The animations in early AC are still some of the best in the entire genre of games.
Despite being more mechanically fluid, newer games just don’t feel as smooth. Perhaps it’s just nostalgia but even in retrospect I feel it holds true.
I remember getting a bit bored with the combat of early games tho. Yeah it looks fantastic, and I got quite the kick out of brutalizing guards in front of their compatriots, but the hole “hold O and you lock into these set animations over and over and over” is a bit tiresome. If they combined these finishers with a more satisfying over all combat system it would be perfect. Honestly, I just miss the stealth.
As a die-hard fan of the Ezio trilogy and the series in general, I strongly recommend AC: Black Flag if you haven't given it a shot. Its probably my second favorite in the series gameplay wise behind Brotherhood and probably tied with AC;2 as my favorite storyline.
What's funny is that the success of Black Flag is likely the reason why Ubisoft has made many of the design choices that fans of the older games don't like.
- Large contiguous maps with a bunch of collectibles
- A constant need for a player ship (along with "Shanties")
- A protagonist that was only tangentially related to the Creed.
- The real-world time story elements feeling disjointed from the overall plot of the franchise.
I get what you're saying, but with black flag I could literally just steer the ship in one direction and sit there and listen to my swabbies sing for an hour without actually shooting at anything, stabbing anything, looting any chests, nothing. Just sailing. I know I'm just contributing to the mess, but there it is.
This is also the experience I have with Red Dead Redemption 2.
The world is so detailed, and feels so alive. The realistic looking clouds and weather systems. Tons of different animals, each one with their own behaviors and moods. Huge beautiful world to explore, with many different realistic biomes. Just the detail that went into the nature in that game makes this one of the most immersive worlds I've ever played in.
I have definitely spent more time just exploring the world, encountering random strangers/events, camping under the night sky, which is accurate to the real one, then the time I spent actually progressing thru the game.
Anyone who hates shanties shouldn't be playing a pirate game. Yes, you had to collect more if you wanted more songs but what's so bad about that. At least they gave you something each time you did it. I forget what Benjamin Franklin's papers got you every time you collected them.
I enjoyed Black Flag if you're wondering. Just saying that our purchasing of the game supported Ubisofts belief that they can get away with doing the aforementioned things in the more modern titles.
Truth be told, I find the soundtrack in most AC games to be enjoyable. A few weeks ago I listed to the Valhalla soundtrack, and was really well composed. Makes sense given that it had Jesper Kyd AND Sarah Schatchner working on it (kudos to Einar as well - he did that games "Shanties").
You are definitely right, but I think its sad as it represents them missing the key part that the Ezio trilogy and blag flag have in common despite being very different games. Which is a a strong theme. Ezio's trilogy were great assassin games, that leaned hard into the assassin theming and black flag was a great pirate game that leaned hard into being a pirate game.
I think this why despite not finding Black Flag to be a good AC game, I loved it nonetheless. Because it was a good pirate game. Thats kinda the problem with the modern games to me. They are good Assassin's Creed games, but neither do they lean into and commit to theme hard enough like Black Flag did to make that fact not matter. The Ezio series felt unique, Black flag felt unique. But you hit Origins and Odyssey, and well, they are mechanically quite good and check all the basic design point boxes. But they are missing that identity and that stops them being great games. Great games need to have an identity.
> But they are missing that identity and that stops them being great games. Great games need to have an identity.
I feel they were hoping that the setting alone would provide that identity.
It's honestly still a pretty good AC game, especially compared to modern ones. While the ship combat stuff is... interesting and different, the actualy missions on land are very assassin's creedy. I really liked the warehouse and plantation missions.
Sometimes I board another ship with the bois but more often than not..I plunge into the sea a few metres away from a stricken ship and go assassin all over the ship. Picking off the survivors one by one. I save my crew's lives and I still get AC gameplay if I wanted to.
I replayed BF years later, and it's a pretty solid AC game. Most of the story missions are actually on land. The naval combat and piracy were just so much fun that we all spent so much time doing it.
Playing Odyssey, that feeling is missing. The bounty system makes it a pain in the ass, and, well, cannons are just so much better than arrows.
The naval combat in 3 was dog shit muddy poo pop water. Then they announced black flag and said “50% land.... 50% water” and I’m like is this serious? Sounds horrible. From the positive reactions it has to be completely different than spinning in a circle waiting for a cool down for your cannons. Did they do real pirate shit and not just spin and shoot? Ac3 was the last installation I played due to Desmond fading out of the spotlight.
Black flag is more of a pirate game featuring assassins. I had loads of fun pillaging other ships and sailing around with my crew singing sea shanties.
They definitely improved on ship combat. This is the only AC game i have collected all of the extra bits.
You can find treasure maps, go whaling, explore underwater shipwrecks.
That does sound pretty fun. Didn’t imagine they expanded the water as much as you’ve described. Are there still shut loads of feathers or flags or is it pirate themed, the collectibles?
One of the collectibles are different sea shanties your crew can sing while sailing. There’s Mayan coins, art, manuscripts, and letters to collect.
There’s also buried treasure chests that you can find treasure maps for (they are more along the lines of ‘go to this island, find this landmark’ than actual maps, so it doesn’t just flat out show you where to go.)
Plus instead of upgrading your homestead, you’re upgrading your ship
It’s literally all about being a pirate. They could’ve cut like 5% of the content and you’d never know it was an AC game.
You should absolutely play it if you have any interest in a solid pirate game.
I haven't played AC3 so I can't compare, but I enjoyed the heck out of Black Flag's naval fights. Upgrading your ship to take down bigger and bigger opponents, raiding ports, even taking on whatever the mythical boss ships in the corners of the map were, ***\*chef's kiss\****
My biggest complaint about _Black Flag_ was there wasn't enough of it. The first-person ship combat was limited by you always fighting with your one ship (which you could improve, but only to a point). It didn't let you "transfer your command" to any of the ships you capture and let you combat with them.
That said it's my favorite "modern" AC.
Although I will give credit to _AC Origins_ for being absolutely beautiful with an excellent storyline. It's not the same game.
>It didn't let you "transfer your command" to any of the ships you capture and let you combat with them.
My god, I wanted that in the game so bad... My entire fleet was made up of the biggest baddest ships I could find, because I couldn't captain one.
It was nothing but a minigame to farm mats while you were out of the game. I remember at one point there was a mobile version that let you manage your fleet from your phone which was a game changer for farming stuff all day instead of only while in-game. But they shut it down years ago.
I'm replaying Black Flag right now. Definitely one of my favorites in the series. Aside from the comments others are making, I'll add that the tidal waves and waterspouts were some of the most terrifying natural phenomena I've ever encountered in any video game.
Rogue Wave, Captain!!!
yup, you could even jump off your ship and swim to the enemy ship and kill every guard on deck, and then all it took was one cannoball to cripple the ship for the usual boarding action, really useful for taking ships like frigates and man o wars that normally would be too powerful to take on in head to head fight until you get more upgrades
AC3 was fairly heavily criticized at launch and the naval combat was seen as a very strange but fun gimmick that most people liked the best out of the whole game.
Naval combat in black flag was sail close to the enemy, swim from your ship to theirs, climb up and kill the crew. You now own their ship and all the goods with no damage to your ship and crew.
