This is video game junk food. It's objectively terrible, but I really liked it.
Let's start with the negatives, as they are numerous. The game is slow, tedious, and repetitive.
The game is slow : Climbing is a chore, as it's quite clunky (I often ended up jumping of a wall even though I didn't want to) and Altaïr is very... careful when climbing, by what you should understand that he's as quick as a snail crawling up a skyscraper. The combat relies mostly on you waiting for enemies to attack so that you can counter them with dope-ass animations that one-shot kill a lot of the enemies, or at least give you a window to do serious damage.
The game is tedious : If I have to go through the "kingdom" one more time I will find everyone who worked on this game and make sure their families pay for their Ubisoft-working family member's sins. For the first three sequences, you have to ride your horses to the three main cities, and doing so is the worst part of the game, by far, as it is completely barren, with nothing to do except climb observation points every five meters. The map requires you to climb observation points to reveal it, and there is WAY TOO MANY OF THEM. I actually like observation points, some can procure breathtaking sights, but there is around 60 in this very small game, so the area they reveal is quite limited, and it gets very repetitive and boring, especially given Altaïr's climbing speed. To make things worse, even after going through the tedious process of revealing the map, navigating thanks to it is no easy feat. The mini-map is useless, as it doesn't show anything at all except for where the north is and where your objectives are, and the actual map isn't much better, as it doesn't show you roads for you to follow, so you just kinda pick a path and hope that it isn't a dead-end. Thankfully, you then unlock fast travel, but you still have to walk all the way from the Assassin's fortress to the the fast travel point, which will take 2 and half minutes, WHICH YOU HAVE TO REPEAT 9 TIMES. That makes 22 and half minutes out of this 12 hour game where you're repeating the same exact boring journey.
The game is repetitive: if you've done one assassination in the game, you've basically done them all, and they really aren't that interesting. You'll start by being given a speech by Al-Mualim, then you'll do the boring travel section to the town you need to go to, get into the city by camouflaging yourself in scholars, get to the bureau, then accomplish 2-3 "investigation" missions which consist of either a/ eavesdroping (sit on a bench, aim for the two guys that are talking, and press triangle) b/theft (listen to two guys talking, walk up to the the back of the one you need to pickpocket, hold circle) c/interrogation (listen to a guy talk, follow him until no guards are nearby, beat him up(which consists of alternatively pressing square to punch and then holding R1 to block without any timing involved), listen to him talk) d/collect the flags (basically a parkour challenge, pretty decent but I only got to play one even though I did around thirty of the 54 possible investigation missions) e/ assassination timer challenges (kill 2-5 dudes without being seen within the time-limit). For those of you keeping count, that's only 5 mission types for 54 possible investigation missions. That means that, on average, one type of investigation is repeated ten times, and I'm sure that there aren't as many timer challenges or eavesdropping missions that they are interrogation of theft missions, so you'll mostly be following dudes around to beat them up or pickpocket. It gets very repetitive, very fast. After that, you go back to the bureau (which can be pretty far away as well), then you do the assassination. Now this is where the game could've shined. Every investigation mission gives you info on the guy you need to kill and tips on how to kill him. For example, one guy told me that scholars would be attending a ceremony where my target would be, so I could hide amongst them. Here's the problem: firstly I never found the scholars or a victime to save to make scholars spawn, secondly, I didn't need the scholars because this game is way too easy. Even though security is often pretty tight, with a lot of enemies around the target, the target can't escape, he'll just stand and fight you. Had he been programmed to flee, putting the mission under an invisible time limit, having to avoid combat would've been a priority, and I would've been heavily encouraged to engage with more investigation or at least to be smart with my assassination, but because of how easy it is to do assassinations, I just acted as a brute who would force his way through guards. Furthermore, even when I tried being smart, the detection system is really quite clunky, and I often got spotted even though I wasn't doing anything wrong (I wasn't running, or jumping, or climbing or anything that requires "active mode" as the game calls it). The problem can be resumed to this: the game gives you a solution to a non-existing problem. After the assassination, you escape the guards, hide, they forget about you, you get back to the bureau (again) and you're done.
