Assassins Creed 3 - The Best Assassins Creed Yet.

[Durzo_Blint]

I'm not going to get into the many reasons why I thought it sucked, but I will say this.

I think the biggest PROBLEM with the game was Haytham Kenway. I started the game expecting to begin as Connor since he'd appeared in all the trailers and ads and cardboard cutouts and action figures, etc, but instead I'm playing as some snooty British guy in a tricorn hat. "Well, this won't last," I thought. "I'll be playing as him half an hour tops, no sense getting attached."

Instead you play as him for SIX hours of tutorials before Connor is even introduced, and by that point Haytham has grown into Captain AwesomeHat. To go from Captain AwesomeHat to Connor sulking about everything in his monotonous boring bloody voice just made Connor suck even more in comparison. I think if you had have jumped straight into Connor's memories the game would've been marginally better, but then while wishes are horses I think they should have just tried to make Connor a compelling character and Assassin, rather than just "The tree spirit told me to learn Assassining, so teach me!"

 

[Reaper195]

AC3 had a fair bit going for it. But, personally, it was the excess that was Brotherhood and Revelations that ruined the game for me. There are so many different mechanics added, many of which were utterly unneeded. The story was pretty average, and I fucking raged at how it wasn't until AC3 where the writers finally gave Desmond something to do,

Spoiler

and then had the fucking gaul to kill him off when he finally got interesting!

"This comes from the idea that Desmond Miles, the modern day protagonist of the series, was to finish his tale by December 2012. Amacio said that gamers should not have to play a futuristic game after the time period in which it is set"

And that was the goddamn reason? That was what I was hoping AC was eventually going to get to!

 

[Murmillos]

There are always a few that don't think like the rest of us.. and those people happen to like sub-par games, like ME3 ending and AC3.

AC3 as an assassins creed game was just... well, bland.
I even put AC3 below AC:Rev.. There are no grand puzzles. There are no epic towns. Assassinations are well, boring. And your Assassination side quest are just boring find a target on a map, and stab him and walk away. No planning or insuring its done quietly or unseen... just, walk up, stab - done.

I get how they were trying to write Conner, and it makes perfect sense and they pull it off, but really -- NO BODY WANTS TO PLAY A BLAND BORING INSISTENTLY ANGRY AND SHALLOW MINDED CHARTER....

Hell, the ship missions were the best part of a game, and when you think about it, shows how Risen 2 really should have been done.

My personal rating from Best to Worst in terms of over all game polish and production.
AC:Brotherhood
AC2
AC1
AC:Rev
AC3

 

[Derelict Frog]

Really?

I think it's the most boring game I've played of 2012.

I completed every single other console AC in the same week I got it. I haven't touched AC in weeks, it's just mediocre.

I almost completelt agree. Every other AC has had me captivated, even though I must admit that by Revelations it felt a little stale. This is a personal opinion, but the locations and settings of the the previous games are just significantly more interesting and exotic than those in AC3.

Connor is also the most boring protagonist of almost any game I've ever played. Haytham is awesome, and I genuinely sympathised more with the Templars in AC3 than I did with the assassins. The game made me actually want Connor to fail in his quest. Connor spoke without any emotion and in some grating monotone. There was nothing likable about his character at all. The voiceacting in the game as a whole was awful compared to other AC games (apart from Haytham and of course Shaun Hastings).

The naval missions were very very fun though. Could see that being expanded upon and made into a full game.

 

[Shadowstar38]

AC 1: Good game. Dragged on a bit. Needed work. Worst in the series by far, but still enjoyable.

AC2: Pretty much a perfect game in the series

AC Brotherhood: I like what you did here. But get to work on a new assassin please.

AC Revalations: Fuck off Ezio!

AC 3: Almost as good as 2. I didn't see what everyone was so pissed about. The character you're "stuck" with is pretty awesome, so I didn't feel like the tutorial dragged on. Once the game fully opened up I was having a blast. I really have no major complaints with it.

 

[King Billi]

Assassin's Creed 3 is fucking awful.

1) The setting creates piss-poor freerunning as most buildings are no higher than your average house.
2) You start the game as the only interesting character then play the rest of it as the LEAST interesting one.
3) You're an "Assassin" who has his own ship and engages in Naval Warfare. Very stealthy...
4) Pretty much every assassination amounts to "run up to them with an axe" as opposed to the quick & quiet nature of 1 and 2.
5) The game doesn't even have a fucking ending.

1) Forget the buildings, freerun through the trees on the frontier... It's awesome!

2) I can't really argue with you on this point but I will mention that considering Conners story on its own he really should be more compelling than he actually is..? The guy who provided his voice must have tried very hard to make him as boring and unlikeable as he did.

3) I've always said that these games have always been more swashbuckling adventures than true sneaky stealth games and I feel that by giving the main character his own ship in this game as well as an unlockable pirate costume essentially makes this point validated.

4) Pretty every single game made thus far has moved the series further and further from it's stealthy origin even Assassins Creed 2. It's a justifiable reason for not liking the series but by this point I'm not really surprised.

5) Yeah? So what else is new? To be serious this is really only an issue if you actually believe that this was supposed to be the final Assassins Creed game.


All in all I find the common criticism for this game to be way beyond exaggeration and in my personal opinion is that its actually very fun game.

