So a couple weeks after starting Unity(and going back between this and Blasphemous), I feel like I can talk about it a bit.
First off, as is commonly noted, Paris is beautiful. It might be the best depiction of a 18th century major city in a video game I've ever seen. Previous AC games had Cities like Rome and Constantinople, but this feels on another level There's also how the city feels crowded and lived in the way most most other VG cities don't. And it's wonderful to explore places like Notre Dame and the Louvre and a bunch of other famous landmarks of Paris 200 years ago.
Missions are generally good, though for the first couple sequences it's mostly Arno getting into trouble until he finally lands in the Bastille in the most hamfisted way possible. Basically, he comes across his foster father, who had recently been fatally wounded, at a party and despite the guards 50 feet away totally missing the fact he'd been assaulted in the MIDDLE OF VERSAILLES AT A HUGE PARTY, they suddenly notice Arno when he's leaning over the body to see him if's okay and just assume he's the killer because he discovered the body. Trials apparently didn't exist in 18th century France prior to the revolution. In the Bastille, he meets and assassin and then gets invited to join, after which he starts doing Assassin missions properly.
After which it's generally Arno following the trail to find the killers of his foster father(who he finds out was also a Templar Grand Master), punctuated by missions where he tracks down his target and is generally given a lot of leeway how to approach and take him down, much like the missions in Syndicate. This includes having optional objectives to make the missions easier.
And this is great, though the side missions are somewhat less good. There are approx 70 million side missions and as you reveal more of the map it feels overwhelming and reminds me why I don't play Ubisoft games anymore.Fortunately you can filter the map to make it a bit less difficult to actually find stuff. So far the best of the side content are the Paris Stories and the Murder Mysteries(and now I feel retroactively cheated by syndicate because the Dreadful Crimes are the same as the Murder Mysteries here but you had to buy them as DLC). There are also some heist missions for big money and more invovled then the side quests are and can be repeated to boot. I haven't tried the companion and co-op missions so I have no idea if those are any good. The fact there are so many different types of side missions kind of underlines where Unity falls right back into Ubisofts worst habits of doing more rather than better.
Notably the fact I spent at least a couple hours syncing all the viewpoints by climbing towers so I could reveal the map, because that way I can buy social clubs and renovate the Cafe Theater. Why am I doing this, you ask? Because this is the best way to make money in this game. It's basically the landlord mechanic from brotherhood and Revelations yet again, but this time you only have to buy and upgrade a handful of businesses instead of every shop in Rome/Constantinople. And you pretty much have to do this because there's a massive selection of Weapons and Armor to purchase, but they get more and more expensive the better in quality they get. This is basically how you upgrade your character by buying better gear, and you have to do this because the districts get progressively beef gated(Common mooks can one shot you in the more dangerous areas and will tank your hits in the more dangerous districts) which are overcome by making a ton of cash so you can buy the best gear(but you also have to do side missions and complete sequences to unlock the guy as well). Yes, the RPG element that has become predominate in AC now was already kicking into gear in Syndicate and Unity. Just with a smaller leveling system(5 levels instead of whatever the hell it is in Valhalla). What's worse is that I didn't realize I couple upgrade my armor until just last night because I thought it was cosmetic.
As for the main story, it's okay. Arno is kind of annoying, like he's trying to be a dashing Rogue like Ezio or Edward and just doesn't have the Charisma to pull it off. He also doesn't seem terribly interested in the French Revolution stuff going on around him which comes across as kinda weird since there are literally extremists in the streets beating up people for being "moderates"(not royalist, moderates). And it feels telling that instead of pulling the normal trope of offing his Parents like the usual AC Protagonist, they off his dad in the intro(Thanks, Shay), whereupon he gets adopted and then his foster dad gets offed. He barely seems to care about his actual dad getting offed, despite the fact he goes berserk if anyone touches his dads broken pocket watch. It feels weird considering Rogue went out of it's way to have Shay kill Arnos Dad and the only mention of Shay in Unity so far is to have his clothes as an outfit(which feels dark as hell if you actually chose to wear them).The French Revolution feels more background noise then anything for the most part. Yeah, a couple famous bits have been featured(the storming of the Bastille) and the streets are full of angry mobs and tricolour flags but despite that there seems to be very little of the revolution as part of the plot.
One of the more interesting bits of this game are the Helix Rifts, where(since you're a dude playing Helix Game Console who gets a pirate Signal from the assassins) occasionally Abstergo does a server sweep and you have to move arno out of the server through a big sky portal, which then drops you into Paris in another Era(The Belle Epoch, the Nazi Occuptation of France during WW2 and what I believe is the hundred years war). And these are kinda fucking amazing to see, but they're also linear obstacle courses like the platforming missions of the earlier games that essentially don't exist in AC anymore. Yeah, you can try to stop and enjoy the scenery but then the red scan lines of death with appear and force you to keep moving forward. No doubt to keep you from poking around to much and realizing how small these levels really are. It really is a shame. I've heard the original concept for Unity was supposed to have you going between different time periods of Paris but that idea got cut(and seeing what issues Unity had at launch this doesn't shock me) but they didn't want to waste the time and effort put in so they made them into these cool little side missions. I haven't been able to find anything to confirm this though.
It's not the broken mess it was when it launched, though I've still run across some embarrassing bugs(I once got trapped by phasing into a building while trying to climb it). It generally good so far but it's more or less just an update of Brotherhood/Revelations(except without the recruitment/map mini games).
