Is Assassin's Creed 3 better then AC2, BH, Rev?

[xebtria]

in my opinion: no, it's not.


- I miss the whole recruiting stuff. I did it once because it was part of the storyline, and I also did the assassins signal once because it was part of the storyline. never used it since.
- I am 100% disappointed for the vendors not making any sense. I did not upgrade my gear ONCE throughout the entire game. this was one part of the motivation for me with ac2, brotherhood and revelations. I ended up with over 100k and I may have bought that one dagger that was better than my tomahawk, but that's pretty much it.
- the controls were made easier. but I also miss them. I liked the active-blocking-and-then-counter stuff. now it's more ore less smashing one button and try to hit it in the right millisecond.
- I completely hate the fact that you can dress in whatever color you want, but in the cutscenes you have the default clothes on. bulls**t.
- since the area is more spread and not a big, clustered city like Rom or Istanbul were, the actual main part of AC - climbing the shit out of the city - is not as motivating as it used to be. and the eased fast traveling makes you just fast travel wherever you want to be instead of running over all the roofs.
- climbing on and through trees is fun. but you soon realize, it is only possible with a certain setup of trees. you often end up running in a half-circle through the trees and even though traveling by tree is faster than on the ground, it ends up taking longer anyways. it is not really a free running.
- towers and trees and thus "lifting the fog on the map" is shit. imagine the map as big as your screen, and by synchronizing with a tower or a tree you make a 2 inch circle around your position visible, along with two feathers and one challenge-stuff-thing. that is demotivating as its best. you can discover everything by simply running everything manually, but that is not fun either.
- and last but not least, compared to Rom and Istanbul, whereas you - theoretically - could discover everything after the first two hours of story, and could do all side quests, and do like everything the fuck you want to... you can't do that here. firstly, because the first like 10? hours or so you aren't even fully grown connor or even connor yourself, then you can't go to boston yet, then you can't go to NYC yet, you feel so limited at the start... and once you can go everywhere, seriously, the main story line is more fun than anything else by that point.
- the end of desmond's story. it's like you play the game for 30-40 hours to finally see the grand finale, and then you get smashed in the face and it is over. I sat in front of my monitor and I was like "that's it? dafuq?". I really was disappointed. still fighting with my inner turmoil whether this or Mass Effect 3 was the worst ending in a video game ever.
- I almost forgot: playing the mill game (it's really hard, your opponents always make their best move, regardless of what you do) and opening chests. that minigame to open chests is just retarded. after all, I found a way how to manage it, but it still is retarded. they could've done this with buttons (press the right combinations) or something, but no, they choose to do it via analogsticks and (even more retarded) for mouse/keyboard players with the mouse via x and y axis. and if you move the x axis by 1 mm after you locked it and you try the y axis, you have to start all over again. this is frustrating in any way imaginable.


that's about the bad part of AC3.
what is good then?
well:
- graphics + atmosphere. you see it every now and then that it is not top of the hill graphics anymore, but it looks damn good and you really feel like you are back then in that country.
- size: the size of that one region-in-the-middle is HUGE. try to circle it by foot once, you'll take half an hour at least. and then there is boston, nyc, and your homeland, and all of them are really big as well. I'd say, AC3 has more area to discover, than brotherhood and revelations together. and both of them were immense.
- the story of connor: besides the fact, that it takes some time before it really gets the drive, the story is phenomenal. plots here, plots there, twists here, twists there, bad events here, good events here, it is just genius.
- the story of desmond: real good ending of the complete desmond story. you get ALOT of background information, you will do more than just run around in 10y distance of the animus. it could've been perfect. if it would not have been for the very end itself (see above). although I really liked these animus-part-story-thingy from revelations.
- all the characters within (connor's) the story. you feel with connor, with haythem, with that old dude (I forgot his name), even the guy I was collecting the relics for seems reasonable. all the guys on your homestead, you mostly rescue them first, then they live with you. you have a connection with them, and after all, a reason why they live there.
- sea fights. easily the best feature of AC3. if I could've decided, they could've make the game a sea fight simulator. They should sell the engine and make a pirates-of-the-carribean-game. it would be 100% plausible.


