THE BIGGEST FUMBLE IN THE HISTORY IN THE FRANCHISE (So far). The animators, the environmental artists, and character designers went wild with this one, while the writing department and level designers just came in to work to collect cash and nothing else. The atmosphere is impeccable, ruined by the story and characters written by hacks for drooling infants. Every second scene you should ask yourself what is that character doing, what is his motivation for being here, and by the end of the story or even at that moment the answer in 95% of cases is: "... it doesn't make sense or matter, eat the delicious slop you drolling infant."

Why doesn't the enemy kill you when they catch you? No idea.
Why does Connor just walk up to people and get immediately caught (EVEN THOUGH HE KNOWS OTHER PEOPLE LIVES ARE IN HIS HANDS AT THE MOMENT) instead of doing the whole "Assassin" thing? I have no idea, neither did the moronic writers of this travesty of the story.
The whole Daniel Cross plot line in the modern day is just fucking yikes, how are you not embarrassed to write something like that after I assume studying some kind of writing-related subject at some university.
There are so many gripes like that, gripes that did not apply to AC 1,2,Bro,Rev.

The game is also buggy, it's no Unity at launch, but this is... 12 years after the launch, so these bugs are there to stay. Out of the first 5 AC games, this one is BY FAR the buggiest and most frustrating.

And this hot, stinking, liquid shit is sitting on top of some actually decent food on your plate. I liked the homestead missions and how you develop it, even if it's fucking worthless gameplay-wise. I liked the little hunting side missions and especially loved the frontier side content when you delve into Scooby Doo mysteries. I liked the frankly complex hunting system, even though there are no real incentives to ever interact with it. I like the IDEA of the protagonist, but the writers made him completely bipolar. In one scene he will randomly lose his temper over nothing, while in others he's as patient as Budda, what the fuck was going on in that writing room? Because the writing is just so bad I don't even know who is Connor supposed to be!? He supposedly cares about his tribe, but you get almost no interactions with them after the prologue bits, he sure TALKS about doing all this for them but then he doesn't fix any of their problems ever and just kills bad men that he doesn't like instead? Sometimes he gets caught by walking straight into his assassination target and telling him "Hi I'm Connor here's my id, I'm an assassin I will assassin you with this hidden blade over here, could you come closer so I could assassinate you real good?", and then in other scenes, he fucking swims out with no boat into the sea to take on an entire armada and does so no problem. Is he Smart? Skilled? Lucky? Compassionate? Naive? You tell me, there's at least one scene to prove each and at least one to disprove each. You can't nail a single characteristic, such is the magnitude of the bad writing present in this game.

This game was brave for reworking the combat system, it was brave for bringing the storyline into such a wildly different place and time than the previous titles, and it was brave for trying something completely new. And that bravery is the only thing keeping this game from getting a straight-up negative score in my mind. If it was written better, I have no doubt in my mind it could reach the greatness of 2's story or maybe even surpass it, but it never stood a chance with that team of writers, producers, directors, whoever was responsible for THAT story.

This game has a lot of problems. The repetitive collectibles that there are way too many of. The 2nd half of the game essentially just being the 1st half again. The combat just being enemies coming at you one at a time and countering. The guards being bloodhounds who can be near impossible to lose at times (arguably a positive, to some!). I had to make 3 separate modifications to this game in order for it to run properly on a modern computer.

This is a 6/10 game...but why did I have so much fun while playing it? And why would I still recommend it?

The parkour. The atmosphere. The level design. Once you actually get this game going, past its quite long tutorializing, it's a short and sweet romp through Damascus, Jerusalem, and Acre. I'd recommend this game if you're a fan of the franchise. I think it's worth revisiting just to see how the series has changed from this first entry, and because of how interesting the parkour in this game is compared to the other games. If you aren't already a fan of the franchise, maybe consider skipping ahead to the Ezio trilogy if some jank isn't for you.

I don't have much to say that's new about this game or the original, this is a remake that lives up to the original- and even surpasses it. Something I was hopeful for yet didn't quite expect with how most remakes turn out.

The team that made this clearly holds love for the original and took tons of care to preserve its essence in as many ways possible. While it does miss some of the ludo-narrative poignance of the original and certain charms or scenes the original had, it makes up for it fully in reimagining Persona 3 in such a fresh, vivid and more satisfying manner by delving deeper into characters they couldn't do the same for in the original.

My few gripes are with the audiovisual aspects, I like the OST a lot but it's certainly not as iconic as the original which is fine but in certain songs it's a little too off. And for the visuals, on most fronts this is one of the prettiest games I've ever played yet the lighting can be completely out of sync in certain areas. Besides the things I've mentioned, this game is essentially perfect.

