u/Much_Discussion1490

The app is classic words on android. I am playing on extremely hard , with bad draws turned off.

I made my first post in this sub 10 days back when I was around 15hrs into the game. There were a lot of great comments and discussions but a few people also had a lot of negatives regarding the game, which had me concerned as I was worried it would slowly prop up for me as well as i continued the game...well 40hrs in now, I thought I would share my opinions on the criticisms frim my initial post fwiw especially for new normie gamers still waiting to know if its worth getting into

"It gets boring after 25 hrs" : Well , not yet. As a matter of fact I quite like the story progression and side quests. Is the storyboarding better than Odyssey? No. But that's a high ass bar. It's a great story still and I feel suited for an RPG open world. A lot of the impact of the story comes when you travel across the 16 the century Japan, interact with the world , see daishyos and corrupt samurai screwing the locals, understand the impact of your castle Raids etc. I get why reviewers and people who like more linear stories wouldn't enjoy this. This game is not intended for a 30-50 hr playthrough. Side quests are important here.

Quests are not arranged in any ordered sequence : This ,now becomes an opinion which i kind of understand. The idea that you can complete a quest even without knowing you are in it, might be problematic for some people. Fair. I actually find it appropriate for an open world game. Like if I can do it. I will. If not I will get my ass kicked. Getting to do stuff out of sequence adds to the immersion for me because I have the choice. Of course that means that sometimes there are compromises on narrative building similar to Odyssey, but then again it's a trade off. Do you want choice or order. I think shadows did a fair trade off here

"Too less emphasis on stealth" : This to me has been the most surprising so far. Like..shadows probably has the best stealth in the series and you can absolutely just play with Naoe as much as you want. I have only played with yasuke in a couple of compulsory knowledge point activities bar that..it's just naoe.

Valid criticisms do include the absolutely ass glitches when fighting on elevated podiums . Man it's annoying and horrible. Also I don't the game devs put equal amount of efforts into optimising the video quality across all cutscenes. The frame drops in cutscenes is crazy sometimes. Even crazier when the video becomes absolutely gorgeous the moment the cutscene ends. My first experience of a game where the in game graphics are better than cutscenes xD

All in all, This was probably the best $25 game purchase I made in a while. Way worth the money and I am not even 20% done yet

The point of this post was also to just show the gorgeous graphics xD

I got this for Rs 2500 ($27) recently on the Microsoft sale and have been loving it ! I didn't buy it at launch because I was waiting for the price to come down as I usually do with most games , so the wait was long but totally worth it.

A disclaimer: I am a noob gamer for over 20 years now xD ( the clip should be evidence enough), I play on default settings mostly for an hour or two after work and i prefer open world RPGs since sometimes I can just relax and do side quests or just roam the world and this game nailed the open world!. The NPCs are reactive and sometimes annoying when you are trying to sneak in somewhere and they notice you which adds to the difficulty of the game and is a welcome change.

My favourite AC game so far was Odyssey and around 15 hours into this I think this is going to take the cake. There's just so much to fuckingg do in this game

It's not to say it's perfect. The controls can be a bit janky at times, especially the crouch -> lie flat mechanic, fighting on the ladders or ledges or the Archer podiums..they are immersion breaking.

But the best part for me so far has been the fighting mechanics. Even at normal difficulty it's unforgiving with Naoe because her health drains very fast even with a single kick. Unless you are button masher cum 100 resaves -restarts kind of player , you need to concentrate quite a bit to kill enemies.

Castle Raids domt seem as mechanical as Odyssey Because you actually need to plan to take out enemies one by one. The old school assassination mechanics are back with this one and I am glad they are because killing the daishos are a pain with 1 v1

Overall its probably the most value for money buy for me since I got rdr+rdr 2 for $11 two years back at another Microsoft sale!