u/a34fsdb

For some context I recently decided to play all the main non-RPG AC games in order of release. I played the first four on release and all the newer ones since origins also on release so for me games in the middle like Unity are me playing them for the first time.

Hard game for me to rank as I for me this game has clearly the best gameplay and the worst story so far. Best gameplay of the pre-RPG ones, top 3 locations, impressive NPC density while all great are still not big enough improvements for me to rank this higher above the other pre-RPG games as those have a significantly better story. The RPG ones have better gameplay, modern graphics, more polish so I would rank this in the series only above Mirage.

I still enjoyed this game a lot, just did not love it like the games I ranked higher.

To start with the positives this game is one of the biggest leaps in the series on what it tries at a technical level. Graphics are very improved (still pretty dated) compared to Rogue (insane these two games released same date) and the NPC density is some of the best in gaming. And not only just raw density of NPCs, but variety in their looks and actions. What they did is obviously just shuffle various possible combinations of npc clothes and actions, but the illusion works almost all the time. Most of the npcs will be just walking down the streets or rioting near a landmark, but they will be varied and all around them will be small groups doing different things. A guy carrying a looted stone cross, two people carrying an injured friend, a man leaving his house accosted by beggars, somebody sweeping in front of his shop or fixing a barrel. Some of these are pretty rare and I saw them once every few hours and only rarely I just saw something that slightly broke immersion like three people (out of very many on the screen) with exact same clothing or three people fixing their table in a row on the side of the street.

For me this was the first time I would say this series has decevent combat because this is the first time it has any difficulty at all. So far all the protagonists were absolutely unbeatable in combat and you were in danger only if you attempted things you were obviously not supposed to and even then you could win. Here with enemies having levels with increased hp, damage and better moves/defences at higher level gearing up Arno is important and the world is a bit dangerous. This is obviously not a hard game and anything is solvable by just charging through the front gate, but you do need to gear up first and have consumables and pay attention slightly compared to previous entries.

Level design is also often very nice with missions being mini-sandbox levels with multiple ways to approach the target and some scripted ways to gain an advantage. Also I liked the design of the world and how while many buildings could be explored to find a chest it often took some effort to find the entrance and then navigate through the houses.

Stealth is a bit mediocre by you not having that many tools for it and guards reacting often too fast, but I still thought it was enjoyable. Often you could use stealth to do quite a bit and then when you get discovered you could often just kill the guards nearby to go back to stealth. And even if everyone gets alerted it still felt immersive to get discovered mid way through and then having to fight.

The city itself is also very impressive. Very detailed, varied from poor to rich parts, obviously impressive recreations of real life locations, dense and felt very organic like a real city with unique buildings, often lacking symmetry etc.

Parkouring despite being very important in AC games is not something I usually think too much about as I always find it very similar to other entries and it is always good however this one is obviously different and my favourite one when it works. Arno can clmb mostly everything and he does tricks to look cooler while doing it. He also cant climb absolutely everything like in the rpg series which finds a very good balance. Being able to climb absolutely everywhere is a bit unrealistic so sometimes having obstacles or lack of purchase is fun however them being fairly rare and not needing obviously marked things like the Ezio games sometimes did removes some frustrating parts. How far Arno can jump and what he can climb is very unrealistic, but feels like something out of a cinematic when it works.

The setting is also very good. Top 3 for me. When I started the game I was not really looking forward to the setting however a dense urban zone with political turmoil is obviously just perfect for an AC game. Finally I enjoyed how they did not split the sides into obviously evil and bad ones and it is a bit messy.

A small positive I would like to point out is that the economy is actually a bit interesting and even if you rush the most obvious path to get passive income and loot all the chests you will still need cash until near the very end.

Moving on to the elements I did not like I will start with the biggest one and that is the story. Out of the eleven AC games I played this is tied with Mirage for the worst one. It is not outright terrible and I was a bit interested in it while playing it, but it is just very forgettable. That is mostly because Arno and all of the Assassins are dull. Only three Arnos allies I can name are not Assassins and two have smaller roles. And the plot is less related to the revolution than I would like. Only interesting part is them actually killing of a big character and Arno being expelled from the Assassins, but that part is resolved off screen. When replaying the Ezio games 20 years later I could still remember a lot of the story while I finished this game two days ago and I had to refresh some of my memory with some recaps to write this. It is just so forgettable.

I know I am often in the minority on this take, but I really enjoy the modern day story in AC games and I think this is actually the worst one by a decent margin. It is so irrelevant, but not entirely gone either and present just enough to be annoying while having no substance. And that is especially jarring after Rogue which connects to everything else and while nothing too major happens at least it is intriguing. It even mentions events that would be connected to Valhalla. Also here is finally where the series loses all its slightly "edgy" conspiracy stuff. 2 had a lot of this in the glyph puzzles and they basically imply every conspiracy has some truth to it and so many people are Assassins and Templars. They even have live footage of an elephant about to be executed by "Templar" Edison. BF and Rogue had a tiny trace of it with some niche (maybe?) stuff like Akashik Reader or Voynich Maniscrupt mentions, but there is nothing like that here (unless you count Nostradamus which I dont). The changing of severs is just annoying while it is sometimes visually fun with some WW2 scenes.