tl;dr
I played it for the story, and the story (except desmond's ending) is extremely motivating and fun. there are also some sidequests and -actions who are really fun. the graphics are (considered the age of the engine) superb, the atmosphere comes close to far cry 3 (each in its own setting of course). and because of this, AC3 is a really, really good game. but the downsides are too major to make it the best game of the series. I'd rate it revelations >= brotherhood > ac2 > ac3 > ac1. AC1 was sometimes just too hard. AC2 made a lot things better, and bro and rev both improved the things what AC2 made already well. AC3 made after all not THAT much major things wrong (the fight controls being the one major thing that comes to my mind), but a whole lot of minor things, which adds up at the end. it's like telling the devs, don't screw shit up that worked for 3 games, but they did nevertheless just for the sake of "changing stuff".

tl;dr of tl;dr:
I would've liked it more, if the game would've been the same as brotherhood and/or revelations (mechanics/gameplay wise), with the only change being some animations, the graphics, and the story ofc.

[Drathos]

I agree. Connor was a HUGE downgrade after playing Haytham. I actually started liking Haytham more than Ezio. XD

Oh, so you actually switch character later on in the game. Good, I might actually give it another shot, then. What I really dislike about AC3 so far is that the ranged weapons are way too important(and guns don't feel right for AC), I much preferred the weapons in AC1 and 2.

The thing I enjoyed about 3 over Brotherhood/Revelations is that you actually assassinated people who were known and important. In 2 (minus the final guy), they were all just no names really. Don't get me wrong though, I LOVED 2. I actually prefer it over 3.
2 for a few reasons. All the different places were really interesting, and then getting to Rome at the end and just seeing it but not being able to go to it created such a feeling of mystery and expansiveness. It also showed growth of a character as well.
3 had growth, but a PAINFULLY long intro. I'm talking sequences 1-5 are all introduction pretty much (12 seqs). The open world feeling and hunting was great, with snow being pretty cool and whatnot...but the locale just does not interest me at all. I'd really like to go to Boston in real life, but playing there and New York just wasn't that great.
I'm huge fan of ancient history, so seeing Ubisoft's re-constructions and weaving the assassin/templar storyline into those worlds (1-Rev) was terrific. Going to places like Jerusalem and Florence, and traveling through Forli...it felt so cool. 1 & 2 also focused on being sneaky and learning about your targets which I really liked. Maybe it was just the location, or the lack of trying to be really sneaky in the 3rd, I'm not sure. On another note, the graphics and animations are AWESOME. The crafting system leaves much to be desired though.

Actually turned into quite a wall of text; hope you can read it clearly. I believe I kind of ranted there...

I agree completely about 1 and 2 being more interesting time periods(at least to me). I've only played 1/2/some of 3, and my favorite in terms of setting was definately 1 with 2 having the best gameplay.(why did they change the combat system so much for 3? I was so confused when countering was a different key)

[Loktarok]

AC3 in one Word: Vague.

[xebtria]

Oh, so you actually switch character later on in the game. Good, I might actually give it another shot, then.

see the first part with haytham as the prologue to the game. you then start playing connor and after a while (you will understand which "while" I mean when you play it), the actual game does start.

[Istaril]

Eh?

I don't for the life of me get the people saying that AC3 was the worst. Worst main character, sure, but worst game?

Not even by a long shot.

For me it's BH = AC2 > AC3 > AC > Rev

[Spl4sh3r]

I actually liked Assassin's Creed 3, though I wish the cities were more like in Assassin's Creed 1 and that between cities would be bigger as it aswell. The wilderness was not big enough for me. As for Assassin's Creed 2, I have them but never actually played.

[Drathos]

see the first part with haytham as the prologue to the game. you then start playing connor and after a while (you will understand which "while" I mean when you play it), the actual game does start.

Small update, I've now played another few hours and have finished the Haytham part and escaped Boston as Connor. I can see how ranged weapons are important for hunting, but they still feel wrong in combat. The QTE's for some animals(predators, I think?) are complete bullshit, and the combat overall is worse than in 1/2, somehow. It's still a counterfest, but countering is now quite annoying to use.
And Connor's story starts out very similar to Ezio's, tbh. Parent dies, son goes out to get trained to get revenge.