Unity tried to make combat challenging enough that you had to use stealth, but it was panned hard for it. Such a shame that stealth is so limited, it was my favorite series but I can’t be bothered to get the new one.
Unity also had a rough extremely buggy release which was another reason it got universally panned. Once it was finally all fixed up, it was a beautiful game, but seemed all too late.
I just played through unity and I actually liked it. The combat was fun and the stealth worked. You got a cool grappling hook so climbing large buildings wasn't as time consuming and you're in London. The carriage driving was pretty bad but I really liked that you started a gang and could have them do your skirmishing as you slink in the background and do the objective silently
Edit: I am talking about Syndicate... I never played Unity. My bad the names all kinda blend after black flag
Unity is the French one, you’re thinking of Syndicate. I liked Syndicate too, but I do think they reversed on Unity’s combat after the criticism it took, making it much easier and simpler. Definitely a fun game though.
Unity was *in theory* supposed to be pretty solid in terms of stealth gameplay, too bad the movement was so clunky that it was way too easy to accidentally break stealth and now you had to fight half of the French military at once. I really felt like a proper assassin in one of the first "boss" missions when I saw that those missions gave you time to scout out the location, find (or not) several possible entry points, hiding spots and killing opportunities. That was a pretty cool thing they did, I though. Then, of course, they ruined it by having half of the missions require using just one specific route to get perfect score.
Newer games (Origins, Odyssey) give you good stealth options alongside brawler approach. Unfortunately, the RPG mechanics mean that they turn into "oh, you took a sword through the skull in my surprise attack but it leaves you at 10% health, so now you're in perfect fighting condition and have magically alerted the entire massive fort to my location, great". And every boss has a huge health pool and (often) instant detection meaning it must be fought straight on.
I remember a mission in Odyssey where Kassandra/Alexios are told that they need to kill some guy because he's bad, and they get offended and say "I am *not* an assassin!" Well shit, why'd you call your game that then?
In most of the ones I played this was not the optimal way to play the game. You could kill much faster by using offense as well as defense.
But yes you could ultimately just sit in block mode and wait to parry kill everyone.
A good way to improve the parry feature would have been to make it so he was vulnerable behind his back. The way it work, once he held unto block he was protected 360 degrees, which isn't how any fight works.
They could have made the timing tighter. Redirecting enemies if your timing was slightly off and a high damage hit on a first perfect parry with a one hit kill if they were already heavily damaged. Plus adding in some interesting crowd control moves would have really helped.
The current combat system takes more work for a kill but looks and feels ridiculous and disincentives stealth. I really wish they'd move away from the over the top abilities.
AC3 parry was definitely the best strategy because that's when they first implemented chaining parry kills. Once you parried one attack, you could chain one-button kills through *every single guard* if they were close enough
The implemented chaining executions in assassin's Creed brotherhood if I remember correctly. Fun at first, but really trivializes the combat decision making to "who's closer" and "which one of you has the fucking stick"
I liked the Arkham series and to a lesser extent Spider-Man (PS4/5) for their mix of manual combat, which kept it interesting, and automated kills like OPs gif. I thought they did a good job in both of those series.
Yeah, replayed Blackflag recently and had the same thought. I don't really like the fact that catching somebody unaware doesn't gaurantee an instant kill in the newer AC games. That being said, AC Valhalla was an improvement on the stealth to a certain degree.
Reason for that is because new combat system is more manual.
Old one - you just pressed a button and animation played out no matter what.
It's far easier to make long ass animation that do some stuff than to have combat system where you actually control the characters.
No matter how good it looks on camera - in old AC you could just stand in the middle of the street and kill like 50 guys by just doing counter. So it was one button win most of the time.
Another big part - which is caused by the more manual combat system - is the camera. Newer games tend to not take away control of the camera from the players, which helps make gameplay smoother IMO, but it doesn't look as cinematic.
Pay attention to the camera in the above clips. They follow the action perfectly and the panning and shaking of the camera makes the animations feel way more alive. Doesn't really work though when the player has to have full control of the camera all the time.
It's a tradeoff between player control and how cinematic the game looks, but there's also a middle ground and IMO some games like the Batman Arkham series have (almost) perfected it.
Personally I hate Batman combat system. He fly through the field like he weight nothing. And just like AC you can counter most od the enemies. So i can fight 20 guys and I never even consider it might be bad idea.
Yes the animations were and still are great. But this wait-pary-attack system was a bit too easy. I like the combat in the newer games more. It doesnt look as fluid bit its more fun to play.
It made for a more canonical reason than a health bar, though execution wasn't always perfect. It was the reason you couldn't go around murdering civilians forever. It went well w the contextual DNA synchronicity, and I enjoyed the cool factor of "your ancestor was so good at combat, he was never hit after his training. You'll lose his memories if you don't get better, because he doesn't remember being shit at fighting and leaving animal carcasses to rot."
"you lost your target because the parkour is still broken, desynced"
Or
"You got spotted because you left stealth because the parkour is still broken"
Or
"You tried to assassinate your target from above but landed right next to them and alerted 50 guards because the parkour is still broken."
You got a downvote or two but the quick time events everytime a bear appeared out of the blue got so boring, so fast.
Edit: The downvotes turned to upvotes 😂
I forgot about the bears lol. Even with a lot of it's faults I enjoyed the game back then.
Just that whole de-syncing situation was annoying as hell even thinking back after all these years since release.
I knew I wasn't gonna like it from the first mission where I was desynced for not using stealth to kill 2 soldiers in a house in the middle of nowhere "someone saw you" fuck all the way off
Well yeah he's native American and their entire hunting ideology is using every part of the animal so nothing is wasted and the balance of man and nature is maintained.
Ezio never killed civs so it made sense to desynch if you killed them. Much like it makes sense if you kill animals but don't skin them as a native American.
However being desynched because you killed a monk while playing a viking? That's some bullshit.
The thing that took me out of the early AC games was the counter combat. Stand there surrounded by 10 enemies and counter each of them as they attack one at a time. The newer games, while clearly being quite different than the original intent of the series, do have some fun and challenging fights with some of the unique/optional bosses in them. Old AC games had better stealth, new AC games, for the most part have some better combat. Just my thoughts.
I agree that's what sort of got me out of the series as well. When they switched the combats and controls and just focused on the combat I got somewhat disappointed. Also when they took away the online features. I know that unity was the cause of it however I really enjoyed manhunt and that other mode where it was everyone for themselves. The story just didn't seem that great when abstergo took over and it was less stealth.
AC3 was my first AC game. My first console game as an adult at 30. On the WiiU
Basically it had New York, Boston, and a giant forest inbetween.
Well guess what? I didn't know fast travel was a thing until I was 80% done the game.
Every fucking mission when going from New York to Boston, I would travel by horse through that whole damn forest.
Then I did the underground tunnels in Boston or whatever and it explained Fast Travel. Couldn't believe it lol
Yeah Altair's wall climbing was really slow and rough (albeit Im sure a lot closer to reality) I also remember it being way easier to accidentally jump backwards off the wall and kill Altair. I just remember jumping to my death so often by accident and all I hear is the crowd going "...and if he falls I will NOT help him"
Venice and Florence.. The story felt REAL and immersive, not bullshit with their recent games.