The map is crazy overstuffed even for an AC game. It has like a few hundred chests and other pretty lame collectables. The only fun side content are the murder mysteries which to be fair are surprisingly good. Enjoyed those a lot.

Not a fan there is also some regression in various systems. Why did we lose repairing the city, freeing the forts, managing Assassins or crafting?

Finally and this drawback is pretty significant the game is pretty poor on a technical level. As many of these pre-rpg games this has a lot of bugs, crashes and it is required to tinker with the settings to get it running (at locked 60) a bit too much. The bugs are often pretty bad and require a restart. Getting shot while climbing has like a 10% chance to get you stuck in a falling animation forever, just fighting will stop working a couple of times per hour and need a restart, the parkouring will often glitch wildly.

For some quick context I played around release the first four games in the series and the latest five and I at least enjoyed all of them. Then recently I started replaying the older games from the start and now I got to this one so playing this one for the first time.

Before getting to my thoughts about the game itself I think the lack of discourse about this game is interesting. Whenever people talk about this series, which one is their favourite or even least favourite, or what protagonist or setting they like the most this one is almost always missing. Just seems largely ignored.

And looking on reddit discussion now the main reason while people seem to dislike it is the story while on reddit discussions of the time the story is praised as a strength and I agree with that and the story is the main reason why I liked the game so much.

Other AC games have more likeable protagonists, more charming side characters or more interesting time they are set in. After you play a few of these the stories inside the Animus are fairly formulaic. There is the protagonist and his allies and against the antagonist and some of his allies and there is some Precursor artifact. There is some surprise in who exactly will die in the story, but the good guys will most likely win with some light losses and get what they want with heavy antagonists casualties.

This game unlike most other AC stories actually has suspense and intrigue in the main plot. Because the game very early on takes some bold choices like switching the protagonists allegiance and killing characters from both sides there is tension what will happen next. This is the only AC game where I rushed the main story and did very little open world content as I was really interested what will happen next. I was always intrigued because I think there were a lot of options where to take the story.

I liked the execution of most of the things they were trying to do. Shay is a compelling character with complex feelings and motivations. Reasonable and also flawed and emotional at times. His doubts before his turn made it effect and his struggles after it also were interesting. The rare brevity of the game for an AC title hurts it a bit as I wish we got a bit more characterization of every ally. I still enjoyed the moments where he confronts them, but it could have been better. And maybe if we got a bit more after where the game ends it would be fun. One of the bigger common criticism is that they made the Templars too good and Assassins too evil, but I thought they struck a good balance because we are left with a lot of incomplete information. It seems entirely possible that from Shays perspective (or other mid ranking Templar) he would react like he would because he does not have the entire greater picture of the conflict that we did. The bombardment of the hideout was silly and I agree with that criticism.

I know the modern time elements are divisive, but I really enjoy them in this series and I thought this game has a very good modern part. Very little actually happens (like most times), but it has nice recaps of many events in the audio logs in Abstergo and it is all very well connected to the rest of the games and the world feels immersive because of that. There are some details that will be connected to Valhalla even. I really enjoy how they make Abstergo a videogame company that made Far Cry 3, AC games, Abstergo and Anvil engine having the same logo etc. The earlier games had a more creepy vibe and referenced a lot of pretty niche conspiracy theory stuff and it is mostly gone here, but there is still a tiny bit. The voice actor of Otso Berg was really good and a big part why I liked the modern sections.

The next big element is the combat which I thought was just fine. You are unstoppable in melee combat and there is no danger ever like in most pre-rpg games, but the fighting is still a bit fun. Nothing special and I did not out looking for combat, but it was okay when it happened. Exploring the city was fun and I collected most collectables there, but doing so in the river and ocean maps was just not that fun. I really loved this in BF:Resynced, but without the amazing graphics the gameplay loop of constantly leaving your shit for a few collectables was not fun. The gun combat is faster and satisfying and at one point you have to beat some ships in the main story which is too hard with an un-upgraded ship so I had to grind a bit and I did not mind that at all. The stealth is pretty minimal and the new gadgets were all clunky to use.

One of the biggest elements of these games is the choice of setting and unexpectedly I enjoyed this one. I was not really excited for this setting, but the cold desolate feel of North Athlantic, the sparse population feel of the River Valley and then the classic AC in a city feel with New York was way better than I expected. A setting that I did not experience a lot in games and was quite fresh for me.

