Assassin’s Creed 3

Pros:
Mundo aberto divertido de explorar
Traz o sistema de caça como novidade
Traz missões de navio bem divertidas
História boa
Vilão muito BOM
Parkour e combate melhorados

Contras:
Ambientação fraca (Por causa dos Estados Unidos)
Protagonista sem charme
Ritmo muito lento
E conclusão de arco de história que traria consequencias negativas para a franquia……….

Few games have disappointed me as much as this game. When AC was at its peak, this game seemed like a huge next-step, but in the end fell completely flat for me, and really started, in my opinion, the decline of the franchise, barring the next game. The game looks great, with amazing renditions of Colonial America, and a great adaptation of the freerunning system to the less urban and more sparse setting, with fantastic animation work to boot. Slight improvements to the gameplay made for a more engaging combat experience versus the 1-button counters of the previous game, even if the new combat wasn't exactly great on its own. The introduction of ship combat, while a bit awkward narratively, presented an excellent blueprint that Black Flag would iterate upon to great success, and the foundations here are a strong addition to the gameplay loop of the franchise. Sadly, all of the praise ends here, since what has defined the good AC games from that bad has been the narrative, and AC3 is the first game in the series that, for me, truly dropped the ball when it comes to the story being told.

The game starts out very promising, with the first few chapters being rather on-brand for strong narrative with interesting questions being asked with regards to the setting and the series themes of control vs freedom, a theme that is ripe for exploration in the burgeoning US of A. Sadly, that strong start quickly falters, with the game choosing to skirt around a lot of the more damning explorations of American history that this era and these characters could achieve. The fact that the protagonist, a Native American, is so casually integrated into this setting without exploring the true tragedy that befell these people at the hands of this nation and these historic great men just strikes of cowardice for a series that has up until now done an excellent job of exploring history. In the end, the story here feels much more like an amusement park history ride, a theme that the series would sadly replicate going forward. The present-day narrative also comes to a head, and sadly that end is also a disappointment, so much so that the series would essentially abandon that element of the storytelling moving forward, another casuality in the franchise narrative.

Overall, AC3 fails to really bring anything particularly noteworthy to the table. The story is bland, toothless, and unengaging. The gameplay, while improved by a new engine and tech, is let down by the fact that the setting fails to illicit the same sense of wonder that previous settings would, and the core combat loop lacks any real engaging mechanics. While the next game in the series would use a lot of the foundations built here to better results, AC3 feels like the turning point in the franchise, where the old style of storytelling was replaced with cartoon meet-and-greets with famous figures pf history, and the ballooning of the game world with activities and collectibles has become the new norm for how the game is structured. Assassin's Creed was never the same after this game, and while Black Flag would stand-out as an all-time series high, it would take a while for the series to right the ship after the course change that this game initiated.

Creeding in the USA! It's boring!

This game was honestly a pretty fat struggle for me to get through, it felt extremely drawn out and I couldn't help but be disengaged throughout most of it. I think a lot of this has to do with the setting, it's really boring! Revolutionary War NA is just not something I'm interested in, especially considering I've already seen so much from this era in my life, but even so, Ubisoft made it boring. They didn't have any good ideas with it, the whole world looked like I was playing through a documentary video a history teacher would show me in school, I mean seriously this whole game is so drab and grey throughout it's legitimately one of the most aesthetically boring games I've ever played.

ACIII is mostly a story about failures, as both Connor and Desmond find themselves failing again and again, this has a lot of potential to be powerful, but as always Ubisoft excecutes it all in the most boring ways possible. What I mean by that is there's legitimately bad cinematography throughout cutscenes, awkward lines additionally voice acted awkwardly, a complete lack of pacing, and a completely forgettable soundtrack. This culminates into story ideas that anyone could respect, but a story that will leave a majority of people, me included, completely bored and disinterested. I was never invested in the story of Connor whatsoever, which is a shame because he has endless potential.

As for the modern story, this is the finale of 5 whole games here and somehow they made me just not care about it, with once again dreadful pacing and uneccesary jargon. Forcing a father-son relationship into the plotline was just a bad idea, Desmond absolutely did not need this and the father contributed literally nothing meaningful. There was also a clear setup for a player choice at the end that could've played into the ideology of the games and made the ending much more memorable, but alas they don't let us make the choice. So, for the finale of 5 whole games, it's just quite mundane, not really showing us anything new then ending as anticlimactic as it could've, it just ends instantly after the big ending moment happens. It felt like the payoff of 5 games was just a crumb of what it should've been.

Finally, onto the mission structure! Ubisoft is really hitting their stride at filler content that wastes your time here, as literally everything outside of main missions and homestead missions are complete filler with nothing interesting going on. It's all collecting meaningless shit, clearing forts, fetch quests for meaningless currency or materials, doing the same world events over and over, y'know, typical Ubislop. As for the main missions, they're EXTREMELY linear and rarely put the player in interesting situations that shake things up, noticably a major lack of stealth situations, especially in the second half of the game. Essentially every mission is just a vehicle for the story, nothing more. The homestead missions are probably the best thing this game does, and it's a bit puzzling why they completely dropped this idea in future entries. The homestead missions basically let you build up a community in the American Frontiers, with characters that partially seem like actual humans and let Connor show off some personality. It's just quant stuff.

This review feels a bit too long, so I'm gonna talk about final gameplay points then call it:
This game marks the downward spiral of the emphasis parkour has in AC. Parkour is somewhat smooth but has mostly been neutered, basically the player has less control and things become more automated. You'll be just holding two buttons mindlessly more than you could've in previous titles. The world is no longer a playground for your parkour, but is more of a cinematic piece to make you feel like you're really in this world, in this games case, really in colonial new york, boston, and yk, the woods. This means you'll be riding around on a horse or running WAY more than previous games, which is frankly boring and eventually I just started fast traveling everywhere. Even in cities, everything is spaced so far away that it's just impossible to flow around everywhere like you could in previous games.

Finally the combat and stealth, it's just more AC combat and stealth. They give you a lot of tools this time around but I hardly ever used them, as I never really needed to. combat is flashy and looks better than previous games. Connor is a pretty strong brute with a tomahawk, how can that not be cool? But y'know, pretty animations aside, it's the same stuff, which is fine, combat has never been AC's strongest aspect. I am a bit dissapointed by the absence of stealth in missions outside of the obligitory trailing missions. Social stealth is still here, there's a lot of gadgets for me to work with, but I'm rarely given opportunities to use them. Really the main times you'll be doing stealth is when you clear forts, which you have basically no incentive to do. You see the problem here?

ACIII felt like an absurdly dragged-out game that leaned into the aspects of AC I don't care about, while shying away from what makes AC special. I'm left with a game that makes me bored, and makes me wish I was playing a different AC game.

If you wanna see my rankings as I go through the series, click here.