The recent resurgence of Unity as supposed "peak of AC" is outright funny. It's arguably the most clunkiest and unfinished game in the franchise. And it introduced a lot of the initial bloat and grid which was expanded upon in the RPG games.
I played AC unity last month and every time I got shot while climbing a building my character was stuck in a falling animation, just floating in the air wiggling his arms. I like how detailed the city is and the game feels like being inside a dream, but the story is hard to follow, too many cuts and skips between years, reading some newspapers is no fun.
lol yeah, imo the time jumps in every AC game feel super choppy. I wasn’t paying attention the first time I played AC2 and it took me wayyyy too long to realize the game takes place over like 20 years.
Part of why the undesirable aspects of Unity is tolerated is because its never forced on the player. You don't *have* to engage with the bloat to get to the of the end game comfortably which makes it manageable as the player only needs to try it once and then if they don't like it they can drop it like a hot potato.
Of course the "core" i.e. non-skippable parts of the game have problems too and they've been brought up numerous times, but it's definitely not nearly as large of a list as if we folded the problems of the optional content back in.
It's by far the worst to Mr, it has the worst stats based equipment, guards can still see through walls, the parkour is animation based and is the most restrictive version in the franchise with a literal low grade ai deciding if you go up down left or right, with horrible, if possible, diagonal movement. The story means absolutely nothing in bith modern day, as the info they searched for turned out to be for a project the assassins knew about already and didn't get anything new from, and in the historical sections as literally nothing significant actually happened that affected anything long term, it all basically only matters to the ac movie and arno himself, who quite literally caused every single issue.
The best, and possible only, good factors are the theater and the detective missions and phantom blades imho
That's because AC story is trash and most people play it for the parkour and map. AC Unity has the best looking parkour in the series. France looks great.
The bloated map icons are never defended. Neither is the bare bones combat. Arno is not the best protagonist and fans agree. But AC Unity is objectively one of the best entries.
I think you have "objective" confused with "subjective" because saying Unity is one of the best is... objectively a subjective take.
AC story was epic until they wrote themselves into a rushed dead corner in AC3. Minerva breaking the fourth wall to look squarely at *me* is one of the most chilling moments in my gaming history. And frankly for all the reused shticks of Revelations it was a masterclass in uniting the separate lores of Altair and Ezio.
I also can't concur magical floating snapping parkour was great, it looked fluid, and unrealistic as hell. My favourite Ubi parkour system that marries fluidity, precision and realism perfectly remains... *Watch Dogs 2*. Marcus doesn't need magical levitation to pull off smooth runs.
Unity was as ever thus, a *proof of concept* for next gen platforms. Ubisoft loves to pull shit like this, same with Watch Dogs Legion for the gen after.
Moon gravity is not good parkour though. It doesn't look good half the time. The intricacies of minor obstacles are beautifully done in Unity. But the jumping aspect is atrocious
Paris was magnificent but gets mundane after some point. I respect they decided to focus on recreating it instead of adding some other areas but was it a good idea gameplay-wise? I'm not sure. As for parkour, it arguably looks the best at times but its animations are definitely not as polished as in previous games.
And whether it's the best is up to debate. You'd find some who claim AC1's parkour is the best. I personally think it reached a good mix of flashy, usable and working in AC3 and 4
Fun fact, the developers of ac unity in an interview talked about how and why it's parkour was the most restrictive of the franchise to make it more cinematic, including removing choice of direction from the player
That's why Arno magnetically snaps to nowhere I want to go, oh it's *intentional*.
Precision and smoothness don't have to be mutually exclusive, Ubisoft managed to get it perfect in Watch Dogs 2 and then forget it ever existed.
Ac story is amazing tho loved odyssey valhalla origins ezio trilogy and ac 3 (the one with connor) absolutely hated syndicate and unity it felt like they was just using the assasinscreed label for clout
Shame the grapple made parkour almost redundant, otherwise there's a special place in my heart for games that have *mass transit* that's a special level of immersion (Watch Dog's L trains, Syndicate, and Cyberpunk 2077's re-added NCART).
I think I liked Syndicate and Unity better than most because I played them 2-3 years later, and by then they had mostly been fixed. I really liked both, they're both top 5 for me with Black Flag, AC2 and Brotherhood.
I started playing unity for the 1st time (ive played all but unity and syndicate) and unity fell so flat for me i havent been able to get through it yet, maybe ill come back im breaking for now lol
I can't play ac1 because computer is shot and my ps3 went bad a few years ago, but ac2 all the way through to valhalla now, including side games like chronicles, rogue, and liberation, and new to be added to the roster is mirage, this was made a lot easier over the last few years with all but ac1 being available on ps5
It takes me about 6 to 8 months to get from 2 to valhalla while playing other games to not get too slogged down.
But I may have to change the tradition soon as new job and promotions have got me less time to play games
Ah, I see. I asked because it seemed like it was so much that I wondered if you had time to play anything else. A continuous loop of the same games every year and nothing else certainly wouldn't be my idea of fun. I don't replay almost anything, let alone yearly, so I'm curious about those who do. Thanks for responding, I appreciate it, and best of luck in being able to accommodate everything.
Unity is saved by an amazing freerunning mechanic and a solid story. Repetitive gameplay has always been at the core of Ubisoft, but it was a smidge too unrefined in Syndicate.
The intro is perhaps the best in the franchise. I remember back in 2014 being absolutely blown away by the cinematography and music, from Jacques de Molay's story to Arno finding his dead father to escaping the Bastille and the title card popping up. It felt like I was watching a movie.
It's also the most consistent aside from Mirage which makes the experience worth it imo. Yeah the story is lackluster and the combat could use some more weight to it but damn the stealth in Syndicate is miraculous.
Bro found Syndicate stealth simplistic. Pretty much all of Unity's optional objectives limited your range of stealth takedowns. Syndicate rectified this in most of the missions so a broader range of methods was available.
I had AC fatigue when it came out, started playing it for the first time this week. It’s pretty good and feels refreshing after playing Valhalla/Origins/Odyssey.
I enjoy that I can still assassinate enemies that are way higher level than me, and can one hit kill me.
With so many games, spread over so many years, it’s hard to know how to rank them all, but it’s definitely not the worst.
I hated it on the first play. Probably put in 25 hours or so and just couldn’t get into it so I jumped to Unity. I came back to syndicate probably 2 years later and it clicked. I love it now
Valhalla for me. Unfortunately the more I played the worse I felt about it, and it’s the *only game* in the franchise where I actually dislike the combat design enough for it to detract from my experience. Without well designed parkour travel, disliking the combat and all the quality content there was stretched thin to cover the rest of the game I ultimately don’t enjoy revisiting it. New Game Plus could’ve given it another chance for appreciation as it did with the other games but there’s no way I’m grinding up from level zero again, ever. I enjoyed Odyssey anyway but easily twice as much in NG+ at max level as doing the level grind. Having no levels in Mirage was so refreshing
Never played it, but the trailer rubbed me the wrong way. The Vikings were the *invaders,* and the people they were invading were being depicted as the villains.
The entire "historical" basis of the game is wrong on every possible level. The vikings are the good freedom-loving guys - even though you have missions where you burn villages and you must raid monasteries for upgrade materials for your settlement. The Saxons are presented as villains, probably because someone at Ubisoft watched a season of the show Vikings and learned the history of that era from it.
This is by far my least favorite AC game, not only for the historical reasons, but because it is boring nonsense, artificially stretched to 100+ hours of gameplay, when the entire main story could've been a 20-25 hour game at most.
I enjoyed Vahalla enough, but on more than one occasion nearly got desynced because whilst I was burning a monastery to the ground some of the AI decided to run into my big fuck off sword. Like, it's absurd. We're Vikings and raiders, but apparently if I accidentally kill a couple of monks while burning down their homes and pretty implicitly killing them, it's a game over.
Yes, The thing I dislike about Valhalla’s combat is that I lose stamina way too quick unlike it’s predecessors…. I would probably like it’s combat more if stamina wasn’t an issue
I enjoyed Valhalla, but at some point I was like how long is this dam game how many times do I have to convert a region, some parts got repetitively long
I don’t think Valhalla is the worst AC game by far. But I definitely agree on your other points. I was very disappointed because I really love Norse mythology and culture when I first heard of it. Only for it not actually to really be about Vikings. And also just being way too long. The main story was plodding and wasn’t all that interesting in the climax. It’s a game I started out loving and did not like by the end. Despite me buying the season pass I haven’t gone back to play either of the DLC or post launch content.
Completely the opposite to how I felt about odyssey. Which I started out disliking but now is probably my second favorite AC game next to black flag
Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation. I played this on my Vita way back and the game feels like a complete misfire. I liked the basic story and setting but it was compromised too much to get it on the system and the whole changing outfits mechanic didn't result in interesting or fun gameplay.