 

[Astoria]

I put it on par with Revelations as the worst. The combat was better but that was about it. Connor's personality annoyed me, he's either being a doormat and just agreeing with others or he's being angry out of nowhere. With Ezio and Altair you really feel like your actions make a difference but with Connor I felt he had no impact whatsoever. The story also progressed incredibly slow and you're introduced to a million people who never seem to appear again. It's just incredible obvious which parts of the game they focused on and which they didn't.

 

[Ghored]

AC3 is quite...the mixed bag.
You can see what they were originally intending to do with Connor, Haytham, and Desmond, all ideas of grand scales, maybe not interesting to some, but the potential and momentum were both there.
Then, somewhere along the lines, it feels like another person came in at the last stages of character development, took all the material and wrote in his own, one dimensional characterisations of every other important character.
The same idea goes for about half of the new gameplay mechanics.
My version of "hunting" came out to be "kill anything within stabbing range while running recklessly through the woods" and I came out with hundreds of pelts.
Homestead Trade is... painfully slow.
Gambling. Too much time for chump change.
And well, Storyline Assassinations. Yeah.

It all added up to a sort of "pseudo-RDR" experience. I enjoyed it, sure, but it never really gets close to the same level.
So, I was more or less dissatisfied, but It's not a steaming pile of horrible.

After all, I couldn't get enough of firing flaming balls of doom and misery in those naval missions. I sunk a lot of dreams out there.

 

[Shocksplicer]

It's not the worst in the series (Revelation has that one firmly in it's grasp...) but it's far from the best.

 

[dragon575]

I am a fan of the assassins creed games, and I completely agreed with you in terms of assassins creed III being the best one yet. The story is interesting and exciting, especially the revolutionary war battles, but where the game differs from the other games is its main character. To be honest, Connor is quite boring and extremely monotone compared to Ezio or Altair. The game takes about 2 hours to actually start getting into, but once you do it becomes a very fun and exciting game, no matter how boring Connor may be.

 

[Xanex]

While I did enjoy it and ranking just below #2. I personally believe they missed named the game. It should have been "Fapping about Creed" because there is almost nothing about being a assassin in that game.

 

[Rawne1980]

Haven't played an Assassins Creed past 2 and nothing will force me to give Ubisoft any money to play any of the others.

So I haven't played 3.

My friends have, they say it's shit.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I thought the first game was the best one. Actually felt like you were an assassin.

 

[Goofguy]

I, Sir, respectfully disagree with you. The series peaked at Brotherhood and went downhill from there.

 

[Professor Lupin Madblood]

I thought the first game was the best one. Actually felt like you were an assassin.

This right here. No matter how much people might want to absolve AC3 of its sins because ooh it has a homestead, ooh you can run around the frontier so the horrible parkour in the colonies doesn't matter, ooh it has naval missions, it just doesn't work like that. Assassin's Creed was (and ought still to have been) a game about stabbing people like a badass assassin. Instead, you get this . . . thing that seems to think that you want to do tedious bullshit fluff more than you do actual content.

I was perusing the backlogs of Zero Punctuation recently and AC3 was one of the video I watched. I might thus be "fresher" than most people and thus less forgiving, but it's always struck me as insane that people can, at any level, defend AC3 as an improvement of any sort.

Honestly, just have a look at the video. It touches upon pretty much every single reason the series has been going downhill since AC2.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6516-Assassins-Creed-3

1. Combat simplified to the point of button mashing. You are as effective at the start of the game as at the end, and the massive body count only serves to make any quandaries about killing people laughable.
2. Running made more fluid, but at the cost of control. You can either walk around or sprint like your life depends on it with full interactivity with parkour elements - no intermediate.
3. More and more emphasis placed on minigames and side missions. The overarching narrative is less cohesive than Ezio's games, and that is an achievement.
4. The minigames and side missions are more pointless than ever, since the ultimate reason for doing them is for the benefit of more minigames, as opposed to the combat or the "sneaking."
5. It's more linear than ever, which is the antithesis of open-world games. Need I even mention the numerous chase sequences that instantly fail you for deviating slightly from the course, which - thanks to the new parkour controls - is now easier than ever.
6. Due to the setting, pretty much everyone you fight has a gun. Guns were the most annoying things in Ezio's games, and setting the game in a place where they're more prevalent than ever was a horrible idea.

Ad infinitum.

 

[Mirrorknight]

I liked 2 better. Probably mostly due to the setting. Colonial America just doesn't have the wow factor that Renaissance Italy had. I liked Ezio more then Conner. Hell, I liked Haytham more then Conner, which Ubi does a good job on making the Templars not seem so bad, then they pissed it all away by making them mustache twirling evil again once Conner shows up. Hopefully they'll do a better job developing Conner's character in the inevitable Assassin's Creed III: Insert One Word Subtitle Here. Maybe have more interesting locations, too. London, perhaps.

Also, the game is buggy. Froze a lot. I have a caravan that's eternally stuck. I have a quest that's bugged and won't reset or let me quit it.

Boats are cool, though. More of that, please.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

I gotta say, 3 is no where near as engaging as the others I really dislike the control scheme they used for 3 and for Revelations. The controls of 1, 2 and Brotherhood just felt better, and Colonial America just doesnt interest me as much as previous locations.

Also I liked being able to slightly customize the protagonist with colour schemes and better outfits and weapons, every melee weapon feels the same now, it sucks

 

[JoesshittyOs]

By far the only thing worthwhile about that game was how far they've come with the fluidity of the animations.

And I feel like I need to nip this argument in the butt. Shaun didn't give a "balanced" view on the Revolutionary war. He gave the British point of view on the war. There's a difference.