u/JPXTUY-RETRO

Is it taking in mind the American 20th of August or japanese?

It's so emotional and fits with the overall theme and feel of the game.

I am trying to do a deathless run and she's getting in the way of it. I don't struggle with her second phase, but goddamn is the first phase super difficult. I genuinely die at least 5 times before getting to the second phase, which is a total breeze compared to the first. Am I doing something wrong? What's the strategy to get through the first without dying too many times?

There's really no real useful reason to use it except for style points. The buildings in Baghdad aren't really that tall to give you enough time to aim and, even if you do get enough time, it's generally just better to throw a smoke bomb and assassinate normally because throwing a knife out in the open not only will increase your notoriety but it also risks getting detected. It's also generally better to use the assassin focus if you're suspended in mid air anyway to negate fall damage. (which is a big deal to me at least because I have fall damage set to 200%) Also, if you have enemy health set to 200% like me, anything but a headshot won't kill the enemy, so it's very difficult to use it without having exceptional aiming skills.

What about you? Have you used the slow motion knife throws in an efficient way before, and in which situation is it most useful to use?

It's mechanically a great feature to have. And I think it fits with the risk and reward aspect of the game. The game having relatively slower assassination animations and no double assassinations forces you to think strategically. Do you use a smoke bomb and hope you can kill 4 or more enemies before its effects vanish? Or do you use four chunks of the assassin focus to kill these enemies instantly yet risk needing it later on for a quick assassination to targets you can't get to? It's also a good way to clip an enemy that's about to enter combat and have detected you. If they're too far away to assassinate normally, clip them with the Assassin focus. Or maybe you want to skip a combat sequence in a mission. (The game does a bad job of teaching you this in the Al-Ghul assassination when it teaches you about The assassin focus, which is a shame) You can use it to kill them all before they initiate combat or the moment they initiate it.

There's so many strategies to use with it and the choice of having it is great. It's not spammable either, since you have to recharge it by assassinating enemies, so you have to choose which enemies to clear with it.

Now, admittedly, it is VERY spammable with the animus mods, but that's an optional thing to have anyway, so it's fine.

What do you think? Did you like or hate its inclusion?

Combat is way too easy, still. You have more options and better mechanics, but the enemy AI still just kind of stands there and waits for you to hit them, even on hard mode. The game should have had enemy health and damage sliders like Mirage. Since the enemies are not aggressive, having the option of making them more intimidating by increasing their health and damage would've been good. Enemies die too quickly and they don't do much damage right now, so either fix the enemy AI or give us those options.

The control scheme customization sucks ass and it doesn't flow together. The fact that combining the sprint and parkour up buttons doesn't register you holding the button is annoying and creates a stop and go momentum to the parkour. It sometimes works for no reason, but it mostly doesn't. It's a shame because this parkour is probably the best we've had every since Origins. It's better than mirage and shadows because the targeting system works and you don't just fail jumps you should he able to do just because the AI doesn't register it like Mirage. Controls need to be updated in a patch.

The detection system is extremely inconsistent. Sometimes enemies pinpoint your exact location for no reason all of a sudden, and sometimes I run past them and they don't detect me.

This one is a nitpick since you can customize the HUD, but I think the default HUD settings are horrible. It takes every corner of your screen. But it isn't an issue since you can just turn it off.

That's it. Other than those, which hopefully get fixed in a patch later, the game is quite good.

The game still has some issues with naval combat, but I never really liked it, so I'm not the person to criticize it.