First off, as is commonly noted, Paris is beautiful. It might be the best depiction of a 18th century major city in a video game I've ever seen. Previous AC games had Cities like Rome and Constantinople, but this feels on another level There's also how the city feels crowded and lived in the way most most other VG cities don't. And it's wonderful to explore places like Notre Dame and the Louvre and a bunch of other famous landmarks of Paris 200 years ago.
Missions are generally good, though for the first couple sequences it's mostly Arno getting into trouble until he finally lands in the Bastille in the most hamfisted way possible. Basically, he comes across his foster father, who had recently been fatally wounded, at a party and despite the guards 50 feet away totally missing the fact he'd been assaulted in the MIDDLE OF VERSAILLES AT A HUGE PARTY, they suddenly notice Arno when he's leaning over the body to see him if's okay and just assume he's the killer because he discovered the body. Trials apparently didn't exist in 18th century France prior to the revolution. In the Bastille, he meets and assassin and then gets invited to join, after which he starts doing Assassin missions properly.
After which it's generally Arno following the trail to find the killers of his foster father(who he finds out was also a Templar Grand Master), punctuated by missions where he tracks down his target and is generally given a lot of leeway how to approach and take him down, much like the missions in Syndicate. This includes having optional objectives to make the missions easier.
And this is great, though the side missions are somewhat less good. There are approx 70 million side missions and as you reveal more of the map it feels overwhelming and reminds me why I don't play Ubisoft games anymore.Fortunately you can filter the map to make it a bit less difficult to actually find stuff. So far the best of the side content are the Paris Stories and the Murder Mysteries(and now I feel retroactively cheated by syndicate because the Dreadful Crimes are the same as the Murder Mysteries here but you had to buy them as DLC). There are also some heist missions for big money and more invovled then the side quests are and can be repeated to boot. I haven't tried the companion and co-op missions so I have no idea if those are any good. The fact there are so many different types of side missions kind of underlines where Unity falls right back into Ubisofts worst habits of doing more rather than better.
Notably the fact I spent at least a couple hours syncing all the viewpoints by climbing towers so I could reveal the map, because that way I can buy social clubs and renovate the Cafe Theater. Why am I doing this, you ask? Because this is the best way to make money in this game. It's basically the landlord mechanic from brotherhood and Revelations yet again, but this time you only have to buy and upgrade a handful of businesses instead of every shop in Rome/Constantinople. And you pretty much have to do this because there's a massive selection of Weapons and Armor to purchase, but they get more and more expensive the better in quality they get. This is basically how you upgrade your character by buying better gear, and you have to do this because the districts get progressively beef gated(Common mooks can one shot you in the more dangerous areas and will tank your hits in the more dangerous districts) which are overcome by making a ton of cash so you can buy the best gear(but you also have to do side missions and complete sequences to unlock the guy as well). Yes, the RPG element that has become predominate in AC now was already kicking into gear in Syndicate and Unity. Just with a smaller leveling system(5 levels instead of whatever the hell it is in Valhalla). What's worse is that I didn't realize I couple upgrade my armor until just last night because I thought it was cosmetic.
As for the main story, it's okay. Arno is kind of annoying, like he's trying to be a dashing Rogue like Ezio or Edward and just doesn't have the Charisma to pull it off. He also doesn't seem terribly interested in the French Revolution stuff going on around him which comes across as kinda weird since there are literally extremists in the streets beating up people for being "moderates"(not royalist, moderates). And it feels telling that instead of pulling the normal trope of offing his Parents like the usual AC Protagonist, they off his dad in the intro(Thanks, Shay), whereupon he gets adopted and then his foster dad gets offed. He barely seems to care about his actual dad getting offed, despite the fact he goes berserk if anyone touches his dads broken pocket watch. It feels weird considering Rogue went out of it's way to have Shay kill Arnos Dad and the only mention of Shay in Unity so far is to have his clothes as an outfit(which feels dark as hell if you actually chose to wear them).The French Revolution feels more background noise then anything for the most part. Yeah, a couple famous bits have been featured(the storming of the Bastille) and the streets are full of angry mobs and tricolour flags but despite that there seems to be very little of the revolution as part of the plot.
One of the more interesting bits of this game are the Helix Rifts, where(since you're a dude playing Helix Game Console who gets a pirate Signal from the assassins) occasionally Abstergo does a server sweep and you have to move arno out of the server through a big sky portal, which then drops you into Paris in another Era(The Belle Epoch, the Nazi Occuptation of France during WW2 and what I believe is the hundred years war). And these are kinda fucking amazing to see, but they're also linear obstacle courses like the platforming missions of the earlier games that essentially don't exist in AC anymore. Yeah, you can try to stop and enjoy the scenery but then the red scan lines of death with appear and force you to keep moving forward. No doubt to keep you from poking around to much and realizing how small these levels really are. It really is a shame. I've heard the original concept for Unity was supposed to have you going between different time periods of Paris but that idea got cut(and seeing what issues Unity had at launch this doesn't shock me) but they didn't want to waste the time and effort put in so they made them into these cool little side missions. I haven't been able to find anything to confirm this though.
It's not the broken mess it was when it launched, though I've still run across some embarrassing bugs(I once got trapped by phasing into a building while trying to climb it). It generally good so far but it's more or less just an update of Brotherhood/Revelations(except without the recruitment/map mini games).
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