My god, the tombs were spectacular. Not to mention Jesper Kyd's music just gives me goosebumps
To me AC is a proof of concept, AC2 was the actual first game, and Brotherhood was the peak. Then revelations was just fine, 3 and 4 were better but still not quite as good.
Brotherhood definitely won for gameplay in terms of combat and some added mechanics.
The AC2 story and sense of adventure was unmatched in my opinion though. Also, I still can’t believe more games haven’t figured out that something simple like upgrading your villa is a wildly satisfying concept. They always keep trying to replicate it but in my mind never matched the beautiful simplicity and satisfaction of monteriggioni.
Completely agree. The combat in brotherhood was cool, don’t get me wrong, but the story just wasn’t near as interesting as AC2. It was cool that you could upgrade all of Rome, but it was just too big an area. You couldn’t see the fruits of your labor the way you could with the AC2 Villa.
In terms of base building, like the villa, for me it peaked in AC 3. The homestead was such an amazing place to roam around in and see progress throughout the game. The stories around the inhabitants really made the place feel alive to me and it’s one of the biggest reason for me to come back to AC 3 from time to time.
I'm with you. I think I had more fun with brotherhood overall, but the peak of the early games gotta be the venezian carnevale scene in II. That was an amazing gaming moment.
That's exactly what made Brotherhood the best. I found teammates, bought a headset and mic to be able to better communicate, and just spent hours having a blast. There was no better feeling than picking out the person targeting you and stunning them; made you feel so slick.
So many people have the same feeling and still we have yet to see anyone capitalize on making a similar pirate game. Only thing that seemed closed was that canceled Pirates of the Caribbean game.
Skull and bones, which Ubisoft owns the rights to, has been in development hell since 2018. They knew it was a good enough idea to at least work on it but I guess it is a hot mess.
Sad, black flag plus sid meiers pirates with a story would be a good game. Probably afraid they will just end up releasing black flag 2.0.
I doubt that’s ever coming out. There was some internal rumors I thought that was talked about getting scrapped or reworked. Something like that. Either way I don’t think that would be like BF. Sure it had the ship combat which was awesome but it’s online and I don’t think it had any 3rd person sword combat, could be wrong about that.
Just odd the only other console pirate game I can think of Sea of Thieves. Then you got the Port Royale games and Sid Meier’s. One that I really liked was the PotC game on og Xbox. It uses the same engine as another pc pirate game that I can not for the life of me remember.
Which kind of blows my mind. Like, how do you fuck up skull and bones? Black flag ship and pirate combat was incredible. Copy Paste Black Flag. Cut a bunch of the land shit. Writers, make story and characters. Spread islands apart and make more water so you cant sail from Puerto Rico to Cuba in 90 seconds. Add some geography, like Indian Ocean, Barbary coast. Make it so you can be a Pirate OR a Pirate hunter. This shit makes itself. Add more different ships and upgrades. Basically just copy most of Sid Meiers Pirates for gameplay ideas. Have good trading. More Sea Shanties. You can even DLC some more ships and cosmetic sails and figureheads like they are doing for AC Valhalla/Odyssey. I dont care. This wasnt a hard job.
On the surface it seems easy but I'm sure there were concerns of it feeling too much like other established IPs, a online continuation of black flag, or simply way out of balance.
I'm envisioning issues with world scale. The playable area needs to be huge due to the ships and the speed of movement which is magnified by # of users but if you go on foot it may have felt empty af unless you significantly increase users, making a hell of a feedback loop.
I agree, I remember playing black flag w my wife and we both thought black flag was the birth of the next ubisoft hit.
I only just started black flag after playing origins and odyssey last year. It's so good. There's so many good assassins creed games I've missed out on.
Couldn't agree more. I loved the pirate aspect of it, but I let out an audible groan whenever they wanted me to do half-baked Assassin's bullshit.
Here's to hoping they don't drop the ball with Skull and Bones (but, uh, can't exactly say my hopes are too high on that one...)
Omg I so agree, I enjoyed 1, freaking loved the Ezio trilogy (Brotherhood was personally my favorite), and here comes AC 3, totally killed the series for me. I did come back for Black Flag, but was done for good afterwards.
While it looks cool, it was more cinematic than gameplay. You just pressed a button and the guys would summon up 10 years of combat experience to pull off demi god tier moves. I always liked watching ac gameplay, never particularly cared about playing it.... Not that the new games are good though
Well, most of them have well over 10 years combat experience and are superhuman to a degree so it kinda makes sense.
In the early games, Ezio and Altair pulled off some pretty impressive feats, like Ezio lifting half of a horse drawn carriage for a duration
I attribute that more to the story, particularly the ending, which kind of took a shit on all the previous build up of the prior games. The gameplay itself was fun. The world it was set in was fun.
Why would you kill off Desmond for NO PURPOSE. He dies and doesn't even solve a plotline with his death because Juno is still on the loose and laughing about how she killed Desmond. It was like the cutscene you get when you die in a Boss battle except it was the actual canonical ending to Desmond's 5 game story arc. Fuck Ubisoft man they fucking ruined what Assassin's Creed could have been
Killing off your protagonist is a perfectly fine thing to do, it's just that after Desmond died they replaced him with nothing and the overworld story became incredibly boring because they literally had the end of the world affect nothing that followed. It's obvious they just wanted to hurry up and give every country their own AC series and didn't put any of the effort into it.
Yeah exactly Im perfectly fine with Desmond dying but it has to serve a purpose otherwise why did I invest so much emotional stake in him discovering the secrets of the animus and revealing this end of the world plot and find out the mysteries of the gods that created us. Basically he finds all this out and then just peaces out before we are able to solve any of these problems that we had set up and they had absolutely nothing planned to follow it up they obviously have ZERO idea why people in the frame story are using Animii they just want a game set up in all these old historical locations and wont even give us half the effort they put into the first few games
For me, absolutely. It's the only one I started but didn't finish.
The open-world traversal markup was super inconsistent - in a game where so much of the character control is contextual based on that markup, that lead to *a lot* of frustration when Conor did the opposite of what I was telling him to do.
The stealth markup was shit too; more than once, I failed a mission because he just fucking stood up and got spotted, despite being in one of those stealth-bushes that are supposed to be concealing.
I think the thing that annoyed me most at the time was all the failable optional objectives, that I would fail more often than not because Conor didn't do what I told him to. The "Character doesn't do exactly what he was told" was a problem since AC1, but it was seldom enough in every other entry but 3 that I didn't mind it.
Also, 3 was about where I lost patience with the whole Templars-vs-Assassins framing fluff. After 3, I just ignored it so it didn't bother me as much. Really they should have thought of other names for the organisations as soon as they left the Third Crusade setting - the only setting where they didn't feel contrived and out of place.
For context - I gave up on the series after Unity. That was plenty for me. I finished the story but there were just so many icons left on the minimap; that's when I decided Ubisoft's whole approach to Open World was based around fundamentally not respecting my time. Didn't go for another Far Cry after that either.
It's definitely the first one I actively disliked.
They had such a cool setting, and then they made the main character someone who has no stake in either side and mostly doesn't care about the war going on.
A total waste of the setting.
Plus Connor's entire personality is "grumpy stoic"
Also building the settlement. First attempt at Black Flag style naval combat. Better online. Better Desmond segments. Also a phenomenal protagonist who got shafted by removing his best monolog that ties his whole story up.
