Beautiful game, captivating landscapes, but they harmed the ethos of the AC games by introducing a level system. No longer does a mission require you to understand the games systems. No longer is difficulty increased by new and unique environments with more complex sets of enemy patrols, and fewer allotted mistakes. If I drive a hand spike through a man's brainstem but I'm two levels lower than him? He gets right back up. I get into a fight with five well outfitted guards? I'm 4 levels higher, too bad for those guys.

Steerable arrow go BRRRR

The inception of the RPG AC games.

Ancient Egypt is recreated in stunning detail.

Bayek is a really good protagonist and the story is very good. His motivations are very relatable.

Missions, even the side missions, are very high quality and interesting.

Parkour has been combed down as you easily climb just about anything, but it is really fluid.

Combat is very good and you have a good skill tree.

Witnessing the birth of the Assassin's Brotherhood was touching.

At its core, AC games has always been repetitive in terms of its gameplay, it all feels like chore especially doing all the side missions and other misc objectives. Currently at 20 hours on this game and this the second time I play it continuously everyday and it's starting to feel like a struggle finishing it. I enjoyed the combat and the difficulty at first but feels hollow. I might still finish the main story of this game and maybe a few sidequests, the DLC nah.

The best thing that modern AC games offer is the discovery tour, a immersive learning experience that teaches you about the time period and setting it's on. It's so educational that this could be taught on schools. Got many hours out of that.

As the last seconds of Assassin's Creed Origins played out, I was so confused by this game. This was my second playthrough, so the confusion was not caused by the story but by the fact that I forgot all the tiny details about this game. Some plot elements, mission structure and these sort of things. What caused my confusion was the fact that.. do I really like Assassin's Creed? Because this game is so far from everything that this franchise stands for and as it slowly crawls back to the style of Assassin's Creed, I realize that I start to lose interest in it's plot.

Origins was the turning point for Assassin's Creed as the game became an RPG with soulslike combat that rewards parrys and dodge rolls. A bizarre mixture of genres and ideas let to the creation of a game that tries to deviate itself from the past, while it cherishes the ideas of the previous entries. It reasonates well with the main theme of the game, grief and revenge, where the past needs to be buried for a better tomorrow. Egypt is a great location for a game like this for very obvious reasons. However, what lurks beneath the sands is what keeps this game away from becoming a masterpiece.

Origins tells the story of Bayek of Siwa who wants to take revenge for the death of his only son, Khemu. His heart is full of rage and sadness as he travels the land of Egypt in order to find his son's killer amongst the members of a cult who are ruining the once great kingdom by commiting attrocities against the people. Bayek's journey is a long and sometimes very tedious path as he solves crimes, help others and destroy bandit camps.

When words are not enough, you will fight with what you have. You have melee and ranged weapons, including swords, spears, bows, maces and such. The combat is simple, you have a light attack and a heavy attack. The light attack can be easily spammed but it does not break the guard of the enemy, while the heavy one can be deal a massive damage and stagger your foes. You can dash and use different tools for combat too, similarly to other Assassin's Creed games. Poison, traps and everything inbetween, combat is great in this game. The animation based fights are long gone and this new system, while lacking the fancy style of the previous games is the better one by a mile.

My main issue with Origins is the story. It unfolds in a way like nothing in this franchise, slowly and maturely as the methodical hunt for the cult becomes this anger filled redemption for Bayek but by the end of act 1, it becomes the usual Assassin's Creed nonsense, where historical figures are thrown in and everything is about the age old templars vs assassins theme. The game is largely written in a way where the player gets slowly driven into this world of espionage and assassinations but you can feel that the game works better when they just let the player run around in egypt and help people.

Speaking of helping, the side quests are amazing. The tasks themselves are pretty same in terms of mechanics but the writing is good for almost all of them. There are murder cases, love stories, weird situations, treasure hunts, stargazing and even ones where there is no story at all, like arenas and races. This game is full of content that rewards you, respects your time and the exploration is also fun.

Origins is a great starting point for new fans and returning fans of the franchise alike, it is just a shame that the writers cannot let go of the hands of the past, unlike the game's protagonist. Assassin's Creed is about history and with Origins, it became clear that the fast and edgy entries of the past are long gone. The franchise entered a new era, it matured and became what it is today. While the other entries will be remembered for ages to come, the RPG era of this franchise will age better from the rest and as time goes on, they will be cherrished for what they were.