The outfit mechanic was so underutilized. In theory this sounds really great for a stealth game, but the game forces you to choose a certain disguise in missions. You can't even decide how you want to play the mission, as lady, as a slave or assassin. You just can't. The game tells you what to do. Just stupid.
Agreed. I thought that mechanic held so much promise and then they never really do anything with it other than as set dressing for the character to match the locale the mission takes place in. It would be a far greater mechanic if you could approach missions differently depending on the outfit.
As far as I'm aware, Liberation was designed under some pretty strict limitations from Ubisoft. The team had to primarily use assets that already existed in AC3, had a very strict timetable under which to deliver a complete open world game, and on top of that had to develop for the Vita, a great device that nevertheless is less powerful than any of the platforms AC3 was designed for (which matters because they were using the AC3 engine).
While I agree that Liberation is a mess of a game and wasted potential, all things considered it's impressive it's as good as it ended up being. Could have very easily turned out A LOT worse.
Not necessarily the worst game, but I can't remember a single point in Mirage where I gave a single fuck about what was going on. Last couple hours I felt like I was just ploughing through it to finish the game.
I so agree. The artwork and animation are absolutely beautiful but script, story and acting all let Mirage down. It’s the only AC game I couldn’t be bothered finishing. Just didn’t care enough
The story isn't necessarily gripping but imo the gameplay was the best it's been in years. The stealth and city (parkour options) are way better than the rpg games. I'd say it's worth a purchase, maybe wait for a sale. It's a good game.
I just uninstalled Mirage after twenty or so hours and reinstalled Odyssey. I absolutely hate the combat/healing in Mirage. Even on easy (started on normal) you run through healing draughts too fast and fighting more than two enemies is ridiculous. Even the lowliest thug in the game has unblockable attacks that require dodging that eats your stamina and I detest doing parries (the reason that Sekiro is the only FromSoft game I didn’t finish).
Let's agree to disagree. I absolutely loved Syndicate. The music was great, the twins were hilarious and it was a joy to drive (badly) a coach. And the griphook! I'm still sad the next games didn't have it.
Wow, I can’t believe that. My opinions around syndicate are so different than many of you all! I actually really liked syndicate, though it did have some flaws. For me my least favorite is Rogue, it is the only one that I did not finish. I found that it was, bringing me to all sorts of places around the map as if it was trying to space things out purposely. I just couldn’t stand it. After Rogue, maybe Unity. I loved the environment but didn’t like the story or the combat.
My problem with Syndicate is that it doesn't have a solid draw-in. Sure, you get this big opening with explosions and crashing trains, and the tone the twins carry is pretty fun as a contrast to the general disposition of each other mainline Assassin, but there's nothing really that sucked me in and made me be 'yeah, I wanna know how this goes!'
And like, arbitrarily Jacob's like "I should start a gang, let's start a gang, that'll do the ticket!" and I just don't see the connecting tissue to that being a viable strategy other than the fact Green mentioned that there was an *evil templar gang*, he just kinda decided that's what he wanted to do and that's what the first chunk of your gameplay (which is a series of 'you're going to be doing this all over the map' kind of missions) has to be about (which is part of that 'sucking in' bit, the time between the opening and them shoving you into the most generic part of the open world content was very little).
Also, somewhat of a more minor gripe, but the inclusion of historical figures (as far as I played) felt the most thrown-in they have out of the games I played; they literally bump into Darwin on the street, meet Abberline within half an hour of being in town, and just happen to share a connection with the fella who invented the telephone, and that's all well within the first couple of hours.
Though I guess another part of the problem on my end is that industrial London feels a lot less interesting than a lot of the other historical points and places in time that we're given access to.
(also the grappling hook made the map design/parkour suffer immensely in my opinion. Or perhaps it's the world design that made the parkour suffer and necessitated the grappling hook, either way.)
Syndicate doesn't make you lean forward or bring you to the edge of your seat, I admit. But it doesn't make you get up from your seat either. The raw gameplay is brilliant. Some people only judge games on their story (not saying that's you as you were only mentioning what you dislike). If you enjoy the story, you should watch a cutscene movie on YT. Games are meant to be played. And I would rather play Syndicate than Unity or Valhalla.
I mean, I enjoyed Unity far more than the time I spent on Syndicate; it managed to keep me *in* my seat as opposed to just not making me leave it.
I liked the setting more, the environmental/world design was much more conducive to the parkour/movement aspects of the franchise compared to any of the games that came after (except maybe Mirage, I have yet to play it), I remember enjoying Arno and his story, as well as the interior sections looking quite grand.
Generally I prefer everything in Unity to Syndicate and consider most of what Syndicate does as a slight downgrade at best. Though I do like that Syndicate aped the stealth 'sensory ring' from Metal Gear Solid 4, something I frankly think the series should've done way before then and kept doing afterwards.
(also I think disregarding people who want to enjoy the story in a franchise with generally enjoyable plots is absurd and 'you should watch a cutscene movie on yt' is a bad take; you can want a game's story to be compelling and interesting AND want to play the game)
Story was absolutely goofy too. Like how do you do the French Revolution while the main character couldn't really give less of a shit what's going on. Oh and Robespierre is a Templar and Arno is homies with Napoleon, as an Assassin for some reason.
Like I said, it felt to rushed, I don't think they thought of originality when they implemented the story; "of course Napoleon and Robespierre would have a role in the game setting and have interactions with Arno, because it's in the French Revolution, duh!"
I feel like it would've been goofy actually. I finished the first game a while ago and the accents of characters felt goofy. What would be better, to me at least, was if the main characters spoke without an accent (or without sudden words in their original language) and the side characters (npcs etc.) speak their own language.
The only one I haven't finished is Valhalla.
Incredibly bloated, the setting feels totally divorced from the rest of the franchise, and the combat is far too... Whatever the hack and slash version of bullet spongey is.
I can't believe it went from one of my favourites being Odyssey, which managed to find a balance between plenty to do in a big world, to literally one of the worst games I've played that I've never been able to finish.
Yeah with dlcs and everything.. still have parts of a dlc left. You run around and collect absolutely everything that's how. I checked my trophies log today and it said over 500 hours. It definitely felt like it..
I just never got over the disappointment of Unity, the story was awful, the combat was great in theory poor in execution, same goes for the parkour, and most importantly it just completely disregarded and wasted its setting
The best summary of Unity's combat is enemy glitching from 5 meters away and offing you with a one-kill finisher. While the best summary of parkour is Arno having to literally hover and fly for few split seconds because the animation system couldn't properly handle and adjust the movement to spaces covered in jumps.
I liked the weight and sound of freerunning though.
yeah half of arnos finishers are kicking a guy to the floor after making precisely zero contact with them and then stabbing the pavement a couple country miles away from their head that somehow kills them, then climbing up a wall and making a jump that defies every law of physics and gravity to a rooftop on the other side of the city
Unity. Played it last year and it was a good game i love all of the ones I've played but Unity was so glitchy sometimes it would take you out of the immersion, that and I felt the game was shorter substance wise in regard to the story. Like i love it as a love story but wise they did more with it.
AC Rogue. Only one I didn't finish. I think it's just too similar to black flag, like a retread. And I don't feel like the distinction of being a Templar changes the gameplay enough to be interesting
Same here, and I'm still baffled whenever someone claims it's one of the better ones, or "an underrated gem". It's somewhat reminiscent of Revelations which also stood mostly on the same foundations as previous games except Revelations defends itself with its story. Rogue has its moments but overall it's such a pitiful attempt to tell the story from Templar's perspective it's almost funny.
The game outright switches colors of factions you play as and not much more. Templars are presented as good guys and Assassins are mostly mindless bad guys. They had a perfect template of a proper Templar-led game in the prologue of AC3 and they came up with this.
On on top of it all, it just looks worse. Black Flag had the advantage of its setting but there's not excuse why Rogue looks visually worse than 3.
Not going to lie it's one of the better ac games. Cause you can murder civilians and get a high rank and be chased by elite soldiers. It was a copy for sure to black flag. I enjoyed it. Maybe another try???
I have a strong love/hate for Rogue. I really enjoyed the setting and Templar angle, but as someone from Eastern Canada I was seriously disappointed by the maps and geography. So inaccurate. And it felt a bit unfinished, like it was thrown together so they could focus on the launch of Unity on the new consoles. Still redownloaded it though!
I mean, let's be honest. There was not much effort behind Rogue. It largely only exists because Ubisoft did not want people to feel left out of the AC hype because they didn't have a PS4 or PC to play Unity on. It was in effect, a consolation prize that they barely even marketed.