Lastly for negatives, the story isn't good. It's not terrible, but the Desmond sections are a whole bunch of nothing where you just walk from your bed to the animus, and then from the animus to your bed, and it never gets interesting, even though there was potential for it to be I will say that. Altaïr really is a dick, and it feels like his arc just happens without any rhyme or reason: he's a dick at the beginning, and ends up being a humble guy because.. he killed 9 dudes ? The thing is the game shows reasons for him to humble himself (his arrogance is responsible for a death and a lost limb to be fair) but when those things happen, he keeps being a dick about it and only becomes humble at the end of the game, so surely that's not the reason for which he humbles himself, and there's no other reason given. Sure, he talks with the templars who make him realise the world is multi-faceted and complex, with no real good or bad guys, but that doesn't have anything to do with him being humble. Maybe becoming wise is what makes him humble ? It's weirdly done, that's for sure. Overall, the story is kinda there and that's it, but the ending is just hilariously bad. It's not even an ending, the game just stops abruptly. It feels like the writers had a heart attack while writing the climax of the story and nobody bothered to finish it.
Now for the positives: this game is all show, and that is what saves it, and, I must confess, made me enjoy it. Altaïr is a meh character, but hot damn his outfit is so cool and charismatic that it makes me love him even though he has all the personality of a dry sponge. That's the word to describe this game: cool. it has a cool factor which makes me enjoy it. The fighting animations are cool, pushing everyone in the crowd while trying to escape guards is cool, running on rooftops, hopping from one to the other is cool, the whole assassin's mythos is cool, killing someone with the hidden blade in the middle of a crowd without anyone noticing is cool, climbing, even though poorly executed, is cool, especially when climbing huge buildings. This game is objectively bad, and I feel terrible for enjoying it this much, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a good time. This is McDonald's: gourmet food is cool, but there is something comforting about those cheap burgers and fries. Breath of the Wild or Outer Wilds are cool, and I vastly prefer them to this by the way don't get it confused, but playing a game this simple and brain-dead was a nice experience.
Let's start with the negatives, as they are numerous. The game is slow, tedious, and repetitive.
The game is slow : Climbing is a chore, as it's quite clunky (I often ended up jumping of a wall even though I didn't want to) and Altaïr is very... careful when climbing, by what you should understand that he's as quick as a snail crawling up a skyscraper. The combat relies mostly on you waiting for enemies to attack so that you can counter them with dope-ass animations that one-shot kill a lot of the enemies, or at least give you a window to do serious damage.
The game is tedious : If I have to go through the "kingdom" one more time I will find everyone who worked on this game and make sure their families pay for their Ubisoft-working family member's sins. For the first three sequences, you have to ride your horses to the three main cities, and doing so is the worst part of the game, by far, as it is completely barren, with nothing to do except climb observation points every five meters. The map requires you to climb observation points to reveal it, and there is WAY TOO MANY OF THEM. I actually like observation points, some can procure breathtaking sights, but there is around 60 in this very small game, so the area they reveal is quite limited, and it gets very repetitive and boring, especially given Altaïr's climbing speed. To make things worse, even after going through the tedious process of revealing the map, navigating thanks to it is no easy feat. The mini-map is useless, as it doesn't show anything at all except for where the north is and where your objectives are, and the actual map isn't much better, as it doesn't show you roads for you to follow, so you just kinda pick a path and hope that it isn't a dead-end. Thankfully, you then unlock fast travel, but you still have to walk all the way from the Assassin's fortress to the the fast travel point, which will take 2 and half minutes, WHICH YOU HAVE TO REPEAT 9 TIMES. That makes 22 and half minutes out of this 12 hour game where you're repeating the same exact boring journey.
