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Since I completely missed the series, and enjoyed the first one once I got to it, I’ve been slowly playing through the whole series across the last ~2 years. I’m on Syndicate now, and here are some of my thoughts: AC1: It’s super impressive how much they pulled off with this one. All the building blocks are in place, there are three huge cities and an overland map, plus modern day stuff. They did star off with an engine from Prince of Persia, but it’s kinda amazing still how much of the new stuff they introduced here stuck around. Still, steering was preposterous, the character would stick to every crate, tree or low wall and the combat was super hard. AC2: This one and Brotherhood exist as one in my memory. I don’t remember anything horrible about it gameplay wise, but the setting blew me away. Just the idea of seeing Florence, and then going to the real place and going “ayup, that’s it all right” is kind of amazing. I enjoyed the plot here, too, and seeing Ezio in different points in his life in this and two other Renaissance games was great - something they tried in other games, but never on this scale, I think? I’m sure I’ll do a remastered playthrough some day. Revelations: As I was writing this, I realized Revelations and Brotherhood were two separate games, despite playing them, what, a year or two ago? Anyhow, I loved Rome, the setting, murdering the pope, mini games, other assassins and so on in this and was the only game I 100%ed. I think this is also where I started loosing the modern day plot. Brotherhood: I mostly remember Constantinople. Or being as great as Rome, with a bunch of random streets but also with some cool real world and Roman buildings, and the street tower defence minigame.Other than that I’m blanking on this one. III: I’m excited to see the evolution between these games, and III was very different, only I didn’t enjoy it that much. The character, I remember, felt like a block of stone on ice, and, strangely, it didn’t feel like either AC2 or Black Flag, but Unity later down the line felt a bit like that, so hrmpf. The plot, other that Haytham and Ranawhatever, was a confusing mish mash of rushed stories and real history I don’t know that well, so I was a bit confused, though I did enjoy the notion of Assassins being defeated and the Brotherhood in retreat. I don’t think the engine at this point can pull off forests very well, unless in winter, which looked great. The military battles were a nice twist and the world felt truly huge even though I never felt a 2 by 2 km map convincingly represents everything north of New York. I barely remember the ships part of the game. Now that I think about it, III truly was a monster of a game, but it also drove me insane with the stealth/follow missions, to the point I was reticent to play the next one. Black Flag: People loving this one got me to look into the whole series, and I was excited to get to it. I’m not going to be original here - the setting and naval gameplay are great, but they do get old after you’re past the half way mark. The modern day plot is somewhat interesting, but I found the main Edward storyline a bit meh - it jumped all over the timeline, the other pirates, other than Kidd, Thatch and maybe the crazy captain guy, were a blur. This was also the first game in my play-through I burned out on and put on hold for over a year. I hated the stealth and follow missions again, and the naval boarding part go super repetitive. I came back to it recently on the Switch, which is an ideal platform to play it on. Rogue: After being done with Black Flag, Rogue threw me into more of the same, built on top of a bunch of III elements. I powered through it and I think this was my fastest play-through. While the gameplay is completely forgettable, I did enjoy the plot and characters, even if, ultimately, it went nowhere. Rogue felt supper buggy, like a Frankenstein monster, slamming elements and ideas that never seemed to be thought through a sum in a single game. I never felt the need to shoot icebergs in combat and the hunter assassins were a stupid nuisance, nothing more. I also played this one on switch, which seems to be the superior choice for naval ACs. Unity: I only read about Unity when it came out, how its a bad game and a disappointment. Well, other that AC2, I loving loved Unity. The setting and world building here are amazing and I visited all the landmarks. The atmosphere of the revolution on the streets and going into every second building to see people going about their lives was just so cool. The free approach to assassinations was a breath of fresh air (if I want to cheese it and run up to the main guy, fuckin let me). The character movement felt strangely like ACIII, but the city traversal was pure joy. You know what, I think I liked this one the most so far. Syndicate: Well, I’m here and I’m in a bit of a rut. London is huge, but it’s also cut n paste ville. It seems to be built on archetypes - street urchins, XIX century gangs, just over the top britishness - and the characters are bombastic and over the top to the point they’re grating, and that’s just the side characters - the two mains are just... goofy, I guess? The game brings back poo poo I never liked - timed follow missions, stealth, scripted assassinations. The train HQ thing is daft beyond measure. I’m on the second district/ 4th sequence and feel meh. This is the first AC I feel completely alienated by, but I do think it does wet cobblestone loving fantastic. Can’t wait to get to Origins!