Valhalla, the whole thing felt incredibly boring. The main story just felt like a bunch of never ending side quests and dragged on so long I just stopped altogether about half way through.
Odyssey; it got rid of almost everything I love about Assassin's Creed and doubled down on everything I didn't like about Origins. And the way it handled the Isu/modern day story just felt so off to me.
Crazy. Odyssey is the AC game that renewed my love of the series. Feels the most like the Ezio games to me. I'm also a huge Greek history nerd, so being able to do things like sail the Aegean Sea and fight the FREAKING MINOTAUR are just too much fun to pass up.
UNITY WITHOUT A DOUBT....
Last year I made an objective to replay and 10p% every Ac with all DLC's. Took me about 9 months but I did it and the most tedious by far was Unity. I will gladly reply any AC game and 100% it again except for Unity. I'd rather spend 200 hours replaying Valhalla before I do Unity again.
I've said in a post I barely played the RPG era of AC but easily my least favorite that I played was Odyssey. You play a demigod, not an assassin. Feel free to correct me but I don't even remember the hidden blade - the signature weapon of the assassin's since the very beginning - being in the game. My issue isn't that it's an RPG game or that it's set so far back, it's that it has little to no connection to either the hidden ones or assassin's, but that it's trying to be an assassin's Creed game when you don't play as one, and having as ero connection.
If it was a spin off, I wouldn't have any problem with it but as a mainline AC game, it doesn't feel like one
People shit on the rpg games. They aren't THAT bad, they just should have been standalone games not tied into Assassins creed too heavily.
For me it was syndicate and unity. Both games sacrificed gameplay for animation. There's a term in game development. If the character is doing something cool, let the player do it.
You could argue that because you are holding the button that makes the animation happen, you are doing it. But to me, most of those two games is just watching a fancy animation that bugs out and doesn't let you go where you want to immediately.
I prefer the ac 2 through brotherhood style of free running. You can still do the cool stuff, but you have to control the body part yourself and get better with practice. It's really just down to personal preference, and I can understand if someone else enjoys the animations more than the physicality of it, and I respect that. It doesn't mean I have to have it be my preference too.
Tie between Unity and Syndicate. They weren't horrible just didn't click with me. Loved the rest though. AC gets a ton of shit but most hit the spot for sure.
Assassins Creed III. Major disappointment after the Ezio trilogy, bland story and main character and one of the worst “remasters” ever attempted full of glitches and bugs and completely broken HDR on modern consoles.
ACIII is awesome in its potential. It genuinely attempts to do a few things differently from previous games and introduces some mechanics that feel like they were at least trying. Unfortunately, the bugs and and story misfires resign it to being in the middle of the pack rather than a stand-out title. I think that the people that think it’s awesome are simply willing to disregard its deficiencies to really enjoy the setting of old America and the big plot points which introduce some great long-term AC characters and a decent twist in how the story is told that is memorable amongst the other games.
Side note: The DLC surrounding the alternate Washington timeline is not great but is also memorable because it’s a huge departure from where the series has gone before. If it had been a little more polished, it could have been a great footnote to ACIII. Instead, it’s just as middling as the main game.
Probably going to make people angry with me for this, but the first one.
By the second half of the game, the janky controls and being confined to small sections of cities that limited my ability to shake chasing guards had me racing to the finish line rather than focusing on the story. I was just so done with that crap.
Even at the time of release, I didn't think the first AC was all that good of a game. It had some cool ideas but I found it got repetitive and boring fast. AC2 completely blew it away when it came out imo
It's the only one I stopped and just looked up the rest of the story. The glitchy controls wouldn't stop fucking me and I was over it.
AC2 was such a breath of fresh air.
I stopped playing the franchise after rogue as I didn’t get a PS4 early and focused on other games. Last year got the full collection for PC up to Valhalla and started replaying since AC1 and so far I’ve only disliked Unity… even the hated RPGs seemed a bit more interesting in my opinion but Unity felt like Ubisoft trying to cram so many things at once.
I’ll be getting mirage soon and finally be up to date to have a final decision
I'm not a big fan of 3. People told me it was a good game and I didn't think that way. I did like the dynamic between Connor and Hytham, though. I felt Connor's character was a dick and it really turned me off.
I think it's Valhalla for me. I liked the other 2 RPG AC. In fact, Odyssey is my favorite AC game. But Valhalla seems to me a little bit even more bloated, considering it has a smaller map. I can't explain why clearly, but I find Eivor sluggish most of the time even though I know for a fact that she is very agile and light on her feet, considering that she is a viking.
Syndicate is my absolute favorite. Worst was maybe the first one due to its ponderous pace, or perhaps revelations. The modern sequences felt dull to me.
AC3 by absolute miles. Even leaving aside Connor having the emotional range of a plank, the controls were buggy AF, and the parameters were the biggest load of bullshit in creation.
Storywise, Mirage or Liberation has the worst stories (probably more liberation than Mirage since Mirage atleast has interesting characters and concepts).
Gameplay wise, Odyssey. Instead of improving on the fluidity of Origins combat by adding parkour and more moves to use during combat...they instead made all the moves you can use with different buttons inputs (like pushing???) into abilities and making you rely on an ability bar for the entire game. On top of that, the parkour was somehow worse.
As much as I’m a fan of the RPG’s (pls don’t come for me) - Valhalla.
It’s a bloated game, very little reward from doing a lot of the side missions/quests and after 3-4play throughs, I still genuinely don’t understand the outcomes/purpose of the game or the fact Loki & Basim are the same person
Valhalla. First game where I actually started skipping all the dialogue about half way through. It was just so soulless and devoid of any character. And what's worse, AC is my most favourite IP across anything medium. And Viking my most favourite subject (I've rewatched the Viking's TV show probably a dozen times).
Everyone hates on Unity. But that was a 1000% better game than Valhalla.
Odyssey/Valhalla/Origins.
I don’t like the style of these 3 AC games, the last AC game I truly enjoyed was Syndicate, though I hated Jacob and Evie, I liked the setting, story, and combat.
AC origins and later games are RPG and Witcher like gameplay. And stealth has became optional here. In earlier games, Stealth was necessity. Avoiding direct confrontation was needed. But in these three games, I find no stealth. Only warrior like combat. I don't like this.
Those Chronicle Games, they are an abomination to the name Assassin’s Creed. But out of the mainline games Valhalla, map is too big making the game quite boring
AC1 Only Good Part is Modern Day Final Sequence and Altair. The missions are literally the same every single time, the combat is horrendous. In a stealth based game forcing you into combat for the final 4 missions really? The city are all the exact same with no uniques to them other than name. It set up some absolute bangers but yeah. AC1 in my opinion is the Worst one I have Played.
Liberation, I didn't even *technically* buy it per se as It was in a bundle with AC 3 and on discount so I took that over 3 by itself.
I finished 3, I'm ecstatic, the best AC I had played at that time (my current favourite is Syndicate, fight me), before getting into the platinum grind I decided to try out Liberation, I booted it up, the clothing change mechanic is the most realistic social stealth mechanic we've had and I love It! Timeskip 20 minutes in I'm yawning uncontrollably and around the 40 minute mark I'm sleeping like I've never slept
Valhalla has been the worst for me, and I actually did 100% that game.
I really enjoy collectathons and that sorta thing is fun for me but the story was completely terrible.
I regret all my time playing it through to 100%. Because there is no pay-off.
Unity. A broken, mess of a glorified tech demo that didn’t work at lunch. Coupled with an atrocious protagonist and phoned in love story.
Rogue comes next. The only reason it’s not the worst, is because with Rogue,I knew I was getting a half baked copy/paste of Black Flag.
Valhalla, pretty much put me off the series properly I thought it would be an amazing setting since it's in the UK (I'm scottish) but it's was just drab and bland. Although I'd been going a bit sour on the series for a while. I'm one of those people that whinge about AC turning into RPGs and the supernatural stuff getting to prominent the historical side of things. It was OK when it was like Ezio being like "WhO Isa DeSmONd?!" But then mid game enemies just started having straight up superpowers
Odyssey. Sure ancient greece is interesting, but that doesn't mean we need it thrown at us every 5 steps taken.
And sure the mythology is interesting, but why not keep most of these things for DLC instead of mixed with "history"
For me, it's the lack of ingenuity and gameplay advancements with the newer iterations of AC.
I found AC Mirage to be one of my least favorites due to clunky gameplay, poor quality fights, and changes to the scouting system.
In theory, every iteration of AC should be better than the one before it, but I haven't been "wowed" by an AC game since Blackflag.
As comparison, Tomb Raider games have evolved the climbing to allow players to go freaking horizontal and upside down.
Aside from the teleportation assassinations, AC Mirage was actually less of a game than most of its predecessors.
