Playing this in 2024 on the Series X and in French. From my understanding, the original release in 2014 was not very good. What I will say is I'm having a pretty good time early on in the first act. The movement mechanics are a little wonky. This is the first AC game I've picked up since Brotherhood at launch, so it feels mostly similar to that experience.

The voice acting is solid in French. It's fun to jump in and out of these quick missions. The detail of the city of Versailles and Paris is so impressive. The buildings, the architecture, it's pretty surreal for a 2014 Ubisoft game; of course the crowd and NPCs on the other hand are almost entirely carboard cutout stand-ins, but that was expected. The FPS on the X makes this really nice.

What is somewhat interesting to me about this game, is it sort of a relic of the "downfall", bit of a dramatic term", that gaming took in the early mid-2010s with bizarre microtransactions in game. It is so silly that when you go to upgrade equipment, it pulls up options to spend real money on single player gear. Very glad I don't see that in games nowadays, at least the ones I play. So distasteful.

Also, the map is hilarious. Hundreds of unnecessary icons, what a UI clusterfuck. But still mostly functional. Look forward to getting deeper in and seeing more of this one.