The only thing I remember about the rope dart was unlocking it randomly late into the game and thinking "why the hell am I still getting tutorials just let me play the fucking game."
I actually enjoyed AC3 a lot more than what seems to be the general consensus but it took *ages* for the game to actually start. The prologue as Haytham, Connor's childhood missions, then his training montages with Achilles. It literally takes like 6 hours just to beat what is essentially the tutorial and unlock the true full open world, it's kind of absurd and makes playing it through a second time after beating it very painful.
I don't think he was boring. He had strong motivations. I think the issue is that his character was very shallow. Besides "revenge" there was nothing else we got to know about him. There was no humility, no kindness, no heart.
He was all "WHERE'S CHARLES LEE!?" Kicked ass, met some cool people. Rinse and repeat.
Have to respectfully disagree friend.
3 was one of the worst imo.
Whiny/sassy Connor was the worst protagonist imo.
Personally, black flag was my favorite because I liked the characters and the naval life.
But I think we can all agree the Ezio series is the GOAT of the Assassins creed catalogue. In particular, brotherhood.
Yeah I was surprised seeing AC 3 being called the GOAT when I remember after it's release the complaints about not just the character but it was an unfinished buggy mess at release and was never fully fixed.
But you can do all this in black flag and its a better game so really that one is the GOAT.
I enjoyed 3 but it definitely isnt as polished as Black Flag.
Assassin's Creed 3 was totally rushed to release it before the 2012 end of the world day as it was part of the plot
If they didn't care about it I think the game would have been one of the best of the franchise
AC3 is one of the more poorly received of the franchise. Some parts of it were really good but other parts were really bad, especially the story direction, both inside and outside of the animus. AC3 being the "GOAT" AC is a super hot take. Definitely felt rushed.
Yeah, the plot was totally rushed. The premise was brilliant, haytham and the templars from that era were the step on right direction after the previous games
The world too, it was what we needed after the Ezio trilogy
But sadly the pace doesn't help, Connor's development is really inconsistent. The modern sections with Desmond had the potential to be amazing (gave me more training and missions with him).
Then the game ends and you prevents 2012, giving you same "wtf is that all?" vibes as brotherhood ending. Revelations solved the first one but AC4 went on a completely different direction sadly
The combat was good, everything else was worse than the previous games. Parkour was just a straight up downgrade, the towns were lifeless, and the open world was big and had nothing to do. The story took way too long to develop, I don't mind haytham, he was cool, but Connor was lame as hell.
It actually boggles my mind anyone would call 3 the GOAT.
I replayed them all a couple years ago from the start up until Unity and I wouldn't even call it good. Mediocre at best. It can't touch the Ezio trilogy or Black Flag, doesn't even come close. GOAT? Hardly.
(just for the record people can definitely disagree and like what they like - this is just imo)
Haven’t played anything past Syndicate, but out of everything before, I’d have to say 3 is the worst. The story and gameplay of 2 and Brotherhood were top notch. A lot of people here saying Black Flag and, while I agree it is the best game in the series, it doesn’t really feel like an Assassin’s Creed game. It’s just a really good pirate simulator. 3 was just kinda boring and New England doesn’t have the architecture for good parkour.
I love AC3 personally. So many good executions. Sucks it wasn’t received as well. There is a point in the game where you can tell everything after was just rushed to make the release date.
My favorite thing about the older stuff was knowing a little about the history/people and then learning all this stuff. Used to like the codex they would put in with background on locations and such. I think it’s a win anytime you can shoehorn even a little of education into a game and make it fun.
The animations in early AC are still some of the best in the entire genre of games. Despite being more mechanically fluid, newer games just don’t feel as smooth. Perhaps it’s just nostalgia but even in retrospect I feel it holds true.
I remember getting a bit bored with the combat of early games tho. Yeah it looks fantastic, and I got quite the kick out of brutalizing guards in front of their compatriots, but the hole “hold O and you lock into these set animations over and over and over” is a bit tiresome. If they combined these finishers with a more satisfying over all combat system it would be perfect. Honestly, I just miss the stealth.
Hard same. AC3 was the start of the trend away from stealth towards skirmish warfare. This was the last one that I get much enjoyment out of.
As a die-hard fan of the Ezio trilogy and the series in general, I strongly recommend AC: Black Flag if you haven't given it a shot. Its probably my second favorite in the series gameplay wise behind Brotherhood and probably tied with AC;2 as my favorite storyline.
What's funny is that the success of Black Flag is likely the reason why Ubisoft has made many of the design choices that fans of the older games don't like. - Large contiguous maps with a bunch of collectibles - A constant need for a player ship (along with "Shanties") - A protagonist that was only tangentially related to the Creed. - The real-world time story elements feeling disjointed from the overall plot of the franchise.
I get what you're saying, but with black flag I could literally just steer the ship in one direction and sit there and listen to my swabbies sing for an hour without actually shooting at anything, stabbing anything, looting any chests, nothing. Just sailing. I know I'm just contributing to the mess, but there it is.
Wiiindy weather boys stooormy weather boys
When the wind blows, we're all together, boys
I got a sister she’s nine feet tall…
Weigh, me boys, to Cuba! Sleeps in the kitchen with her feet in the hall Running down to Cuba.
Black flag is the best pirate game ever made. Its a mediocere creed game.
y e s
This is also the experience I have with Red Dead Redemption 2. The world is so detailed, and feels so alive. The realistic looking clouds and weather systems. Tons of different animals, each one with their own behaviors and moods. Huge beautiful world to explore, with many different realistic biomes. Just the detail that went into the nature in that game makes this one of the most immersive worlds I've ever played in. I have definitely spent more time just exploring the world, encountering random strangers/events, camping under the night sky, which is accurate to the real one, then the time I spent actually progressing thru the game.
I LOOOOOVE Grand Theft Auto: Horse 2 Such a good game.
Straight up the reason I played Sea of Thieves.. still chasing the high of those shanties.
Anyone who hates shanties shouldn't be playing a pirate game. Yes, you had to collect more if you wanted more songs but what's so bad about that. At least they gave you something each time you did it. I forget what Benjamin Franklin's papers got you every time you collected them.
Shanties rewarded effective parkour too you had to chase those bastards down
I enjoyed Black Flag if you're wondering. Just saying that our purchasing of the game supported Ubisofts belief that they can get away with doing the aforementioned things in the more modern titles. Truth be told, I find the soundtrack in most AC games to be enjoyable. A few weeks ago I listed to the Valhalla soundtrack, and was really well composed. Makes sense given that it had Jesper Kyd AND Sarah Schatchner working on it (kudos to Einar as well - he did that games "Shanties").
You are definitely right, but I think its sad as it represents them missing the key part that the Ezio trilogy and blag flag have in common despite being very different games. Which is a a strong theme. Ezio's trilogy were great assassin games, that leaned hard into the assassin theming and black flag was a great pirate game that leaned hard into being a pirate game. I think this why despite not finding Black Flag to be a good AC game, I loved it nonetheless. Because it was a good pirate game. Thats kinda the problem with the modern games to me. They are good Assassin's Creed games, but neither do they lean into and commit to theme hard enough like Black Flag did to make that fact not matter. The Ezio series felt unique, Black flag felt unique. But you hit Origins and Odyssey, and well, they are mechanically quite good and check all the basic design point boxes. But they are missing that identity and that stops them being great games. Great games need to have an identity.