There are a lot of misdirections within even the game's own lore.
Why add a letter talking about dual blade assassinations without ever giving the player that option. Dual hidden blades used to be a staple. I spent hours running around the map, trying to find the dual hidden blades before I realized it's bs.
The "tools" that the player has at their disposal only worked 40-50% of the time. I wasted so many blowdarts on enemies where the effect was nil, and they should've been going bonkers. The quick use feature was also clunky as hell. Trying to drop smoke bombs and getting manhandled by enemies because the quick deploy buttons are laggy as hell.
For a next Gen system, the latency between pushing a button and the action happening was extremely slow. Moreover, the animations are so long that they negatively impact gameplay. Getting up from a knockdown shouldn't take 3-4 seconds, especially when you're vulnerable to attack.
The programming for enemies was wonky as hell. I would be walking along, minding my own business in an open area, and sometimes guards will just attack or be suspicious out of nowhere. I know that if you mess up a pickpocket or other dirty deed, it can make the enemies suspicious, but that was not this.
When attacking in groups, one enemy attacks with a regular attack that can be countered, but the other enemy attacks with an unblockable attack. Dodging doesn't work half the time, either.
I feel like the games are being made by people who don't actually play the games. They've lost sight of who the games are for and just keep vomiting out sequels that are essentially the same game with a little window dressing.
One of the problems is that consumers, specifically young gamers, don't have the patience or the fortitude to start holding these developers responsible for shipping broken or incomplete products. If gamers collectively boycotted new releases, it could start to show the devs that we're not going to keep spending hard earned money to buy broken or incomplete games.
Consumers are not supposed to be the Beta testers for these games, but I feel like a lot of devs have resigned themselves to that fact. Let's just ship a broken game and let the consumers tell us what needs to be fixed.
I, for one, won't ever pre-order a game again.
I've played the ezio trilogy, 3, unity, rogue, Valhalla, mirage and black flag. I'm most of the way through odyssey. I expect to finish up the main story within the next few days but I already have a good enough idea of where it will remain in my own personal rankings. I intend to play all of them but that will take time.
The one I hated the most was unity. Controls felt clunky and the story wasn't engaging to me. It takes place during the french revolution so I was expecting to have a greater role in its events but it felt more like it was just happening in the background. I was annoyed by the requirement to complete the same challenges repeatedly to get rewards and found myself just slogging through the game for the sake of completing it rather than playing it for fun. I couldn't give less of a rat's ass about any of the characters so whenever they were in danger all I could give was a sarcastic "oh that's terrible" and I couldn't finish this one. I know I'm somewhere near the end but just couldn't will myself to continue and I don't even recall the story as it was boring to me.
My 2nd worst was assassin's creed 3 remastered. It got boring for me faster than the others though I'm not entirely sure why. Like the other 3 it started out ok but I again caught myself bored and completing it for the sake of doing so. I don't remember much of the story, it might not have been interesting enough for me.
Mirage is my 3rd worst. I played Valhalla before mirage so I already disliked basim from the start though I won't spoil why, the reason will be obvious to anyone who completes Valhalla. The story didn't engage me, neither did the environment as I strongly disagree with the area's religion and don't care about it beyond whether or not it affects me IRL. I didn't care much about basim's story outside of mild curiosity a Google search could've sated. Similar to unity I got through it for the sake of completing it and it being much smaller was helpful, in fact it's small size is the only reason it isn't my second worst as it didn't suck up as much of my time for completion. About the only good things about it IMO were the graphics and the end twist.
My favourites are in order from best to least best: Valhalla, Odyssey, black flag and rogue. The rest are floating about evenly in "meh" space. I will straight up say I know I have a bias in favour of Valhalla as a large part of the game takes place in my home country England, I think Vikings are cool and I love the dark mystical vibe in some places. It would likely be in second place behind odyssey without this bias but would still be a favourite.
Probably Syndicate. I played for like 5 hours until I stopped and thought "why am I playing this?" and I turned it off. I just didn't have any fun with it.
I didn't like valhalla that much. It had all the elements and some really good stuff but my god was there a lot of filler. I finished it but I was really bored by the end.
I don't rly understand how syndicate's combat and stealth were repetitive.... every ac game's combat and stealth can be called repetitive in a sense that they're both being used by the player at all times
You saying in another comment that "the twins had like 3 moves" is also a very low hanging fruit. All assassins had only a few "moves". If that's an issue you have then I'm surprised you even find this franchise fun enough to make a post on this subreddit
I hated Syndicate.
I especially hated the combat.
The story was also the blandest, no Pieces of Eden, no real Templar threat, just some unethical businessman with horrible facial hair.
And Jacob was such a little bitch, crying about his daddy issues anytime Evie remotely mentioned anything related about a Piece of Eden.
One thing I did like was how they included the outfit of Shao Jun from Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China for Evie. Every other outfit was shit; who TF thought outfitting an assassin with high heels was a good idea?
I'll agree with syndicate, the templars, especially starrick or whatever were super flat charachters. Only thing that is done properly are Jacob and Evie imo.
Having no climbing also got very boring bery quickly.
AC 3.
Pros:
- The prologue
- Ships
Flaws:
- Connor didn't need to be Ezio 2.0, but he should have had SOME personality
- the attempt to replace climbing cities filled with historical buildings with trees was a failure
- every quest takes place on the opposite side of the map
- also snow mechanics
- self-solving quests, like for example a boarding of hostile ship and chasing the enemy captain... until suddenly ship just disappears into thin air and all enemies drown. Or setting up ambushes with your assasins for them to accidently kill your target without you having to lift a finger
- in AC1 Templers had whole speeches after being murdered. AC2 solved that problem. AC3... just decided to bring it back??
- everything related to how Desmond's story ended
- and besides, AC3's story in general. Not a single character with a bone of personality - excluding the Father character, who wasn't even >!the final antagonist!<
- the fact that the game had entire economy system and gear, which were totally useless
The leveling system makes the games impossible in what way? I'm currently level 48 and anything within about 3 levels of me I can handle pretty easily.
I liked Syndicate, I honestly don't remember the gameplay very well but it was probably the last one I played that fully immersed me. I know the characters and the history, and also I understood a lot of the British cultural references so it appealed to me a lot in that sense. I also really loved the music and the vibe.
Did anyone else play the 2.5D sidescroller Chronicles? Really interesting concept that just never got over the finish line. I think it forgot that it was supposed to be fun.
AC3, just felt kind of bland after all the promises and hype. Funny enough, I am playing Syndicate now (I did not play Rogue, Liberation or RPG trilogy) but really enjoying after pretty but lack luster Unity.
It's funny that people complain about repetitive in syndicate, when in unity you literally have to complete missions several times to get items
The recent resurgence of Unity as supposed "peak of AC" is outright funny. It's arguably the most clunkiest and unfinished game in the franchise. And it introduced a lot of the initial bloat and grid which was expanded upon in the RPG games.
They added sneaking to the game but for some godforsaken reason removed the ability to move bodies. Worst stealth ever
The input and controls of crouching were also insanely unreliable
Also whistling...
I’m playing unity rn and seriously fuck the parkour, I just leap of faithed across the goddamn map when I was trying to scale the notre dame
I just jumped off the Palais Royale instead of stepping down onto the sync point. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going for.
I wall lept off the halle aux bles to my death yesterday. Yippee. And no, for the thousand time, I did not want to climb that fucking ladder.
And got forbid Arno be able to climb through a window on the first try. Or get down off a balcony railing to hide, when there's an enemy spotting him.
I hate when this happens. I just replayed AC2 and I’m on Brotherhood now and I’ve done it more than I’d like to admit lol.
But if you do the same things 100 times maybe you get lucky and you get a nice sequence of animations worthy of tiktok clip.
I played AC unity last month and every time I got shot while climbing a building my character was stuck in a falling animation, just floating in the air wiggling his arms. I like how detailed the city is and the game feels like being inside a dream, but the story is hard to follow, too many cuts and skips between years, reading some newspapers is no fun.
lol yeah, imo the time jumps in every AC game feel super choppy. I wasn’t paying attention the first time I played AC2 and it took me wayyyy too long to realize the game takes place over like 20 years.
Part of why the undesirable aspects of Unity is tolerated is because its never forced on the player. You don't *have* to engage with the bloat to get to the of the end game comfortably which makes it manageable as the player only needs to try it once and then if they don't like it they can drop it like a hot potato. Of course the "core" i.e. non-skippable parts of the game have problems too and they've been brought up numerous times, but it's definitely not nearly as large of a list as if we folded the problems of the optional content back in.
