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.

Personally, I really do love this katamari thing

Katamari Damacy was, in my humblest opinion, a straight 5/5, shit rocked. How do you follow-up perfection? You can't reinvent the wheel, you can't vastly change the gameplay, all you can do is expand on the perfection, and that's what they did.

(Note: I chose this version over the original release because I wanted to see the Royal Reverie content, and there's enough quality of life improvements to justify it.)

Now, this game takes the formula of the original and puts it in various new lights, with unique and engaging scenarios that really shake things up for the player. Both games are excellent at continuously delighting me with new and fun ideas. I personally don't like some types of levels where you have to guess or only pick up specific things, I'm more of a roll up literally everything kinda guy, but the variety is what was needed, and it goes down nice and easy.

As for any downsides, I kinda wanted more maps to be honest? Or some maps are just not used to their full potential, like there's some really awesome levels you only see maybe twice. Give me more of that please? Also, I was kinda hoping the story was more expanded on, but really we just get some king lore, which is neat I guess.

One of the biggest detractors is the soundtrack. There are some good tunes in this game but man, the first games soundtrack absolutely SMOKES this one.

The ending also felt very abrupt, the final levels didn't really feel like you were getting close to the end like in the first game.

also on gameplay fronts, there's a lot of in-game loading and object pop-in, which can kinda break that flow state you get in. I'm obviously nit-picking here but y'know, I'm trying to explain why this is a slightly inferior sequel.

This game really just functions as an expansion to the first game rather than a full-on second game imo. Still though, we really do love Katamari, and this is an easy recommendation for anyone.