Assassin's Creed III

While this game did not ditch the paradigm of the franchise like Origins did, it was very empty feeling. AC games usually feature buildings to climb, cities to run through, and law enforcement to escape from...instead this game mostly features trees and rocks. While there are city settlements as well, the noticeable focus on natural environments infused the game with a less potential to maintain momentum that most AC games carry while playing. Still, it wasn't a total disappointment, as the story is still really good and the scenery is somewhat relaxing.

Most of the game in terms of a general experience, and just the atmospheric vibe of navigating around is an 8 or even an 8.5 out of ten, but even with this remaster, I've noticed there's a lot of technical bugs and difficulties, which honestly did get kinda annoying to have to navigate and deal with.

For a general playthrough not concerned with completion rating, or even a high completion run, even despite true accusations such as the story taking a long time to really kick into gear, you're bound to have a much better experience as a first-time player.

Things such as a couple of the side objectives for naval and main story missions though felt more luck-based than anything unless you really know what you're doing ahead of time, and some of the challenges, required for full completion, can be a grind to get through at best, and in the case of a challenge requiring 500 pounds of winnings from games for instance, can feel like a real crapshoot at times.

All in all though, I'd say this game was rather enjoyable. Best in the series? Probably not, but as a series fan I say this might make it into my top 5 mainline entries depending on mood?

The modern-day story concludes Desmond's story which sees him stealing some power cubes. The main location in the ruins is a bit bland, but when he ventures to a construction site and stadium; it gets a bit more interesting. It's a very cryptic and convoluted storyline which I've never really followed, especially when I haven't played the games in order.

The actual game is set in Colonial America. You will be travelling between Boston, New York and the frontiers. You start off playing as Haytham who is later revealed to be a Templar. You then play as his son, who has Native heritage but then goes by the pseudonym Connor to disguise it. You start out as a child, but then there's multiple time skips as he becomes an assassin and vows to take revenge on the Templar order (especially Charles Lee) who has razed his village which kills his mum.

The game was criticised for its pacing because it takes several hours to start playing as the actual protagonist; adult Connor. On the plus side, it fleshes out the characters to show why you should care about them and their motives.

There's some objectives to build up the Homestead but I didn't expand it much. It seems less involved than what you saw in the Ezio trilogy but still not important to complete the game.

The parkour part of the game often just involves holding the run button and moving forward, and pressing the A button to signify you want to leap. I felt the climbing wasn't as good as the Ezio games because part of the game takes place in wooded areas, so you either just run along the floor, or awkwardly climb the trees. It's definitely not as free-flowing.

Early on you get introduced to hunting and can trap some animals like rabbits in traps. Other animals like deer can be attracted by bait and can be killed directly. You have a bow to hunt from range, as well as using stealth from bushes or trees. More aggressive animals like wolves will attack but can be taken down with simple quick-time events. The quality of the kill determines the rewards with the meat/skin etc can be sold or used in the crafting system.

There’s quite a few “tailing” missions where you have to follow someone, and you can’t get too close, or too far from them. Some stealth sections don’t allow you to take the easy aerial route, but when you are on the ground, you can “blend” into crowds by walking slowly with them.

Committing crimes in a city increases your notoriety bar which determines how much attention the guards will pay to you. The lower the meter, then the closer you can walk to the guards. At a low level, they may be curious and walk towards you, but if you have high notoriety, they will begin chasing at first sight. You can lower the notoriety by ripping wanted-posters from the walls, bribing the heralds, or paying off the printing shop. It's an overly simplistic system which means you don't really need to care about your actions since it's easy just to revert the situation back to normal. When guards give chase, you also have the option of running out of a set area to evade them. Alternatively you can hide in the hay, or wells on the ground. A tip often popped up to state you can run in open doors or windows but wasn't sure what it meant - they all seemed shut to me.

The exploration element of Assassin's Creed remains the same. There's a large environment to explore, and scaling buildings is easy. Your map initially lacks detail unless you climb the tallest buildings (and trees) and 'synchronise'. At this point, points of interest such as quests, shops and notoriety-reducing-elements are marked on your map. But then it becomes so cluttered with all kinds of icons.