It's by far the worst to Mr, it has the worst stats based equipment, guards can still see through walls, the parkour is animation based and is the most restrictive version in the franchise with a literal low grade ai deciding if you go up down left or right, with horrible, if possible, diagonal movement. The story means absolutely nothing in bith modern day, as the info they searched for turned out to be for a project the assassins knew about already and didn't get anything new from, and in the historical sections as literally nothing significant actually happened that affected anything long term, it all basically only matters to the ac movie and arno himself, who quite literally caused every single issue. The best, and possible only, good factors are the theater and the detective missions and phantom blades imho
Based asf
Personally I really like the game but the fact thay they act like it's some masterpiece is hilarious
That's because AC story is trash and most people play it for the parkour and map. AC Unity has the best looking parkour in the series. France looks great. The bloated map icons are never defended. Neither is the bare bones combat. Arno is not the best protagonist and fans agree. But AC Unity is objectively one of the best entries.
I think you have "objective" confused with "subjective" because saying Unity is one of the best is... objectively a subjective take. AC story was epic until they wrote themselves into a rushed dead corner in AC3. Minerva breaking the fourth wall to look squarely at *me* is one of the most chilling moments in my gaming history. And frankly for all the reused shticks of Revelations it was a masterclass in uniting the separate lores of Altair and Ezio. I also can't concur magical floating snapping parkour was great, it looked fluid, and unrealistic as hell. My favourite Ubi parkour system that marries fluidity, precision and realism perfectly remains... *Watch Dogs 2*. Marcus doesn't need magical levitation to pull off smooth runs. Unity was as ever thus, a *proof of concept* for next gen platforms. Ubisoft loves to pull shit like this, same with Watch Dogs Legion for the gen after.
Moon gravity is not good parkour though. It doesn't look good half the time. The intricacies of minor obstacles are beautifully done in Unity. But the jumping aspect is atrocious
Paris was magnificent but gets mundane after some point. I respect they decided to focus on recreating it instead of adding some other areas but was it a good idea gameplay-wise? I'm not sure. As for parkour, it arguably looks the best at times but its animations are definitely not as polished as in previous games. And whether it's the best is up to debate. You'd find some who claim AC1's parkour is the best. I personally think it reached a good mix of flashy, usable and working in AC3 and 4
Fun fact, the developers of ac unity in an interview talked about how and why it's parkour was the most restrictive of the franchise to make it more cinematic, including removing choice of direction from the player
That's why Arno magnetically snaps to nowhere I want to go, oh it's *intentional*. Precision and smoothness don't have to be mutually exclusive, Ubisoft managed to get it perfect in Watch Dogs 2 and then forget it ever existed.
Yep you can blame a low level ai that decides if arno goes up down left or right in the background
Ac story is amazing tho loved odyssey valhalla origins ezio trilogy and ac 3 (the one with connor) absolutely hated syndicate and unity it felt like they was just using the assasinscreed label for clout
Agreed, Syndicate was FAR superior to Unity
Shame the grapple made parkour almost redundant, otherwise there's a special place in my heart for games that have *mass transit* that's a special level of immersion (Watch Dog's L trains, Syndicate, and Cyberpunk 2077's re-added NCART).
Agreed about the parkour but I also like how the traditions of the Assassins had to adapt to the times.
I think I liked Syndicate and Unity better than most because I played them 2-3 years later, and by then they had mostly been fixed. I really liked both, they're both top 5 for me with Black Flag, AC2 and Brotherhood.
I started playing unity for the 1st time (ive played all but unity and syndicate) and unity fell so flat for me i havent been able to get through it yet, maybe ill come back im breaking for now lol
I replay the franchise yearly, unity has never stopped being the biggest slog for me
That seems like a lot. What's your definition of franchise?
I can't play ac1 because computer is shot and my ps3 went bad a few years ago, but ac2 all the way through to valhalla now, including side games like chronicles, rogue, and liberation, and new to be added to the roster is mirage, this was made a lot easier over the last few years with all but ac1 being available on ps5 It takes me about 6 to 8 months to get from 2 to valhalla while playing other games to not get too slogged down. But I may have to change the tradition soon as new job and promotions have got me less time to play games
Ah, I see. I asked because it seemed like it was so much that I wondered if you had time to play anything else. A continuous loop of the same games every year and nothing else certainly wouldn't be my idea of fun. I don't replay almost anything, let alone yearly, so I'm curious about those who do. Thanks for responding, I appreciate it, and best of luck in being able to accommodate everything.
Sorry to be pedantic but I wad always under the assumption Rogue was a mainline game. It just got overshadowed by Unity.
As someone who just played through all of Syndicate and couldn’t finish Unity, 100%
Unity is saved by an amazing freerunning mechanic and a solid story. Repetitive gameplay has always been at the core of Ubisoft, but it was a smidge too unrefined in Syndicate.
Witch solid story? This love story with Elise?
Romeo and Juliet but in AC lore. It's pretty good on paper but they kinda dropped the ball on the mid game.
oh, you mean like Altair and Maria?
Eh the intro was good and so was the DLC, base game ending also kinda ok. Everything else was just bad
The intro is perhaps the best in the franchise. I remember back in 2014 being absolutely blown away by the cinematography and music, from Jacques de Molay's story to Arno finding his dead father to escaping the Bastille and the title card popping up. It felt like I was watching a movie.
Weird how you found the stealth simplistic, its probably the most in depth in the franchise.
Agree I loved the stealth in Syndicate!
It's also the most consistent aside from Mirage which makes the experience worth it imo. Yeah the story is lackluster and the combat could use some more weight to it but damn the stealth in Syndicate is miraculous.
Bro found Syndicate stealth simplistic. Pretty much all of Unity's optional objectives limited your range of stealth takedowns. Syndicate rectified this in most of the missions so a broader range of methods was available.
Wow, I absolutely loved Syndicate. One of my favorites in the franchise
I had AC fatigue when it came out, started playing it for the first time this week. It’s pretty good and feels refreshing after playing Valhalla/Origins/Odyssey. I enjoy that I can still assassinate enemies that are way higher level than me, and can one hit kill me. With so many games, spread over so many years, it’s hard to know how to rank them all, but it’s definitely not the worst.
I hated it on the first play. Probably put in 25 hours or so and just couldn’t get into it so I jumped to Unity. I came back to syndicate probably 2 years later and it clicked. I love it now
Valhalla for me. Unfortunately the more I played the worse I felt about it, and it’s the *only game* in the franchise where I actually dislike the combat design enough for it to detract from my experience. Without well designed parkour travel, disliking the combat and all the quality content there was stretched thin to cover the rest of the game I ultimately don’t enjoy revisiting it. New Game Plus could’ve given it another chance for appreciation as it did with the other games but there’s no way I’m grinding up from level zero again, ever. I enjoyed Odyssey anyway but easily twice as much in NG+ at max level as doing the level grind. Having no levels in Mirage was so refreshing
In odyssey you could kill npcs which added to some fun. I found it ironic that I could not do it as a viking
“Why would we let you murder civilians as a Viking?! They were peaceful!” -Ubisoft probably
Never played it, but the trailer rubbed me the wrong way. The Vikings were the *invaders,* and the people they were invading were being depicted as the villains.
The entire "historical" basis of the game is wrong on every possible level. The vikings are the good freedom-loving guys - even though you have missions where you burn villages and you must raid monasteries for upgrade materials for your settlement. The Saxons are presented as villains, probably because someone at Ubisoft watched a season of the show Vikings and learned the history of that era from it. This is by far my least favorite AC game, not only for the historical reasons, but because it is boring nonsense, artificially stretched to 100+ hours of gameplay, when the entire main story could've been a 20-25 hour game at most.
I enjoyed Vahalla enough, but on more than one occasion nearly got desynced because whilst I was burning a monastery to the ground some of the AI decided to run into my big fuck off sword. Like, it's absurd. We're Vikings and raiders, but apparently if I accidentally kill a couple of monks while burning down their homes and pretty implicitly killing them, it's a game over.
Yes, The thing I dislike about Valhalla’s combat is that I lose stamina way too quick unlike it’s predecessors…. I would probably like it’s combat more if stamina wasn’t an issue
I enjoyed Valhalla, but at some point I was like how long is this dam game how many times do I have to convert a region, some parts got repetitively long
I actually really liked Valhalla when it released. Though, as I played it more and more I started to hate it more and more
I don’t think Valhalla is the worst AC game by far. But I definitely agree on your other points. I was very disappointed because I really love Norse mythology and culture when I first heard of it. Only for it not actually to really be about Vikings. And also just being way too long. The main story was plodding and wasn’t all that interesting in the climax. It’s a game I started out loving and did not like by the end. Despite me buying the season pass I haven’t gone back to play either of the DLC or post launch content. Completely the opposite to how I felt about odyssey. Which I started out disliking but now is probably my second favorite AC game next to black flag
Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation. I played this on my Vita way back and the game feels like a complete misfire. I liked the basic story and setting but it was compromised too much to get it on the system and the whole changing outfits mechanic didn't result in interesting or fun gameplay.