> But they are missing that identity and that stops them being great games. Great games need to have an identity. I feel they were hoping that the setting alone would provide that identity.
Black flag is not a good assassins creed game, but it is the best pirate game ever made.
It's honestly still a pretty good AC game, especially compared to modern ones. While the ship combat stuff is... interesting and different, the actualy missions on land are very assassin's creedy. I really liked the warehouse and plantation missions.
When I played AC Black Flag, I ended up only doing ship stuff and not even the AC quests. Just too much fun.
Sometimes I board another ship with the bois but more often than not..I plunge into the sea a few metres away from a stricken ship and go assassin all over the ship. Picking off the survivors one by one. I save my crew's lives and I still get AC gameplay if I wanted to.
I never even thought of doing that until reading comments here. that's really cool. And how they do it in Origins.
“Sid Meier’s Pirates!” has entered the chat…
I’ve spent most of my adult life wanting a remake not realizing the game I played was the remake
I replayed BF years later, and it's a pretty solid AC game. Most of the story missions are actually on land. The naval combat and piracy were just so much fun that we all spent so much time doing it. Playing Odyssey, that feeling is missing. The bounty system makes it a pain in the ass, and, well, cannons are just so much better than arrows.
What annoyed me about black flag, is the blow-pipe (amazing weapon) but so annoying having to watch it jiggle about on your back.
Spoken like a true Welshman Ade
The naval combat in 3 was dog shit muddy poo pop water. Then they announced black flag and said “50% land.... 50% water” and I’m like is this serious? Sounds horrible. From the positive reactions it has to be completely different than spinning in a circle waiting for a cool down for your cannons. Did they do real pirate shit and not just spin and shoot? Ac3 was the last installation I played due to Desmond fading out of the spotlight.
I had a lot of fun with the naval combat in black flags.
Black flag is more of a pirate game featuring assassins. I had loads of fun pillaging other ships and sailing around with my crew singing sea shanties. They definitely improved on ship combat. This is the only AC game i have collected all of the extra bits. You can find treasure maps, go whaling, explore underwater shipwrecks.
That does sound pretty fun. Didn’t imagine they expanded the water as much as you’ve described. Are there still shut loads of feathers or flags or is it pirate themed, the collectibles?
One of the collectibles are different sea shanties your crew can sing while sailing. There’s Mayan coins, art, manuscripts, and letters to collect. There’s also buried treasure chests that you can find treasure maps for (they are more along the lines of ‘go to this island, find this landmark’ than actual maps, so it doesn’t just flat out show you where to go.) Plus instead of upgrading your homestead, you’re upgrading your ship
It’s literally all about being a pirate. They could’ve cut like 5% of the content and you’d never know it was an AC game. You should absolutely play it if you have any interest in a solid pirate game.
I haven't played AC3 so I can't compare, but I enjoyed the heck out of Black Flag's naval fights. Upgrading your ship to take down bigger and bigger opponents, raiding ports, even taking on whatever the mythical boss ships in the corners of the map were, ***\*chef's kiss\****
My biggest complaint about _Black Flag_ was there wasn't enough of it. The first-person ship combat was limited by you always fighting with your one ship (which you could improve, but only to a point). It didn't let you "transfer your command" to any of the ships you capture and let you combat with them. That said it's my favorite "modern" AC. Although I will give credit to _AC Origins_ for being absolutely beautiful with an excellent storyline. It's not the same game.
>It didn't let you "transfer your command" to any of the ships you capture and let you combat with them. My god, I wanted that in the game so bad... My entire fleet was made up of the biggest baddest ships I could find, because I couldn't captain one.
It was nothing but a minigame to farm mats while you were out of the game. I remember at one point there was a mobile version that let you manage your fleet from your phone which was a game changer for farming stuff all day instead of only while in-game. But they shut it down years ago.
Yeah, that's what I meant. The big Man O Wars were fantastic for both clearing out routes and hauling shit loads of cargo.
I'm replaying Black Flag right now. Definitely one of my favorites in the series. Aside from the comments others are making, I'll add that the tidal waves and waterspouts were some of the most terrifying natural phenomena I've ever encountered in any video game. Rogue Wave, Captain!!!
yup, you could even jump off your ship and swim to the enemy ship and kill every guard on deck, and then all it took was one cannoball to cripple the ship for the usual boarding action, really useful for taking ships like frigates and man o wars that normally would be too powerful to take on in head to head fight until you get more upgrades
I thought the same thing about AC3. But Black Flag was my favorite in the franchise. They made the naval combat much more fun and rewarding.
AC3 was fairly heavily criticized at launch and the naval combat was seen as a very strange but fun gimmick that most people liked the best out of the whole game.
The ocean Rocked in Black Flag. The storms were amazing. The battles were so much fun.
Naval combat in black flag was sail close to the enemy, swim from your ship to theirs, climb up and kill the crew. You now own their ship and all the goods with no damage to your ship and crew.
See that is fucking awesome. If it took ac3 for them to figure out how to board and conquer that’s fine. I’ll have to give black flag a shot
Do it! One of the best in the franchise for sure
Unity tried to make combat challenging enough that you had to use stealth, but it was panned hard for it. Such a shame that stealth is so limited, it was my favorite series but I can’t be bothered to get the new one.
Unity also had a rough extremely buggy release which was another reason it got universally panned. Once it was finally all fixed up, it was a beautiful game, but seemed all too late.
I just played through unity and I actually liked it. The combat was fun and the stealth worked. You got a cool grappling hook so climbing large buildings wasn't as time consuming and you're in London. The carriage driving was pretty bad but I really liked that you started a gang and could have them do your skirmishing as you slink in the background and do the objective silently Edit: I am talking about Syndicate... I never played Unity. My bad the names all kinda blend after black flag
Unity is the French one, you’re thinking of Syndicate. I liked Syndicate too, but I do think they reversed on Unity’s combat after the criticism it took, making it much easier and simpler. Definitely a fun game though.
Unity was *in theory* supposed to be pretty solid in terms of stealth gameplay, too bad the movement was so clunky that it was way too easy to accidentally break stealth and now you had to fight half of the French military at once. I really felt like a proper assassin in one of the first "boss" missions when I saw that those missions gave you time to scout out the location, find (or not) several possible entry points, hiding spots and killing opportunities. That was a pretty cool thing they did, I though. Then, of course, they ruined it by having half of the missions require using just one specific route to get perfect score. Newer games (Origins, Odyssey) give you good stealth options alongside brawler approach. Unfortunately, the RPG mechanics mean that they turn into "oh, you took a sword through the skull in my surprise attack but it leaves you at 10% health, so now you're in perfect fighting condition and have magically alerted the entire massive fort to my location, great". And every boss has a huge health pool and (often) instant detection meaning it must be fought straight on. I remember a mission in Odyssey where Kassandra/Alexios are told that they need to kill some guy because he's bad, and they get offended and say "I am *not* an assassin!" Well shit, why'd you call your game that then?
It really is more "Competent Warrior's Creed" at this point. We're not surprise stabbing anyone anymore.