This post will be mostly spoiler free until one point which I will point out as I think this game is good and I think it is entirely possible someone will appreciate the positives of this game more and my dislikes will matter to them less. If someone told me this was their favourite game of the year it released I would not think that is a crazy opinion.

When I started playing this game I had very high expectations as people often say on social media this is one of the best recent Obsidian games and I really liked their other games too. It has a very good metacritic score and many content creators I watched really praised this game. I also enjoy slow game with lots of reading so this seemed perfect.

The main element of this game is the story and while I think it has very interesting ideas and themes the story drags on with too much repetition, dropping themes and replacing them with new ones quickly and without enough connecting elements. There are some pretty bold story decisions which are fresh, but also they are often unsatisfying. And this would still be very compelling if it was not dragged down by gameplay being extremely slow and making the game a lot longer. I loved about half of the time spent with this game, but half of the time I just wanted it to end.

Spoilers ahead:

I played the game spoiler free until close to the end where I got some minor things spoiled to me. After I finished the game I looked on reddit for some information about the story.

Story:

So the story is set in 16th century Swiss Alps village where in the first act you are a young artist working in the local abbey scriptorium when a visiting nobleman gets killed and you decide to investigate as the abbot decides your mentor who is almost certainly not the culprit as a scapegoat. You talk to people around the town, you inspect items and you have some speech checks based on actions and your background you choose at the start. There is an in game timer and you find 4 suspects while you have time to investigate about two and a half. You give your findings to the official and then one is executed. Also there is this (in my opinion a bit contrived) element where there is a "thread-puller" in the village who gave the victim and suspects a letter to meet to set up this murder which seems so likely to fail. I also did not like that you investigate this element very superficially despite getting a lot of information for potential leads at this point.

The game seems at first like a murder mystery game, but you realize during act 1 that it is really not about that. It is a story that asks questions what to do in life that has a lot of uncertainty. Results of our actions can have long reaching consequences and we have to make decisions with imperfect information. And what to do with this? Is being always honest the best choice? Or should you lie to implicate the most likely culprit? Should you even interfere? And during the investigation doing obvious things might lead to best evidence, but often it does not. Sometimes illogical things and chance (or Providence) might lead to clearly bad decisions having best outcomes. Does anything really matter at all?

This being about the narrative and not the mystery itself becomes very apparent at the end of act 1 where you realize you have to make a decision with very imperfect information and the killer is not confirmed and the game just continues. This plot twist of an accusation based on so little and without a resolution is very interesting and the story (and gameplay) peaks here in my opinion. If the game ended right here or shortly after I would absolutely love it.

Then act 2 begins and you choose another set of background traits and come back 7 years later and you try to solve another murder and this also ends up quite badly with bloodshed with many peasants dead and the abbey destroyed and many characters dead. The same existential themes remain and I think they outstay their welcome as it just becomes too repetitive and less effective. In my opinion these themes are way better in shorter form than a longer one.

Another element here is introduced and that is main characters melancholia / depression which I did not like as an addition here. It is obviously interesting and makes sense as a result of act one, but a lot of happens to the MC between the acts and that felt really cheap. We just briefly read about the tragedies instead of exploring that at all. Roleplaying these parts about events we know nothing about felt awkward.

Then we move to Act 3 which seems divisive to some and not just me. As the MC is seemingly dead we move to a linear story with a new PoV some years later where our new characters explores the history and decides what to record with the information we got. I thought this really just drags on and is really another repetition of the same theme until the very end where some reveals and emotional scenes really hit. And there is some satisfying character development and seeing the results of our choices. Also I do like that the game gives some answers to the questions it asks us.

Setting The setting is interesting and I think it is covered with detail in a lot of places, but pretty shallow in others and the potential is wasted quite often. I for roleplaying chose my background very similar to myself in real life and often special dialogue choices would be quite obvious things in my opinion. And often observations would be like that too.

And all my story critiques about pacing and repetition would be much less important to me if the gameplay did not slow the game just too much.

So the days are spread into times of the day when you do your investigations and villagers and events happen around the village. So after each time progresses you should check every place because you might encounter a npc with new dialogue, some new event or a clue however (especially as acts progresses) there is just not enough content in the village so you spend a lot of time rechecking around 40 areas where only 1-2 have something relevant and just 1-2 have some flavour. A lot are used for nothing or just tiny details.

Act 3 is also a series of linear tasks which felt very unsatisfying after the open nature of previous acts and controlling another character to me just made the final act very tedious except its ending.

Also the themes of the game can make you just stop caring about choices at some point as seemingly smart or kind decisions can lead to good or bad results at random. Which is interesting, but at the end after it is repeated for 15 hours when the point was made after five it was just not fun to go through the motions.

And finally I thought the artstyle was lovely. Especially in the few scenes where the UI is removed and the scene is zoomed out to enjoy it fully.

Hvala ti Senf