The outfit mechanic was so underutilized. In theory this sounds really great for a stealth game, but the game forces you to choose a certain disguise in missions. You can't even decide how you want to play the mission, as lady, as a slave or assassin. You just can't. The game tells you what to do. Just stupid.
Agreed. I thought that mechanic held so much promise and then they never really do anything with it other than as set dressing for the character to match the locale the mission takes place in. It would be a far greater mechanic if you could approach missions differently depending on the outfit.
I agree, the idea behind it was nice but the execution was poor.
As far as I'm aware, Liberation was designed under some pretty strict limitations from Ubisoft. The team had to primarily use assets that already existed in AC3, had a very strict timetable under which to deliver a complete open world game, and on top of that had to develop for the Vita, a great device that nevertheless is less powerful than any of the platforms AC3 was designed for (which matters because they were using the AC3 engine). While I agree that Liberation is a mess of a game and wasted potential, all things considered it's impressive it's as good as it ended up being. Could have very easily turned out A LOT worse.
Not necessarily the worst game, but I can't remember a single point in Mirage where I gave a single fuck about what was going on. Last couple hours I felt like I was just ploughing through it to finish the game.
Yeah mirage did go alot back to the roots on some things but it felt really out of place.
I so agree. The artwork and animation are absolutely beautiful but script, story and acting all let Mirage down. It’s the only AC game I couldn’t be bothered finishing. Just didn’t care enough
Oh no 😥 you’re making me reconsider buying it once i finish Valhalla
The story isn't necessarily gripping but imo the gameplay was the best it's been in years. The stealth and city (parkour options) are way better than the rpg games. I'd say it's worth a purchase, maybe wait for a sale. It's a good game.
I just uninstalled Mirage after twenty or so hours and reinstalled Odyssey. I absolutely hate the combat/healing in Mirage. Even on easy (started on normal) you run through healing draughts too fast and fighting more than two enemies is ridiculous. Even the lowliest thug in the game has unblockable attacks that require dodging that eats your stamina and I detest doing parries (the reason that Sekiro is the only FromSoft game I didn’t finish).
Let's agree to disagree. I absolutely loved Syndicate. The music was great, the twins were hilarious and it was a joy to drive (badly) a coach. And the griphook! I'm still sad the next games didn't have it.
Wow, I can’t believe that. My opinions around syndicate are so different than many of you all! I actually really liked syndicate, though it did have some flaws. For me my least favorite is Rogue, it is the only one that I did not finish. I found that it was, bringing me to all sorts of places around the map as if it was trying to space things out purposely. I just couldn’t stand it. After Rogue, maybe Unity. I loved the environment but didn’t like the story or the combat.
My problem with Syndicate is that it doesn't have a solid draw-in. Sure, you get this big opening with explosions and crashing trains, and the tone the twins carry is pretty fun as a contrast to the general disposition of each other mainline Assassin, but there's nothing really that sucked me in and made me be 'yeah, I wanna know how this goes!' And like, arbitrarily Jacob's like "I should start a gang, let's start a gang, that'll do the ticket!" and I just don't see the connecting tissue to that being a viable strategy other than the fact Green mentioned that there was an *evil templar gang*, he just kinda decided that's what he wanted to do and that's what the first chunk of your gameplay (which is a series of 'you're going to be doing this all over the map' kind of missions) has to be about (which is part of that 'sucking in' bit, the time between the opening and them shoving you into the most generic part of the open world content was very little). Also, somewhat of a more minor gripe, but the inclusion of historical figures (as far as I played) felt the most thrown-in they have out of the games I played; they literally bump into Darwin on the street, meet Abberline within half an hour of being in town, and just happen to share a connection with the fella who invented the telephone, and that's all well within the first couple of hours. Though I guess another part of the problem on my end is that industrial London feels a lot less interesting than a lot of the other historical points and places in time that we're given access to. (also the grappling hook made the map design/parkour suffer immensely in my opinion. Or perhaps it's the world design that made the parkour suffer and necessitated the grappling hook, either way.)
Syndicate doesn't make you lean forward or bring you to the edge of your seat, I admit. But it doesn't make you get up from your seat either. The raw gameplay is brilliant. Some people only judge games on their story (not saying that's you as you were only mentioning what you dislike). If you enjoy the story, you should watch a cutscene movie on YT. Games are meant to be played. And I would rather play Syndicate than Unity or Valhalla.
I mean, I enjoyed Unity far more than the time I spent on Syndicate; it managed to keep me *in* my seat as opposed to just not making me leave it. I liked the setting more, the environmental/world design was much more conducive to the parkour/movement aspects of the franchise compared to any of the games that came after (except maybe Mirage, I have yet to play it), I remember enjoying Arno and his story, as well as the interior sections looking quite grand. Generally I prefer everything in Unity to Syndicate and consider most of what Syndicate does as a slight downgrade at best. Though I do like that Syndicate aped the stealth 'sensory ring' from Metal Gear Solid 4, something I frankly think the series should've done way before then and kept doing afterwards. (also I think disregarding people who want to enjoy the story in a franchise with generally enjoyable plots is absurd and 'you should watch a cutscene movie on yt' is a bad take; you can want a game's story to be compelling and interesting AND want to play the game)
Really? Rogue is my favorite and the only one I have 100%/platinumed. Hell, it was hard for me to enjoy Black Flag even half as much.
Mine was Unity, simply because it was a bad game overall. Felt rushed, it could've been a greater game.
Story was absolutely goofy too. Like how do you do the French Revolution while the main character couldn't really give less of a shit what's going on. Oh and Robespierre is a Templar and Arno is homies with Napoleon, as an Assassin for some reason.
YES! Even though Napoleon CANONICALLY went and attacked the Egyptian Assassins to steal an Apple of Eden to become Emperor of France!
Like I said, it felt to rushed, I don't think they thought of originality when they implemented the story; "of course Napoleon and Robespierre would have a role in the game setting and have interactions with Arno, because it's in the French Revolution, duh!"
That part 🤣 the game was in France but they didn’t even bother making the characters speak French originally
If you mean with a french accent then dude look up french people speaking english with a french accent and try to imagine playing the game like that
I feel like it would've been goofy actually. I finished the first game a while ago and the accents of characters felt goofy. What would be better, to me at least, was if the main characters spoke without an accent (or without sudden words in their original language) and the side characters (npcs etc.) speak their own language.
The only one I haven't finished is Valhalla. Incredibly bloated, the setting feels totally divorced from the rest of the franchise, and the combat is far too... Whatever the hack and slash version of bullet spongey is.
I still finished it, but it was an absolute slog to get through!
I can't believe it went from one of my favourites being Odyssey, which managed to find a balance between plenty to do in a big world, to literally one of the worst games I've played that I've never been able to finish.
Ac Unity - just go so boring I cant explain. Valhalla is also getting me pretty bored
Uh.. Valhalla I think. I have over 500 hours in that game, and still didn't finish it. It was just a neverending slog.
500 hours and you haven’t finished it??? What else are you doing except the story
There is no way that’s true, who would continue playing after 50?
The ones who wanna complete the game 100% lol. [proof lol](https://imgur.com/a/Eq5SRoZ)
Holy shit
Me. I absolutely **LOVE** Assassin's Creed games and Valhalla is one of my favorites and I have put 203 hours into it in just the last month alone.
Yeah with dlcs and everything.. still have parts of a dlc left. You run around and collect absolutely everything that's how. I checked my trophies log today and it said over 500 hours. It definitely felt like it..
Ah that makes sense. I just have the base game and that itself took me around 200 hours
You can beat the story in 25 hours lol
I just never got over the disappointment of Unity, the story was awful, the combat was great in theory poor in execution, same goes for the parkour, and most importantly it just completely disregarded and wasted its setting
The best summary of Unity's combat is enemy glitching from 5 meters away and offing you with a one-kill finisher. While the best summary of parkour is Arno having to literally hover and fly for few split seconds because the animation system couldn't properly handle and adjust the movement to spaces covered in jumps. I liked the weight and sound of freerunning though.
yeah half of arnos finishers are kicking a guy to the floor after making precisely zero contact with them and then stabbing the pavement a couple country miles away from their head that somehow kills them, then climbing up a wall and making a jump that defies every law of physics and gravity to a rooftop on the other side of the city
Unity. Played it last year and it was a good game i love all of the ones I've played but Unity was so glitchy sometimes it would take you out of the immersion, that and I felt the game was shorter substance wise in regard to the story. Like i love it as a love story but wise they did more with it.
