I too have strong feelings on Revelations. I loved brothergood, it was two MASSIVE steps forward for the series compared to Assassins Creed 2. Revelations, however, was like four steps back. The engine has aged horribly, and the free running is more like "restricted, annoying and finnicky running" compared to faster and more flowing movement schemes like inFamous 2.
As for you points:
MiracleOfSound said:
1. Too much un-needed clutter.
a) you never really need them
b) they're a boring pain in the ass to craft.
c) loud-ass explosions aren't very assassin-ish
Agreed. The bombs were pointless. The only time I needed to use them was when i was FORCED to do so, for the Challenges and certain 100% sync mission requirements. Pointless, and effort that could have been put into other things.
Despised this game from the bottom of my soul. That stupid tank thing at the end... yes, you could destroy it with cannons, but it pretty much ruined and semblance of a perfect run you might have had going. It ALWAYS made it to the building and took some life off, no matter how many bombadment blockages, bomb assassins and cannons you fired at it.
3. Renovation
This just added to the clutter thing for me. The monuments were especially ridiculous. Having to leave my console going and check back every few hours just so I could earn enough money to buy everything before the game ended was a pain.
Well, this I kind of disagree with. Even though the extra dungeons felt fractured from the rest of the game, i still think there were actually the best parts. Chasing after that raft down the river? Awesomeness. Really made up for the hum drum boringness of running around the city.
Very out of place, and not that engaging. Could have been a sort of clever version of portal if they'd put more effort into it.
Overall, everything that made Brotherhood good was there, minus a great deal of other stuff, and plus a great deal of bad new stuff. Next years one better be a new engine and a proper full length game. i think one expansion between main games is definitely enough.
I really liked some of the things you didn't, OP. The bomb crafting, for example, yes it's boring to actually craft the bombs, but if you use them in the correct way, they're extremely useful.
What I mean is that in the way they are presented they feel, to me, somewhat segmented and different to the rest of the game. The lighting is different, the textures are sharper... in Brotherhood to me it felt like these places were a part of the overall world, just below or inside it.
In this game they felt like a completely different universe in a different game. I liked them (because they reminded me of Sands Of Time) but they just made me feel like 'oh well this is clearly the bit that xx studio designed' - the gap between them was too transparent.
DarkAngryWolf said:
6. Mind expanding. Maybe my mind isn't that fresh, but I assume you mean when you start a mission then bullshit happens when you desyncronize immediatly. Yeah, it sucks, but I can get past that.
Yeah that... it has happened me so many fucking times. I got stuck in a loop on the 'Dress up like a janissary' mission where I would insta-fail on that black screen before I even properly spawned in. I can hear the guards saying 'That hood!' before I can even see what's happening.
Then there's stuff like beggars knocking into you or assholes stabbing you in the back which causes you to be seen... just annoying. The Desync for being detected needs to be more generous. Punish us by having to run and hide, or fight, not by insta-failing. It's also frustrating as shit when you're trying to get those taunting 100% syncs. As a compulsive gamer I hate those 100% syncs because the means to achieving them often turn the game into a frustrating chore.
DarkAngryWolf said:
8. Not sure what you mean by snipers. You mean gunmen and bombers? Or something else. *shrugs*
My main feeling with this game is the gameplay changes are a bit more interesting than some give credit for, however I suspect it may not have been intentional on Ubisoft's part.
MiracleOfSound said:
The main problems I have with the game are as follows:
1. Too much un-needed clutter.
Did we really need a bomb crafting mechanic? Ezio already has plenty of options and it feels like the bombs are a wasted opportunity as
a) you never really need them
b) they're a boring pain in the ass to craft.
c) loud-ass explosions aren't very assassin-ish
I kinda agree with (c), to a point, although I did opt for the distraction-type bombs on most occasions and saved a trio of Brit-powder shrapnel bombs for when things really went tits up. What bugged me about them were the Piri Reis missions, which really felt more tutorial-y than most in Assassin's creed. I don't outright agree with (a), if you're on rooftops for a mission and come across a pillbox filled with riflemen, your best option is to throw a bomb in there - although I will agree that some bomb types are utterly redundant.
