Kitteman said:
Now that a considerable amount of time has passed and plenty of people have played AC3 I just wanted to know if anyone out there can truly say if and why they enjoyed it. Personally when compared to the previous games I found it to be rather lackluster mainly I think due to the location. The American Revolution sounds cool in theory, but one of my major concerns were the towns. Boston and New York just don't compare to places like Florence and Rome. They're just too short I guess is what you would call it. They don't really make you want to go free-running on the roofs and guards spot like you in around 3 milliseconds if you decide to go onto the rooftop. So the game negates one of the most important aspects of the Assassin's Creed universe. Couple this with the fact that this is the easiest game in the franchise (and that is saying something) due to the revised health system. Instead of having to replenish your health with health packs it instead regenerates over time therefore removing most of the challenge in fighting, I say most because the fighting in AC was never hard. Now the character of Connor was also another considerable concern for me. He just isn't interesting, at all. I know that we were all sick to death of Ezio always appearing, but now that he's gone who do we get? Some monotone, boring kid who never seems to understand what's going on? Compared to Ezio's charismatic womanizing appeal Connor just comes off as bland and uninteresting. I have been of fan of this series since day 1, but with this latest entry I just give up and it seems that Ubisoft has too.
Honestly I thought the combat was an absolute pain in the ass compared to the other games...what with guys chucking bombs at you, firing-squads lining up half a block away from you and me never seeming to be able to pull off the "human shield move" in time. One of the things I did appreciate was that they updated the counter-attack system to require *GASP!* TWO button presses! They also seem to have made the majority of enemies immune to instant counter-kills. But this uptick in challenge was completely negated once you realize that the Tomahawk is a death machine that kills pretty much anyone in three hits before converting into an unstoppable combo of death and destruction.
Beyond that, Brotherhood is still my favorite AC to date. 2 was pretty sweet and a very close second, but I REALLY enjoyed killing that bastard Ceasar (probably misspelled that). On a more technical standpoint that I won't get into but rather just mention: the game is FULL of mechanical glitches. And really I have to borrow from Yahtzee's take on the game and mention that a lot of the sidequests are just tedious busy-work with no real point besides absolutely murdering time. I will say I enjoyed the naval battles a LOT more than the tower defense from Revelations...but then again, as a whole, I'd say I liked ACIII a lot better than Revelations.
That said, though, I can't say I liked ACIII too much. A lot of the bonus mission objectives were, in my opinion, almost impossible considering the gear that you're given (the fucking bow and arrow SUCKS! The crossbow was a beautiful, quiet, long-range stealth kill to help with tricky situations...the fucking bow takes 3 arrows to kill someone). There's one where a town is getting bombarded by a couple ships and you have to run through the bombardment, jump in the water, and swim out to the boats. New Optional Objective: kill everyone on the boats without getting spotted. Yeeeah, considering their patrol patterns and my pussy-ass weapons, that wasn't happening. Musta tried 40 times with every possible approach I could think of and I just couldn't get it done.
Onto the character: I can understand why they made Connor the way they did. He was never completely sold on the beliefs of the Assassins. Sure, he bought into it and followed the old man around, but it was clear he didn't have the will or heart of an assassin. He was merely using them as a tool to make himself strong enough to fight against those that would endanger his people. That said, I definitely prefer Ezio - even Old Man Ezio - over Connor.
With the buildings, yeah, it's just not the same without beautiful towers that you take one look at and start getting a chubby while thinking "Oh I'm gonna climb the FUCK outta this tower!!" Orrrrr maybe that was just me who got that excited.
All in all, like I said, I thought it was better than Revelations, but considering how utterly crap Revelations was, that's not saying much. Assassins Creed is best kept to the medieval timeperiod...you know, before EVERYONE had a frickin' gun.
On a side-note..........is it just me, or does Connor sound almost exactly like Alucard from the original PS Syphony of the Night? Seriously, play that again, then play AC III...it's GOTTA be the same voice actor. It's not constant, but there's a good number of points where Alucard REALLY comes out. Mostly when Connor's starting to get pissy about something.
