mhg83

5 hrs in

I must be in the Minority as I'm really enjoying my time with this. It amazes me that a game made for last gen has such great graphics. I set everything to max and my PC seems to handle it just fine with a slight drop in framerate at certain times. The opening sequence at the theater blew me away at the amount of people on screen at once. I think I counted about 100.

I just reached Connor. My jaw dropped at the revelation at the end of sequence 3. I'm still let down that there's still not much to do except climbing buildings and doing missions. Can't wait to get to hunting.

mhg83

Just finished up with 30 hrs 43 min. logged. This was my most played AC game to date with 85 % completion. And I have to say without a second thought my favorite AC game so far (I've played the past AC games).

Unlike the past AC games I really enjoyed the setting. Italy, Rome and the other Cities bored me as well as the History and the people. That's not to say the other AC games are bad. I really liked the combat system and the missions were action packed and exciting at times.

I really liked how they handled Desmond's story and that It felt like they gave him an actual role outside of the Animus. I loved all the Desmond missions especially at the end when you

As for Connors' story, I thought they put an interesting and different spin when it came to the Assassins' VS Templars'. Yes it was a typical cliched revenge story, but they built up the main Villain well and was so much better than that horrible Antagonist from Revelations.

The combat took a long time getting used to. It just feels so dumbed down when compared to past AC games. 99% of fights all I needed to do was push two or three buttons and having a giant "He's gonna hit you!" icon made me feel like the Developers thinks the average gamer is an idiot. I also missed the Armor. Each time I upgraded it felt like i was making progress. Also sword upgrading was not even needed for more than half the game. I used the same sword for the majority of the game. But damn those execution animations were brutal!

The new side stuff was a blast to play. Hunting was by far my favorite part and of course the naval ship combat. The checkers games were really weird. Never really got into that and the ball toss game was odd as well. Chasing missing pages of Almanac was cool and finding treasure chests was really fun but I never got the hang of Lock picking. My thumbs always slipped when it was time to hit the right trigger.

Some of the checkpoints in missions were annoyingly bad. I recall a mission early on that even when you made it close to the end they make you replay the whole mission over! Hated that so much but some other missions fixed that so I was partly relieved. Also the eavesdropping missions can go fuck themselves! I hope that got eliminated for Black Flag.

Even with the faults listed above it didn't distract from my overall enjoyment of the game. I can't wait to start BF!

slop101

that you enjoyed it.
But you're mostly alone in your assessment above. I remember there were people that actually enjoyed the Superman game on the N64... *shudder*

mhg83

That was probably one of the dumbest chase sequence in any AC game. I died so many times. It was like the DEVS saying "Congrats on making it this far. Now go FUCK OFF!"

Supermallet

IIRC, my main gripe with ACIII was that for a game whose protagonists were fighting for the right to choose their own destiny, the game sure as hell made sure you played the missions the way the devs told you to play it. So many of the seemingly optional objectives somehow became mandatory and I remember failing missions repeatedly where similar missions in the other games never gave me any problems. It was incredibly frustrating. And then in the time between missions you're stuck managing caravans and hunting yet another series of rabbits. Bo-ring!

mhg83

I think it has something to do with the 'Binge Effect' I played 2, Brohood, and Revelations all in this year pretty close together. By the end of Rev. I was sick of the same setting and characters. As much as I like Ezio, I think 3 games was too much for one character.

wmansir

I'm playing this now after picking it up for $5 during the Steam sale. I don't know for sure how many hours I have in because Steam says 23, but I'm pretty sure it's just counting Uplay being open, even if the game isn't running. I would say I'm about 8 hours in, but I"m a 100%er so I really slow play it, so I'm only a few hours into the Connor stuff.

It's OK. Some cool content and environments but the story and pacing is really messed up, particularly for someone like me who focuses on sidequests and stuff first. If I had known then what I know now I would have just powered through the Haysworth stuff because it was extremely frustrating wanting to do all this exploring and sidequest stuff and having practically nothing to do because they don't tell you this is all just the prologue and you really haven't started the main game yet so nearly all the sidequest/collectible stuff isn't unlocked yet.

Now that I've gotten into the real game I'm having more fun, but there are still some annoying things, like escaping enemies takes forever. Also the bugs are there. For example, you see a redcoat standing at the edge of a cliff and approach from behind. These guys seem to like standing by cliff edges, so you would think they had a special animation or two for a little stabby stabby and boot to the ass, but no, instead Connor decides to stab him like normal, then walk out in front of him to catch his fall, walking like Wile E Coyote in empty air until the animation runs out, at which point he falls to his death.

I also don't like the secondary objective system for missions. Of course I have to get them, but they usually don't make the missions more fun but are just a pain, and sometimes the game doesn't even notify you of them until the last second so it ruins the flow of missions.

wmansir

I've been playing this game a lot the last few days and the longer I go on the more unpolished the game seems to be. I thought I may have just missed something but now I realize there are multiple game mechanics that are just left largely unexplained. The game constantly holds your hand during mission sequences (Hit X now to win!!), but then there are things like the crafting system and assassin recruits that get virtually no guidance, even though they are one of the few ways to actually improve your character's abilities.

I really like the homestead building stuff, for the story aspect, but the rewards for the missions are improved crafting/trading abilities, which is fine except for the fact that the crafting and trading UI is horrible. It take so long to do anything in it, and unlike previous games there is no passive income, you have to manually conduct every transaction to make money.

The only good part about making money being such a pain is that money is basically pointless in the game so you don't really need to worry about it anyway. You need a little pocket money to bribe public speakers and some large sums to upgrade your ship and buy maps of the collectibles, and that's it. Consumables are just easier to get by looting, and while there are better weapons for sale, they hardly make any difference in combat. Most side-quests have basically no reward, and I can only think of one that is gives a functional upgrade as a reward and even that is something that hardly matters.