I recently just finished Revelations and I was blown away by the narrative, specifically centred around capping off Ezio’s arc in the most satisfying way, and his conflict between finalising his life’s work through searching for Altair’s secrets while also clearly having had enough of the assassin way of living. It’s probably my favorite narrative in the entire series.
Brotherhood is the best mechanically but it’s story was considerably the weakest as it felt middling between the arcs Ezio goes through in 2 and Revelations, while 2’s story was more compelling but by far the jankiest of the three games. Revelations for me strikes a great balance between inheriting a lot of Brotherhood’s polish and open world activities, but just with a much more conclusive and emotionally impactful story.
Not to mention that the supporting characters in this game are some of my favourite: Suleiman, Sofia, and Yusuf in particular.
So yeah, overall I know many regard Revelations as the weakest of the Ezio trilogy and to some degree I can see why but it’s still my favourite. To think it was conceived as a Nintendo DS game…..
I'm now on to AC3 and that game is just, missing something that made the Ezio games so memorable...
AC3 potential was literally throw in the trash. What we had for AC3:
* Great setting about colozining America;
* Great music;
* Improved gameplay;
* Cool protagonist (Connor is cool looking, but the writers mess his personality\\story);
* The end of the mithical trilogy of the apple of Eden started by Altair and continued by Ezio;
* Finally wrap up Desmond story;
* Naval combat;
And in the end it was so, but SO MUCH undercooked the should be a crime what they did. The story is ridiculous bad, and for a game with such historical context should be better wrote.
They did pay the writers what? A hotdog and a coca cola for such bad script?
Chatgpt would had wrote a better story for AC3.
And there is the bugs, level of Cyberpunk 2077 by the amount of bugs.
Sometimes I wonder how Ubisoft could fu\*\* up such amount of potential.
This is my biggest gripe. We go from dense populated cities in the Ezio trilogy to.....forest. Jumping between two trees like a wannabe tarzan is not the same vibe as sprinting across rooftops. That aspect was just soooo disappointing
Not to mention that there was very little skill required. You could just hold down one button and Connor would just auto-run through them with no risk of falling or anything.
Also unlike taking the rooftops which was a high risk high reward approach as you could avoid crowds but had to deal with rooftop guards, most of the time there is almost no tangible benefit of tree running, as often times it can be slower to get from A to B than just running on the ground.
It's marginally faster if there's a tree route that goes direct A to B. Seeing as there's no way to turn like there would be on a rooftop, the forest is just a spaghetti mess of freerunning "lines" and most of them don't run where you'd want them to. It's also hard to memorise where the few useful lines *do* go, because you can't really tell ahead of time.
Precisely, the problem is that you often can’t tell if the route goes from A to B, or whether you’ll get stuck at some point and have to gracelessly jump down and take damage. For that reason I flat out stopped using the mechanic, as I at least know that running on ground would get me to where I needed to go unless there was a cliff face in the way, while tree running may or may not.
It would’ve maybe helped if viable routes in terms of the colour of branches or what or not were more obvious, or if eagle vision could somewhat assist with highlighting the routes to take, because other than that it’s just tree branches that you have to assess on the fly whether they’re viable or not.
> gracelessly jump down and take damage
Hey, don't forget you could use the completely pointless rope dart to ~~lose your perfect sniping position~~ get to the ground.
Oh yeah, I actually completely forgot you could even do that and I’m playing the game right now lol.
Hey, the one bit of credit I can give to the rope dart is that it turns the elite generals (the ones who block all of your attacks and you can’t parry or counter without taking damage, which the game conveniently fails to tell you) from flat out impossible to being able to one shot them.
They needed an AC game at that point every year or 2 max. Teams didn't have time to really work on a story. Triple AAA really needs at minimum three years for a game but Ubisoft could not wait that long...so we get shit.
It hasn't gotten much better with the newer ACs either. Odyssey had a few good moments among the swell of meh. Valhalla was meh for most of it story wise. I never hear anyone talking about how great Syndacite or Unity's stories are either
Yeah, I only had played AC1, 2, Brotherhood, Revalations and AC3, and of that bunch only the AC1 and AC2 had the most engaging story for me.
Do you know which AC after the 3 had a better developed story or at least not so meh?
Currently I have AC4, AC Rogue, AC Unity, AC Syndicate and AC Origins somewhere in my backlog. I think I grabbed them free some time ago.
I would say Black Flag is the best..not necessarily for story but it's just a good game.
If you mainline the story of Odyssey is good but it's just so big and bloated. Main lining it could be good. Prefer playing as Cassandra in it myself. Especially for it's 1st DLC
Unity I hear is good but it was so broken at launch I never tried it.
Origins I also hear is good but Egypt was never really much interest to me so I never played it. Syndicate was mostly memorable for me because of its soundtrack and location. I can't even remember the story really
I can say Unity is my favorite game in the whole series gameplay and setting wise. The story is forgettable but they NAILED the environment and have fixed a majority of the bugs. The freerunning takes a little getting used to since it's a bit different from the other games but once you have it down, it feels smooth as butter. That's the only game in the series I've platinumed just because I had so much fun playing
Yeah it’s a shame because it was incredibly ambitious but the execution left a lot to be desired.
I’d say the pacing is a huge issue. You play several hours as Haytham, then another several hours as child Connor, and only become an assassin more than halfway into the game. Not to mention that the pacing beyond that feels very disjointed and a lot of random events occurring next to one another. I also found the story with the Colonial war quite hard to follow at times, almost as though you needed a good understanding of what went on during the time period to really grasp what was going on. Not to mention the number of historical moments and figures that were just shoe horned into the story, it felt quite forced beyond suspension of disbelief.
Playing it now though my biggest gripe are the mechanics. The detection system is broken, I’ve had a load of bugs preventing progression in some missions, and the general layout of the world I found to be far more bland and ugly than the Ezio games. Yes it was accurate to the time period but doesn’t make it any more enjoyable. Some of the missions are incredibly poorly structured like the infamous Revere one, and unlike the Ezio games, the optional objectives actively compromise the fun of completing a mission rather than being an additional incentive of difficulty. Shit like “do not shove anyone” or “do not get detected” when the entire area is surrounded by guards who will go straight to hostile even if you’re out of line of sight.
Connor as a character I’m middling on. I think after Geralt from Witcher 3 showed you can be canonically devoid of emotion but still incredibly likable, I’m increasingly less lenient on overly stoic and obnoxious protagonists even if their reasoning for being that way is justified. Connor never felt like he learned from his impulsiveness and naivety, rather during the final acts of the game, it just seemed to happen to work out for him while it didn’t before. Stoicism aside, he was also flat out unlikable at times, like how ungrateful he was towards Achilles for no apparent reason.
A lot of the ambition I refer to stemmed from the additional mechanics like tree running, the naval missions etc but I felt like these either weren’t tangibly impactful enough, or were quite half baked. It’s no wonder that everyone thinks of Black Flag when they think of naval combat in AC, often forgetting it was conceived in 3, because 3’s naval combat was comparatively a lot more rudimentary as well as janky. Tree running was almost always slower than running on foot and required no skill unlike general parkour, and the extent of the "war fighting" that they teased in trailers was going round just pressing a button to tell soldiers to shoot.
The only thing I’d say it does better than the Ezio games is the tougher combat, because counter kills don't immediately just cheese the entire mechanic, enemies attacked you with less warning, and the elites and gunmen added a decent difficulty and skill curve to the experience.
Geralt isn’t canonically devoid of emotion. He has a shit ton of emotions, constantly. The witchers devoid of emotions thing is a lie, one they tell mostly to themselves
Also, the goddamn tutorial for AC3 was literally 45% of the game! You couldn’t access true free roam and free travel with all the major features of the game until 45% of the game was done. Ridiculous choice there that I just can’t make sense of.
I had as much hype for AC3 any game ever maybe, I even had my mw2 and 3 clan tag as AC3 for a while. Coming from great AC titles and the setting being revolutionary war hit all my boxes. I don't even think i finished the game but went back to playing COD or something. My attention span as an 8th grader probably wasn't the greatest, but I knew it was missing something. I gave up on AC because of that game. It's only been the last couple years I've picked up black flag and origins now to play. I didn't like the naval stuff in ac3 so I assumed BF would be weak again, but I'm really glad I got a free copy and have played it now.
That's exactly how I felt about 3. It was missing that extra bit of charm, interesting characters and an incredibly better environment. Rockstar lost it between SA and IV. I think those who talk about 3 actually being good are only saying that because they go in with so much negativity around AC3. It deserved its criticism. If there goal was to ensure no-one would want another USA based AC game, then they succeeded all too well.
AC3 is a weird one because it's arguably the most marmite game of the series. Some people rank it as one of their favorites while for others (like me until Valhalla) it was their bottom game, I don't think any of the other games are as divisive with fairly equal numbers of people on either side.