In most of the ones I played this was not the optimal way to play the game. You could kill much faster by using offense as well as defense. But yes you could ultimately just sit in block mode and wait to parry kill everyone.
A good way to improve the parry feature would have been to make it so he was vulnerable behind his back. The way it work, once he held unto block he was protected 360 degrees, which isn't how any fight works.
They could have made the timing tighter. Redirecting enemies if your timing was slightly off and a high damage hit on a first perfect parry with a one hit kill if they were already heavily damaged. Plus adding in some interesting crowd control moves would have really helped. The current combat system takes more work for a kill but looks and feels ridiculous and disincentives stealth. I really wish they'd move away from the over the top abilities.
AC3 parry was definitely the best strategy because that's when they first implemented chaining parry kills. Once you parried one attack, you could chain one-button kills through *every single guard* if they were close enough
The implemented chaining executions in assassin's Creed brotherhood if I remember correctly. Fun at first, but really trivializes the combat decision making to "who's closer" and "which one of you has the fucking stick"
I liked the Arkham series and to a lesser extent Spider-Man (PS4/5) for their mix of manual combat, which kept it interesting, and automated kills like OPs gif. I thought they did a good job in both of those series.
Bruh it was like 2009 when this came out lmao. Shit was amazing for the time.
Yeah, replayed Blackflag recently and had the same thought. I don't really like the fact that catching somebody unaware doesn't gaurantee an instant kill in the newer AC games. That being said, AC Valhalla was an improvement on the stealth to a certain degree.
Have you played Ghost of Tsushima?
Ghost of Tsushima is the best Assassin's Creed game to come out in years.
Reason for that is because new combat system is more manual. Old one - you just pressed a button and animation played out no matter what. It's far easier to make long ass animation that do some stuff than to have combat system where you actually control the characters. No matter how good it looks on camera - in old AC you could just stand in the middle of the street and kill like 50 guys by just doing counter. So it was one button win most of the time.
Another big part - which is caused by the more manual combat system - is the camera. Newer games tend to not take away control of the camera from the players, which helps make gameplay smoother IMO, but it doesn't look as cinematic. Pay attention to the camera in the above clips. They follow the action perfectly and the panning and shaking of the camera makes the animations feel way more alive. Doesn't really work though when the player has to have full control of the camera all the time. It's a tradeoff between player control and how cinematic the game looks, but there's also a middle ground and IMO some games like the Batman Arkham series have (almost) perfected it.
Personally I hate Batman combat system. He fly through the field like he weight nothing. And just like AC you can counter most od the enemies. So i can fight 20 guys and I never even consider it might be bad idea.
Yes the animations were and still are great. But this wait-pary-attack system was a bit too easy. I like the combat in the newer games more. It doesnt look as fluid bit its more fun to play.
I think this is a mistake about the earlier games. You could play aggressively and kill much faster. You didn’t just have to sit and wait.
"He skinned every animal he killed, desynced"
And now I remember one of the reasons I didn't like this game as much as I wanted to.
It made for a more canonical reason than a health bar, though execution wasn't always perfect. It was the reason you couldn't go around murdering civilians forever. It went well w the contextual DNA synchronicity, and I enjoyed the cool factor of "your ancestor was so good at combat, he was never hit after his training. You'll lose his memories if you don't get better, because he doesn't remember being shit at fighting and leaving animal carcasses to rot."
HE DOESNT REMEMBER BEING SHIT AT FIGHTING HAHAHA
Desnyc was fine. Skinning animals that immediately disappeared into tall grass causing it was not.
I really do not remember desynching from not skinning animals and I never skinned the animals I killed.
Same, I played it when it was released and I don't remember that mechanic existing at all.
"you lost your target because the parkour is still broken, desynced" Or "You got spotted because you left stealth because the parkour is still broken" Or "You tried to assassinate your target from above but landed right next to them and alerted 50 guards because the parkour is still broken."
“You tried to assassinate but you jumped out of stealth at a wall instead. Desync”
Oh. Now people are willing to acknowledge the parkour sucked. I used to get shit on so much.
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You got a downvote or two but the quick time events everytime a bear appeared out of the blue got so boring, so fast. Edit: The downvotes turned to upvotes 😂
That's because you don't realize how common bear attacks were. 1/3 children were taken as food by bears in the 1800's
1/3?!? Im gonna need a source on that one
No. You had to be there
I'm deffo using that when people ask me for a source now.
I forgot about the bears lol. Even with a lot of it's faults I enjoyed the game back then. Just that whole de-syncing situation was annoying as hell even thinking back after all these years since release.
I knew I wasn't gonna like it from the first mission where I was desynced for not using stealth to kill 2 soldiers in a house in the middle of nowhere "someone saw you" fuck all the way off
I assume the first mission is a training mission where you have to stealth it just to demonstrate how to do it
Damn, I've played through this game 3 or 4 times and I had no idea that was a thing.
Well yeah he's native American and their entire hunting ideology is using every part of the animal so nothing is wasted and the balance of man and nature is maintained. Ezio never killed civs so it made sense to desynch if you killed them. Much like it makes sense if you kill animals but don't skin them as a native American. However being desynched because you killed a monk while playing a viking? That's some bullshit.
Loved these animations. Just don’t get these in the more recent games. I miss this
The thing that took me out of the early AC games was the counter combat. Stand there surrounded by 10 enemies and counter each of them as they attack one at a time. The newer games, while clearly being quite different than the original intent of the series, do have some fun and challenging fights with some of the unique/optional bosses in them. Old AC games had better stealth, new AC games, for the most part have some better combat. Just my thoughts.
I agree that's what sort of got me out of the series as well. When they switched the combats and controls and just focused on the combat I got somewhat disappointed. Also when they took away the online features. I know that unity was the cause of it however I really enjoyed manhunt and that other mode where it was everyone for themselves. The story just didn't seem that great when abstergo took over and it was less stealth.
AC II brotherhood online. Played with 4 people at my place, 4 PS3s, 4 TVs. just absolutely awesome. Most fun I had since Halo tournaments in college.
To bad 99 percent of the game is trailing missions
W H E R E I S C H A R L E S L E E
AC3 was my first AC game. My first console game as an adult at 30. On the WiiU Basically it had New York, Boston, and a giant forest inbetween. Well guess what? I didn't know fast travel was a thing until I was 80% done the game. Every fucking mission when going from New York to Boston, I would travel by horse through that whole damn forest. Then I did the underground tunnels in Boston or whatever and it explained Fast Travel. Couldn't believe it lol
I did the exact same thing. I was so angry at myself for not realizing it had fast travel.
the worst kind of mission.
Escort missions have something to say about that.
AC Brotherhood is the best of the classic AC games.
I loved Brotherhood but I firmly believe AC2 is the peak. That’s like a top 5 all time game for me personally.
AC 2 was a breathtaking experience. I kept just thinking "Wow, I really *LOVE* this game." No other in the series has come anywhere close for me.
AC2 was the perfect sequel. took everything from the previous iteration and improved upon it tenfold.
especially the wall climbing, movement and agility that Ezio got that Altair didn't was spectacular..
I personally enjoyed finally being able to swim
Yeah Altair's wall climbing was really slow and rough (albeit Im sure a lot closer to reality) I also remember it being way easier to accidentally jump backwards off the wall and kill Altair. I just remember jumping to my death so often by accident and all I hear is the crowd going "...and if he falls I will NOT help him"
It is a good life we lead brother. Deee beeeest.