There's two types I have yet to find a use for, there's one which (I forget the payload type) makes it look like a fire has started (but ISN'T the phosphorus smoke bomb), which just looks shit even by DX9 particle effect standards and doesn't really seem to do anything, and the other one which uses coal dust is described as really lethal but doesn't seem nearly as lethal as a shrapnel blast.
The map is so cluttered with shops, bomb crafting sites, Assasin coops, respawning treasure chests and god knows what else that it's a nightmare trying to even find your mission markers sometimes. Not to mention the un-needed map effects that make opening and closing it a slow affair.
Loading times are one thing, but it is entirely possible to select which markers are displayed. I buy the treasure maps, but holy crap do I turn the item chest markers off when I'm not hunting for items otherwise you wouldn't see a thing.
I think they could have gotten rid of the black market guys though, buying from a selection of four pre-made bombs just didn't appeal to me. It's not like it's THAT hard to find your own ingredients, I was swimming in Brit powder by about sequence 3.
2. Tower Defence
This minigame sucks. It is badly explained, has an awkward as hell camera mechanic, is frustratingly chaotic and somehow boring at the same time. Not to mention it is unrewarding, simply there to punish you for renovating the dens, something that seems like a dick move to me.
3. Renovation
Renovating the city adds to your Templar awareness. Which means much time utterly wasted running around after stewards and Templars to lower it again in order to avoid having to do another shitty tower defense game. Why the hell does the game punish you for doing the optional stuff? This is pure ass-backwards game design - you should be rewarded for this kind of stuff. Sure it makes sense from a story point of view but it's the complete opposite of fun IMO.
I agree, the tower defence isn't the best game mechanic ever. Even the Monteriggioni defence in ACB was more entertaining. That said, for me this is a prime example of the gameplay being better by accident, if not by design. The fact that I didn't want to be constantly defending my assassin dens made me WAY more careful with managing my notoriety. I don't look at it as being punished for doing well, I view it as trying to (maybe) challenge the player, and also aiming for a tad more realism. The idea that in ACB you could basically destroy nine entire Templar regiments and buy up every key business in the city without any direct reprisal is a tad less realistic, IMO.
I was pushing quite hard through the storyline and not doing side quests so much, and given how careful I was being with my notoriety, I was really having to make every akce count and only renovate shops when I was in dire need. Think I only had about half of the third breakable armour on me when I did the final mission.
4. Built by committee
The game feels cynically built, rushed and fractured. For example... you can really tell the linear POP style 'dungeon' areas were built by a different studio, as they are visually very different to the rest of the game with more dynamic lighting, different textures and more structured visual design. It feels disjointed and separate, unlike the ones in Brotherhood which to me felt seemless and part of the overall world.
Yeah, this is probably my biggest gripe. The dungeons in the last two games felt like actual places within the cities, some of them famous locations. The only "proper" dungeon for me in ACR is the Hagia Sophia level. I didn't mind the actual gameplay in each of the Masyaf key levels, but they did feel rather nondescript as environments.
5. Location
Now perhaps this is just personal preference but Ubisoft's Constantinople to me doesn't have half the charm, character and identity that Rome, Florence and Venice had. At times it's even downright ugly.
It seems like they scrimped on assets, re-using the same 3 or 4 buildings over and over, not to mention the dull, dusty colour scheme that just doesn't appeal to me the way the beautiful vistas of the last two games did. Even the sky doesn't look as nice.
It just all looks the bloody same, meaning you have to make frequent use of that slow, clunky map screen.
This might be personal preference. The reason why AC2 and ACB appealed to me so much is partly because I spent a fair bit of time in Italy when I was younger, so I've actually been to a lot of the places in the games. I've no idea what Istanbul is/was like. What got me in ACR is a lot of the viewpoints are rather similar looking free-standing spires, that don't really provide much of a climbing challenge - then again, from what I can gather looking at some old pictures in a history of Byzantium that I have, those spires are rather commonplace in Istanbul.
