Unfortunately going to have to shelve this for now. It was my most anticipated game this year and I could feel from chapter one that something was off. The first drawback was the shite visual modes it offered. A nauseating 30FPS experience or a smooth 60FPS with the textures and resolution of a ps2 game. Im not saying everything needs to be great, but for an expansive mainline game running on the ps5, I do expect more.

The combat is still great, if anything, its even better than Remakes. The characters are just still as charming and goofy. The situations in this game had me laughing out loud many a time as well.

There's a lot of very good things in this game. There's obviously been a lot of time and energy put into so many different parts of this game but it becomes too much. Each chapter introduces a new area with the same tiresome format: ubisoft towers, combat encounters, meaty area story. It is just boring. Chapters also include side quests, which often have some great banter, but just become "go here kill this go back boom done." Minigames are also very fun but they destroy the pacing of what is to be an intriguing storyline.

So when it comes to the narrative, it is enticing because I've grown to care about these characters. That doesnt matter in the grand scheme of things because each chapter ends with a, "oh but wait lets go over there..."

It's just gotten to a point where I am tired to play this game and it becomes more of a slog than something i enjoy. I hope to come back to this eventually but for now its just a mess of really great individual pieces of a game.