johnlemmon

This game has a plethora of problems, it’s far from the return to roots people claim it is and certain bugs can take you out of the moment especially during free running, the story also lacks massively in the mid section and combat is shallow. Despite this, the world is absolutely stunning, baghdad is one of the most beautiful settings assassins creed has ever been to, it feels alive and vibrant with several distinct districts. The best part of this game is by far the stealth system, it is so much fun to silently cut your way through an enemy fortification, planning different routes, using your tools in different ways, most importantly this systems greatest feature is that it makes you actually feel like an assassin, for me that is the most important part of an AC game. When playing as Basim in stealth sections, i felt like an assassin for the first time in this franchise in a long time. For me this is what makes this game great despite its flaws, it’s the way it made me feel, i was able to assassinate anybody without having a number above their head telling me otherwise. overall I love this game, it has many flaws that hold it back but it is definitely worth playing if you’re a fan of AC or not. i would recommend playing on hard to get the most out of combat and to further incentivise stealth, this is where the game thrives. thanks for reading.

starting with the positives since it won’t take long pros: the modern day plot is great, when the combat works it looks great and is a lot of fun, the world on the remastered version is nice to look at whilst still looking dated i would say it stands up well with the remastered version, haytham is a really good interesting character. cons: the intro is just too damn long, i understand the story they wanted to tell had to begin at this point but it’s simply too slow paced and frankly boring, the parkour is much more shallow than the previous game and the world is clearly not built with parkour in mind, tree parkour is fun and looks good however it’s very rarely useful outside missions, boston is one of the most bland cities in video game history, when combat works (which is rarely) it is boring and not challenging yet somehow manages to also be frustrating as certain enemy types are not well explained by the game making them impossible to defeat early on and lastly, bugs are everywhere in this game, some examples of bugs i encountered fairly early in my playthrough: connor didn’t respond to my inputs around 20% of the time i was trying to parry, connor refused to climb easily climbable objects, some bushes don’t let you hide in them half the time overall: this game is not very good, it’s very buggy, the world isn’t built well for parkour and the combat is either boring or doesn’t work. despite all this if you are a fan of the AC franchise it is still worth playing in my opinion to simply experience this chapter of desmond’s story, the modern day is the most enjoyable part of the game and i would recommend it just for that. thanks for reading.