I absolutely despise the Desmond/Precursor story. The games would've been perfectly fine as "Assassins vs Templars conspiracy in different time periods".

I also dislike how you see the ultimate bad guy(I assume, considering he's the Grandmaster of the Templars) really early on in the game, you're standing like 20 meters away from him, and yet you don't even try to kill him, instead you're just standing there being like "So yeah, thats my dad. Do I need to kill him?". Even if you'd died after killing him, it'd almost definately be worth it. I guess I just don't like how illogical it is, and similar stuff happened in AC1/2 as well, iirc.

[Shop Ebay]

Horse riding mechanics stink. They are completely unable to travel over or off the smallest bump in a surface.

[Malderon]

For me AC2 > AC:brotherhood > AC3 > AC 1 > AC rev, liek i said in my topic, last 2 sucks because it has no revenge

[Linkedblade]

I agree. Connor was a HUGE downgrade after playing Haytham. I actually started liking Haytham more than Ezio. XD

But Haytham is the enemy :X

[Oerba Yun Fang]

But Haytham is the enemy :X

Still awesome!

[muxx]

Ok, so, no its not the best game of the series.

My biggest grief with the game is that it was WAY to short and could have covered more material. Outside of the story being amazing, i wish there could have been more going on as far as the actual war. Also the bugs. But one thing i did miss that all the other AC games had except the first one was the dungeon/cave crawling. That by far was my favorite thing about AC2 was the difficulty of some of the caves and ahving to actually think about what i needed to do to get through it.

[Drathos]

Ok, so, no its not the best game of the series.

My biggest grief with the game is that it was WAY to short and could have covered more material. Outside of the story being amazing, i wish there could have been more going on as far as the actual war. Also the bugs. But one thing i did miss that all the other AC games had except the first one was the dungeon/cave crawling. That by far was my favorite thing about AC2 was the difficulty of some of the caves and ahving to actually think about what i needed to do to get through it.

You mean the silly climbing/jumping/timed puzzle stuff? Never saw the point in having those.

[Malderon]

Still awesome!

I actually agree, AC3 is awesome but the main character is not attractive at all. Gaytham wins all the way!

[LBHoward]

If you loved the others then you won't find too much wrong with AC3. But the series is still going downhill IMO. Not that that has stopped me buying every damned game on release day.

[Naidia]

Nah, AS:2 is still my favorite, BH and Rev are expansions to that, AC:3 is just....not as good as it should have been. Most of it was very pointless.

[Donnie]

I like it more.

[Migey]

Don't bother with AC3. It is fucking awful and by far the worst AC to date, and this is after the hollow, money-grabbing husk that was revelations (which in retrospect, wasn't so much bad as pointless and boring). AC3 has a terrible story, with Connors tale being boring and totally lacking in consistency, focus, and emotional weight, and Desmonds being slightly more interesting but culminating in one of the most dissapointing endings since Mass Effect 3 (which by the way it shares striking similarities with). The gameplay has been given a huge overhaul since the Ezio games, largely under the philosphy of ''If it aint broke, break it''. In other words the gameplay is crap. Even more button-mashy then ever and counter-attacking is even easier if you can imagine. In combat and other areas changes seem to have been made completely arbitrarily with no purpose whatsoever, except to make it all shittier. For all that combat is way flashier then ever with more intricate and awesome pre-baked finishing moves, it feels less visceral then ever and you may as well be slicing through paper for all it feels like you're actually sticking sharp metal into human flesh. If just half the time that went into shittifying the combat and creating all the flashy finishers went instead into actually thinking about the game and how not to make it shit the game would probably be an entirely different creation.

Despite the great graphics, the game manages to be shit aesthetically too. Kudos to the devs for making the cities ultra realistic and accurate but I feel like they could have put a bit of effort into diversifying the two main cities and making them kind of interesting. They look exactly the same and are boring anyway. Perhaps the time period is the issue; there isn't much fantastic architecture to jump off of and stuff in colonial America, but even so. Every part of the city looks the same, and while playing there is no way for an onlooker to tell at a glance if you're in Boston or New York. Gone is the amazing and rich visual character of Florence and Venice, or even the interesting and varied locales in the first game or Brotherhood. Even the Frontier, easily the most interesting of the three main locales in AC3, gets very boring very fast.

