After my 7 month old crawling daughter has gone to bed, I've been able to put in an hour or two of Assassin's Creed 3 in every night for the past couple of weeks. As VG30 readers will know, Assassin's Creed is one of my favorite series, and I need to add that as a disclaimer because so far I'm really unhappy with this one.
I have no complaints about the beginning of the game (Chapters 1 - 6), I think it's clever and well done, and to avoid spoilers I'll simply say that it really goes down hill when you become a full fledged assassin. Since I'm only about a third of the way through the game, I'm going to keep this limited to the top few things that are driving me nuts.
I Miss Banks
In previous Assassin's Creed games, you go around town improving it buy purchasing banks which then build interest for you over time so you're able to keep up with the latest weapons and armor. There's nothing like that in this game. Instead, you have to have people build you things, and then go to stores and sell them, or setup convoy systems that earn you about as much as you'd get from killing one guard. It's a terrible system from what I've worked with so far, and is just cumbersome to the whole game.
Combat Sucks
Alright, that's not ENTIRELY true, as the block, parry, and counter system works pretty well in the new system. There's two very big problems I have with it, though. The hidden blade is worthless in combat. In previous games, using the hidden blade was difficult, but could clear a group of guards in seconds with well placed hits. In this version, you have to stab somebody 6 - 7 times in a combat cycle before they die. I don't know if it's too elegant a system for a savage to use, but I've had to switch to sword play for every combat.
Second, and this is a real deal breaker, it is next to impossible to end open combat without running away. Just this afternoon I was sneaking up on a guarded chest, when I was spotted. In old games, no problem, take out the 3 - 4 guards, maybe a passing wandering guard group if things are going really poorly, and when they're dead, you're done. There's an elevated alert status, you might have to rip down a few posters, but you're essentially safe. In this game, guards will come from BLOCKS away to assist. And they respawn. And they keep respawning. After fighting off 15 guards, there were more looking for me, so I had to retreat into a haystack where I was eventually on the risk of being found because there's ALWAYS one who breaks away and check the hay stacks. I understand that I'm fighting an army and probably need to change tactics a bit, but this makes me feel like a complete novice of an assassin.
Connor is a complete novice of an Assassin
I really hope this game moves towards a "I understand the creed now" story in the very near future. Right now Connor is naive and I've literally yelled at the screen "Nothing is true! Everything is permitted!" when he's gone on a "holler than thou" speech to various people in the storyline. He feels like an Episode 4 Luke Skywalker still stuck on Tattooine whining about power converters. Damnit Luke, there's so much more that's happening that you don't understand yet! It's so discouraging after playing the bad ass that is Ezio.
Three things that are making me not want to finish this game right now. I'll be back with a full review when I finally slog through this.
