues about the Ancient Ones and kill them. But there are a lot of twist and turns on the way, and by traveling around Egypt we get to explore the wonders of it as well: we get to travel from small oasis villages to enormous ancient cities like the greek-built Alexandria or the Egypt build Memphis, but also cross the dessert and mountain areas and even get to climb the Pyramids and explore the tombs in the Valley of Kings. Besides traveling by foot we also get to ride camels and horses, carriages and even get to go by boat on larger lakes or the river Nile. This world is enormous, and to make it even more fun to explore, we get a ton of side quests; some are stand alone quests, others are series of quests and then there are even quests that spring from main quest events where we get to see how the people are doing afterwards - if we want to, as side quests are totally optional of course. But in Origins non of the quests feel repetitive as every quest has its own story and fate behind it, so this never feels like a chore to do.

The new fighting system feels great; its much more fluent but it also needs you to learn some tactics that vary with the kind of enemy you are fighting against; and it's become impossible to fight against whole group of enemies at once - whats true for you (hit box system) is also true for the enemies - if three of them hit you at once with a heavy attack that takes away a third of your life then you die in an instance. So even though fighting is much better and much more accurate and fun to do, it won't allow you to cut through your enemies like previous games did; so you need to adapt your strategy. I myself had a lot of fun with stealth sneaking around and killing my enemies from a distance with bow and arrows. The predator bow is an incredible weapon and there is an incredible ability that even allows you to steer your arrow while it is in the air, but you are very limited in arrows, so I tried to stake out an enemy camp find all my possibilities to recharge arrows and then strategically planned my takeouts - trying to not alarm anyone, if possible. Coolest thing I learned: A burning arrow deals much more damage, and to make your arrow burn you actually can stand next to a fire source, or - if at a distance - shoot through a fire source in which case your arrow will also catch fire. Boy had I fun finding the perfect trajectory lines or trying to steer my arrow mid air so it could pass through a fire source and still hit my target. To perfect your play style there is a skill tree and different weapons in various rarities that can be even further upgraded.

Besides all of this there is also an arena where you have gladiator style fights and an arena where you have Ben Hur like chariot races, and there are even missions that are set on the ocean on a trireme, with Black Flag like mechanics for some boat fights. All in all this gives you a pretty decent amount of variety - and for an Assassin's Creed title that is saying a lot.

And if that is not enough for you and you want to immerse yourself even further into the life of ancient Egypt, there is an entire game mode where you are allowed to run around the world freely without any obstacles and visit certain landmarks or locations to go on a guided tour and learn about every days life, believes, economic systems or scientific achievements of ancient Egypt. This opens up the world on a much deeper level and makes you appreciate certain game aspects so much more; and it is a really fun way to learn new things or refresh on your textbook knowledge in an immersive way that even museums cannot offer; oh and btw. this mode has already been discovered by teachers who actually use some of this material in their classes.

Included with my edition came two DLCs:

1. The Hidden Ones: A new mission that takes place in Sinai, where Bayek helps an allied rebel leader to fight against the Romans. In general it was fun to play, but I felt it didn't feel and fit as good in the story. Some elements where copied over without even thinking about them making sense in the new environment or not - so while I generally liked it, I felt that it was just a sloppy addition that could have used more care.

2. The Curse of the Pharaohs: This is the DLC where you should put all your money in. Especially when playing this, you will even more so feel that the "Hidden Ones" was just a sloppy copy of the original game to add some missions and game time to the game. Not so with The Curse of the Pharaohs. This time you'll dive deep into the Egyptian believe system - deeper than you think: In Thebes all of a sudden Egyptian Pharaohs rise from the dead to punish the people. Bayek gets called to investigate this, and not only dives deep into the tombs found in Thebes and Luxor, but also reaches the Egyptian worlds of the dead: The "Fields of the Reeds", "Aten" and the "Duat" are places he has to visit to appease the raging pharaohs. And those where incredible experiences of interpretations of what Egyptians believed in. Each world has its own look and feel, enemies, missions and side quests that felt incredibly unique, and everything is framed in an really interesting story that also allows us to visit new real existing Egypt cities to explore. Definitely one of the best DLCs of the entire series.