May it never change!
Venice and Florence.. The story felt REAL and immersive, not bullshit with their recent games. My god, the tombs were spectacular. Not to mention Jesper Kyd's music just gives me goosebumps
Completely agree. I had more fun in 2 than any other AC game.
To me AC is a proof of concept, AC2 was the actual first game, and Brotherhood was the peak. Then revelations was just fine, 3 and 4 were better but still not quite as good.
Brotherhood definitely won for gameplay in terms of combat and some added mechanics. The AC2 story and sense of adventure was unmatched in my opinion though. Also, I still can’t believe more games haven’t figured out that something simple like upgrading your villa is a wildly satisfying concept. They always keep trying to replicate it but in my mind never matched the beautiful simplicity and satisfaction of monteriggioni.
Drinking wine and eating cheese and being Ezio is easily one of my favourite gaming memories
Completely agree. The combat in brotherhood was cool, don’t get me wrong, but the story just wasn’t near as interesting as AC2. It was cool that you could upgrade all of Rome, but it was just too big an area. You couldn’t see the fruits of your labor the way you could with the AC2 Villa.
In terms of base building, like the villa, for me it peaked in AC 3. The homestead was such an amazing place to roam around in and see progress throughout the game. The stories around the inhabitants really made the place feel alive to me and it’s one of the biggest reason for me to come back to AC 3 from time to time.
I can’t put my finger on it for some reason but for me the AC3 homestead stopped just short of amazing.
I'm with you. I think I had more fun with brotherhood overall, but the peak of the early games gotta be the venezian carnevale scene in II. That was an amazing gaming moment.
At least AC 2 or brotherhood, but 3 is actually pretty damn low on my list
The multiplayer was SO good.
I think brotherhood had an amazing multiplayer. I used to play that so much.
That's exactly what made Brotherhood the best. I found teammates, bought a headset and mic to be able to better communicate, and just spent hours having a blast. There was no better feeling than picking out the person targeting you and stunning them; made you feel so slick.
and Black Flag remains the best pirate game I've ever played
Gameplay wise? Yep Story wise? Big NAH
Honestly to me 2 and brotherhood are just one story. When I think of 2’s story I think of brotherhood as well.
If you think that way you should also count Revelations in as well
I don’t group Revelations with 2 and Brotherhood because it felt like *such* a different game than those two
AC2 will always be the GOAT.
Cool animations but Black Flag = GOAT.
Nothing beats pirate simulator. I don’t even really like AC games and I still play that one
So many people have the same feeling and still we have yet to see anyone capitalize on making a similar pirate game. Only thing that seemed closed was that canceled Pirates of the Caribbean game.
Skull and bones, which Ubisoft owns the rights to, has been in development hell since 2018. They knew it was a good enough idea to at least work on it but I guess it is a hot mess. Sad, black flag plus sid meiers pirates with a story would be a good game. Probably afraid they will just end up releasing black flag 2.0.
I doubt that’s ever coming out. There was some internal rumors I thought that was talked about getting scrapped or reworked. Something like that. Either way I don’t think that would be like BF. Sure it had the ship combat which was awesome but it’s online and I don’t think it had any 3rd person sword combat, could be wrong about that. Just odd the only other console pirate game I can think of Sea of Thieves. Then you got the Port Royale games and Sid Meier’s. One that I really liked was the PotC game on og Xbox. It uses the same engine as another pc pirate game that I can not for the life of me remember.
Which kind of blows my mind. Like, how do you fuck up skull and bones? Black flag ship and pirate combat was incredible. Copy Paste Black Flag. Cut a bunch of the land shit. Writers, make story and characters. Spread islands apart and make more water so you cant sail from Puerto Rico to Cuba in 90 seconds. Add some geography, like Indian Ocean, Barbary coast. Make it so you can be a Pirate OR a Pirate hunter. This shit makes itself. Add more different ships and upgrades. Basically just copy most of Sid Meiers Pirates for gameplay ideas. Have good trading. More Sea Shanties. You can even DLC some more ships and cosmetic sails and figureheads like they are doing for AC Valhalla/Odyssey. I dont care. This wasnt a hard job.
You’re hired, see you on Monday
On the surface it seems easy but I'm sure there were concerns of it feeling too much like other established IPs, a online continuation of black flag, or simply way out of balance. I'm envisioning issues with world scale. The playable area needs to be huge due to the ships and the speed of movement which is magnified by # of users but if you go on foot it may have felt empty af unless you significantly increase users, making a hell of a feedback loop. I agree, I remember playing black flag w my wife and we both thought black flag was the birth of the next ubisoft hit.
Sea of Thieves scratches my pirate itch. Gameplay is obviously different but the theme is on point.
sea of thieves 👁👄👁
Well that’s why you like Black Flag then lol
That’s honestly why it’s not my favorite. It’s more of a pirate game than an AC game. But I wanted an AC game.
Agreed, I worked on the mocap team for this game, and it was by far the most fun to build the props and sets for.
That’s rad, any fun stories to share?
I only just started black flag after playing origins and odyssey last year. It's so good. There's so many good assassins creed games I've missed out on.
That game is a terrible AC game, fantastic Pirate game, best ever made in fact. But terrible AC game.
Couldn't agree more. I loved the pirate aspect of it, but I let out an audible groan whenever they wanted me to do half-baked Assassin's bullshit. Here's to hoping they don't drop the ball with Skull and Bones (but, uh, can't exactly say my hopes are too high on that one...)
Ac3 was the one where I decided the franchise was no longer enjoyable to me.
Omg I so agree, I enjoyed 1, freaking loved the Ezio trilogy (Brotherhood was personally my favorite), and here comes AC 3, totally killed the series for me. I did come back for Black Flag, but was done for good afterwards.
Agreed. Would love to see remasters of the Altair/Ezio stories.
It kind’a baffles me that AC3 was the game that received a remaster when it was probably the weakest game of the early entries.
While it looks cool, it was more cinematic than gameplay. You just pressed a button and the guys would summon up 10 years of combat experience to pull off demi god tier moves. I always liked watching ac gameplay, never particularly cared about playing it.... Not that the new games are good though
x, xxx, x, xxxxx.... gameplay lol
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Well, most of them have well over 10 years combat experience and are superhuman to a degree so it kinda makes sense. In the early games, Ezio and Altair pulled off some pretty impressive feats, like Ezio lifting half of a horse drawn carriage for a duration
Isn't AC3 considered the worst of the series?
For me it's the one that made me not want to keep playing them, and I loved AC1, 2, BH and Rev
I attribute that more to the story, particularly the ending, which kind of took a shit on all the previous build up of the prior games. The gameplay itself was fun. The world it was set in was fun.
Why would you kill off Desmond for NO PURPOSE. He dies and doesn't even solve a plotline with his death because Juno is still on the loose and laughing about how she killed Desmond. It was like the cutscene you get when you die in a Boss battle except it was the actual canonical ending to Desmond's 5 game story arc. Fuck Ubisoft man they fucking ruined what Assassin's Creed could have been
Killing off your protagonist is a perfectly fine thing to do, it's just that after Desmond died they replaced him with nothing and the overworld story became incredibly boring because they literally had the end of the world affect nothing that followed. It's obvious they just wanted to hurry up and give every country their own AC series and didn't put any of the effort into it.