Back to the mechanics of the game. The game is awash with pointless minigames, most of which lose their allure incredibly fast, such as hunting or the naval missions. And to be fair, the naval missions are one part of the game I can't find it in me to hate on, even if they do get old. They are the one new thing which is actually welcome; interesting, fun, somewhat varied, and amazingly for this game, with tight, intuitive controls and mechanics which are never an issue to use. But thats pretty much the only one; any other minigame you're presented with is either boring, pointless, awkward, any combination of these, and in more then one instance only a one off for one specific mission. A huge amount of effort seems to have been put into the whole trading and crafting thing; you can get local craftsmen to make stuff and trade it, send conveys, get money, etc. The only problem with this is that the only thing you get out of this is money (and maybe occasionally a few practical things like dual holsters for pistols so you can mow down entire groups of NPCs 3 seconds faster), and money is even more useless in this game then it was in Brotherhood and Revelations. In all of these games the only thing to do with money is to use it to make more money, creating an avalanche of money that keeps growing the more you try to get rid of it. There is literally nothing useful you can do with money, except upgrades for your ship which are kinda pointless too, because thats a fairly limited minigame which doesn't stay interesting for too long. You can't even use it to buy upgrades for your weapons or armor. At least in AC2 you would occasionally have to be tactical with your purchases cause you often wouldn't have enough money to buy the entire next set of armor at once, but in AC3 you are exactly as efficient at the start of the game as you will ever be at standing there numbly counterattacking everything that touches you. So in simple terms, all the effort that went into making the intricate trading and crafting systems was wasted because nobody cares and it's boring anyway. If sitting around trading bear skins and moonshine gives you a stiffy then be my guest but the same effect could probably be achieved by playing around in any spreadsheet program with a blue interface.

I feel like banging on about the story and characters some more. It sucks. They suck. Desmonds section are too few and far between and his very linear missions are, while pretty good, not quite interesting enough to make the game worth it. I've already said how shitty the ending of the Demond story is so lets focus on Connor Mcblandpants Kenway. He has no character at all. Minor spoilers ahead, if you hadn't already heard, you play the first fifth or quarter of the game playing as Connor's dad, Haytham, who is far, far more interesting then Connor could ever be. It feels like they tried with Connor to give him some kind of mixture of Altairs silent menace and Ezios charm, depth and charisma, but totally missed both by a few miles, resulting in what looks like a basketball player in a dressgown standing with a distractingly blocky face glaring at stuff and spouting random, nonsensical platitudes about freedom and justice and choice and peace and *yawn*. In Haytham, thankfully, they did manage to capture these elements, with him having a presence, like Altair, and a character and charisma like Ezio, without feeling like he's blank-facedly ripping off either. Unfortunately this section suffers from the same gameplay faults as the rest of the bloody game and is still not sufficiently interesting to carry the game, despite a great twist at the end of his section. The other characters are just bland and badly done. Care is taken to make the Templars seem more human and similar to the Assassins, to introduce some moral ambiguity. However, like with every single ass-creed up to this point, the need to make the Templars sympathetic and also to make sure they remain the bad guys clashes into what, unsuprisingly, ends up just being completely one-dimensional. At first the Templars seem like quite nice guys in their own ways, fighting for what they believe in, but then thats thrown out of the window and they start acting like the gentlemens club of greasy-haired tosspots all trying to outcompete each other to be the biggest dick, with the exception of their leader, who irritatingly, despite being the most interesting of them, isn't even the big bad. And he too does random evil shit for no discernable purpose (or no purpose thats explained properly). So while the Templar speeches about how humanity needs guidance threaten to be interesting occasionally, they instantly undermine themselves as the game tries to remind us that yes, these are the bad guys and has them do something unambiguously assholey. So, thats the characters, what about the story again? Oh yeah, the story. The story... you know I can't remember much distinctive about it all apart from a few specific conversations, funny accents, and one or two major characters. I can remember plenty of things that happen in it sure, because the game never stops trying to twist its plot and rape probability to have you be present, cause, or take part in half the major historical events of the period or run into half the major historical figures doing something they're famous for, but for the actual story, not much interesting and independant of history books actually happens. It all begins to ring a bit hollow. AC2 did it to an extent, with you running into Leonardo Da Vinci, Machiavelli, etc, but at least it does something with it, makes them characters of their own, as opposed to AC3s preferred tactic of pointing out something famous and wallowing in it's presence for a bit before shoehorning Connor into it. Plenty of the historically significant things that Connor does end up being literally useless and pointless to the overarching story, achieving absolutely nothing. Connor barely even feels like an assassin, especially as there doesn't seem to be a brotherhood of it anywhere. I shit thee not, the assassins presence in colonial America appears to be limited to an old black man with a stick and Connor, who only became an assassin because a glowy thing told him to.