So, was the wait, the re-haul of the entire game and the change from stealth-action adventure to role playing game worth it? In my humble opinion - as a story game enthusiast - yes, definitely. Everything was so much more immersive, so much more fun to play and got so much more depth. Heck, even Layla had more depth with the tiny portion we got to explore about here (mainly by going through her personal files in the computer, though) then Desmond had with all four of his game installments.

But take not just my word: While sales where dropping with every series since Black Flag, Origins was the first game to exceed all previous games in sold units, making it the first game since a decade to beat their previous record - by more than a million additional copies sold. Financially, Assassin's Creed did everything right; and story and game-play wise it at least impressed me the most; it's definitely in my Top 3 titles I enjoyed most - maybe even the best of them all? And I really have a hard time finding anything I disliked during the entire experience.

As stated in my first review I started playing this game a long while ago as my first entry to the AC universe, but shelved it mid-game - (a) because I felt that the game was getting repetitive and not too much fun anymore and (b) because I felt I understood too little from the background story to really play this game just for its story.

After playing through AC1 - Unity some years later I finally unshelved this one and attempted a replay.

Syndicate is already the ninth entry in this series, and uses the same engine as its predecessor, which makes its gameplay similarly fun - parkour is at its best, the fighting works perfectly as well, and we get a couple of new mechanics.

In the modern day, we are still the same character as the last game - the Assassin's new "Initiate". And again, modern day story is mostly consistent of inbetween cut scenes, containing Shaun, Rebecca and Bishop - and not much more. Our goal is to - once more - locate a powerful piece of Eden, this time by experiencing the memories of the Frye siblings Jacob and Evie who in 1868 recapture London, which by then is totally under Templar control. But though they are twins, they couldn't be any more different: While Evie is interested in gaining knowledge and collecting artifacts and steeling from the Templars what they seek and what they believe makes them powerful, Jacob is more interested in liberating the people to form gangs and actively fight the Templars (and other oppressors) with cheer power while building up a mob-like structure. Thus there is a lot of struggle between those two and some missions will require you to play Evie, while others are only playable by Jacob. Both characters get some unique abilities and both of them are leveled separately and have their own gear and clothing, making this game a two-character assassins game. Outside of missions we are free to choose whom we want to play for all the side missions or just exploring, and can easily switch between the characters. The real fun - however - is when both of them work together, and this is apparent the most in the final mission where we get to switch the roles inbetween the missions back and forth. Here you can see and feel the strength of having two characters with a different set of abilities work together; unfortunately - and this is my biggest downside - its only fully used here. The rest of the game you rather feel forced to use one or the other for the missions; and outside of the missions you probably just pick one of them and play the whole game with that character - here it depends if your playstyle is more sneaky (Evie) or openly aggressive (Jacob).

Story-wise both Characters are fun to play - each has their own character and then have a wonderful chemistry amongst themselves and their team that consists of Henry Green (Head of the London Assassin's) and Agnes MacBean (train conductor), and their associates, that consists of Alaxander Graham Bell, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Frederick Abberline and even Queen Victoria. The tone of the game contrasts the ear - while everything is poverty struck and people fend for their lives, everything is humorist and and comic. All in all the stories and situations are some of the most fun in the entire series.

Gameplay-wise we get a couple of new mechanics; three of which revolve around movement: There is the rope-launcher which lets us catapult up high buildings and zipline inbetween buildings that gives us a new and really fast way of moving and escaping and therefore makes traditional parkour necessary - you'll rather swing from buildings than try to find the perfect jumping and climbing opportunities. Then there is riding a train. Trains move through London all the time and even your headquarters is an ever circling train. This lets you with your locations in mere seconds and as you need to be on the train to switch characters or accept new (side)missions, you'll often be there and just wait for the perfect stop or location to jump of your train. But you can easily also just use other trains to ride along. And then there is the ability to anywhere just hijack a carriage. There are different carriages around, some more stable (but slow), and some much faster (but also more brittle and prone to fall over if you cut corners too fast). Also a lot of missions revolve around carriages, and there is a whole series of side missions that consist of carriage races. Besides carriage races there is also a side mission series consisting of fight clubs, and one addition to the fighting system is the ability to chain different attacks with each other making them either faster and/or more effective or allow you to include multiple enemies - there are even a lot of achievements for, e.g. for longest chain or including the most enemies in a chain of uninterrupted hits, and these are actually pretty challenging to manage.