Now for a little personal footnote, this game came into my life when I started questioning the meaning of life and why I was alive at a very tender time of my pre-teen years, still unaware of how to deal with a loss. Back then, this game was a guiding light to me, it helped me sit with my fear of death despite how much it posessed me. Death is something I fear even to this day, this moment. But unlike 10 years ago, this time I know the meaning of my life is mine and the people I surround myself by to find. It's alright if I can't find it as long as I'm alive, my life already means something to the people that love me.

And that's fine enough, no matter when or how I pass. This realization only came to me then due to this game and today it comes back into my life in a further fully realized manner to pat me on my back and remind me of the same, to keep walking on and adore the burning glimmer and brilliance in life even if it means enduring all the suffering I have to face or that it'll all come to an end.

And as the game says, "Nothing's a waste...my life will have meaning."

Saints Row 1 is kind of annoying as shit to play. Grinding activities fucking sucks once you run out of the fun ones (Demolition Derby and Mayhem). All the other ones I do not enjoy. Driving and shooting in this game is a pain in the ass because there isn't cruise control yet AND I have to play on controller with no mouse aiming. The missions have NO checkpointing so if die to some random bullshit (can often happen), start the whole thing over again. I also didn't really understand how I'm supposed to accumulate enough ammo to play missions tbh. I started with the Rollerz and I was frequently asked to do car shooting. You are not getting more ammo from this, and i could only accumulate like 100 sub machine gun ammo at max around then, it just seemed impossible to play the game.

I was wondering why I didn't have any achievements on this game I know I played quite a bit, and its because I always had cheats on when I was younger. I also just started using cheats for infinite ammo so I could actually have some fun playing the game.

Story wise the game feels kind of lacking. There aren't any real good character stuff like in the later entries, its just like an introduction to this world. Not to say there aren't good character moments, but the side characters kind of felt super constricted to the mission formatting and not real. Like any moment Troy's secret is foreshadowed through his dialogue is really cool. Gat's young love of destruction and mayhem is cute. I really liked Dex and I wish he was in more and didn't just disappear. Then there's Benjmain King, he feels like such a powerhouse character that just steals the show.

Gang stories aren't too crazy. The Rollerz are really forgettable in my opinion and Lin doesn't really do much. The Los Carnales kind of have something going on, but not enough story stuff I think. The Vice Kings feel like the real meat because of Benjamin King, and just the inner turmoil between the characters.

At the end, I did appreciate this as a early point in the Saints history. Like, "wow look at baby Gat". I remembered all the stuff invovling these characters in two and I started feeling like this was some hazy memory world, a sort of odd normalcy before the outrageous rise of The Boss.

addendum: Why the fuck can't you test songs before you buy them? The song store also doesn't show who the artist is, just song titles. The mp3 player is an ingenious idea, letting you play music whenever, but it is wonky as all hell.

Despite the cool setting and stylish presentation, Ass Creed Russia is an absolute disaster on the gameplay front, to the point it's nothing but a frustrating trial and error experience from start to finish.

An unholy marriage of slow, unresponsive controls and timed sequences calibrated to the fraction of a second, the result is that even the slightest mistake will prompt a restart of an entire section. Especially egregious are segments where you have to catch a train, or a truck, or escape from a chasing vehicle, which are so punitive in their demand for perfection that you can be expected to try them over and over and over again until you finally do everything without the slightest mistake: get stuck for the briefest of moment on geometry while trying to vauilt over a box and it's back to the start for you. There is no sense of accomplishment when succeeding, only irritation.

The rest of the game is fairly pedestrian stealth puzzles you have seen man times before, only these are worse: here too there is only one possible solution in most cases and you have to keep failing and trying again until you figure it out and get it right. Or... you can just exploit the overabundance of rifle ammunition to just skip the tedium and just blast enemies in the face from a mile away, with all that's suffering from that being your score and the unlocking of upgrades you don't need.

The story is ludicrous, with the Bolshevik revolutionaries hilariously being a front for the templars (prompting the question if the Tzar is in his turn a front for the Assassins), and with the revolution setting in motion a Disney-esque plot involving Anastasia, now possessed by the Chinese assassin lady from a previous spinoff. It's bad, and even worse when you realize that all the guards in the game, Bolshevik or Assassin, keep repeating the same three conversations to the point of literal nausea. You will be sick to your core of hearing about how their family is "coping with the holes in the roof" or how "the smaller states have declared independence but Estonia want to remain closer" or "your hometown, isn't that where the anti-Bolsheviks are located?" How hard could it possibly have been to record a dozen conversations, instead of looping the same three over and over for the entire game?

There is some fun to be had in Ass Creed Russia if you manage to look past the mountain of flaws the game has and learn its levels by heart, compensating for its clunky mechanics to the point of perfection, but really, who would want to do that, aside from the most compulsive of achievement addicts?