DNF

The pacing really pushed me off the edge regarding Nier Automata. After several hours of gameplay I was honestly surprised of how little dialogue was going on as I silently drifted around an enormous yet largely empty desert/city/forest. That left me spending most of my time with the serviceable, if not underwhelming, combat to fill the time. Standard enemies being boring little gizmo boys who'd mutter some nightmarish Philip K. Dick inspired words under their breath as I'd rip them in two. It's more of a button-masher than I'd like.

I got a bit past the spaceship part before I realize I was pushing myself to play it and not really enjoying myself at all. Then I hear tales of having to play through it all several more times for the true ending...? I'll have to pass.

More time spent with the characters would have been great, rather than curt exchanges about the mission. I would have slogged through more of the game if I cared about what was going on and the people involved.

I also bought this game on Steam and could not launch it, it would start and immediately crash. Surprisingly, the torrented version had zero issues.

The thing I dislike most about AC:U is that it had some legitimately good ideas but failed to deliver on most of them. AC:III was boring and uninspired and left me with low expectations for AC:BF which was perfect because that game was a mess top to bottom, hearing about what Unity had to offer in terms of story and gameplay gave me a spark of hope though and I decided to give it a shot. French Revolution, Co-op play, a new main character? Assassins Creed had me on board once before several games before with the charismatic Ezio Auditore and it's nonsensical story about space gods, maybe this would be a return to glory. The result was a series of disappointments. Being an game in the Assassins Creed series, I'd want to establish what made the past games enjoyable and then compare those things to Unity, seems fair to me. Previous entries had fun climbing, interesting main characters, an interesting subplot, sneaky stealth, fun flowing combat and let you effect important moments in history and rub shoulders with historic figureheads. Unity doesn't. Any of it.

The climbing in Unity, even with the new "Ascend/Descend" function is terrible, I found myself jumping to places I didn't want to, struggling to climb through a window, getting stuck in certain areas... etc. I've never had as much trouble traversing rooftops in a previous game before and it ended up being undeniably faster to jump down to the streets to get from point A to B instead of running along the tops of buildings. For a game that's heavily focused around making you look cool doing insane parkour, this is unacceptable, speed and mobility are one of the staples of AC and I felt like a drunk with weighted boots as I got around the city.

The protagonist, Arno Dorian, is a rich Englishman in the middle of the French revolution. I don't know what is going on. We have an interesting time period that we could have used to fuel a compelling story about Arno's position and role in the revolution itself and how it effected him and the lives of the people he knew. Instead we have a weak ass story about getting revenge for his father figure who's actually a TEMPLAR??? NO WAY and the fact that the revolution is going on has literally no impact on him or the story at all for the most part. Arno is two dimensional, fueled only by his desire for revenge, he isn't even a terribly good Assassin, disregarding the Creed and his superiors at every opportunity. Several times better than the leads of III and BF but still much to shallow and poorly written.

Speaking of poorly written we're tossed in yet again to a "Game within a Game" Inception horns nonsense about Abstergo using the Animus technology to allow people to play the memories as a form of entertainment. In BF you were a game developer and in Unity you're just a run of the mill gamer, here and there some plot is peppered around about you helping some rouge team discover some dirt about Abstergo and in the end nothing happens. The DLC that continues the main story has yet to be released and I don't care anyway, I shouldn't have to shell out extra money to find out how the game really ends, this isn't Asura's Wrath. The "story" is barely that, a series of voice clips here and there, I don't care about who I am who's playing the Animus and I don't care about the dudes on the other side who are telling me about being HACKER REBELS. It's dumb. Give me back the Gods and Desmond nonsense at least that was one linear story that connected all the games, this is all isolated nonsense.

I'll combine the stealth and combat points in to one for this bit, considering how they basically did away with stealth for more of a Batman Arkham Paris kind of game. Air assassinations and silent kills are still in the game, although you have to "unlock" most of it (???) but for the most part a kill will instantly alert everyone within 4 city blocks of your location even if you did it quietly and no one saw, enemies will suddenly reel around and point you out after you silently slit a throat or toss a knife after which a full on brawl will take place. After a while of playing you'll suddenly realize that stealth is not only under-powered but simply isn't as effective, running in to an area like a madman, tossing endless smokebombs on to the ground and beating people over the head with a hammer is simply faster than any other means of approach, making the whole "plan and assassinate your target" parts of the game nonsense. My plan is to kick the door down Strangehold style, doves flying out from behind me as I shoot 3 guards in the face and beat another in to a fine powder, what game am I playing again? Assassin's Creed? Really now?

In 3 I talked with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, we bro'd out. In Black Flag I chilled with Blackbeard and Mary Read and drank ale. In Unity I saw Napoleon once, he seemed alright...? That's about it. I burned a building down once, that might have actually happened during the revolution but I really don't know. Like I said before since your character isn't french and has no stake in the goings on of the time, you don't take part in any major events or meet any major people. It just feels like you just so happen to be in Paris and there just so happens to be a revolution happening but MY TEMPLAR DADDY ;___; so it's all just ignored and wasted.

It's really a shame. At the end of the day I did manage to beat it though and the coop missions can be fun if you happen to get a group of semi-competent people together. That's all if the game isn't bugging out or crashing though which is a completely different problem entirely. It's a time waster, not a particularly good one. I hope Ubisoft learns their lesson and makes a better game for... next year... sigh