this is a masterclass in metroidvanias. however, metroidvanias are still marred by exploration being a tedious endeavor when things start heading into backtracking territory. the reality is that, though exploring a new environment is really enjoyable (especially in a game so artistically compelling in visuals, presentation, and story), backtracking still sucks when you've gone through the same obstacles multiple times. the most notable example is the goam section in the crossroads, you end up having to go through this area many times and it's just kind of annoying. the game does give you tools to circumvent this, but the stag stations are pretty damn spaced out (for the most part) and the dream nail teleport isnt unlocked till around the 3/4 point of the game for most, id imagine.

aside from that, this game is excellent. i find it really cool how you really can play this game in many different ways depending on the charms that you choose and still be pretty effective. theres also just so much content here and so many little things to appreciate that build the world.

theres a real sense of progression as you go through the early stages of the game, and this mechanical progression is then followed by narrative progression. it works really well, and every area in the game feels like it has legitimate purpose to be there, both for the game and for the story.

great game. probably the best metroidvania game ever made.

i genuinely loved this game. i just think that specific skill checks shouldve been a 100% chance to occur after a certain amount of points. for example, getting into the building where you pick between a savoir faire skill check and a physical instrument skill check can straight up soft lock your game if you cant do either, so i had to savescum it to do it. it sucks because a big part of the game is dealing with the failed skillchecks that you get along the way.

aside from that, the pace of the story is a little wonky sometimes, but the first half of the game was genuinely one of the most engaging and wonderful stories ive gone through in any artistic medium. its amazing how much work was put into crafting this world.

lieutenant kitsuragi is a true homie.

the only points this gets are from the story pieces and some of the environments being pretty neat. aside from that, this is really lame.

they really did choose the worst part of revelations to add to a dlc. not sure why they didnt make this better either, they really couldve just made all the segments like this better by implementing, i dont know, actual gameplay mechanics, but it ends up being unchallenging and boring.

whatever, its a short dlc. youre better off just reading the wiki for what is revealed in it if you really care about the lore and dont care about completionism or whatever.

Great art style, great music, some of the worst gameplay and level design choices I've ever had the displeasure of playing. Disappointed. Maybe the annoying enemies and stage gimmicks would be okay if the controls weren't so awful. Bear in mind that Pro Skater 2 came out the same year as this, and Pro Skater 1 came out 2 whole years before it as well.

Game is tied to 30fps by the engine no matter where you play it. This usually doesn't bode well for platformer-type games.

If you want to engage with this game, just appreciate the art from a YouTube playthrough and listen to the music or something. It's just not worth playing. Maybe Future is better.

the honest truth is that this wouldn't really be bad by any means if it was released on a system that had better capabilities. unfortunately though, the controls really hamper the game, in addition to the very sluggish performance.

aside from that, the game is a nice little linear assassin's creed game that fills the gap between ac1 and the codex pages in ac2. i was impressed by the segments of altair writing his thoughts down until i learned that they were just some selected codex pages in verbatum, but the voice acting for altair is honestly still more "accurate" to how i would imagine him sounding than ac1.

regardless, i found myself enjoying the linear approach this game had over the ridiculous amount of lame side content brotherhood had, for example.

still, i can't really justify rating this any higher based on the limitations of the hardware, unfortunately.

Aveline's story is done a disservice by the poorly done concept of Abstergo hiding the truth from you, and it doesn't help that the writing seems hastily done as well. Citizen E doesn't fix it either, as the ending is jarring whether you kill all of them or not.

Furthermore, the remaster of this game (even with AC3R) doesn't really improve a significant margin over the original release on the Vita. The improvements are mostly graphically and framerate-wise, and the game is still locked at a weird 80fps, and the graphics are okay-ish. The gameplay is still affected by the technical limitations of the Vita and is not really improved that much.

Regardless, some of the moments this game has are fairly okay, the Bayou is relatively well crafted and the setting is believable enough. As always, the more Uncharted-esque parts are pretty fun to go through, and the Connor cameo is cool, but seems to just be a way to connect this to AC3.

All around, just mediocre. Could've been good, ended up being a huge letdown for an interesting character.

i really just think the hunting grounds update made this game ridiculously boring, grindy and repetitive. the gameplay isn't bad at all but damn does it suck that it's made boring by the leveling done by running place to place on an island over and over.

equipment elements were completely trivialized as a result as well, meaning that you really only care about what cells a piece of equipment has instead of the protection / damage it does against a specific enemy. the only cases where it semi-matters is the legacy modes, the arena one and escalation, but even then perks are probably more powerful than bothering with elements most of the time. perhaps im not at late game though, but who would trudge through to late game when it's so lame?

and obviously theres not really much point to play this when you can afford monster hunter games. just kinda sucks cuz the potential was there back when i played in early access.

i wish this was longer. really great in every way other than the variety of actually effective moves (dodges into spin hook kick destroys everything in the game except yang). the camera can be a pain in the ass sometimes too.

aside from that, the combat is refreshing and responsive, the visuals are unique, compelling and great in every level (personal favorite being the museum, im sure many agree), and thats all the game really needs in all honesty. the vague story works, and so does the music.

just great. play it.

this game just felt like AC2 with less variety in locations and more side content gimmicks that artificially increases playtime for completionists.

while i like that there was much more emphasis on the overarching plot here, we end off once again with a cliffhanger and still a really weak understanding of the lore.

some things that bothered me specifically:
- the reuse of locations over and over again (because of the lack of locations)
- how the crossbow makes this game ridiculously easy
- how the game bugs out at certain points regarding full synchronization, and has multiple points in time where having over 60 fps will softlock your gam
- the guilds system as a whole (leveling up guilds is just lame as hell, including the assassins guild)
- some missions are just straight up boring

ultimately it's still assassin's creed and it's still fine. just not special at all.

a very rough diamond.

i don't think ive played a game that had more visual bugs than this game had, and yet it's so solid in every other regard that i can't give it that much flak over it. exploration, combat, style, environments, story, characters, everything is so solid, but not exceedingly special.

the major thing aside from visual bugs is a lack of variety with enemies. the cool boss fights are cool, and there are great moments, but theres a lot of repetition in enemies, and the difficulty doesn't change with different enemies, but instead by increasing the amount of enemies. it gets boring fighting the same animals, same stun stick troopers, and run into the same bounty hunters over and over again, but everything else makes it flow fine.