In previous games there were plenty of weapons and armour to purchase, then a generous medicine system to restore your health in combat. I think there were weapon shops, but I didn't buy any equipment other than the early mandatory story mission. I'm not sure if combat was easier or if I was just better at countering but if there was a medicine system, I didn't take advantage of it.

The counter-attack move still remains the most effective combat option. The enemy variety does result in different strategies, so some enemies need to be disarmed first, and sometimes knocked down. Ultimately it resorts to similar behaviour to the first game where each character takes turns in attacking, allowing you to pick them off easily. Once you execute one guard, you can chain into nearby guards for easy kills. Stealth assassinations allow you to kill from hiding places, ledges and rooftops for some satisfying and strategic kills.

There's a good amount of collectibles with the usual feathers and chests, then flying almanac pages (not realistic but gives you something to chase).

There’s some naval combat, where you control the speed and direction of your ship, whilst firing broadside cannons and swivel gun. This mechanic was further explored in Black Flag and Rogue. There’s a few story missions featuring this gameplay, then some optional side missions.

There is a graphical bug where the carriages are invisible but you can see the horses. There were some physics glitches with animals catapulting when dead. I saw one animal frozen in place. A couple of times the game just crashed to the desktop.

The change in setting makes it feel a bit fresher compared to the Ezio trilogy but it's pretty much more of the same. It’s a problem with the majority of these games really, that there’s a few systems and loads of objective types but every aspect is just basic and you just casually play without putting much thought into most of it. It is a fine game, but it just feels a bit too repetitive and unoriginal at this point, and is a little too easy.

+ Great spin on the previous games by introducing wilderness environments.
+ Great use of the open world.
+ Good end to the story arch.

Completed.

Oh boy! It's the black sheep of the Assassin's Creed series! But considering the amount of confusing choices this series has done, every single game in this series is considered the black sheep by a large percentile of the fanbase. But, in my personal opinion, I really enjoyed this game. As a Non-American who didn't have to learn about the American Revolution in school, I found the setting and the story and learning about the start of the USA really fascinating. I enjoyed Connor as a character, with the hot-headed kid jumping head first into battle transforming into a cunning and amazingly tactical genius, and him slowly becoming more sociable through the Homestead Missions was great. I thought the gameplay was a great evolution from the Ezio Trilogy, with parkour feeling more free flowing than ever before. The combat felt way more visceral and fast. The additions of tree climbing and the Frontier in general were very enjoyable. However, it is an Assassin's Creed game, so it still suffers from the same series pitfalls, such as way too many collectibles thrown about the map, kind of grating real world shit, and plenty of bugs. The latter especially so since the Switch version has a ton of issues, such as performance problems, annoying bugs and glitches, and most annoying, really low bit rate audio. It sometimes sounds like it was recorded from an iPod Nano. Maybe stick to a different version if you can, but it still worked fine enough that it's still a more than playable version. I would maybe recommend you to give it a second shot.

- Graphics (good) were what I was expecting. I never played the original, so I'm not sure what the Remastered version brings to the table.
- Performance (good) on the Switch was fine. I didn't notice any issues in handheld or docked mode.
- Combat (crap) can be very painful at times. Either feeling incredibly sluggish and sometimes downright ignoring the inputs. I know this is a game that is not designed for button mashing, but combat overall was generally frustrating and felt disconnected from the character.
- Story (good) felt almost like there was as many cutscenes as actual gameplay. This is not a bad thing, the Assassin's Creed games are very story heavy like this and I like that.
- World (fair) - The world felt large and I did enjoy seeing downtown New York in 1770s and discovering Wall Street, Trinity Church and Bowling Green. However, overall most of the world outside of the cite felt very generic and uninteresting to explore. Unlike other open world games I didn't have much desire to do side quests or complete collectables. I think this was partly because the world was mostly uninteresting, but mainly because most of the character improvements came from story progression and not simply purchasing them. The only real things you could buy were maps to show you where chests was that would let you earn more cash - so that seemed pretty pointless.
- I did spent quite a bit of time reading the history in the Animus Database and loved the sarcastic and funny remarks throughout.