I love this series. I do. Partly because it's been filled with games that I not only finish but am actually pretty damned good at (apart from roof chases, where I behave like a drunken fool). I have really appreciated the way the games have grown, expanded, added elements and got swiftly away from the "do three things to get to the boss section" rigity of the first game.
But with this game, I really felt that the developers had listened to one person too many, and had done so much to make it as accessible as possible that they had made it too damned accessible and it was so blooming easy that I breezed through it as if... I was going to put "it was SuperMarioLand" here but then realised that I really struggled with that game and it was a hell of lot harder.
Due to the size of the city I thought I was really going to have an epic game in front of me, so I was disappointed only to have 9 sequences to start with, and the dungeons were laughably simple. I remember screaming and pulling my hair out with some of the dungeons in previous games, having to do sections over and over again to get the acrobatics right, but although the dungeons were mind-bogglingly-eye-wateringly beautiful in ACR, they again--were simple. I actually did the "Chase the Templars in the boat" section in one swift uninterrupted run which is Not Like Me, I assure you.
The balance of the game was a little off - I finished the game but found that I still had one den to free, and I had only converted a fraction of shops - hadn't bought any landmarks. I never had enough money, I didn't even buy the crossbow as I never had the dosh in my pocket long enough. In Ac2 and in Brotherhood I had time enough and money enough to do this as I went along. I didn't really feel like going back and doing it all AFTER the story had finished, because Ezio was no longer there, and had in fact been banished.
I also felt - repeating what I said above about the developers listening to everyone - that the Den Defence mini game was irritating in the extreme. It was purely a very pretty "defend the tower" desktop game and I never found the right way to kill the armoured machine things. So what I did was let the den fall, didn't bother to defend it at all, then simply kill the captain which was far far simpler. I was surprised there wasn't a version of Angry Birds, to be honest.
As for the ending, I was pretty annoyed about it. When are we going to get ANY answers? All Zeus (or whoever it was) told us was more of What We Already Knew.
Beautiful, fun to play, but far too easy (why can't we have difficulty levels?) and far too short, too.
But with this game, I really felt that the developers had listened to one person too many, and had done so much to make it as accessible as possible that they had made it too damned accessible and it was so blooming easy that I breezed through it as if... I was going to put "it was SuperMarioLand" here but then realised that I really struggled with that game and it was a hell of lot harder.
Due to the size of the city I thought I was really going to have an epic game in front of me, so I was disappointed only to have 9 sequences to start with, and the dungeons were laughably simple. I remember screaming and pulling my hair out with some of the dungeons in previous games, having to do sections over and over again to get the acrobatics right, but although the dungeons were mind-bogglingly-eye-wateringly beautiful in ACR, they again--were simple. I actually did the "Chase the Templars in the boat" section in one swift uninterrupted run which is Not Like Me, I assure you.
The balance of the game was a little off - I finished the game but found that I still had one den to free, and I had only converted a fraction of shops - hadn't bought any landmarks. I never had enough money, I didn't even buy the crossbow as I never had the dosh in my pocket long enough. In Ac2 and in Brotherhood I had time enough and money enough to do this as I went along. I didn't really feel like going back and doing it all AFTER the story had finished, because Ezio was no longer there, and had in fact been banished.
I also felt - repeating what I said above about the developers listening to everyone - that the Den Defence mini game was irritating in the extreme. It was purely a very pretty "defend the tower" desktop game and I never found the right way to kill the armoured machine things. So what I did was let the den fall, didn't bother to defend it at all, then simply kill the captain which was far far simpler. I was surprised there wasn't a version of Angry Birds, to be honest.
As for the ending, I was pretty annoyed about it. When are we going to get ANY answers? All Zeus (or whoever it was) told us was more of What We Already Knew.
Beautiful, fun to play, but far too easy (why can't we have difficulty levels?) and far too short, too.