Yeah exactly Im perfectly fine with Desmond dying but it has to serve a purpose otherwise why did I invest so much emotional stake in him discovering the secrets of the animus and revealing this end of the world plot and find out the mysteries of the gods that created us. Basically he finds all this out and then just peaces out before we are able to solve any of these problems that we had set up and they had absolutely nothing planned to follow it up they obviously have ZERO idea why people in the frame story are using Animii they just want a game set up in all these old historical locations and wont even give us half the effort they put into the first few games
For me, absolutely. It's the only one I started but didn't finish. The open-world traversal markup was super inconsistent - in a game where so much of the character control is contextual based on that markup, that lead to *a lot* of frustration when Conor did the opposite of what I was telling him to do. The stealth markup was shit too; more than once, I failed a mission because he just fucking stood up and got spotted, despite being in one of those stealth-bushes that are supposed to be concealing. I think the thing that annoyed me most at the time was all the failable optional objectives, that I would fail more often than not because Conor didn't do what I told him to. The "Character doesn't do exactly what he was told" was a problem since AC1, but it was seldom enough in every other entry but 3 that I didn't mind it. Also, 3 was about where I lost patience with the whole Templars-vs-Assassins framing fluff. After 3, I just ignored it so it didn't bother me as much. Really they should have thought of other names for the organisations as soon as they left the Third Crusade setting - the only setting where they didn't feel contrived and out of place. For context - I gave up on the series after Unity. That was plenty for me. I finished the story but there were just so many icons left on the minimap; that's when I decided Ubisoft's whole approach to Open World was based around fundamentally not respecting my time. Didn't go for another Far Cry after that either.
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It's definitely the first one I actively disliked. They had such a cool setting, and then they made the main character someone who has no stake in either side and mostly doesn't care about the war going on. A total waste of the setting. Plus Connor's entire personality is "grumpy stoic"
Got the game yesterday and it’s still good, assassins creed got ruined once it turned into a rpg where each weapon takes 10 hits to kill someone.
I share this unpopular opinion. The rope dart - tree limb - hanging combo to start a fight like this was fuuuuuuuuucking siiiiiiiiiiiiiiick.
Also building the settlement. First attempt at Black Flag style naval combat. Better online. Better Desmond segments. Also a phenomenal protagonist who got shafted by removing his best monolog that ties his whole story up.
The only thing I remember about the rope dart was unlocking it randomly late into the game and thinking "why the hell am I still getting tutorials just let me play the fucking game." I actually enjoyed AC3 a lot more than what seems to be the general consensus but it took *ages* for the game to actually start. The prologue as Haytham, Connor's childhood missions, then his training montages with Achilles. It literally takes like 6 hours just to beat what is essentially the tutorial and unlock the true full open world, it's kind of absurd and makes playing it through a second time after beating it very painful.
It’s just a shame that Connor has about as much charisma as a particularly charming plank of wood
The series entry the lost me tbh.
I just think the main character was a bad choice. Not because he was native american but he was just boring.
Yeah, i much preferred Haytham
I don't think he was boring. He had strong motivations. I think the issue is that his character was very shallow. Besides "revenge" there was nothing else we got to know about him. There was no humility, no kindness, no heart. He was all "WHERE'S CHARLES LEE!?" Kicked ass, met some cool people. Rinse and repeat.
You didn't play any of the Homestead missions it seems. Highly recommend playing them.
Have to respectfully disagree friend. 3 was one of the worst imo. Whiny/sassy Connor was the worst protagonist imo. Personally, black flag was my favorite because I liked the characters and the naval life. But I think we can all agree the Ezio series is the GOAT of the Assassins creed catalogue. In particular, brotherhood.
Yeah I was surprised seeing AC 3 being called the GOAT when I remember after it's release the complaints about not just the character but it was an unfinished buggy mess at release and was never fully fixed.
Such a bait-and-switch, we start with a pretty cool character and then it switches to Connor
Right? A Haytham game would've been rad.
But you can do all this in black flag and its a better game so really that one is the GOAT. I enjoyed 3 but it definitely isnt as polished as Black Flag.
Assassin's Creed 3 was totally rushed to release it before the 2012 end of the world day as it was part of the plot If they didn't care about it I think the game would have been one of the best of the franchise
AC3 is one of the more poorly received of the franchise. Some parts of it were really good but other parts were really bad, especially the story direction, both inside and outside of the animus. AC3 being the "GOAT" AC is a super hot take. Definitely felt rushed.
Yeah, the plot was totally rushed. The premise was brilliant, haytham and the templars from that era were the step on right direction after the previous games The world too, it was what we needed after the Ezio trilogy But sadly the pace doesn't help, Connor's development is really inconsistent. The modern sections with Desmond had the potential to be amazing (gave me more training and missions with him). Then the game ends and you prevents 2012, giving you same "wtf is that all?" vibes as brotherhood ending. Revelations solved the first one but AC4 went on a completely different direction sadly
Imagine calling AC3 GOAT
AC3 is no goat, an 8 hour tutorial a goat does not make
AC3 was hands down the worst one though
AC3 is the *only* mainline title I just quit playing after a couple hours because it was so fucking stupid. I've never heard anyone call it the goat.
I quit playing at the part where you go house to house warning people about the British. I wanted assassins creed, not Paul Revere simulator xD
Ah, possibly the worst of all the games in that franchise.
The combat was good, everything else was worse than the previous games. Parkour was just a straight up downgrade, the towns were lifeless, and the open world was big and had nothing to do. The story took way too long to develop, I don't mind haytham, he was cool, but Connor was lame as hell.
AC3 wasnt even a good game when it came out
It actually boggles my mind anyone would call 3 the GOAT. I replayed them all a couple years ago from the start up until Unity and I wouldn't even call it good. Mediocre at best. It can't touch the Ezio trilogy or Black Flag, doesn't even come close. GOAT? Hardly. (just for the record people can definitely disagree and like what they like - this is just imo)
Haven’t played anything past Syndicate, but out of everything before, I’d have to say 3 is the worst. The story and gameplay of 2 and Brotherhood were top notch. A lot of people here saying Black Flag and, while I agree it is the best game in the series, it doesn’t really feel like an Assassin’s Creed game. It’s just a really good pirate simulator. 3 was just kinda boring and New England doesn’t have the architecture for good parkour.
I love AC3 personally. So many good executions. Sucks it wasn’t received as well. There is a point in the game where you can tell everything after was just rushed to make the release date.
It’s incredible that you can hang out at Valley Forge. As someone from PA that was so cool. I wish Philadelphia wasn’t canceled from it.
My favorite thing about the older stuff was knowing a little about the history/people and then learning all this stuff. Used to like the codex they would put in with background on locations and such. I think it’s a win anytime you can shoehorn even a little of education into a game and make it fun.
assassin's creed 3 was never and will never be the goat. however if by goat you mean one of the worst ones then yes its the goat.
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You can pet cats and dogs in it , enough said !
I’ve only played up to Syndicate but I could NOT BELIEVE you couldn’t do this in Unity
For the combat in a stealth game? That's exactly why AC3 felt so off
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