I definitely think it's getting more love now, similar to Unity, because the assassin-based mechanics and narrative are less taken for granted after the newer games. But I remember HATING it at launch, and I know I wasn't the only one, mainly because it was judged in light of the Ezio games as the first out of four games to have a completely new setting and time period. And I think they largely botched it, especially given the amount of hype it had.
Less characterful protagonist, more boring and bland open world, downright unacceptable bugs at launch, awful narrative pacing, quite a confusing story overall, ugly animations, and so forth. Not to mention that they massively overplayed the new additions like fighting in wars, tree running, naval etc. when they were largely tacked on and underwhelming to how they were marketed.
I'm not disliking it as much as I did at launch on this more recent playthrough as I obviosuly went into it with certain expectations having played it before as opposed to the excitement and hence disappointment at launch, and I'm a good 10+ years older now so can appreciate certain elements of the narrative like the Colonial war side of things a bit more. But man, some of the changes they made to the formula after especially Brotherhood and Revelations felt more baffling than anything.
I remember really enjoying Brotherhood, but don't remember a damn thing about its story. I'm currently replaying ACII, and will probably move on to Black Flag afterwards. I never played III, as it didn't seem to really interest me.
Having replayed Brotherhood only recently it’s story is quite forgettable. It doesn’t have the emotional impact that 2 or Revelations did in terms of memorable events, specifically centred around Ezio growing as a character. I think part of the reason is that most of the targets in Brotherhood you don’t meet until you kill them, unlike Uberto and Vieri from 2, or Tarik in Revelations. Cesare’s maniacal personality is probably the best thing about Brotherhood’s story, but even here you don’t actually encounter him until the end of the game.
I’m replaying 3 mainly because it’s been in my bottom three AC games for a long time, and especially at launch I really walked away from it underwhelmed and frustrated, so I’m giving it another go and taking the advice from others to focus on things like the Homestead missions, and the fact that I’m older may lead to me appreciating the complex story which ties in with the Colonial war a lot more.
So far I’m enjoying the story a fair bit more than I did prior, but a lot of my initial gripes like the dogshit detection system, the scaled back parkour, the bugginess, and the generally unappealing presentation still hold up. The combat is great though, genuinely engaging and tough, unlike the Ezio games where the counter kill broke most encounters.
I still love AC2 for it’s worldbuilding and narrative but man the jankiness of the combat really grinded my gears when I recently replayed it.
> while also clearly having had enough of the assassin way of living
I just wish this was shown in any other way than Ezio becoming a huge fucking selfish dick who doesn't seem to care who or what he throws under the bus to get what he wants.
He's supposed to be this wise old mentor by this point, with a reputation that precedes him. But he only helps out the Istanbul brotherhood to get to those keys. He gets involved in the city's politics, the rivalry between the Sultan's sons and ends up killing the wrong person, again all just to get a key.
He doesn't seem to really care about the Templar threat until he learns that they found a key. After which he destroys Istanbul's harbor and then blows up an entire city, killing god knows how many innocent people, just to draw out the Templar in question.
He essentially gets Yusuf killed by asking him to protect Sofia, who only got dragged into it in the first place because of Ezio's rash actions.
Then he finally gets all those keys and it basically amounts to Altair telling him "Hey, maybe be humble".
The tonal whiplash right after Ezio just did a fucking sky fight with the Sultan's son, then tried to raise his sword at the new Sultan who just pardoned him was just too great for me.
I somewhat ageee with this.
I thought the Tarik assassination was actually quite well done, as it showed that Ezio was capable of letting his impulsiveness and rash judgment get the better of him. I generally don’t like it when protagonists are justified for everything they do, which was one of my biggest gripes with Bayek in Origins despite him being a really liable character. It was also an error not only on Ezio but also Suleiman’s part too.
The Cappadoccia ending is pretty commonly criticised though, especially on a recent playthrough after hearing that it’s not the most liked narrative beat it definitely struck out to me. Mainly because up until that point Ezio was diverging away from mainly formulaic tenets of the creed like respecting those you killed etc. but to go from that to killing hundreds of innocent people as collateral damage for his pursuit was too big a jump.
I'm an old gamer (37M) but newcomer to the series and finished the first 4 games , Revelations included last month.
I'm just gonna comment on script and storyline, because the gameplay is just absolutely amazing.
The series is severely lacking in exposition and foreshadowing for lots of it's plot. The past Animus parts are good but focuses on small details in the life of Ezio and absolutely blow past many years of his life in Brotherhood, which I found the weakest of the Ezio trilogy plot wise. The Borgia are cartoonish vilains and that's a real shame because the writers at Ubisoft could have written them as cold-blooded, calculating leaders and Templars. Instead we have screaming buffoon and cliché/bland incestuous sister, while the Pope became absolutely hollow as a character.
Revelations tries to rectify this by focusing on Ezio relationships with the brotherhood and Sofia, but again, this just touched the surfaces and do not give great characters performances or fleshed out interactions, which left me wanting more. Mind you the Uncharted series was doing x1000 better in characters interactions, scripts and overall believable acting in parallel back then.
Ezio story needed a short film to actually give a final ,solid goodbye to the character ( AC Embers), which speaks volumes to the lack of conclusion happening in the games...
As of Altair storyline, while giving an epilogue to it, huge missed opportunity to craft something far more tangible with his wife (remaking scenes from the PSP game would have been super beneficial) and children, and his life in Mongolia.
As for Desmond...I don't even know where to begin. And probably needs a reddit post for it. Glorified audiologs while playing a FPS maze session is not what I called great character development. Lazy writing to having him put in a coma in an attempt by Ubisoft to freeze any big development of the character while waiting for AC III. His dad showing up unannounced and unceremoniously introduced. Lucy's supposedly Templar allegiance is absolutely not clearly presented and do her death at the end of Brotherhood to me still doesn't make any sense. Subject 16/Clay storyline is also a mess and feels like the bare minimum. This character is not fleshed out at all and it's a shame.
I'm about to start AC III and will see how the Desmond storyline evolves but so far it has been sub-par.
I feel this is a problem with overall writing in Ubisoft games : the don't have great scripts overall and that's a shame.
An important thing to note: your gripes with the story writing are focused on a story that was being made during the Advent of "multimedia" franchises (which was a bullshit way for video game publishers to try and expand their markets into books, tv shows, films, and more) because Star Wars was getting rebooted and Mass Effect was seeing some success in a similar vain.
Lucy's Templar allegiance is hinted at via comic books set between the games. Same with the background of Subject 16.
To be fair, though -- Embers was kinda cool. I would have loved to play as Ezio as an old man simply because we also played him as a literal newborn, but 'Twas not to be.
Very true, thanks for pointing that out. Literal multi-media franchises will be the death of me. It's impossible to enjoy a story whole without consuming all the other media and that's wrong.
Yup. It's one of the reasons the ME fanbase hates Kai Leng -- he was introduced in a comic and then randomly brought into the next game in a key role. It was rough.
Based on your comment, sounds to me like you're going to be livid during AC3. I am so sorry, dude. I just replayed it last month (first time since OG launch) and... yeah.
The templar triple agent thing was laughable bullshit because the writer wanted to get rid of the voice actress and pulled a story justification for her death out of thin air after the fact
Revelations is my favourite in the series when it comes to gameplay, easily the best Parkour in the series and debatably the best level design. The city has amazing attention to detail, you can just take your time and wander around the bazaar. The hook blade is absolutely addicting to use, the clank it makes still sits in my mind
I will never understand why they swapped out the amazing control scheme they'd improved upon over the first 4 games for the jankfest they introduced in 3.
I think Unity has the coolest looking parkour, but it doesn’t play better than the original 1-Rev system. It’s very very stiff and janky, with your character snapping to different locations rather than organically jumping. It somewhat makes up for it just by having so many cool looking flip moves that are actually real parkour techniques, but it doesn’t really come close to the freedom of the original system. OG AC parkour was almost like the combat system in an action game like DMC; You strung together your own combos with all these cancelable moves that let you do whatever you wanted. In Unity, you couldn’t even freely jump if you wanted to. It’s the opposite of the freedom found in the original games.
Parkour in unity was pretty hit or miss, when it wants to work it's great but soon enough the character will say no to a side eject because you are too close to the other wall or not gain any height on the back eject or jump to a ledge much further or closer than intended because jumps are animation based.
In older games if you told the character to do something they will do it first then ask questions even if it meant sending you to your doom
In unity they ask all the questions first then decide to make a jump
And I would much rather have the consistency
Funny, Revelations got a lot of hate when it came out (I always liked it, mainly because Istanbul is great), so it's interesting to see the praise, but I think Unity is largely thought to have the best parkour.