The missions again do have opportunities, however they are not as elaborate and freely to chose from as in Unity. In syndicate they feel more streamlined and not as free - but again you are rewarded with additional cut scenes and exceptional kill animations that always are more fun to do than your standard procedure would be.

While we have our main mission and side-missions with different personalities, there is also the territorial battle, and here's where things get rather repetitive and dull:

In order to proceed with a territory, you need to do different tasks in that territory:

- Hunt Templars, by identifying them and killing them
- Liberate children that are forced to work in factories
- Liberate strongholds of the rival gang by killing all the members, burning some flags and/or liberating own captured gang members
- Fullfill some bounty hunts for the police by identifying and following a criminal, incapacitate them and drive them to the police.
Bounties

Once all these are done there is the possibility to kill the Gang Leader of the territory, and after that follows the gang war where you need to kill more enemy gang members than they can kill yours.

Once all this is done, you rinse and repeate with the next territory. And you have to, because to proceed in the main story you need to capture the territories. And there are 18 Bounty Hunts, 11 Child Liberations, 12 Gang Strongholts, 18 Templar Hunts and 7 Gang wars, each with the same cut scenes, etc. This kind of grind is nothing new to Assassin's Creed players, but after coming from Unity it feels like a giant step back. And that is what's the biggest downside for me.

And that's what really bothers me; the world building is beautiful, the connection to history and historic characters is really fun and the twins are wonderful lovable characters. The story is okey, but especially the end was really beautiful and heartwarming; and yet - if you try to get it to 100% you feel like there is a lot of content that feels like doing chores rather than having fun. Which is why I cannot rate it along side games like Unity or Black Flag, who - even though they also had this repetitiveness, felt less annoying over all.

That being said, all in all it is a game that is worth your time and that, story and gameplay wise can easily hold up with the other games in the series that are rated better.

We again get an anomaly that will bring us to one of the World Wars, this time however it's the first one, and we get to play Lydia Frey, granddaughter of Jacob, who works for Churchill and eliminates German spies (that are backed by the Templars) in the heart of London. This also was quite fun to play and I really liked the Lydia character; it's a shame that for this kind of added content the characters stay really shallow.

Then there are also three DLCs which are really fun to play. "The Dreadful Crimes" and "The Last Maharaja" are add-ons to the map and can be played while playing the main story, and where included in the game I bought. "Jack the Ripper" feels to Syndicate as "Liberation" (which wasn't even a DLC) felt to Assasisin's Creed III (plus it wasn't included in the standard editions of Syndicate that I own, so I had to buy it separately and only played it after [Origins], which is why I'll include that one in an separate review.)

PS: And just because I mentioned it in my first attempts review - after playing a bunch of these, AC Syndicate doesn't feel any harder than any other AC game, and actually the entire series is quite accessible, even for casual players.

I already spoke about the weirdness this release had in the Rouge review: This game came out the same date as Rogue and got the community divided between both games, which was a really bad choice that Ubisoft did. Fortunately, most people chose to go with the new Engine and opted for Unity.

Unity continues the story line that gets set in motion by the actions of Shay in Rogue, only this time we see them in the eyes of a small boy: Our protagonist Arno Dorian, who grows up adopted by François de la Serre, Grand Master of the French Templars. When de la Serre gets killed, Arno blames himself as he might have been able to prevent it, but rather pursued Élise de la Serre as an love interest. He gets blamed for the murder and thrown into the Bastille and by chance is broken free during the storm of the Bastille - together with Pierre Bellec, an Assassin. Pierre takes Arno in, and Arno in turn rises the ranks of the Assassin Brotherhood and tries to find the real killer and avenge de la Serre, while also continuing to pursue Élise who has finally become a Templar herself, leading to a problematic situation as Arno is an Assassin - and this all takes place in the midst of the French Revolution were both, Templar and Assassins have a role to play.