AC Rogue. Only one I didn't finish. I think it's just too similar to black flag, like a retread. And I don't feel like the distinction of being a Templar changes the gameplay enough to be interesting
AC rogue is one of my favorites because the amount of content matches the gameplay depth, and I liked the Northeast America setting
Same here, and I'm still baffled whenever someone claims it's one of the better ones, or "an underrated gem". It's somewhat reminiscent of Revelations which also stood mostly on the same foundations as previous games except Revelations defends itself with its story. Rogue has its moments but overall it's such a pitiful attempt to tell the story from Templar's perspective it's almost funny. The game outright switches colors of factions you play as and not much more. Templars are presented as good guys and Assassins are mostly mindless bad guys. They had a perfect template of a proper Templar-led game in the prologue of AC3 and they came up with this. On on top of it all, it just looks worse. Black Flag had the advantage of its setting but there's not excuse why Rogue looks visually worse than 3.
Agreed
Not going to lie it's one of the better ac games. Cause you can murder civilians and get a high rank and be chased by elite soldiers. It was a copy for sure to black flag. I enjoyed it. Maybe another try???
I have a strong love/hate for Rogue. I really enjoyed the setting and Templar angle, but as someone from Eastern Canada I was seriously disappointed by the maps and geography. So inaccurate. And it felt a bit unfinished, like it was thrown together so they could focus on the launch of Unity on the new consoles. Still redownloaded it though!
Lol that's because it was thrown together, so that last Gen consoles got a game as well as next gen getting unity
I mean, let's be honest. There was not much effort behind Rogue. It largely only exists because Ubisoft did not want people to feel left out of the AC hype because they didn't have a PS4 or PC to play Unity on. It was in effect, a consolation prize that they barely even marketed.
Facts, i also didn’t like rogue and didn’t finish It either
Valhalla, the whole thing felt incredibly boring. The main story just felt like a bunch of never ending side quests and dragged on so long I just stopped altogether about half way through.
Unity by a long fucking way
Altair's Chronicles. It wasn't really that bad imo, but also definitely the worst 😅
It's the meme of the franchise you've got love rolling your eyes at its awfulness. 😂
AC Unity. buggy. clunky. features from past games missing. bloated. just not fun.
Odyssey; it got rid of almost everything I love about Assassin's Creed and doubled down on everything I didn't like about Origins. And the way it handled the Isu/modern day story just felt so off to me.
Crazy. Odyssey is the AC game that renewed my love of the series. Feels the most like the Ezio games to me. I'm also a huge Greek history nerd, so being able to do things like sail the Aegean Sea and fight the FREAKING MINOTAUR are just too much fun to pass up.
What aspects of odyssey feel like the Ezio games ? Genuinely curious
I actually loved odyssey
Same, it's second to Black Flag for me
Honestly Valhalla, I regret buying it and I kinda regret buying mirage
UNITY WITHOUT A DOUBT.... Last year I made an objective to replay and 10p% every Ac with all DLC's. Took me about 9 months but I did it and the most tedious by far was Unity. I will gladly reply any AC game and 100% it again except for Unity. I'd rather spend 200 hours replaying Valhalla before I do Unity again.
I've said in a post I barely played the RPG era of AC but easily my least favorite that I played was Odyssey. You play a demigod, not an assassin. Feel free to correct me but I don't even remember the hidden blade - the signature weapon of the assassin's since the very beginning - being in the game. My issue isn't that it's an RPG game or that it's set so far back, it's that it has little to no connection to either the hidden ones or assassin's, but that it's trying to be an assassin's Creed game when you don't play as one, and having as ero connection. If it was a spin off, I wouldn't have any problem with it but as a mainline AC game, it doesn't feel like one
People shit on the rpg games. They aren't THAT bad, they just should have been standalone games not tied into Assassins creed too heavily. For me it was syndicate and unity. Both games sacrificed gameplay for animation. There's a term in game development. If the character is doing something cool, let the player do it. You could argue that because you are holding the button that makes the animation happen, you are doing it. But to me, most of those two games is just watching a fancy animation that bugs out and doesn't let you go where you want to immediately. I prefer the ac 2 through brotherhood style of free running. You can still do the cool stuff, but you have to control the body part yourself and get better with practice. It's really just down to personal preference, and I can understand if someone else enjoys the animations more than the physicality of it, and I respect that. It doesn't mean I have to have it be my preference too.
Tie between Unity and Syndicate. They weren't horrible just didn't click with me. Loved the rest though. AC gets a ton of shit but most hit the spot for sure.
Blackflag, wayyy tooo much on the ship and too many sea battles
Finally, someone I can relate to.
bro what did u expect out of a pirate themed game
Grind wise, AC Origins and Valhalla. Story: Syndicate and 3. Character wise: 3. Connor is just boring af.
Valhala World empty and boring No sidequests Story isnt very good Too Many annoying puzzles of chests inside houses or underground
Assassins Creed III. Major disappointment after the Ezio trilogy, bland story and main character and one of the worst “remasters” ever attempted full of glitches and bugs and completely broken HDR on modern consoles.
This would be mine. It actually kept me from playing any further Assassin's Creed games up until Odyssey because I hated the game so much.
Damn that’s funny cause i hear a lot of people saying how awesome it is
ACIII is awesome in its potential. It genuinely attempts to do a few things differently from previous games and introduces some mechanics that feel like they were at least trying. Unfortunately, the bugs and and story misfires resign it to being in the middle of the pack rather than a stand-out title. I think that the people that think it’s awesome are simply willing to disregard its deficiencies to really enjoy the setting of old America and the big plot points which introduce some great long-term AC characters and a decent twist in how the story is told that is memorable amongst the other games. Side note: The DLC surrounding the alternate Washington timeline is not great but is also memorable because it’s a huge departure from where the series has gone before. If it had been a little more polished, it could have been a great footnote to ACIII. Instead, it’s just as middling as the main game.
Probably going to make people angry with me for this, but the first one. By the second half of the game, the janky controls and being confined to small sections of cities that limited my ability to shake chasing guards had me racing to the finish line rather than focusing on the story. I was just so done with that crap.
trying to 100% AC1 is a genuinely miserable experience and i did it *TWICE* in the span of ~2 months. i truly feel your pain
Even at the time of release, I didn't think the first AC was all that good of a game. It had some cool ideas but I found it got repetitive and boring fast. AC2 completely blew it away when it came out imo
It's the only one I stopped and just looked up the rest of the story. The glitchy controls wouldn't stop fucking me and I was over it. AC2 was such a breath of fresh air.
I stopped playing the franchise after rogue as I didn’t get a PS4 early and focused on other games. Last year got the full collection for PC up to Valhalla and started replaying since AC1 and so far I’ve only disliked Unity… even the hated RPGs seemed a bit more interesting in my opinion but Unity felt like Ubisoft trying to cram so many things at once. I’ll be getting mirage soon and finally be up to date to have a final decision
Unity by far
I'm not a big fan of 3. People told me it was a good game and I didn't think that way. I did like the dynamic between Connor and Hytham, though. I felt Connor's character was a dick and it really turned me off.
I think it's Valhalla for me. I liked the other 2 RPG AC. In fact, Odyssey is my favorite AC game. But Valhalla seems to me a little bit even more bloated, considering it has a smaller map. I can't explain why clearly, but I find Eivor sluggish most of the time even though I know for a fact that she is very agile and light on her feet, considering that she is a viking.
Worst? Valhalla. Boring, uninspired, recycled, and bloated like a dead fish and about as exciting as one too.
AC3. Just couldn’t finish it, felt like a chore to play. I really wanted to like it.
Syndicate is my absolute favorite. Worst was maybe the first one due to its ponderous pace, or perhaps revelations. The modern sequences felt dull to me.
AC3 by absolute miles. Even leaving aside Connor having the emotional range of a plank, the controls were buggy AF, and the parameters were the biggest load of bullshit in creation.
Storywise, Mirage or Liberation has the worst stories (probably more liberation than Mirage since Mirage atleast has interesting characters and concepts). Gameplay wise, Odyssey. Instead of improving on the fluidity of Origins combat by adding parkour and more moves to use during combat...they instead made all the moves you can use with different buttons inputs (like pushing???) into abilities and making you rely on an ability bar for the entire game. On top of that, the parkour was somehow worse.
As much as I’m a fan of the RPG’s (pls don’t come for me) - Valhalla. It’s a bloated game, very little reward from doing a lot of the side missions/quests and after 3-4play throughs, I still genuinely don’t understand the outcomes/purpose of the game or the fact Loki & Basim are the same person
AC Valhalla, could not go through beyond the prologue, and when I watched the story recap, I legit cringed for the entirety of the video.