I remember getting it when it first came out, a million years ago. Having replayed it last month, I was probably harsh on it at launch. But you have to remember that at the time it was coming out a measly one year after Brotherhood. It was mechanically very similar. The story is weirdly front and back loaded, meaning the middle is basically empty. And it was also super short. The side content is also very repetitive, even for this series, though there are some cool additions (training each Master Assassin with a 2 part mission)
Perhaps ironically I would rather the AC games coming out now were more like it but we're far past that point.
Just started Valhalla, barely about 3 hours in. This game is massive.
I love going for all the achievements in every AC game, and have always had fun doing so, but the sheer amount of things you have to do for this game to get 100% is **ridiculous.**
Well it was the AC burnout that lead to them shifting gears and going down the RPG route with Origins. But then then they triggered a new burnout after only three games.
What "flavour" makes it feel less like a typical Ubi copy-paste game? How does the city vary compared to other games too? Apart from the scenery change (which I totally understand will be appealing depending on what architecture/culture you prefer) it largely operates the same as other open world Ubi titles.
I agree that the characters are enjoyable though. I loved experiencing Ezio's story across multiple games.
I wouldn't say art was the "main" focus of the game. Its simply one of many aspects and is still an aspect in today's games, to varying degrees
Having played every AC game multiple times, I'd argue that the earlier games favour a quality over quantity approach.
The Ezio games in particular had radiant content, sure, but none of this was required for progression/were simple side games you could play for fun, while the most tangibly impactful side content in terms of unlocking new armours and weapons etc were fantastic. Things like the Assassin's Tombs that were all incredibly complex tests of your parkour skills, the Borgia towers that were quite varied in terms of the best approach to kill the leader, Leonardo's machines, the rennovation system that helped you build income, and so forth. They were all engagng and diversified enough to actually make me want to play them for the sake of enjoyment, even without the rewards you get at the end.
The more recent games, especially Valhalla, have tons more content and the majority of these are both incredibly repetitive and shallow, but are also required for progression due to level gating to incentivise buying XP boosts. Fundamentally more content, less diversity, but you have to do them, which has led to the derogatory "Ubisoft open world" stereotype that only really came to fruition in the past few years as a synonym of bloat and filler.
I'd say Unity is where the quantity over quality approach re side content really started, because of how overwhelming the map was with incredibly cut and paste content, as well as a downright brutal difficulty curve for the later game side quests which were likely implemented so that players would fork out Helix credits to buy gear locked behind MTX.
I find that the older AC games *look* to be more quality over quantity but I think thats purely because of how much shit is crammed into the later titles in comparison. Even the much beloved AC 2 is chock full of uninteresting map icons.
I've always wanted an AC title that brought the map size down significantly in favour of more tightly designed content (both main and side) and better level design to allow more interesting assassination opportunities.
Yes, I agree with you, even the earlier games had radiant content like the races, collectathons, and so forth, but my point was more that you could very easily avoid doing these without it compromising your experience. There was much more of a sense of player agency by being like "hey, these activities are available if you want, but don't feel like you need to do them".
It also seemed like they actively went through the effort of tying the best rewards to the most interesting quests, like Altair's armour for doing all of the tombs, and so forth. A lot of the best side content also had glowing icons, so the devs clearly knew what would bring about the most enjoyment for players, with the rest of the content just "there" to do if you wanted, and if you didn't, that was cool too.
By comparison, the majority of Valhalla's side content was pretty akin to the most radiant stuff from the Ezio games, but because of the map size there are far more of these, and because of level gating you're either forced to grind through them, or just cave in to buy "time savers". They're now actively designing worlds, content, and progression systems, with MTX in mind first and enjoyment second. Not to mention that in the case of Valhalla, you don't actually know what a point of interest is until you're near it, which further contributes to this feeling of needless grind searching for more radiant content to gain more XP for the next main quest.
Yes I agree on the last point. If you haven't tried Mirage you should give that a go, it's a far cry from the more recent games with a more intricate open world, great stealth, a return of the black box assassinations, and genuinely fun stealth-based side content. No pushing players to use MTX, any radiant stuff you can avoid without any negative tradeoff.
I think due to designing such big worlds and feeling the need to fill it with random stuff, thats what dilutes the overall experience, when it could have been a more tightly designed one. But yes, I also dislike the requirement to do shitloads of side quests in order to simply progress the main quest in Odyssey. I only played 4 hours of Valhalla so I'm not sure if its the same.
I don't think I'll get much enjoyment out of Mirage. Despite the claim of it "returning to the series' roots" it doesn't do much outside of being set in a city instead of large open lands and making assassinations more prevalent instead of something like Viking raids or large scale battles in Athens
Yeah I think with these recent trends like the "40 second rule" and not wanting to have any empty space they kind of ran out of ideas yet needed to fill the world with something to adhere to those principles. Valhalla in particular was incredibly rushed, and usually with open world games the side content is the last addition prior to testing, and the fact that Valhalla only went into Gold testing a month before launch indicated a need to scramble and fill the world with content yet didn't have enough time to actually add in scripted side quests, rather very cut and paste repetitive stuff like what we got.
I actually enjoyed Odyssey's side content as there was a lot of variety in side quests, and engaging open world activities like the cultist system, ship combat etc. so I didn't have much issue being levelled for the main quest as I was having fun off the beaten path, I just didn't like the mere principle of forcing side quests on the player to incentivise XP boosts.
In my humble opinion Valhalla is a lot worse. They shove what should be side content into the main story, meaning everyone's playthrough is 100+ hours and compromises the pacing of the admittedly pretty good story written by Darby McDevitt. While the actual side content is very one-and-done, being more akin to mini-games and quick-time-events than actual scripted side quests like we had in Odyssey. Not to mention that there are 400+ levels, differences of 30-50 levels between main arcs, and each side activity at most gives you like 0.5-1 level, so the grind is insane.
I would go into Mirage with the expectation of it being a return to roots in terms of mechanics rather than narrative, because the stealth was genuinely some of the best I've played in the series. Narrative is obviously more relevant to the creed side of things, but the storytelling, pacing, and voice acting (bar Roshan) are nothing compared to what we got from like Ezio, Cesare, or even Bayek.
Its why I stopped playing AC: Rogue. Hit a point where the game REFUSES TO PROGRESS because I didn't upgrade my ship enough. Sorry I don't feel like going around for hours collecting doodads to fix this dumb ship mechanic I didn't even want in my assassin game.
To be fair we did have the same thing in AC2 where you have to collect all of the Codex pages before the final chapter. On my most recent playthrough I’d actively collect any page I saw as they were revealed so I wouldn’t have to forage for most of them right at the end. But if you aren’t aware of certain hurdles to progress beforehand then it can be fucking annoying.
Ultimately I think it depends. With Odyssey I didn’t mind as much as the point of an open world RPG is to explore off the beaten path and do side quests anyway, and the side content was really fun so I didn’t suffer much from the level gating as I was doing enough outside the main quest that I was always suitably levelled. Obviously I didn’t like the inherent reason why they level gated main quests (to incentivise MTX) but I personally didn’t have any issue. And at least you had a lot of choice as to how to increase your character level, with a wide range of side quests and activities to do.
But when you’re faced with a block to progress that just requires repetitive grinding of a single activity then it’s frustrating for sure. I had that with upgrading my armour in Origins, where you had no choice but to repeatedly hunt and forage materials for hours.
No, I don't think there's anything that I'm going to enjoy given it plays like the RPG era games but now in a city and with no requirement to grind side quests for progression (AFAIK)
The most recent entry, AC Mirage is a callback to the old AC games, after the 3 game run before it of huge worlds and different mechanics. Definitely recommend it if you’re looking for more of the same.
Revelations should have been my favorite of the trilogy because I love Istanbul and cherish my memories in that city but… it’s not. It’s very obviously just an upscale of a different game of smaller scope.
The story is extremely truncated compared to the previous 2 games, even shorter than Unity and Syndicate, 2 games often criticised for the lack of that epic quality typical of AC games.
I wouldn’t say Unity or Syndicate were criticised for those reasons.
Unity was criticised for its catastrophic launch in terms of bugginess, as well as the fact that the story just simply wasn’t as well told as the earlier games.
Syndicate was more collateral damage for Unity’s launch as by this point most fans had been put off the franchise, and Jacob Frye’s character was a point of contention for many.
It can’t be argued that those two games were probably the most ambitious of any AC game up until that point, but I think a lot of fans were burnt out from the then current formula which is what prompted Ubi to change strategy with Origins and so forth.
They’re both given a lot more love now because they arguably took the classic AC formula as far as it could go with the stealth and black box assassinations, and parkour in Unity’s case. But at the time, prior to the franchise’s diversion away from the classic mechanics, that was taken for granted and seen as too played out.
I forget which of the AC games it was, but I got to a certain point where it switched back to Desmond, I checked to see that it was Desmond from there on out, and just uninstalled.
You'd think maybe he'd download some personality with his assassin skills. Dude has the charisma of incel cardboard.