The game is repetitive: if you've done one assassination in the game, you've basically done them all, and they really aren't that interesting. You'll start by being given a speech by Al-Mualim, then you'll do the boring travel section to the town you need to go to, get into the city by camouflaging yourself in scholars, get to the bureau, then accomplish 2-3 "investigation" missions which consist of either a/ eavesdroping (sit on a bench, aim for the two guys that are talking, and press triangle) b/theft (listen to two guys talking, walk up to the the back of the one you need to pickpocket, hold circle) c/interrogation (listen to a guy talk, follow him until no guards are nearby, beat him up(which consists of alternatively pressing square to punch and then holding R1 to block without any timing involved), listen to him talk) d/collect the flags (basically a parkour challenge, pretty decent but I only got to play one even though I did around thirty of the 54 possible investigation missions) e/ assassination timer challenges (kill 2-5 dudes without being seen within the time-limit). For those of you keeping count, that's only 5 mission types for 54 possible investigation missions. That means that, on average, one type of investigation is repeated ten times, and I'm sure that there aren't as many timer challenges or eavesdropping missions that they are interrogation of theft missions, so you'll mostly be following dudes around to beat them up or pickpocket. It gets very repetitive, very fast. After that, you go back to the bureau (which can be pretty far away as well), then you do the assassination. Now this is where the game could've shined. Every investigation mission gives you info on the guy you need to kill and tips on how to kill him. For example, one guy told me that scholars would be attending a ceremony where my target would be, so I could hide amongst them. Here's the problem: firstly I never found the scholars or a victime to save to make scholars spawn, secondly, I didn't need the scholars because this game is way too easy. Even though security is often pretty tight, with a lot of enemies around the target, the target can't escape, he'll just stand and fight you. Had he been programmed to flee, putting the mission under an invisible time limit, having to avoid combat would've been a priority, and I would've been heavily encouraged to engage with more investigation or at least to be smart with my assassination, but because of how easy it is to do assassinations, I just acted as a brute who would force his way through guards. Furthermore, even when I tried being smart, the detection system is really quite clunky, and I often got spotted even though I wasn't doing anything wrong (I wasn't running, or jumping, or climbing or anything that requires "active mode" as the game calls it). The problem can be resumed to this: the game gives you a solution to a non-existing problem. After the assassination, you escape the guards, hide, they forget about you, you get back to the bureau (again) and you're done.
Lastly for negatives, the story isn't good. It's not terrible, but the Desmond sections are a whole bunch of nothing where you just walk from your bed to the animus, and then from the animus to your bed, and it never gets interesting, even though there was potential for it to be I will say that. Altaïr really is a dick, and it feels like his arc just happens without any rhyme or reason: he's a dick at the beginning, and ends up being a humble guy because.. he killed 9 dudes ? The thing is the game shows reasons for him to humble himself (his arrogance is responsible for a death and a lost limb to be fair) but when those things happen, he keeps being a dick about it and only becomes humble at the end of the game, so surely that's not the reason for which he humbles himself, and there's no other reason given. Sure, he talks with the templars who make him realise the world is multi-faceted and complex, with no real good or bad guys, but that doesn't have anything to do with him being humble. Maybe becoming wise is what makes him humble ? It's weirdly done, that's for sure. Overall, the story is kinda there and that's it, but the ending is just hilariously bad. It's not even an ending, the game just stops abruptly. It feels like the writers had a heart attack while writing the climax of the story and nobody bothered to finish it.
Now for the positives: this game is all show, and that is what saves it, and, I must confess, made me enjoy it. Altaïr is a meh character, but hot damn his outfit is so cool and charismatic that it makes me love him even though he has all the personality of a dry sponge. That's the word to describe this game: cool. it has a cool factor which makes me enjoy it. The fighting animations are cool, pushing everyone in the crowd while trying to escape guards is cool, running on rooftops, hopping from one to the other is cool, the whole assassin's mythos is cool, killing someone with the hidden blade in the middle of a crowd without anyone noticing is cool, climbing, even though poorly executed, is cool, especially when climbing huge buildings. This game is objectively bad, and I feel terrible for enjoying it this much, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a good time. This is McDonald's: gourmet food is cool, but there is something comforting about those cheap burgers and fries. Breath of the Wild or Outer Wilds are cool, and I vastly prefer them to this by the way don't get it confused, but playing a game this simple and brain-dead was a nice experience.