Finished the story the other day, will likely carry on with co-op until the platinum unlocks. Weirdly torn on this one. The gameplay is very "what is AC1 but good" i.e. you've got a big city and some good-feeling parkour mechanics to navigate it with, and the missions are almost all "go kill this guy" with some fun extras. However the story takes an utterly bananas perspective that I can only conceive of as "when u go so centrist u accidentally royalist". In a game about the French Revolution! Like, they chose this time period, and then consciously decided to make the protagonist a sneering aristocrat.

It also doesn't seem particularly interested in the actual events of the Revolution (some of the key ones are relegated to co-op missions where they're safely divorced from the narrative), which is particularly weird coming off of ACIII and Black Flag, which sometimes felt like tours of the history books. I get wanting to avoid doing the same kind of thing with Unity, since it seems to be trying to reinvent the series in so many ways, but again, The Actual French Revolution is a weird setting to pick if you're just there for, like, the vibes.

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Playing for the first time. On Sequence 9 as of 13 Dec. Notes:

The platforming rules. The usual AC problems are still there (sticky boi syndrome) but the added fluidity and better control over descent make for the best traversal in the series so far. Arno is so springy, it's great.

I've unlocked a heavy weapon that's just a bat with nails through it. It whips ass.

So far the story seems uninterested in the actual French Revolution? idk, we see the Estates-General and the storming of the Bastille without much of a remark (aside from sarky database entries), then skip ahead two years. Napoleon just sort of shows up. Is this some belated reaction to the historical-celebrity hobnobbing of Ezio and ACIII? Instead we're just going to put history in the background of a pretty bland Assassin/Templar plot and pepper in some names to show we did the research before we decided to ignore it?

I think everyone commented on this back in 2014 (when they weren't doing Bug Discourse) but who made the call to give everyone British accents? The Ezio games all used region-appropriate accents and they were good. Altaïr's American accent from AC1 stuck out badly enough to get replaced for Revelations. It's so jarring when someone talking like a Yorkshireman one second switches to French the next. To make it worse the English accents aren't always that good. Élise is on par with Shay from AC Rogue for French-Canadian voice actors mangling an accent to the point that it distracts from the character.

The game's political understanding seems to be on more or less a "Scarlet Pimpernel" level. Nasty smelly revolutionaries whipping the people up into a frenzy against the poor innocent aristos. Of course the "popular revolution was actually masterminded by a shadowy cabal" trope has no unfortunate antecedents, nosir.

Paris is gorgeous. The odd bug aside, this might be the prettiest AC game I've played (although Chronicles India is close). Really showing off that cutting-edge PS4 technology (I love being a console generation behind, it saves a lot of cash). The crowds too! Such big crowds. AC as a series makes a big deal of crowds but this is the first time they've had real hefty throngs of people onscreen.

Flawed but more interesting than the general consensus would imply, as was the case with the first AC and (based on the ~50% I've played so far) Unity.

Someone at Ubisoft clearly put some work into researching Kanienʼkehá:ka culture and history of the period but it's pretty much all relegated to database entries. Ratonhnhaké:ton is immediately given an Anglo name that everyone (himself included) uses, so US/UK gamers don't have to make the slightest concession to a culture outside our own. Also, on a petty note, I'm annoyed we didn't hear more of actress Tiio Horn, who's great in Letterkenny (one day I'm sure I'll cave and get the King Washington DLC for more Tiio).

The game is absurdly front-heavy. Contrast the steady build-up of Haytham's arrival in the colonies vs the ramshackle series of encounters that make up the finale. I know these things aren't actually produced in story order, but it gives the impression that they dwelled way too long on the first act and then had to rush to finish. Like that Spongebob meme of the ornate "The" followed by a blank page.

However! Some of the game's ambitious-but-crap qualities have to be admired. There's a good attempt at making Brotherhood/Revelations' recruitment mechanic more personal, as your handful of Assassin recruits all have voices, personalities, and their own mini-mission to showcase their skills. If only they were interesting characters - but I suppose you can't have it all. Incidentally, I really liked that the recruits' skills replaced the mechanic of hiring thieves/mercenaries/courtesans to disrupt guards from the Ezio games. It's a shame that was abandoned (along with the whole Brotherhood mechanic) after III, although I haven't played anything newer than Unity so maybe it makes a comeback later.

The Homestead is another admirable mess. Instead of buying up property in the game's cities as in AC Bro/Rev, you build a little community in the countryside made up of various outcasts, all of whom have little storylines and are even occasionally endearing or amusing. Thematically, it's a perfect foil for the game's overarching plotlines: the Patriots and Loyalists (and of course Templars on both sides) spout fancy rhetoric about liberty while profiting from slavery and using the Kanienʼkehá:ka as pawns; meanwhile Ratonhnhaké:ton is building a little commune just by going around helping people and bringing them together to meet everyone's needs.

I think this is my favourite version of the Assassins in the series. Instead of being mystical action-monks or the secret landlords of entire cities, here they start from nothing (well okay, having a nice parcel of land isn't nothing, but still) and work to improve people's lives through direct action. It's only the faintest whiff of a revolutionary politics but fuck it, it's the best we're going to get from Ubisoft. It's undermined by some broad characterisation, as well as its implementation into the needlessly convoluted trading and crafting system (menus for days), but it's a highlight of the game and another thing I'm sorry didn't carry over to Black Flag - imagine the Jackdaw's crew being a little community of colourful characters rather than just another ship stat.

So, on the whole: a failure, but a sometimes-noble failure. I feel like AC games often have more going on under the hood than you'd expect from a AAA Ubisoft blockbuster, if for no other reason than the amount of historical research that goes into all of them. You know at least one person on the team for each of these things poured their heart and soul into reconstructing a real time and place, and more often than not that thoughtfulness makes itself known in other parts of the game. For instance, well done to whever made tomahawking someone in the face feel so good in this one. Nice work.

Also: I'd be fascinated to sit down with the person/people at Ubisoft who kept pushing for more sci-fi gubbins with Juno & co. The audience very vocally stopped caring circa Brotherhood, and there's way less of it from Black Flag on, but the attention it's given here makes me think there was at least one really big fan of that storyline in a position of influence from 2010 to 2012. Would love to pick their brains.