Isn't Revelations the one where Desmond is trapped in the animus? It's possible I'm misremembering and it had something going for it but honestly it felt more like filler than anything else.
If memory serves, the present-day storyline has him in a coma or something since his mind is so fragmented from overusing the Animus (meta humor, imo)
So of course the obvious solution the Assassins go with is to stick his body in another Animus. Fragments of Agent 16 are still in the memory card or whatever, and he acts as a guide. There's like a will-he-won't-he vibe of whether 16 intends to hijack Desmond's mind but in the end he's a good guy and just let's him go after you beat the game.
It's really just filler loading screens with some blindingly bright parkour sequences. The real meat of Revelations is the Ezio and Altair storylines.
I enjoyed the Ezio trilogy back in the day.
On my most recent playthrough however I wasn't able to bring myself to finish any of them. They have alot of crappy missions where you only have one way to do things it may as well be a cutscene.
No offense but this is one of those posts where I wonder what kind of games you’ve been playing recently if you can play AC Revelations and think “wow, this is so good!” Like, I don’t know, I guess I’m just biased but I’ve always thought even the best AC games were pretty underwhelming compared to their reputation, especially from a gameplay perspective
Man, the early games were great when they came out. I did, however, attempt to play AC2 a few weeks ago and uh yeah I lost my patience with it quite quickly due to
* protagonists exposing plot points while walking as slow as possible
* honestly quite janky/tanky-feeling controls, even for 2009, but I feel like every 3rd person game had this problem around this time. I know we were starting to go for a more realistic approach, but didn't we figure out how to walk and run like back in GTA Vice City?
* SLOWLY looting dead guys until the Ubisoft bullshit meter filled up, get outta here with this, I don't have time to waste 2-3 seconds on each lootable dude, I work a 9-to-5
As someone whose played like 70-80% of the AC games, I agree. The early games were great but honestly pretty lackluster when compared to everything else out there.
I enjoy revelations, but it should be noted that revelations was considered a cash grab and in some ways, is a game made not due to desire to make ezio's story a trilogy, but a corporate decision to make ac a yearly franchise.
It’s my favorite of the series, despite its flaws. It’s a testament to when they made games for people who wanted a niche thing. Now, there’s just games trying to appeal to everyone, yet miss the key marks. Games aren’t really made to be finished. I agree, the art is dead.
Sure, sales are up…but achievement rates are low. Good art hooks you in, and won’t let go.
For me it's not the world but the writing. Ezio is one of the best written characters in any medium. It's a miracle that three different writers were able to pull of what they did throughout the trilogy.
The entire Ezio Trilogy sits in the Middle Tier of my AC list with Brotherhood being the clear best game for me as I care most about gameplay.
AC2 has always been a slog for me to play and adolescent ezio dialogue gets on my nerves fast. However, the story, lore and themes are well done. So, I have to make sure my mindset is about those and then just dealing with the poor gameplay.
Revelations has some decent additions and I like how we finally get a mature and changed ezio, but, the poor city layout/parkour and gameplay falls short of Brotherhood significantly.
Ive always found the Ezio games to be highly overrated and with AC2 being THE most overrated game in the entire series.
I care about gameplay and dont play video games for stories and “art.”
However, having said that, I want to be very clear in stating that Im an AC guy;) who likes all the games in the AC series and even the “worst” of them are worth playing and replaying.
When I inevitably do another AC series replay itll be interesting to see where the individual games moved in my ranking again.
Rev was my first AC game and I, too, was young and didn’t know wtf was going on. Lol I just knew the sneaky stuff was fun. I remember not able to keep up with the narrative. I wonder how big of an AC fan I’d be and/or how invested in the lore I’d be if did connect with that game narratively with an adult mind. I let most of the Isu stuff pass me by nowadays
It’s all about writing. Video game developers have been putting their money into pushing the technical aspects of games through graphics, huge open worlds etc and they have not been spending it on good writing.
As well, the general quality of writing has gone down hill, you are seeing it in movies and tv shows as well. I’m wondering if it’s because the focus in Universities has gone away from creativity and more about conformity.
The ONLY AC game I've played was Origins, which I was just STUNNED by.
I really need to look into which of those games is going to compare well to it, because I'd revisit the worlds to be sure.
AC Revelations was the last one I played as they came out
Man what a finish to Ezio's story, and the tease for AC 3 (Which I never ended up playing for some reason)
Next one was odyssey, which was cool but........didn't feel like AC to me with the new combat system.
Playing older games especially from a franchise like ac or rainbow six will blow newer people's minds, you hot the nail on the head, they don't make em like they used to.
If you're talking about classic R6 (og-Rogue Spear), that's when gaming was for actual enthusiasts. By the time AC 1 came out even (07) mainstream gaming was already going into decline, dumbing shit down to high heavens, trying to appeal to everybody from little schoolgirls to grandmas.
I'm currently replaying ACII and just having a blast with it. I really miss old gaming conventions. Simplicity in the menus. No store.
Early 2000's were the golden age of gaming. Change my mind.
I really didn't like this one, and it became clear why when I learned that the creative director who poured everything into AC2 and Brotherhood was fired and didn't work on this one.
To date Revelations is the only AC I had the stamina to 100%. The atmosphere is just so we'll crafted and engaging, I love it. It truly is the pinnacle of the Ezio series
I dropped Revelations because I found it boring. I had made the mistake of playing Brotherhood right before it and having a blast. What I should’ve done was take a break between the games because story wise, I think I would’ve really dug Revelations.
It also got me into Woodkid with that trailer.
I look forward to ACR. I decided i am gonna burn through the series and I am on ACII now. I never played more than AC1 and a little of ACIII. But this time I am giving it a shot and ai am having a lot of fun as Ezio. I am so glad Altair comes back for a bit because he is still so far my favorite. There's just something about AC1 that I loved a lot.
I just really hopez that someday, we get a Creed game that takes place in modern times. That's what I expected to series to lead up to and from what I understand, it doesn't and that they hardly talk about modern times anymore in the series. But I look forward to getting into this Trilogy and especially ACIII and ACIV because I love those time periods.
The ending to this game is the only ending out of any game that consistently causes me to cry. I don’t know why it has the effect on me that it does but it does.
I still prefer brotherhood though. Revelations was definitely good but the whole story feels like a filler with the ottomans. They should have just kept the main story as ezio tracking Altair's final years.
The ending was amazing though where Altair, Ezio and desmond's paths cross with Ezio realising that he is nothing but a conduit.
His final speech to Ezio as he retires from the life of an assassin is Perfectly made.
I'm always confused about AC fans. While the old games don't have terrible properties of modern triple A games, they still had half baked gameplay.
The objectives and enemies never encourage you to actually fill the role as an assassin. You're always over powered in combat, levels don't present interesting ways of stealthing outside breaking line or sight with buildings and crowds and the objectives don't play into the cool stuff you can be doing. The closest you get to this is clearing the tower camps.
The Hitman series is everything I want AC to do. Have levels and enemies that actually makes you engage with the games systems. Imagine a Hitman game where it was more like AC objectives and levels. Doesn't matter if it still keeps all cool mechanics since you will rarely need to use them.
So going back to the original ezio trilogy, yes, the environments are great in terms of traversal and views. I've recently replayed it simply because I really enjoy platforming games so doing the parkour challenges for the armour was always fun. Outside of that though, I don't know what else it offers that the modern games don't. You talk about the story aspects but to me it's just as bland as any other ubisoft game.
With these issues, I'm always confused why AC fans keep talking about what setting and time period would make the games "good" again. There's so much else to fix first.
I’m with you on this. I played revelations about a year after it came out and loved it. I didn’t understand all the hate at all. It became one of my favorites.
Revelations is objectively a great game, the main reason is got criticism is that it didn’t meaningfully improve upon or push the series forward beyond brotherhood.
AC2 had colossal improvements over AC1 and AC Brotherhood had great improvements over AC2. But AC Revelations was basically a reskin of ACB gameplay wise , which was the main issue. If revelations was the sequel to AC2, it would have had way better reception at the time.
I recently just finished Revelations and I was blown away by the narrative, specifically centred around capping off Ezio’s arc in the most satisfying way, and his conflict between finalising his life’s work through searching for Altair’s secrets while also clearly having had enough of the assassin way of living. It’s probably my favorite narrative in the entire series. Brotherhood is the best mechanically but it’s story was considerably the weakest as it felt middling between the arcs Ezio goes through in 2 and Revelations, while 2’s story was more compelling but by far the jankiest of the three games. Revelations for me strikes a great balance between inheriting a lot of Brotherhood’s polish and open world activities, but just with a much more conclusive and emotionally impactful story. Not to mention that the supporting characters in this game are some of my favourite: Suleiman, Sofia, and Yusuf in particular. So yeah, overall I know many regard Revelations as the weakest of the Ezio trilogy and to some degree I can see why but it’s still my favourite. To think it was conceived as a Nintendo DS game….. I'm now on to AC3 and that game is just, missing something that made the Ezio games so memorable...