Unity is a packed and dense game; there is so much happening in this really vibrant city, you can walk through the different areas and feel all the turmoil. The poverty and sickness, the people revolting, beheadings, the Roi des Thunes, the Marquis de Sade, the Jacobins, Napoléon, Robespierre, Louis XIV, the Catacombs, the Reign of Terror - everything is happening, and you can feel all of it, by just running around through the city. Every AC was rooted in history and historical events, some stronger, some more loose; but - at least to me - none in that detail as Unity. And I don't mean it in the sense of how it is intertwined with the main story, but just how you can see things happening in the environment you move around. Besides that, the city is modeled quite astonishing. A year after playing Unity we went to Paris for vacation, and it was really uncanny how good we were able to navigate the city from memory, just because I played Unity before. This amount of detail in the map making is insane. And with Le Louvre, Île de la Cité, Versailles, Les Invalides, Quartier Latin and the Catacombs, there are so many different and interesting locations to be playing in.

Character-wise I had a lot of fun playing Arno. I would characterize him like a french version of Ezio, but while I had problems identifying myself with Ezio, I could much more sympathize with Arno, who was a bit more tuned down in certain aspects. His personal story ark is also really nice - it's actually a mixture of Altair (rising ranks in an established Assassin's brotherhood, and trying to redeem oneself for an error one made) and Connor (the inner conflict and question of belonging), together with an hint of Ezio (family drama) and a Romeo and Juliette type of love story. But it's also much more - where Rogue fails, Unity manages to find the perfect balance between different philosophies that are neither good nor evil - just different; and goes even further and shows that there are also philosophy clashes inside each of the factions. There are those Templars who are more extremist than others, and there are Assassins that even try to find common ground with the Templars while others will try to prevent this at all cost.

As to the game play: Both, fighting and parkour have been overhauled and worked better than with any previous AC (except for when there where bugs, and it was surprisingly little bugs - but they where present as well - would it still be an AC game without bugs). Especially the fencing sword fights where a lot of fun and worked great. You also get your typical mini-game in the game; this time its building up the Café Théâtre, which serves as Arnos private headquarters while also housing the secret Assassin's Headquarter just underneath. By upgrading it and doing missions for the owner one can generate a stream of income and unlock new rooms and functions, as well as items. There is the usual amount of different additional items to collect to gain additional gear (chests, cockades, artifacts), and there is a range of side-missions that are new (but typical for AC): on of those are the "Nostradamus Enigmas" puzzle riddles, others are anomalies that this time lead to two different other timelines: the Belle Époque and the Occupation by Nazi Germany. There are also your typical Assassination contracts, but this time they are marketed as "Paris stories" and evolve around famous historical figures. But the most noteworthy additions are the "Murder Mysteries" which I had a ton of fun with: Someone got murdered and Arno gets to collect clues and interrogate witnesses to find out who the murder is. You can accuse anyone you like, but only when accusing the right person do you get to solve the Murder Mystery. These where a lot of fun to play. All these elements allow for an already quite diverse and versatile gameplay. But Unity goes even further: For the first time we get a skill tree, so we can individualize Arnos abilities to match our game play: melee, health, ranged and stealth are the four categories these improvements fall into. And then there is the last improvement that - unfortunately also got dropped in later titles: The main missions are actually not guided anymore, but you get to explore the area to find different infiltration and assassination opportunities. There might be secret entry points, or disguised entries, or distractions you could create with the help of people or crowds nearby - or you could just fight your way in. Then there are different ways of assassinating your targets; sometimes by disguise, sometimes by poisoning something, sometimes by sneaking in a certain way - or if you want: Just fight your way in. Exploring the opportunities always rewards the player with additional more interesting killing animations, or additional dialogue, so it's always the most fun to do.

For me, this is one of the best Assassin's Creed ever made; I would rate it the highest of the old Assassin's Creed parts, and probably among the top 3 over all. And I'd highly recommend it to anyone, even as a start in this series.