Things like that bothered me, but then I'd be swimming across the Bosphorus or pissing off Janissaries because I'm jealous of their fancy armour and I'd calm down.
6. Instant fail mission parameters
I think I just have to accept that Ubi are never going to realise that instant fail missions are infuriating in open world games full of random events and possibilities.
Eh, I can't say I agree with the gripes about the missions raised in the thread so far. My gripe is that they are all insultingly easy. Pretty sure I'm on 90% sync at least after only 15 hours. None of the missions has anything on the goddamn Leonardo tank mission from ACB.
Ok, I may have to have a small rant here.
What in the name of God's arse was the point of the book missions? Go here, climb this, use eagle vision, search. When I wanted paintings for my lair in the last games, I murdered a high-ranking Templar stylishly.
7. Altair
'Huh? What? Hey this is awesome! I'm Altair! This is great, fan service woo! He even has a bit of a personality this time! Let's do this - what... oh. That ended pretty quickly.'
Yeah, I dared to dream that Altair might actually have sequence-length missions....oh well. Shame they didn't take things out of Masyaf. In general, I was hoping they wouldn't end up like the Cristina missions, but they did - exceptionally badly-acted moments that should have been presented with some passion, and the actual gameplay is a cakewalk. Gotta be honest though, did love the ending, even though the modern-day plot wasn't exactly advanced.
9. Desmond's first person platforming bits
These would be kind of interesting if the controls weren't so awful and didn't feel like ice skating.
A bit more snappiness in the controls would be nice, but I didn't seem to get bogged down in these the way some people did. I don't mind the abstractness of it, but what pissed me off was this was basically retreading stuff we already knew, and there wasn't really a big reveal at the end. I think Desmond is more interesting than a lot of people claim, but the overarching Assassins/Templar war is still more interesting, and the subject 16 puzzles in the last two games made good use of that. Desmond's life story, while innovatively presented at least, could never provide as much of a payoff.
What do you guys think? Did Ubisoft shit the bed with this game? Or do you like all the new additions and the kitchen sink feel of it?
To add my own £0.01 to the mix, I think there were too many things tried in too short a game. It was nice that the Assassin's guild got their own mission tree, but it shouldn't have come at the expense of the thief/merc/gypsy guild missions. Given that the gypsy guild is technically a new guild even though gameplay-wise they act like courtesans, they really should have had more of an introduction barring one (very good!) mission.
Rest of my thoughts are spoiler-tastic, so....
I think the kitchen sink approach really hurt Subject 16 as a character. If they'd had regular contributions from him (and overheard stuff from Shaun/Rebecca/William) between each sequence, then they could have fleshed it out a lot more, but they only appear before the last sequence after appearing a couple of times at the beginning. The whole "Animus deleting you" threat was really poorly explained, unless the unstable 16 somehow woke up with Desmond and is going to be a future antagonist.
Again, I'm not sure if this is intentional, but I think the Assassins need another revival like Altair gave them. Using the hidden gun in AC2 was revolutionary, and it was revolutionary when you saw Altair first use it, but in Istanbul, the rooftop guards are armed with muskets, tackling assassins mainly armed with blades. They started using poison eventually, they need to start using bigger weapons. Fighting with an old man using old weapons says a lot - although more likely about the dire need for some new gameplay mechanics.
The ending had some utterly fabulous moments - Ezio surmising that Desmond can hear him, and Altair locking himself in an empty Masyaf and turning out the lights before passing away were absolutely fabulous, and I definitely wasn't expecting Jupiter to show up, nor to get a glimpse of the first civilisation. Again though, still repeating stuff we already knew, though at least we got to see some of it. What concerns me though is the decision to make Altair's apple a different one to Ezio's. Not sure I can reconcile that with the discovery of the apple in Cyprus as shown in AC2 without resorting to fanboy logic....
Oh and I also don't like that they changed everyone's faces.