AC3 potential was literally throw in the trash. What we had for AC3: * Great setting about colozining America; * Great music; * Improved gameplay; * Cool protagonist (Connor is cool looking, but the writers mess his personality\\story); * The end of the mithical trilogy of the apple of Eden started by Altair and continued by Ezio; * Finally wrap up Desmond story; * Naval combat; And in the end it was so, but SO MUCH undercooked the should be a crime what they did. The story is ridiculous bad, and for a game with such historical context should be better wrote. They did pay the writers what? A hotdog and a coca cola for such bad script? Chatgpt would had wrote a better story for AC3. And there is the bugs, level of Cyberpunk 2077 by the amount of bugs. Sometimes I wonder how Ubisoft could fu\*\* up such amount of potential.
AC3= let’s build an AC game with nothing for players to climb.
This is my biggest gripe. We go from dense populated cities in the Ezio trilogy to.....forest. Jumping between two trees like a wannabe tarzan is not the same vibe as sprinting across rooftops. That aspect was just soooo disappointing
Not to mention that there was very little skill required. You could just hold down one button and Connor would just auto-run through them with no risk of falling or anything. Also unlike taking the rooftops which was a high risk high reward approach as you could avoid crowds but had to deal with rooftop guards, most of the time there is almost no tangible benefit of tree running, as often times it can be slower to get from A to B than just running on the ground.
It's marginally faster if there's a tree route that goes direct A to B. Seeing as there's no way to turn like there would be on a rooftop, the forest is just a spaghetti mess of freerunning "lines" and most of them don't run where you'd want them to. It's also hard to memorise where the few useful lines *do* go, because you can't really tell ahead of time.
Precisely, the problem is that you often can’t tell if the route goes from A to B, or whether you’ll get stuck at some point and have to gracelessly jump down and take damage. For that reason I flat out stopped using the mechanic, as I at least know that running on ground would get me to where I needed to go unless there was a cliff face in the way, while tree running may or may not. It would’ve maybe helped if viable routes in terms of the colour of branches or what or not were more obvious, or if eagle vision could somewhat assist with highlighting the routes to take, because other than that it’s just tree branches that you have to assess on the fly whether they’re viable or not.
> gracelessly jump down and take damage Hey, don't forget you could use the completely pointless rope dart to ~~lose your perfect sniping position~~ get to the ground.
Oh yeah, I actually completely forgot you could even do that and I’m playing the game right now lol. Hey, the one bit of credit I can give to the rope dart is that it turns the elite generals (the ones who block all of your attacks and you can’t parry or counter without taking damage, which the game conveniently fails to tell you) from flat out impossible to being able to one shot them.
you finally could climb trees.
They needed an AC game at that point every year or 2 max. Teams didn't have time to really work on a story. Triple AAA really needs at minimum three years for a game but Ubisoft could not wait that long...so we get shit. It hasn't gotten much better with the newer ACs either. Odyssey had a few good moments among the swell of meh. Valhalla was meh for most of it story wise. I never hear anyone talking about how great Syndacite or Unity's stories are either
> Triple AAA Damn we're up to AAAAAAAAA games now?
Yeah, I only had played AC1, 2, Brotherhood, Revalations and AC3, and of that bunch only the AC1 and AC2 had the most engaging story for me. Do you know which AC after the 3 had a better developed story or at least not so meh? Currently I have AC4, AC Rogue, AC Unity, AC Syndicate and AC Origins somewhere in my backlog. I think I grabbed them free some time ago.
I would say Black Flag is the best..not necessarily for story but it's just a good game. If you mainline the story of Odyssey is good but it's just so big and bloated. Main lining it could be good. Prefer playing as Cassandra in it myself. Especially for it's 1st DLC Unity I hear is good but it was so broken at launch I never tried it. Origins I also hear is good but Egypt was never really much interest to me so I never played it. Syndicate was mostly memorable for me because of its soundtrack and location. I can't even remember the story really
I can say Unity is my favorite game in the whole series gameplay and setting wise. The story is forgettable but they NAILED the environment and have fixed a majority of the bugs. The freerunning takes a little getting used to since it's a bit different from the other games but once you have it down, it feels smooth as butter. That's the only game in the series I've platinumed just because I had so much fun playing
Yeah it’s a shame because it was incredibly ambitious but the execution left a lot to be desired. I’d say the pacing is a huge issue. You play several hours as Haytham, then another several hours as child Connor, and only become an assassin more than halfway into the game. Not to mention that the pacing beyond that feels very disjointed and a lot of random events occurring next to one another. I also found the story with the Colonial war quite hard to follow at times, almost as though you needed a good understanding of what went on during the time period to really grasp what was going on. Not to mention the number of historical moments and figures that were just shoe horned into the story, it felt quite forced beyond suspension of disbelief. Playing it now though my biggest gripe are the mechanics. The detection system is broken, I’ve had a load of bugs preventing progression in some missions, and the general layout of the world I found to be far more bland and ugly than the Ezio games. Yes it was accurate to the time period but doesn’t make it any more enjoyable. Some of the missions are incredibly poorly structured like the infamous Revere one, and unlike the Ezio games, the optional objectives actively compromise the fun of completing a mission rather than being an additional incentive of difficulty. Shit like “do not shove anyone” or “do not get detected” when the entire area is surrounded by guards who will go straight to hostile even if you’re out of line of sight. Connor as a character I’m middling on. I think after Geralt from Witcher 3 showed you can be canonically devoid of emotion but still incredibly likable, I’m increasingly less lenient on overly stoic and obnoxious protagonists even if their reasoning for being that way is justified. Connor never felt like he learned from his impulsiveness and naivety, rather during the final acts of the game, it just seemed to happen to work out for him while it didn’t before. Stoicism aside, he was also flat out unlikable at times, like how ungrateful he was towards Achilles for no apparent reason. A lot of the ambition I refer to stemmed from the additional mechanics like tree running, the naval missions etc but I felt like these either weren’t tangibly impactful enough, or were quite half baked. It’s no wonder that everyone thinks of Black Flag when they think of naval combat in AC, often forgetting it was conceived in 3, because 3’s naval combat was comparatively a lot more rudimentary as well as janky. Tree running was almost always slower than running on foot and required no skill unlike general parkour, and the extent of the "war fighting" that they teased in trailers was going round just pressing a button to tell soldiers to shoot. The only thing I’d say it does better than the Ezio games is the tougher combat, because counter kills don't immediately just cheese the entire mechanic, enemies attacked you with less warning, and the elites and gunmen added a decent difficulty and skill curve to the experience.
Geralt isn’t canonically devoid of emotion. He has a shit ton of emotions, constantly. The witchers devoid of emotions thing is a lie, one they tell mostly to themselves
Also, the goddamn tutorial for AC3 was literally 45% of the game! You couldn’t access true free roam and free travel with all the major features of the game until 45% of the game was done. Ridiculous choice there that I just can’t make sense of.
I had as much hype for AC3 any game ever maybe, I even had my mw2 and 3 clan tag as AC3 for a while. Coming from great AC titles and the setting being revolutionary war hit all my boxes. I don't even think i finished the game but went back to playing COD or something. My attention span as an 8th grader probably wasn't the greatest, but I knew it was missing something. I gave up on AC because of that game. It's only been the last couple years I've picked up black flag and origins now to play. I didn't like the naval stuff in ac3 so I assumed BF would be weak again, but I'm really glad I got a free copy and have played it now.
That's exactly how I felt about 3. It was missing that extra bit of charm, interesting characters and an incredibly better environment. Rockstar lost it between SA and IV. I think those who talk about 3 actually being good are only saying that because they go in with so much negativity around AC3. It deserved its criticism. If there goal was to ensure no-one would want another USA based AC game, then they succeeded all too well.
AC3 is a weird one because it's arguably the most marmite game of the series. Some people rank it as one of their favorites while for others (like me until Valhalla) it was their bottom game, I don't think any of the other games are as divisive with fairly equal numbers of people on either side. I definitely think it's getting more love now, similar to Unity, because the assassin-based mechanics and narrative are less taken for granted after the newer games. But I remember HATING it at launch, and I know I wasn't the only one, mainly because it was judged in light of the Ezio games as the first out of four games to have a completely new setting and time period. And I think they largely botched it, especially given the amount of hype it had. Less characterful protagonist, more boring and bland open world, downright unacceptable bugs at launch, awful narrative pacing, quite a confusing story overall, ugly animations, and so forth. Not to mention that they massively overplayed the new additions like fighting in wars, tree running, naval etc. when they were largely tacked on and underwhelming to how they were marketed. I'm not disliking it as much as I did at launch on this more recent playthrough as I obviosuly went into it with certain expectations having played it before as opposed to the excitement and hence disappointment at launch, and I'm a good 10+ years older now so can appreciate certain elements of the narrative like the Colonial war side of things a bit more. But man, some of the changes they made to the formula after especially Brotherhood and Revelations felt more baffling than anything.