This includes the DLC "Dead Kings"

PS: Just to complete the review: There is a modern-day story; as with the previous games the modern-day protagonist now speak directly to you as a player, so the modern-day protagonist does not have a name. However it is clear that this time - again (as with Black Flag and Rogue) you are regarded as a new character, unassociated with the last two. This time you are "The Initiate", someone joining the modern-day Assassins. However the interaction is limited to just story telling and not much more.

In my youth I wasn't too much into third person games like Assassin's Creed but more into strategical games like Command and Conquer, Star Craft, Warcraft or Age of Empires.

So while hearing about Assassin's Creed, I never had the motivation to try it out myself. This changed, when I saw the "Assassin's Creed" movie in 2016; a lot of people - especially players of the series - hated it, for its lack of certain elements. But I was so intrigued by the premises of the world, and the idea to relive history, that I was then and there considering to try out the game. So after watching the movie, I looked up the current game of Assassin's Creed and it was Syndicate. I looked up it if was a good starting point to the series and what it was about, and was even more intrigued as it played in Victorian London - and I both, love London (one of my most favorite European cities), as well as the Victorian era.

I got a cheap PC version of the "Rooks Edition" and started playing the game, but soon run into a couple of obstacles:

1. For someone who hasn't played this kind of games in a long while, this game was really hard to get into. I especially remember a tailing and chasing mission, where you are on the rooftops jumping from point to point, executing any shooters on the way, while having to stay in reach with your target, that got me frustrated for a long time.

2. While marketed for PCs (and therefore should be able to being played with mouse and keyboard), I had to do incredible finger acrobatics on the keyboard. This let me to actually buy a XBox controller, which made the rest of the game a much smoother and more enjoyable experience

3. While the immediate story was generally fun to play and follow, I especially had a problem to understand the overall story. Who exactly are those Templars, what are they trying to achieve; and what the hell where all those "modern-day" scenes in-between? There was this weird drone - and these two people, and someone attacking them, but why? What's this all about?

This is, when I decided mid-game (and in parts because I felt it was getting more and more repetitive), to stop this game and shelf it. I was so much intrigued in all of this that I wanted to understand the entire world and mechanics of the game, and only return to it, once I catched up with the lore. I was considering reading everything on Wikipedia or watching the entire story on YouTube, but in the end I didn't, and instead went the hard way: Catching up with the games, starting with the original Assassin's Creed.

Assassin's Creed: Rogue is a weird game in that it was one of the two successors to Assassin's Creed: IV - Black Flag. And removing the numbering of the titles (after a discussion of the community if AC IV should have gotten a new number or be part of the AC III series [as Brotherhood and Revelation where part of the AC II series]), and giving it the same release date as Assassin's Creed Unity this further added to the confusion. What's even more: While AC Rogue actually builds on the same engine that Black Flag did, and even continues all the mechanics and game play elements of that game, Unity was marketed as the next gen game, using a new engine, new mechanics, as well as a new (and more modern) setting. So for many at that time it was considered the actual successor, and Rogue a bit overlooked.

However, Rogue is also weird in that it tried to be the second game that does something different - I said in my "Black Flag" review that it was an "odd one out" as you don't play an Assassin. Well, guess what: In Rogue you play an Assassin turned Templar. Which in itself could have been a cool idea. However, the name Rogue already gives it away, and after playing AC III, this was not a novel surprise anymore. Still, it could have been a really cool idea - as in AC III you don't get to play the Templars to their full extend - it's an Epilogue after all, and once you're done with it, you switch back to playing an Assassin. And as a Templar you also don't get to do much Templar stuff, because Haytham just arrives at the place, there is no secret Templar society yet, so he has to build one up by himself.

Rogue starts in 1752, i.e. two years before Haytham reaches the colonies. You play Shay Patrick Cormac, an Assassin who is doing missions for the Brotherhood that make him question the actions the Assassins take. He's more open to dialogue and he feels that things the Assassins do, lead to catastrophes, so after a falling out with the Assassins he does the one thing you usually do when realizing that a secret society is a bad thing to be a part of: Join another secret society. If that doesn't already feel rather unbelievable, take this: Now all the locations that previously where bad because of being under Templar control, are under Assassin's control. And that does not mean that there are Assassins in there. Nope, it's the same units, with the same abilities, that are just in a different color.