I see why they made these decisions though. People kept complaining about how easy II was so they slipped in the automatic fail system to grade players and give an extra challenge. This constant running back and forth to bribe heralds and kill off eyewitnesses is an extension of that because of how easy it was to rake in the cash for both the previous games. They wanted to make it harder for players to just buy up all the equipment.
The den missions and the bits with Desmond are obviously experiments that have failed. They wanted to bring more variety to the gameplay, but they didn't develop it well enough to where it feels more than just a tack on to advertise on the back of the box.
Yes, this game isn't great, but honestly outside of these frustrations, it's not terrible. It's definitely the weakest in the franchise though and not one that I will be playing again for a long time.
I see why they made these decisions though. People kept complaining about how easy II was so they slipped in the automatic fail system to grade players and give an extra challenge. This constant running back and forth to bribe heralds and kill off eyewitnesses is an extension of that because of how easy it was to rake in the cash for both the previous games. They wanted to make it harder for players to just buy up all the equipment.
You are right, however in my opinion they chose an ass-backwards way to make it harder.
There are plenty of ways to balance a game's economy without punishing the player for partaking in it, likewise there are plenty of ways to challenge a player without frustrating them with instant-fail missions.
I like Constantinople a lot more than Rome. It feels like a mix between the aesthetic beauty of AC1's cities and AC2's variety. I was honestly getting sick of Renaissance Italy as a setting, and seeing it jump to Constantinople was a breath of fresh air. There's only so many times you can set a series like Assassin's Creed within the same setting, and Rome in Brotherhood doesn't have enough of the same spark that the Holy Land in AC1 or Renaissance Italy in AC2 had. Because of that, I had less of an incentive to go back to Brotherhood as much as I liked the game.
That being said, I'm still in the early chapters of the game, but I'm liking it so far. I don't know about bomb-crafting yet, the core gameplay is still fun, but the tower defense game can fuck right off and the stupid "Full Synch" parameters are misleading for a game that's intended to be an "open world". Then again, I didn't make the mistake of assuming Revelations was going to be "OMG HUGE CHANGES" like AC2 was to AC1, and the reason I thought Brotherhood was a disappointment. Considering that the next AC game will take place generations after Ezio's time, I have faith that they'll do an awesome job of making an AC game that works well in a newer, more modern time where stealth is essential where rifles become more commonplace.
Please let it be a Russian Assassin in the middle of the Russian Revolution and the rise of Bolshevism, Ubisoft.
And PLEASE let it be an updated version of the engine, the AC engine is starting to get a little long in the tooth.
I see why they made these decisions though. People kept complaining about how easy II was so they slipped in the automatic fail system to grade players and give an extra challenge. This constant running back and forth to bribe heralds and kill off eyewitnesses is an extension of that because of how easy it was to rake in the cash for both the previous games. They wanted to make it harder for players to just buy up all the equipment.
You are right, however in my opinion they chose an ass-backwards way to make it harder.
There are plenty of ways to balance a game's economy without punishing the player for partaking in it, likewise there are plenty of ways to challenge a player without frustrating them with instant-fail missions.
I agree. I hate how much backtracking I need to do just to buy a few shops. Besides, AC is about rhythm and parkour. These 'challenges' break that rhythm.
Now that I have finished the game, I have to say a few more things.
1) You can avoid the tower defense mini games, which helped. I only had to do the mandatory one. It was a pain in the butt to always go out of my way to avoid them like the plague, though.
2) I was rather unimpressed with the ending. It wasn't nearly as WTF as the last ones. They already alluded to everything that happened in the other games.
3) It needed MOAR ALTAIR. I think I had the most fun with the Altair sequences than with any of them. I didn't realize it, but I was so sick of Ezio. Also, those were the only parts where I felt like I was getting a story. The Desmond story seemed shoved in, and almost no progress was made with the Ezio character.
4) It was super short. I beat it in a day, sans the 2 hours I played at launch. Still, I had 2 hours left in my day I could have spent playing that so, yeah. Beat it in a day, essentially.