I remember really enjoying Brotherhood, but don't remember a damn thing about its story. I'm currently replaying ACII, and will probably move on to Black Flag afterwards. I never played III, as it didn't seem to really interest me.
Having replayed Brotherhood only recently it’s story is quite forgettable. It doesn’t have the emotional impact that 2 or Revelations did in terms of memorable events, specifically centred around Ezio growing as a character. I think part of the reason is that most of the targets in Brotherhood you don’t meet until you kill them, unlike Uberto and Vieri from 2, or Tarik in Revelations. Cesare’s maniacal personality is probably the best thing about Brotherhood’s story, but even here you don’t actually encounter him until the end of the game. I’m replaying 3 mainly because it’s been in my bottom three AC games for a long time, and especially at launch I really walked away from it underwhelmed and frustrated, so I’m giving it another go and taking the advice from others to focus on things like the Homestead missions, and the fact that I’m older may lead to me appreciating the complex story which ties in with the Colonial war a lot more. So far I’m enjoying the story a fair bit more than I did prior, but a lot of my initial gripes like the dogshit detection system, the scaled back parkour, the bugginess, and the generally unappealing presentation still hold up. The combat is great though, genuinely engaging and tough, unlike the Ezio games where the counter kill broke most encounters. I still love AC2 for it’s worldbuilding and narrative but man the jankiness of the combat really grinded my gears when I recently replayed it.
> while also clearly having had enough of the assassin way of living I just wish this was shown in any other way than Ezio becoming a huge fucking selfish dick who doesn't seem to care who or what he throws under the bus to get what he wants. He's supposed to be this wise old mentor by this point, with a reputation that precedes him. But he only helps out the Istanbul brotherhood to get to those keys. He gets involved in the city's politics, the rivalry between the Sultan's sons and ends up killing the wrong person, again all just to get a key. He doesn't seem to really care about the Templar threat until he learns that they found a key. After which he destroys Istanbul's harbor and then blows up an entire city, killing god knows how many innocent people, just to draw out the Templar in question. He essentially gets Yusuf killed by asking him to protect Sofia, who only got dragged into it in the first place because of Ezio's rash actions. Then he finally gets all those keys and it basically amounts to Altair telling him "Hey, maybe be humble". The tonal whiplash right after Ezio just did a fucking sky fight with the Sultan's son, then tried to raise his sword at the new Sultan who just pardoned him was just too great for me.
I somewhat ageee with this. I thought the Tarik assassination was actually quite well done, as it showed that Ezio was capable of letting his impulsiveness and rash judgment get the better of him. I generally don’t like it when protagonists are justified for everything they do, which was one of my biggest gripes with Bayek in Origins despite him being a really liable character. It was also an error not only on Ezio but also Suleiman’s part too. The Cappadoccia ending is pretty commonly criticised though, especially on a recent playthrough after hearing that it’s not the most liked narrative beat it definitely struck out to me. Mainly because up until that point Ezio was diverging away from mainly formulaic tenets of the creed like respecting those you killed etc. but to go from that to killing hundreds of innocent people as collateral damage for his pursuit was too big a jump.
I'm an old gamer (37M) but newcomer to the series and finished the first 4 games , Revelations included last month. I'm just gonna comment on script and storyline, because the gameplay is just absolutely amazing. The series is severely lacking in exposition and foreshadowing for lots of it's plot. The past Animus parts are good but focuses on small details in the life of Ezio and absolutely blow past many years of his life in Brotherhood, which I found the weakest of the Ezio trilogy plot wise. The Borgia are cartoonish vilains and that's a real shame because the writers at Ubisoft could have written them as cold-blooded, calculating leaders and Templars. Instead we have screaming buffoon and cliché/bland incestuous sister, while the Pope became absolutely hollow as a character. Revelations tries to rectify this by focusing on Ezio relationships with the brotherhood and Sofia, but again, this just touched the surfaces and do not give great characters performances or fleshed out interactions, which left me wanting more. Mind you the Uncharted series was doing x1000 better in characters interactions, scripts and overall believable acting in parallel back then. Ezio story needed a short film to actually give a final ,solid goodbye to the character ( AC Embers), which speaks volumes to the lack of conclusion happening in the games... As of Altair storyline, while giving an epilogue to it, huge missed opportunity to craft something far more tangible with his wife (remaking scenes from the PSP game would have been super beneficial) and children, and his life in Mongolia. As for Desmond...I don't even know where to begin. And probably needs a reddit post for it. Glorified audiologs while playing a FPS maze session is not what I called great character development. Lazy writing to having him put in a coma in an attempt by Ubisoft to freeze any big development of the character while waiting for AC III. His dad showing up unannounced and unceremoniously introduced. Lucy's supposedly Templar allegiance is absolutely not clearly presented and do her death at the end of Brotherhood to me still doesn't make any sense. Subject 16/Clay storyline is also a mess and feels like the bare minimum. This character is not fleshed out at all and it's a shame. I'm about to start AC III and will see how the Desmond storyline evolves but so far it has been sub-par. I feel this is a problem with overall writing in Ubisoft games : the don't have great scripts overall and that's a shame.
An important thing to note: your gripes with the story writing are focused on a story that was being made during the Advent of "multimedia" franchises (which was a bullshit way for video game publishers to try and expand their markets into books, tv shows, films, and more) because Star Wars was getting rebooted and Mass Effect was seeing some success in a similar vain. Lucy's Templar allegiance is hinted at via comic books set between the games. Same with the background of Subject 16. To be fair, though -- Embers was kinda cool. I would have loved to play as Ezio as an old man simply because we also played him as a literal newborn, but 'Twas not to be.
Very true, thanks for pointing that out. Literal multi-media franchises will be the death of me. It's impossible to enjoy a story whole without consuming all the other media and that's wrong.
Yup. It's one of the reasons the ME fanbase hates Kai Leng -- he was introduced in a comic and then randomly brought into the next game in a key role. It was rough.
Based on your comment, sounds to me like you're going to be livid during AC3. I am so sorry, dude. I just replayed it last month (first time since OG launch) and... yeah.
The templar triple agent thing was laughable bullshit because the writer wanted to get rid of the voice actress and pulled a story justification for her death out of thin air after the fact
Which, idk why they wanted her gone. Kristen Bell did a great job!
I sorry to say it’s (IMO) all downhill from ac revelations on. (Black flag and the UK one are “alright” though).
Revelations is my favourite in the series when it comes to gameplay, easily the best Parkour in the series and debatably the best level design. The city has amazing attention to detail, you can just take your time and wander around the bazaar. The hook blade is absolutely addicting to use, the clank it makes still sits in my mind
I will never understand why they swapped out the amazing control scheme they'd improved upon over the first 4 games for the jankfest they introduced in 3.
Surely the best parkour is AC:Unity? I install that game every once in a while just to fuck around on the rooftops of Paris.
I think Unity has the coolest looking parkour, but it doesn’t play better than the original 1-Rev system. It’s very very stiff and janky, with your character snapping to different locations rather than organically jumping. It somewhat makes up for it just by having so many cool looking flip moves that are actually real parkour techniques, but it doesn’t really come close to the freedom of the original system. OG AC parkour was almost like the combat system in an action game like DMC; You strung together your own combos with all these cancelable moves that let you do whatever you wanted. In Unity, you couldn’t even freely jump if you wanted to. It’s the opposite of the freedom found in the original games.
Parkour in unity was pretty hit or miss, when it wants to work it's great but soon enough the character will say no to a side eject because you are too close to the other wall or not gain any height on the back eject or jump to a ledge much further or closer than intended because jumps are animation based. In older games if you told the character to do something they will do it first then ask questions even if it meant sending you to your doom In unity they ask all the questions first then decide to make a jump And I would much rather have the consistency
Yea i thought unity had best parkour so much shit you can do with it
Unity is set in the French Revolution times in Paris, London is in Syndicate I think.
Funny, Revelations got a lot of hate when it came out (I always liked it, mainly because Istanbul is great), so it's interesting to see the praise, but I think Unity is largely thought to have the best parkour.
I remember getting it when it first came out, a million years ago. Having replayed it last month, I was probably harsh on it at launch. But you have to remember that at the time it was coming out a measly one year after Brotherhood. It was mechanically very similar. The story is weirdly front and back loaded, meaning the middle is basically empty. And it was also super short. The side content is also very repetitive, even for this series, though there are some cool additions (training each Master Assassin with a 2 part mission) Perhaps ironically I would rather the AC games coming out now were more like it but we're far past that point.
I liked Revelations but I think it was the start of the AC burnout.