Okay, okay... so the story is a quagmire of pointless bullshit, the characters are almost without exception one-dimensional and bland, the mechanics of the game amount to a steaming pile of shit and even the appearance of the game could arguably have been improved by having all that fancy technology be used to render a pair of sweaty balls, but it can't be that bad right? I mean, at the end of the day, it is still an Assassin's Creed game, with all that entails, right? Like, you know, assassinating people, what with you being an assassin and all? Surely I'll be able to vent all my anger at this game with some nice theraputic stabbery, because at heart, Assassins Creed is still about assassinating?

WELL FUCKING NO, says the game. YOU WANT TO ASSASSINATE THINGS IN A GAME CALLED ASSASSINS CREED WHILE PLAYING A CHARACTER THAT BELONGS TO AN ANCIENT ORDER OF ASSASSINS? WELL FUCK OFF. There's almost no missions in the entire game that actually just give you someone to assassinate and let you do it. It's always with a bunch of extraneous objectives that result in the mission being linear and boring and almost never give you any choice or variation in how to do it. Most of these missions end up with you chasing the target (always frustrating in any situation) and if it doesn't, it tries to railroad you into doing it a specific way by giving you optional objectives that you can't get proper completion without. They don't act like it seems they are supposed to; as guidelines on how to execute the mission with grace and subtlety and finesse, but as irritating and arbitrary commands to do a specific mission in a certain way for no reason, resulting in the missions being even more linear and boring then usual. There are few exceptions, and the entire idea should be scrapped. But even with all of this extreaneous bullshit miring down the proceedings, there is still almost no assassinating. What there is is a LOT of combat. The game will stop at nothing to find excuses for you to fight a whole bunch of people, and while the combat was in a fairly good spot around AC2, even if it hadn't been butchered in this installment, the combat was never the most fun part of the games. Now it's even worse and you're forced to do it way more often. It's not Assassins Creed anymore, but some kind of perverted Combatants Creed. But even taken as an action game and not as a stealth/assassination game (without stealth or assassination) IT STILL SUCKS ASS.

I think I'm just about done. You get the message. The game is shit, plagued with bad design, awful decisions, irritating play, etc. Even if you can overlook half the problems with the gameplay, the entire thing is just boring. There is almost no motivation to continue or reason you'd want to continue slogging through it. If you were ever invested in the previous games but havn't yet got AC3, don't bother. Make up your own ending to Desmonds story and leave yourself with happy, nostalgic memories and a normal, healthy blood pressure.

[Tethrys]

Story length review

One thing I didn't notice til you pointed it out is that combat really is forced on you in that game. It should feel like you do it when it's necessary and/or for the mission ahead, and do it subtly. And the assassinations just were not carried out well. There wasn't always a main target to kill and there was no awesome chase sequences or whatever. I remember in the first game, I think he was like the 7th or 8th? I honestly don't remember...but you had to hop across the water on the little wood stands and then climb up the tower, all while being shot at and chased. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT4CNrMyi2k this guy)

The 3rd game just doesn't have the depth where you question all the targets and they tell you that you were wrong, leading you to a deeper web.

[Chelly]

*snip*

You forgot the "fantastic" new combination of the run/climb buttons. Auto-climbing and thus pissing off some guards from time to time was just really annoying.