From the Templars, Shay gets an ship with a quartermaster, and nothing more, so with this ship he needs to start to - pirate other ships. I've heard the term Black Flag 1.5, and that what all the ship missions feel like, except that the sea fights are a bit dumbed down and not as complex as they where for AC IV, which is a shame. There are a few new aspects (like breaking ice, and being able to be boarded by pirate hunters), but for the most parts - when it comes to Gameplay - you feel like you're playing a DLC to Black Flag. We have to liberate areas from Assassin's control, and we do so, by sneaking into them, and assassinating people - with the tools Shay got from the Assassins. This would have made for a perfect game in an Assassins point of view, but is in no way what I would have liked to play as an Templar. Templars should have had resources, should be plotting and scheming, should use their power and control over people to get to their objectives; and not feel like the same thing in other colors...

For me, this game breaks the lore in multiple ways - Templars see themselves as the good people and Assassin's as the bad ones and vice versa; and the previous AC games have all shown us, that this is a battle of philosophies. Philosophies that can be argued about. None does this better than AC III with Haytham and Connor. Rogue however chooses the easy way out of this conundrum. To justify Shay being a Templar, the Assassins are depicted as truly and purely evil - to the point that they start killing randomly and uninvolved civilians, e.g. by releasing poisonous gasses, just to make Shay be established as the good person here.

It's a fine AC game, in regards of game play, and generally fun to play; and I liked the tie-ins to other games: On the Assassin's side we get to meet Adéwalé again - and as he's the leader of the Assassins in the colonies, we also meet a young Achilles Davenport - and on the Templar side we of course meet Haytham Kenway. There is also a tie-in to Unity (which I didn't know of). And besides we have some really fun missions - I really enjoyed the Lisbon mission, which was incredible to play. But all in all I was rather disappointed about how much this felt like a low effort and how little it fits into the entire lore otherwise.

Funny, though: On the modern-day story we again play a different unnamed new employee for Abstergo, but this time the employees reveal themselves as Templars to us and at the end we are forced at gun-point to join their organization - here the Templars are evil again.

I was intrigued by the idea of playing the antagonist of the series, learn more of their perspective and being able to use the weapons they usually throw at us when we are Assassins. Rogue offers nothing of this at all to us. So in the end, for me it was a real disappointment in the series of AC-games.

By many, sixth installment of the main series (irritatingly called Assassin's Creed 4) is one of the best, if not the best Assassin's Creed. Which is funny, because it's also the first game were we're not really playing an Assassin (at all?).

We start this game shipwrecked as Edward Kenway - father of the Templar Haytham and grandfather of Ratonhnhaké:ton. The setting is the Caribbean sea: while colonizing America, the nations Britain, France, the Netherlands and Spain allowed so called Buccaneers and Privateers to raid the ships of the other nations; they where given Ships and allowed to keep the spoils, and soon in the West Indies a community that from 1630 established this as their culture. Until - starting from 1690 - it was forbidden by more and more of the participating countries. Hence forth these people where labeled Pirates and their way of living outlawed. Different to the European and American society, Pirates lived in societies free of class and sexual, national or racial injustices as a egalitarian multinational society, base-democratic and anarchistic. Which in turn drew more and more people of lower class and status to them. This let to the "Golden Age of Piracy" who's peak many scientists see starting in 1715 - the year Edward strands on an island at the West Indies. But he is not alone - Duncan Walpole; an Assassin, who Edward manages to kill - in his belongings, Edward finds strange items and a letter from a Spanish Governor, that promises a high reward for these items, so Edward decides to take all his belongings and clothes and assumes Walpoles identity. But at the exchange he gets found out, and is sold into slavery. Luckyly the slave ship is getting into an hurricane, and he and another slave - Adéwalé - manage to help themselves and escape. They capture a ship, the Jackdawn, whom Edward calls himself Captain of, and makes Adéwalé his quartermaster, and thus their adventures as pirates begin.