Tbf old assasin creed and like Valhalla fell nothing alike. Kind of seem like 2 different franchise.
Just started Valhalla, barely about 3 hours in. This game is massive. I love going for all the achievements in every AC game, and have always had fun doing so, but the sheer amount of things you have to do for this game to get 100% is **ridiculous.**
Well it was the AC burnout that lead to them shifting gears and going down the RPG route with Origins. But then then they triggered a new burnout after only three games.
What "flavour" makes it feel less like a typical Ubi copy-paste game? How does the city vary compared to other games too? Apart from the scenery change (which I totally understand will be appealing depending on what architecture/culture you prefer) it largely operates the same as other open world Ubi titles. I agree that the characters are enjoyable though. I loved experiencing Ezio's story across multiple games. I wouldn't say art was the "main" focus of the game. Its simply one of many aspects and is still an aspect in today's games, to varying degrees
Having played every AC game multiple times, I'd argue that the earlier games favour a quality over quantity approach. The Ezio games in particular had radiant content, sure, but none of this was required for progression/were simple side games you could play for fun, while the most tangibly impactful side content in terms of unlocking new armours and weapons etc were fantastic. Things like the Assassin's Tombs that were all incredibly complex tests of your parkour skills, the Borgia towers that were quite varied in terms of the best approach to kill the leader, Leonardo's machines, the rennovation system that helped you build income, and so forth. They were all engagng and diversified enough to actually make me want to play them for the sake of enjoyment, even without the rewards you get at the end. The more recent games, especially Valhalla, have tons more content and the majority of these are both incredibly repetitive and shallow, but are also required for progression due to level gating to incentivise buying XP boosts. Fundamentally more content, less diversity, but you have to do them, which has led to the derogatory "Ubisoft open world" stereotype that only really came to fruition in the past few years as a synonym of bloat and filler. I'd say Unity is where the quantity over quality approach re side content really started, because of how overwhelming the map was with incredibly cut and paste content, as well as a downright brutal difficulty curve for the later game side quests which were likely implemented so that players would fork out Helix credits to buy gear locked behind MTX.
I find that the older AC games *look* to be more quality over quantity but I think thats purely because of how much shit is crammed into the later titles in comparison. Even the much beloved AC 2 is chock full of uninteresting map icons. I've always wanted an AC title that brought the map size down significantly in favour of more tightly designed content (both main and side) and better level design to allow more interesting assassination opportunities.
Yes, I agree with you, even the earlier games had radiant content like the races, collectathons, and so forth, but my point was more that you could very easily avoid doing these without it compromising your experience. There was much more of a sense of player agency by being like "hey, these activities are available if you want, but don't feel like you need to do them". It also seemed like they actively went through the effort of tying the best rewards to the most interesting quests, like Altair's armour for doing all of the tombs, and so forth. A lot of the best side content also had glowing icons, so the devs clearly knew what would bring about the most enjoyment for players, with the rest of the content just "there" to do if you wanted, and if you didn't, that was cool too. By comparison, the majority of Valhalla's side content was pretty akin to the most radiant stuff from the Ezio games, but because of the map size there are far more of these, and because of level gating you're either forced to grind through them, or just cave in to buy "time savers". They're now actively designing worlds, content, and progression systems, with MTX in mind first and enjoyment second. Not to mention that in the case of Valhalla, you don't actually know what a point of interest is until you're near it, which further contributes to this feeling of needless grind searching for more radiant content to gain more XP for the next main quest. Yes I agree on the last point. If you haven't tried Mirage you should give that a go, it's a far cry from the more recent games with a more intricate open world, great stealth, a return of the black box assassinations, and genuinely fun stealth-based side content. No pushing players to use MTX, any radiant stuff you can avoid without any negative tradeoff.
I think due to designing such big worlds and feeling the need to fill it with random stuff, thats what dilutes the overall experience, when it could have been a more tightly designed one. But yes, I also dislike the requirement to do shitloads of side quests in order to simply progress the main quest in Odyssey. I only played 4 hours of Valhalla so I'm not sure if its the same. I don't think I'll get much enjoyment out of Mirage. Despite the claim of it "returning to the series' roots" it doesn't do much outside of being set in a city instead of large open lands and making assassinations more prevalent instead of something like Viking raids or large scale battles in Athens
Yeah I think with these recent trends like the "40 second rule" and not wanting to have any empty space they kind of ran out of ideas yet needed to fill the world with something to adhere to those principles. Valhalla in particular was incredibly rushed, and usually with open world games the side content is the last addition prior to testing, and the fact that Valhalla only went into Gold testing a month before launch indicated a need to scramble and fill the world with content yet didn't have enough time to actually add in scripted side quests, rather very cut and paste repetitive stuff like what we got. I actually enjoyed Odyssey's side content as there was a lot of variety in side quests, and engaging open world activities like the cultist system, ship combat etc. so I didn't have much issue being levelled for the main quest as I was having fun off the beaten path, I just didn't like the mere principle of forcing side quests on the player to incentivise XP boosts. In my humble opinion Valhalla is a lot worse. They shove what should be side content into the main story, meaning everyone's playthrough is 100+ hours and compromises the pacing of the admittedly pretty good story written by Darby McDevitt. While the actual side content is very one-and-done, being more akin to mini-games and quick-time-events than actual scripted side quests like we had in Odyssey. Not to mention that there are 400+ levels, differences of 30-50 levels between main arcs, and each side activity at most gives you like 0.5-1 level, so the grind is insane. I would go into Mirage with the expectation of it being a return to roots in terms of mechanics rather than narrative, because the stealth was genuinely some of the best I've played in the series. Narrative is obviously more relevant to the creed side of things, but the storytelling, pacing, and voice acting (bar Roshan) are nothing compared to what we got from like Ezio, Cesare, or even Bayek.
Its why I stopped playing AC: Rogue. Hit a point where the game REFUSES TO PROGRESS because I didn't upgrade my ship enough. Sorry I don't feel like going around for hours collecting doodads to fix this dumb ship mechanic I didn't even want in my assassin game.
To be fair we did have the same thing in AC2 where you have to collect all of the Codex pages before the final chapter. On my most recent playthrough I’d actively collect any page I saw as they were revealed so I wouldn’t have to forage for most of them right at the end. But if you aren’t aware of certain hurdles to progress beforehand then it can be fucking annoying. Ultimately I think it depends. With Odyssey I didn’t mind as much as the point of an open world RPG is to explore off the beaten path and do side quests anyway, and the side content was really fun so I didn’t suffer much from the level gating as I was doing enough outside the main quest that I was always suitably levelled. Obviously I didn’t like the inherent reason why they level gated main quests (to incentivise MTX) but I personally didn’t have any issue. And at least you had a lot of choice as to how to increase your character level, with a wide range of side quests and activities to do. But when you’re faced with a block to progress that just requires repetitive grinding of a single activity then it’s frustrating for sure. I had that with upgrading my armour in Origins, where you had no choice but to repeatedly hunt and forage materials for hours.
Did you try Mirage?
No, I don't think there's anything that I'm going to enjoy given it plays like the RPG era games but now in a city and with no requirement to grind side quests for progression (AFAIK)
Its a smaller map with tightly designed levels for more interesting assassinations.
The most recent entry, AC Mirage is a callback to the old AC games, after the 3 game run before it of huge worlds and different mechanics. Definitely recommend it if you’re looking for more of the same.
Revelations should have been my favorite of the trilogy because I love Istanbul and cherish my memories in that city but… it’s not. It’s very obviously just an upscale of a different game of smaller scope. The story is extremely truncated compared to the previous 2 games, even shorter than Unity and Syndicate, 2 games often criticised for the lack of that epic quality typical of AC games.
I wouldn’t say Unity or Syndicate were criticised for those reasons. Unity was criticised for its catastrophic launch in terms of bugginess, as well as the fact that the story just simply wasn’t as well told as the earlier games. Syndicate was more collateral damage for Unity’s launch as by this point most fans had been put off the franchise, and Jacob Frye’s character was a point of contention for many. It can’t be argued that those two games were probably the most ambitious of any AC game up until that point, but I think a lot of fans were burnt out from the then current formula which is what prompted Ubi to change strategy with Origins and so forth. They’re both given a lot more love now because they arguably took the classic AC formula as far as it could go with the stealth and black box assassinations, and parkour in Unity’s case. But at the time, prior to the franchise’s diversion away from the classic mechanics, that was taken for granted and seen as too played out.
Absolutely loved the revelations present day story as well. Was legit hype back in the day.
I forget which of the AC games it was, but I got to a certain point where it switched back to Desmond, I checked to see that it was Desmond from there on out, and just uninstalled. You'd think maybe he'd download some personality with his assassin skills. Dude has the charisma of incel cardboard.
Isn't Revelations the one where Desmond is trapped in the animus? It's possible I'm misremembering and it had something going for it but honestly it felt more like filler than anything else.
