First off, if you really want to play this game, do NOT buy it standalone. You can get it at much greater value if you buy the Assassin's Creed Odyssey Season Pass.

This review is a little weird for me to write. ACIII was my introduction to the series and growing up it was one of my favourites, and I didn't understand why this game got such a bad rap. But playing this "remaster" really put into perspective how undercooked, janky, unfun, and sometimes downright unplayable it is.

Let's get the good stuff out of the way first. The story is pretty good, with some really emotional moments and impactful storytelling. The modern-day component is also a lot more interesting, as Desmond actually gets to go out and do stuff. The characters are great, with ACIII even providing probably the best villain in the entire franchise. I also really love the time and care Ubisoft put into portraying the Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) people and having characters speak the language, hiring a cultural consultant to ensure that the details were right. The movement system also got a much needed upgrade, completely changing how your character moves parkour-wise like allowing him to climb through trees, and introducing the ability to make running kills, making everything much more fluid and intuitive. The switch to arkham-style combat may be a bit simple, but the combat animations and finishers are extremely cool and stylish. The soundtrack is also one of the best if not the best in the whole series.

Now the bad. ACIII feels like a mishmash of game mechanics that really feel out of place and are essentially pointless, stretching the game out to feel like an incoherent experience. I have only engaged in the hunting system in the tutorial and never again. Same with the convoy trading system. The assassin management system seems really tacked on and could be missed by most players. The naval missions, while fun, are also stuffed in some menu that could be missed by many players. Even certain weapon types feel gimmicky and unusable in most parts of the game. A lot of the side content is literally reduced to a list of challenges, making this game a completionist nightmare because there's so much boring stuff to do. There are also a bunch of optional objectives for some of the missions that are excruciatingly difficult to achieve, sapping the fun you may have trying to complete them. It really feels like the devs threw as much "content" as they could into the game to distract people from how undercooked and unfinished it felt. I had very little actual fun playing this game, and when a game makes you feel like you're working rather than enjoying yourself, something is terribly wrong.

The presentation side of things is also extremely sloppy. The dialogue audio is very low quality, clothes clip through characters even though that's the only set of clothes they wear the entire game, and the lip-sync and animation quality for some side conversations and missions are absolutely horrible, just to name a few. It could just be the setting which I personally have no interest in, but I found the cities and locations featured in the game to be unappealing and monotone. The quality of the game varies dramatically, almost as if multiple different studios worked on it (hmmmm I might be onto something there).

ACIII is also definitely the buggiest game in the series (yes, I'd say even more than Unity). The bugs are too many to name, but it includes dialogue overlapping and cutting in and out, looping music that also gets progressively louder to the point of deafening noise, NPC pathways just bugging out, flickering screens, incompletable objectives, and so much more. I've had to reload saves countless times, and the bugs in general detracted from the whole experience significantly. I don't think I've ever stared at my monitor in bewilderment and threw my hands up while playing ANY game as much as I did while playing ACIII.

Now, the remaster itself. The only thing I can confidently say that this remaster does well is make the environment look better, with more vivid colours and much better textures. That's it. A lot of people talk about the overhaul of the lighting system but I think it made things worse: some scenes are nearly pitch black or blazing white, and characters look like smooth wet plastic dolls. And seeing as this remaster really made me realize how buggy this game was, bugs were not fixed, and even perhaps new ones were introduced.

In addition to the base game, this package also includes the ACIII King Washington DLC and AC Liberation HD. The DLC is good; it has a fresh story and introduces some fun new abilities, if at the cost of recycling locations and repetitive filler content if you choose to do it. AC Liberation HD is a pretty solid short game that honestly seems more coherent and polished of a game than ACIII, with a really interesting and unique "persona" system and creative ways that the story is told, but some of the repetitiveness of the side missions and collectibles (if you wish to do them), awful framerates in certain parts of the city, lack of musical variety, and frustrating objectives needed for 100% sync hold it back from being a standout in the franchise.

TLDR; While getting some things right in the story and parkour/combat department, ACIII feels like an undercooked and bloated mix of different game mechanics rife with bugs and issues not at all fixed by this "remaster", which made some visual changes that make this game even worse. AC Liberation HD Remastered is a really nice inclusion in this package but it has a few (admittedly more minor) issues that hold it back from being a great game.

The graphics are completely broken with the HDR, leading to things looking either whitened or blander for the most part.

There are also bugs here and there which aren't fun to handle when a lot of them occur in the main story.

But, the story alone is pretty neat, and the gameplay feels really fluid. It's nice to come back to this and notice the origins for the ship battles in IV.