5) I didn't feel like there was enough focus on the core gameplay. You know, the parkour and combat. I got so sick of the missions where I wasn't supposed to be caught or kill anyone. The play the game like they wanted you to thing bugged me. I'm Ezio here, I can go about the missions however I please!
The only part I got a kick out of was the Lute Playing thing. I was cracking up during that part.
I loved the first one, and was so excited to see where it went from there...I still haven't finished AC2. I'm ALMOST done but not quite. I have the orb and all the pieces of the map but it's those last few bits that I just don't care for. I haven't seen Brotherhood on sale for 5-10 bucks yet so I haven't bothered. I got both AC1 and AC2 for either 5 or 10 bucks on Steam sales. I don't think games this short are worth more than that. I'll eventually get caught up.
On the one hand, I definitely don't think that they shit the bed. It has most everything that I really liked about Brotherhood, and I really really liked Brotherhood, so I'm quite happy with the game.
On the other hand, I'm not really digging the kitchen sink feel. It does feel cluttered and many of the additions are unnecessary and arbitrary, especially the tower defense and the bomb crafting, which (except for bombs used for distraction purposes) are, like you said, not very assassin-like.
I guess I'm in the middle. I like the game a lot, but at the same time I am disappointed that it's a kitchen sink. I'm especially disappointed that the Altair and Desmond segments were played up so much in the marketing hype, yet they were short and under-realized.
Again, I LIKED both sets of segments, but they should have been longer and better implemented. And I was really looking forward to doing more crazy-surreal-freerunning platforming with Desmond (like you do in the end of the TRUTH segment of Brotherhood). The way they did with the first-person puzzle angle wasn't BAD, it just felt somewhat out of sync with the rest of the gameplay and could have been better.
This back-and-forth dance that I'm doing really sums up my feelings on the game as whole. It's not BAD by any means. There's nothing in the game (even the more obtuse and kitchen-sink-style stuff) that I would call "bad." At the same time, it could have been better. The newer features could have and probably should have either been better implemented or just left out altogether.
One addition I do absolutely love though is the zip-lines. God, I love zip-lines.
Your logic is somewhat flawed there my Assassin friend. When was ACII made? 2009. Brotherhood? 2010. Whoops.
As for what I expected, well, Assassin's Creed. These games all have their little flaws, but that's what makes them special. Well all have dived into a building and can't get out, or get stuck into a jump animation and can't move. Oh, and we have ALL dived under the city and swam around. Did this and somehow, in this game, got over to the next mission and jumped a mile to get there.
And ignoring glitches, there is everything else. The first game? (Somewhat) difficult and repetitive combat, ugly locations (except Acre and the bypus where you kill De Sad near the battle), and sometimes random guards that attack when you are just WALKING AROUND.
The second game? The gun took a little long to load and was useless in combat, raised awareness, and alerted other guards due to the noise. And, uh... ok, I'm sure someone who doesn't think this game is the greatest thing ever and hasn't played 8 times without any sense of repetitiveness or boredom can come up with some serious and correct criticism, but I can't. Seriously, except the glitches the gun's load time and blast volume are all I can think of.
The third? Brotherhood had that annoying 100% sync introduction, which as a OCD sufferer when it comes to this sort of crap I HAVE to do. Not a major annoyance itself, it's cool, but I get annoyed by what it wants. The fact that your in one city. The attack of the Villa. I know he was in a rush, but if you go into battle, WHY WOULDN'T YOU BRING SOME ARMOR?! The rather dull Catelina flashbacks that are really inconsiquencecal (I think I spelled that wrong and I'm too lazy to look). Seriously, what was the point? He doesn't focus on his inability to truly love someone and only lust until Revelations.
The fourth, i.e., this game? Well, I already posted my response to the original post, and that's where almost every complaint I have is.
It's not as good as the second and third games, but it's still very good. It's tries to dabble in too much, though, instead of offering some awesome stealth and parkour sections. It lacks memorable moments like the part in Brotherhood where you climb up that tower while getting glimpses of the incestuous lives of the Borgia siblings.
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