Assassin's Creed IV - Black Flag is an epic Pirate adventure game, and it is the best Pirate adventure game out - this comes even more obvious as just this year Ubisoft released another Pirate game, "Skull and Bones", which is supposed to be a successor to Black Flag, but its release made people long for Black Flag again instead, making it the most played older AC title in the beginning of this year, which is probably the reason why Ubisoft is now rumored to work on a remastered version of Black Flag.

However, I am playing the series for the story of the Assassin's - and regarding those, Assassin's Creed IV feels like the first (but definitely not last) "odd one out": Edward does meet the Assassin's, but is not really taken with them. He helps them when it meets his goals, and ignores them otherwise. Which is getting more and more difficult as friends and fellow pirates of his join their cause and leave the pirates. Edwards however follows the dream of an Pirate State, so you never get to play him as an Assassin. Still it turns out that there is a lot of the typical philosophical questions that Assassin's and Templars fight over also present in a pirates live - the question of control and freedom, order and chaos, etc. And Edwards story and his final choices make sense and feel organic, given all his background and what he experiences in the story.

The game-play can be best described as a combination of AC II and AC III. In AC II we had dense cities with great possibilities to parkour, and different stealth possibilities; in AC III we got a lot of open spaces, hunting and naval games, but less stealth and parkour. AC IV as a Pirate game takes place mostly on the ocean, and you can explore a lot of small islands that don't have much on them but allow you to find and collect items, go hunting, etc. But then there are the three big cities; Havana, Nassau and Kingston. But the biggest component is of course the ship. Naval missions are not a small bonus on some optional objectives as in AC III, but a major part of the game, even though most of it is not part of the main mission (which takes place mostly on land). Ocean makes up 80% of the map and all collectibles, all side quests, all special enemies are only accessible via the ocean, so the ship becomes a major part of the game.

AC 4 gives us a ship that comes with 6 different ways to shoot your enemies (fire barrels, chain gun, swivel gun, mortars, broadside and heavy shots), gives as three different speeds that however change our maneuverability, and that are highly depended on the wind direction (which you always need to take a look out for), while throwing at us different sea obstacles, like really heavy enemy ships (man-o-wars), tornadoes or tidal waves, that we need to keep in mind. This is where the fun of the game lies, the ship feels realistic and to even further immerse you, your crew will sing shanties while your your ship is rocked by the waves. Even though Ubisoft says that the split is 40/60 for sea to land game-play, if you are a completionist you'd probably switch those numbers around and play far more on sea than on land - and if only to plunder the resources you need to upgrade your ship to the fullest. There is also a lot of personalization possibilities, both for the ship as well as the character, and this adds to the immersion.

For the modern day story, Ubisoft picks up the idea they strarted with Liberation: the modern-day main character is you, the player. You are a researcher at Abstergo industires, and you are to explore the DNA of Desmond Miles for one of the many Entertainment products that the subsidiary "Abstergo Entertainment" wants to market to the customers. During your time at Abstergo, you get contacted by different hackers - one of them is an actual Isu trapped as a program on the computer network that tries to get free - the other two are Shaun and Rebecca who want to win you over for their course. The modern-day story was actually fun to explore, but in my humble opinion not as good as the one in AC III; and the story with the Isu and the back story of Abstergo and the Assassins becomes more and more complicated to follow as a whole. But I did enjoy this part non-the-less.

What is sad is that the game feels much buggier again - especially climbing. E.g. I dreaded ships where you needed to climb the mast to cut down a flag, cause ever so often, Edward wouldn't climb but suddenly just jump of the mast and die, which looses you the bounty you nearly had. There was a lot of frustration of this kind, however the really brilliant story and the - for the first time - open world totally makes up for it. It's the first Assassin's Creed game that does not make you play an Assassin, however it still feels totally like an Assassin's Creed game - and it maybe has one of my most favorite endings of all Assassin's Creed games. It also has one of the most recognizable soundtracks after AC II, and just hearing the main title again gives me a the feeling of the really good time I had with the game.

If it weren't for all the bugs and problems with the game play that came with it (especially for certain missions) I might have rated it higher.

This review does not include the DLC "Freedom Cry" which I totally forgot about (got it mixed up with Liberation, so I thought I played it already) and unfortunately played much later.