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Jan 28, 2020 12:54
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jesus WEP posted:I’ve never played Unity and it’s honestly kind of hard to believe that they could make running around loving Paris of all places boring. But everyone says they managed it, and who am I to disagree Unity is great if you remotely care about the city or the period. Most reviews point to the city taking center stage, and it’s a busy and diverse place with a tonne of love pored into it. The problem is the middling plot and an uninteresting main character. It suffers from the usual problem of an AC that introduces a new engine generation - it looks great, but the gameplay sucks.
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Jan 31, 2020 13:50
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I slogged through Syndicate today and it’s yet another AC that fizzles out towards the end with rather uninspiring ending quests. London grew on me a bit towards the end, mainly due to the beer hunting, music in bars and weather/sky ambiance. I deeply despise the hostage mechanic, though. I immediately jumped into Origins and it does this thing where it just dumps you into the plot, no context, into a random temple in buttfuck, Egypt, and sort of goes “eh... figure it out”. I think I’ve been killed more times in the first hour in Origins than the whole of Syndicate.
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Feb 2, 2020 00:22
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Ulio posted:Just started Unity for the first time, the parkour is pretty good in this but is there way to make it less restrictive? It feels like there is an auto aim to the parkour and you can't jump manually in some directions. Or is that basically the new system? Also can't believe how many bugs this game still has...but other than I am liking it more than 3/Revelations. Nah, it’s kinda sticky that way. It’s eased up a bit in Syndicate and completely redone by Origins so you have to slum it and enjoy Paris.
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Mar 15, 2020 01:43
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On my first play through of the whole series and deep into Origins now - next to AC2 and Black Flag,this is the one I’m enjoying the most now and it looks like it’ll be the first one I 100% with DLCs. This is also the first AC game that had me emotionally vested. The motif of Bayek and Aya’s grief after their child and the slow unraveling of their relationship was uncomfortable and sad to watch... until they just said gently caress Khemu and now we’ll be kick rear end no name parkour assassins! Story beats and pacing are poo poo in AC games,usually not fitting due to, I guess, the open ended nature of the game. This was the case in Syndicate, Rogue and ACIII, for me mostly. The gameplay strikes some sort of a bizarre sweet spot for me, between the open ended architecture, non-hardcore combat and huge world size. I’m also amazed by the engine, though they do seem to have dropped the support for crowds, last really properly utilized in Unity.
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Mar 31, 2020 23:14
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Strangely enough, this doesn’t come back in Syndicate or later games (haven’t gotten to Oddysey). As far as a gazillion individual people on screen, this is it. Origins does introduce a complex day/night ritual for any person or animal in the world, and it interacts with the environment (farmers farming, traders zooming around between cities), but you don’t get the crowds. I’m particularly fond of Parisians doing their day to day stuff - singing tunes in bars, building carriage wheels in backyards, etc. - but the rioting crowds were the cherry on top.
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Apr 3, 2020 19:02
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I like my AssCreed huge, RPG-y and incomprehensible, but I also recognize that that has been the last 3 games so I’m down for a smaller experience in the interim.
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Feb 11, 2022 23:31
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Giving Valhalla a go after bouncing once barely past arriving in England. I can’t get over how little it feels like This England, though. Sure, there are spots here and there, a morrow or a church in some fog, but compared to Odyssey and Origins, I’m not feeling it, though I am just barely out of the first settlement and headed north.
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Mar 8, 2022 23:52
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Coming off hot from Oddyssey, it strikes me how poor the voice acting and recording is in some places. It’s amazingly uneven - not only do the voice actors seem to be of wildly different talent, some of the voices aren’t even mixed properly so they really sound as if spoken indoors when the character is walking outside (ei. Ceolbert)
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Mar 30, 2022 16:56
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Chieves posted:I know this is more the Valhalla thread, but I'm slowly working through the series in chronological order. I'm playing Unity on PC now, and it seems... pretty good? I know that a lot of the really egregious stuff has been patched out, but it's nice being back in a single, old world, dense city after a lot of time in the West and Frontier. I'm not sure how well the co-op stuff worked out in action, but it does seem to have the side-effect of the guards simultaneously being much more stingy on catching stealth, while also being dumber than ever before when it comes to following Arno running away. I really loved Unity, and these days it’s considered to be a really strong installment in the series. It’s look and feel of Paris and the period is unparalleled. It got an absolute thrashing when it came out, and for good reason, but it’s one of those games that actually came out all right from the clusterfuck the initial launch was.