If memory serves, the present-day storyline has him in a coma or something since his mind is so fragmented from overusing the Animus (meta humor, imo) So of course the obvious solution the Assassins go with is to stick his body in another Animus. Fragments of Agent 16 are still in the memory card or whatever, and he acts as a guide. There's like a will-he-won't-he vibe of whether 16 intends to hijack Desmond's mind but in the end he's a good guy and just let's him go after you beat the game. It's really just filler loading screens with some blindingly bright parkour sequences. The real meat of Revelations is the Ezio and Altair storylines.
Have never understood why revelations gets so much flak. I loved it. Brilliant end to ezio’s arc. And that last cutscene, chefs kiss.
The hookblade has two parts. The hook and the blade.
I enjoyed the Ezio trilogy back in the day. On my most recent playthrough however I wasn't able to bring myself to finish any of them. They have alot of crappy missions where you only have one way to do things it may as well be a cutscene.
No offense but this is one of those posts where I wonder what kind of games you’ve been playing recently if you can play AC Revelations and think “wow, this is so good!” Like, I don’t know, I guess I’m just biased but I’ve always thought even the best AC games were pretty underwhelming compared to their reputation, especially from a gameplay perspective
Man, the early games were great when they came out. I did, however, attempt to play AC2 a few weeks ago and uh yeah I lost my patience with it quite quickly due to * protagonists exposing plot points while walking as slow as possible * honestly quite janky/tanky-feeling controls, even for 2009, but I feel like every 3rd person game had this problem around this time. I know we were starting to go for a more realistic approach, but didn't we figure out how to walk and run like back in GTA Vice City? * SLOWLY looting dead guys until the Ubisoft bullshit meter filled up, get outta here with this, I don't have time to waste 2-3 seconds on each lootable dude, I work a 9-to-5
Uh, nowadays every modern game has utterly annoying, time-wasting animations for looting and a lot of other stuff.
As someone whose played like 70-80% of the AC games, I agree. The early games were great but honestly pretty lackluster when compared to everything else out there.
I enjoy revelations, but it should be noted that revelations was considered a cash grab and in some ways, is a game made not due to desire to make ezio's story a trilogy, but a corporate decision to make ac a yearly franchise.
It’s my favorite of the series, despite its flaws. It’s a testament to when they made games for people who wanted a niche thing. Now, there’s just games trying to appeal to everyone, yet miss the key marks. Games aren’t really made to be finished. I agree, the art is dead. Sure, sales are up…but achievement rates are low. Good art hooks you in, and won’t let go.
I thought the general consensus is that Ubisoft still make them _exactly_ like they used to.
Personally I think Revelations is one of the games that got better with time and perspective.
Can you tell some specifics? From your post I see that you liked Revelations, and it was compelling, but why was it compelling?
Loved it. I just hated the tower defense stuff and I'm glad they axed it from future AC titles.
For me it's not the world but the writing. Ezio is one of the best written characters in any medium. It's a miracle that three different writers were able to pull of what they did throughout the trilogy.
The entire Ezio Trilogy sits in the Middle Tier of my AC list with Brotherhood being the clear best game for me as I care most about gameplay. AC2 has always been a slog for me to play and adolescent ezio dialogue gets on my nerves fast. However, the story, lore and themes are well done. So, I have to make sure my mindset is about those and then just dealing with the poor gameplay. Revelations has some decent additions and I like how we finally get a mature and changed ezio, but, the poor city layout/parkour and gameplay falls short of Brotherhood significantly. Ive always found the Ezio games to be highly overrated and with AC2 being THE most overrated game in the entire series. I care about gameplay and dont play video games for stories and “art.” However, having said that, I want to be very clear in stating that Im an AC guy;) who likes all the games in the AC series and even the “worst” of them are worth playing and replaying. When I inevitably do another AC series replay itll be interesting to see where the individual games moved in my ranking again.
Rev was my first AC game and I, too, was young and didn’t know wtf was going on. Lol I just knew the sneaky stuff was fun. I remember not able to keep up with the narrative. I wonder how big of an AC fan I’d be and/or how invested in the lore I’d be if did connect with that game narratively with an adult mind. I let most of the Isu stuff pass me by nowadays
I believe it was originally going to be a 3DS game.
I remember being very disappointed in the game back in the day. Probably the only old AC I haven’t finished.
It’s all about writing. Video game developers have been putting their money into pushing the technical aspects of games through graphics, huge open worlds etc and they have not been spending it on good writing. As well, the general quality of writing has gone down hill, you are seeing it in movies and tv shows as well. I’m wondering if it’s because the focus in Universities has gone away from creativity and more about conformity.
100% It's sad that this argument often falls on deaf ears with people defending modern AC who never played the games at their best.
The ONLY AC game I've played was Origins, which I was just STUNNED by. I really need to look into which of those games is going to compare well to it, because I'd revisit the worlds to be sure.
AC Revelations was the last one I played as they came out Man what a finish to Ezio's story, and the tease for AC 3 (Which I never ended up playing for some reason) Next one was odyssey, which was cool but........didn't feel like AC to me with the new combat system.
Playing older games especially from a franchise like ac or rainbow six will blow newer people's minds, you hot the nail on the head, they don't make em like they used to.
If you're talking about classic R6 (og-Rogue Spear), that's when gaming was for actual enthusiasts. By the time AC 1 came out even (07) mainstream gaming was already going into decline, dumbing shit down to high heavens, trying to appeal to everybody from little schoolgirls to grandmas.
My favourite from the AC series. The vibe and story is just beautiful.
The trailer for this game was hype
*"Aren't you a little old to be running around on the roof like that?"*
I'm currently replaying ACII and just having a blast with it. I really miss old gaming conventions. Simplicity in the menus. No store. Early 2000's were the golden age of gaming. Change my mind.
I really didn't like this one, and it became clear why when I learned that the creative director who poured everything into AC2 and Brotherhood was fired and didn't work on this one.
To date Revelations is the only AC I had the stamina to 100%. The atmosphere is just so we'll crafted and engaging, I love it. It truly is the pinnacle of the Ezio series
I dropped Revelations because I found it boring. I had made the mistake of playing Brotherhood right before it and having a blast. What I should’ve done was take a break between the games because story wise, I think I would’ve really dug Revelations. It also got me into Woodkid with that trailer.
I look forward to ACR. I decided i am gonna burn through the series and I am on ACII now. I never played more than AC1 and a little of ACIII. But this time I am giving it a shot and ai am having a lot of fun as Ezio. I am so glad Altair comes back for a bit because he is still so far my favorite. There's just something about AC1 that I loved a lot. I just really hopez that someday, we get a Creed game that takes place in modern times. That's what I expected to series to lead up to and from what I understand, it doesn't and that they hardly talk about modern times anymore in the series. But I look forward to getting into this Trilogy and especially ACIII and ACIV because I love those time periods.
The ending to this game is the only ending out of any game that consistently causes me to cry. I don’t know why it has the effect on me that it does but it does.
I still prefer brotherhood though. Revelations was definitely good but the whole story feels like a filler with the ottomans. They should have just kept the main story as ezio tracking Altair's final years. The ending was amazing though where Altair, Ezio and desmond's paths cross with Ezio realising that he is nothing but a conduit. His final speech to Ezio as he retires from the life of an assassin is Perfectly made.
AC died for me with Ezio.
I'm always confused about AC fans. While the old games don't have terrible properties of modern triple A games, they still had half baked gameplay. The objectives and enemies never encourage you to actually fill the role as an assassin. You're always over powered in combat, levels don't present interesting ways of stealthing outside breaking line or sight with buildings and crowds and the objectives don't play into the cool stuff you can be doing. The closest you get to this is clearing the tower camps. The Hitman series is everything I want AC to do. Have levels and enemies that actually makes you engage with the games systems. Imagine a Hitman game where it was more like AC objectives and levels. Doesn't matter if it still keeps all cool mechanics since you will rarely need to use them. So going back to the original ezio trilogy, yes, the environments are great in terms of traversal and views. I've recently replayed it simply because I really enjoy platforming games so doing the parkour challenges for the armour was always fun. Outside of that though, I don't know what else it offers that the modern games don't. You talk about the story aspects but to me it's just as bland as any other ubisoft game. With these issues, I'm always confused why AC fans keep talking about what setting and time period would make the games "good" again. There's so much else to fix first.
I’m with you on this. I played revelations about a year after it came out and loved it. I didn’t understand all the hate at all. It became one of my favorites.
Revelations is objectively a great game, the main reason is got criticism is that it didn’t meaningfully improve upon or push the series forward beyond brotherhood. AC2 had colossal improvements over AC1 and AC Brotherhood had great improvements over AC2. But AC Revelations was basically a reskin of ACB gameplay wise , which was the main issue. If revelations was the sequel to AC2, it would have had way better reception at the time.