Assassin's Creed Rogue is more like a mini expansion for Black Flag than a true stand-alone game. I had an ok time with it, but I don't think the mechanics are quite as solid and the narrative is scattered and feels hard to justify.
Mechanically, this is everything from Black Flag, with a few extras and a few replacements. The air rifle is basically the blow dart but feels more annoying to use and is less believable. There are also some extra ship addons that don't do much to make the sailing more palatable to me. At best they just feel like more busywork.
Being a Templar, Shay has to deal with Assassins stalking him, which is a bit of a tedious mechanic where enemies are hidden and will ambush you unless you kill them first or draw them out with firecrackers. I found this more annoying than fun.
The narrative feels really hammered together. They clearly wanted to tell a story of an Assassin defecting to the Templars, but they don't motivate things well enough or do enough to make it make sense. The writing is too afraid to make these Assassins actually bad and too afraid to let the player find anything redeeming in the Templars. I need something more from a story like this than "hot heads overreact, leading Shay to murder all his friends, join his sworn enemies, and initiate a 20-year vendetta."
Shay himself is fairly insufferable, established as sort of a smarmy jackass who hates being told what to do but also just does whatever anyone tells him and developing hardly at all over the course of the game. He doesn't really have any agency or self-driven motivation that makes any sense. Compared to Edward Kenway, Shay is simply uninspiring and uninteresting.
Luckily the game itself is pretty short, so it gets through it all at a good pace, despite doing a lot of handwaving and time/location jumps to bring everything together.
Even having not finished Black Flag, I liked it more than Rogue. I think the narrative is much stronger and the game itself just plays better. Rogue is still fine for an Assassin's creed game, but simply doesn't bring a lot to the series that is new or interesting.
Mechanically, this is everything from Black Flag, with a few extras and a few replacements. The air rifle is basically the blow dart but feels more annoying to use and is less believable. There are also some extra ship addons that don't do much to make the sailing more palatable to me. At best they just feel like more busywork.
Being a Templar, Shay has to deal with Assassins stalking him, which is a bit of a tedious mechanic where enemies are hidden and will ambush you unless you kill them first or draw them out with firecrackers. I found this more annoying than fun.
The narrative feels really hammered together. They clearly wanted to tell a story of an Assassin defecting to the Templars, but they don't motivate things well enough or do enough to make it make sense. The writing is too afraid to make these Assassins actually bad and too afraid to let the player find anything redeeming in the Templars. I need something more from a story like this than "hot heads overreact, leading Shay to murder all his friends, join his sworn enemies, and initiate a 20-year vendetta."
Shay himself is fairly insufferable, established as sort of a smarmy jackass who hates being told what to do but also just does whatever anyone tells him and developing hardly at all over the course of the game. He doesn't really have any agency or self-driven motivation that makes any sense. Compared to Edward Kenway, Shay is simply uninspiring and uninteresting.
Luckily the game itself is pretty short, so it gets through it all at a good pace, despite doing a lot of handwaving and time/location jumps to bring everything together.
Even having not finished Black Flag, I liked it more than Rogue. I think the narrative is much stronger and the game itself just plays better. Rogue is still fine for an Assassin's creed game, but simply doesn't bring a lot to the series that is new or interesting.