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Mar 30, 2022 23:07
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I keep climbing the same trees I first saw in ACIII and wooden towers from Black Flag, it’s kinda cool to see the DNA of the series in places. I think Infinite will be that - a way to go back to old worlds.
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Apr 4, 2022 13:45
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I guess that’s… fine? These games should end and not linger like some hellish forever-dream.
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Apr 14, 2022 22:23
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Earwicker posted:why? It’s always personal preference of course, but I believe the work spent on implementing these forever-world automatic systems will never deliver the quality a crafted story with an ending will, even if they’re in smaller packages. In other words, I prefer to have Unity and Rogue size experiences in a shorter time frame, instead of the massive Odyssey world that ties all the dev studios for a linger time.
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Apr 14, 2022 22:57
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They had this sorted in an older game even. When I came early game to to the Cyclops island in Odyssey, not only was the dungeon walled, the character said “hmm better come back later”.
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May 21, 2022 08:21
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I’d say start with Origins - it’s very good and going to Odyssey from there is a great experience, not do much the other way
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May 23, 2022 17:44
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Origins is an absolute no brainer. It’s very good.
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Aug 5, 2022 23:37
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Lobok posted:It must be a nightmare to make this work. To be fair, they’re building up on 20-plus years of game code made for just that and tweaking things. Some of the code in AC goes back all the way to the 3D Prince of Persia game that came before the first AC and I’ll betcha it’s the stuff like camera movement or control schemes.
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Nov 16, 2022 22:31
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Dapper_Swindler posted:yeah, like AC is never historical accurate or whatever but most of them get the feel and bunch of details that click well enough. valhalla just doesnt have that because its set in such a weird time period to pick. i feel like mirage will be a welcome mix of more AC type stuff mixed with combat from the new ones. I’m sure that when the location for the next AC was being picked, some Ubisoft exec said “hey, just saw this Vikings tv show, do Vikings”
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Nov 27, 2022 23:19
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Radical 90s Wizard posted:Visually it feels completely ripped from Vikings tv show though, the whole look of eyeliner and braids and furs and poo poo is straight from that. It was branded by the History channel, with the implication that because of that, extra attention was given to historical realism, but I know poo poo about viking history so (although there’s viking graffiti in the Hagia Sophia, that’s fascinating)
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Nov 28, 2022 23:01
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Ulio posted:Started AC Odyssey on pc recently, drat this game is beautiful. Origins was my favorite since Black Flag and drat this game is hitting a perfect mix of Origins + Black Flag. I believe it is the team that made Black Flag, I really like all the naval combat and rpg mechanics they brought from Black Flag into that. I also got a sense that there might be some bigger battles like in AC3 in the prologue, I haven't made it far enough to see if we get to be in actual battlefields. You’re in for a treat
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Jul 24, 2023 19:57
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Wouldn’t you sooner or later poke your eyes out with those fangs
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Sep 8, 2023 13:19
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Quick Valhalla question - at which point is it best to go into the Ireland and Paris expansions? I'm at around level 160 and opening London but have people in my camp itching to send me over the drink.
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Jan 16, 2024 13:15
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Hey, that's a pretty cool writeup! I've played all the AC games and rarely put this much thought into any particular playstyle.
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Jan 17, 2024 15:44
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With the sheer number of forts in the game, it would have been a nightmare to clear them all. The wooden palisades are unscalable and I wonder if that’s leftover from the earlier design. It’s harder to get into these camps then it is into the large forts!
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Jan 18, 2024 20:54
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I like how this series falls apart the moment you spend more than a minute thinking about any of it’s aspects. Like, why does the Greece you run around in need to be a miniature if the real thing, where you cross a real-life 10-mile wide valley in two hoppity hops.
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Jan 31, 2024 22:49
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Still dumb
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Jan 31, 2024 23:01
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I find it fascinating a separate studio was doing just the Thames and boat traffic in Syndicate.
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Jan 31, 2024 23:07
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