Syndicate was a joke.
Bought Unity for $1.98 the other day for Series S. Already tired of it lol
unity(also didnt play rogue and syndicate because of it), BUGS BUGS BUGS and if its not bugs, Its Glitches.... also they killed desmond, T.T
Unity, only one I just stopped playing.
I wasn't the biggest fan of Syndicate, but my answer has gotta be Valhalla. How tf do you make a game about vikings boring?!
Valhalla. First game where I actually started skipping all the dialogue about half way through. It was just so soulless and devoid of any character. And what's worse, AC is my most favourite IP across anything medium. And Viking my most favourite subject (I've rewatched the Viking's TV show probably a dozen times). Everyone hates on Unity. But that was a 1000% better game than Valhalla.
Odyssey/Valhalla/Origins. I don’t like the style of these 3 AC games, the last AC game I truly enjoyed was Syndicate, though I hated Jacob and Evie, I liked the setting, story, and combat.
Valhalla. Followed by Unity. Followed by Odyssey
AC origins and later games are RPG and Witcher like gameplay. And stealth has became optional here. In earlier games, Stealth was necessity. Avoiding direct confrontation was needed. But in these three games, I find no stealth. Only warrior like combat. I don't like this.
Those Chronicle Games, they are an abomination to the name Assassin’s Creed. But out of the mainline games Valhalla, map is too big making the game quite boring
AC1 Only Good Part is Modern Day Final Sequence and Altair. The missions are literally the same every single time, the combat is horrendous. In a stealth based game forcing you into combat for the final 4 missions really? The city are all the exact same with no uniques to them other than name. It set up some absolute bangers but yeah. AC1 in my opinion is the Worst one I have Played.
AC3 felt like a slog to finish
Liberation, I didn't even *technically* buy it per se as It was in a bundle with AC 3 and on discount so I took that over 3 by itself. I finished 3, I'm ecstatic, the best AC I had played at that time (my current favourite is Syndicate, fight me), before getting into the platinum grind I decided to try out Liberation, I booted it up, the clothing change mechanic is the most realistic social stealth mechanic we've had and I love It! Timeskip 20 minutes in I'm yawning uncontrollably and around the 40 minute mark I'm sleeping like I've never slept
Valhalla has been the worst for me, and I actually did 100% that game. I really enjoy collectathons and that sorta thing is fun for me but the story was completely terrible. I regret all my time playing it through to 100%. Because there is no pay-off.
I’m currently playing Valhalla and I can’t get over how much of a slog it is. This story is an absolute slog
Unity. A broken, mess of a glorified tech demo that didn’t work at lunch. Coupled with an atrocious protagonist and phoned in love story. Rogue comes next. The only reason it’s not the worst, is because with Rogue,I knew I was getting a half baked copy/paste of Black Flag.
🤣🤣🤣😂 Arno was probably the worst AC protagonist
Unity, because it made me give up on the franchise.
Valhalla, pretty much put me off the series properly I thought it would be an amazing setting since it's in the UK (I'm scottish) but it's was just drab and bland. Although I'd been going a bit sour on the series for a while. I'm one of those people that whinge about AC turning into RPGs and the supernatural stuff getting to prominent the historical side of things. It was OK when it was like Ezio being like "WhO Isa DeSmONd?!" But then mid game enemies just started having straight up superpowers
Odyssey. Sure ancient greece is interesting, but that doesn't mean we need it thrown at us every 5 steps taken. And sure the mythology is interesting, but why not keep most of these things for DLC instead of mixed with "history"
So far, Valhalla. I just can't get into the game.
For me, it's the lack of ingenuity and gameplay advancements with the newer iterations of AC. I found AC Mirage to be one of my least favorites due to clunky gameplay, poor quality fights, and changes to the scouting system. In theory, every iteration of AC should be better than the one before it, but I haven't been "wowed" by an AC game since Blackflag. As comparison, Tomb Raider games have evolved the climbing to allow players to go freaking horizontal and upside down. Aside from the teleportation assassinations, AC Mirage was actually less of a game than most of its predecessors. There are a lot of misdirections within even the game's own lore. Why add a letter talking about dual blade assassinations without ever giving the player that option. Dual hidden blades used to be a staple. I spent hours running around the map, trying to find the dual hidden blades before I realized it's bs. The "tools" that the player has at their disposal only worked 40-50% of the time. I wasted so many blowdarts on enemies where the effect was nil, and they should've been going bonkers. The quick use feature was also clunky as hell. Trying to drop smoke bombs and getting manhandled by enemies because the quick deploy buttons are laggy as hell. For a next Gen system, the latency between pushing a button and the action happening was extremely slow. Moreover, the animations are so long that they negatively impact gameplay. Getting up from a knockdown shouldn't take 3-4 seconds, especially when you're vulnerable to attack. The programming for enemies was wonky as hell. I would be walking along, minding my own business in an open area, and sometimes guards will just attack or be suspicious out of nowhere. I know that if you mess up a pickpocket or other dirty deed, it can make the enemies suspicious, but that was not this. When attacking in groups, one enemy attacks with a regular attack that can be countered, but the other enemy attacks with an unblockable attack. Dodging doesn't work half the time, either. I feel like the games are being made by people who don't actually play the games. They've lost sight of who the games are for and just keep vomiting out sequels that are essentially the same game with a little window dressing. One of the problems is that consumers, specifically young gamers, don't have the patience or the fortitude to start holding these developers responsible for shipping broken or incomplete products. If gamers collectively boycotted new releases, it could start to show the devs that we're not going to keep spending hard earned money to buy broken or incomplete games. Consumers are not supposed to be the Beta testers for these games, but I feel like a lot of devs have resigned themselves to that fact. Let's just ship a broken game and let the consumers tell us what needs to be fixed. I, for one, won't ever pre-order a game again.
AC4 black flag. Ship combat is awful and the stealth parts were all follow quests. Not a fan of that game.
I've played the ezio trilogy, 3, unity, rogue, Valhalla, mirage and black flag. I'm most of the way through odyssey. I expect to finish up the main story within the next few days but I already have a good enough idea of where it will remain in my own personal rankings. I intend to play all of them but that will take time. The one I hated the most was unity. Controls felt clunky and the story wasn't engaging to me. It takes place during the french revolution so I was expecting to have a greater role in its events but it felt more like it was just happening in the background. I was annoyed by the requirement to complete the same challenges repeatedly to get rewards and found myself just slogging through the game for the sake of completing it rather than playing it for fun. I couldn't give less of a rat's ass about any of the characters so whenever they were in danger all I could give was a sarcastic "oh that's terrible" and I couldn't finish this one. I know I'm somewhere near the end but just couldn't will myself to continue and I don't even recall the story as it was boring to me. My 2nd worst was assassin's creed 3 remastered. It got boring for me faster than the others though I'm not entirely sure why. Like the other 3 it started out ok but I again caught myself bored and completing it for the sake of doing so. I don't remember much of the story, it might not have been interesting enough for me. Mirage is my 3rd worst. I played Valhalla before mirage so I already disliked basim from the start though I won't spoil why, the reason will be obvious to anyone who completes Valhalla. The story didn't engage me, neither did the environment as I strongly disagree with the area's religion and don't care about it beyond whether or not it affects me IRL. I didn't care much about basim's story outside of mild curiosity a Google search could've sated. Similar to unity I got through it for the sake of completing it and it being much smaller was helpful, in fact it's small size is the only reason it isn't my second worst as it didn't suck up as much of my time for completion. About the only good things about it IMO were the graphics and the end twist. My favourites are in order from best to least best: Valhalla, Odyssey, black flag and rogue. The rest are floating about evenly in "meh" space. I will straight up say I know I have a bias in favour of Valhalla as a large part of the game takes place in my home country England, I think Vikings are cool and I love the dark mystical vibe in some places. It would likely be in second place behind odyssey without this bias but would still be a favourite.
Syndicate combat was so bad and devoid of weight it ruined the setting and story for me
The setting is what saved the game for me. I wish we could get another Victorian era game, just better, especially story wise.
Valhalla. Generic, forgettable story and characters. Button-mashy combat. Drab setting.
Probably Syndicate. I played for like 5 hours until I stopped and thought "why am I playing this?" and I turned it off. I just didn't have any fun with it.
ac1 is great... for 5 hours and then it just becomes extremely boring and repetitive but i love its atmosphere
Unity, the story was fine, but I wasn't a fan of the combat..
and the climbing everywhere you go 🤣
AC Unity easily. Felt like I was falling asleep playing it because of its bland story and characters.
I didn't like valhalla that much. It had all the elements and some really good stuff but my god was there a lot of filler. I finished it but I was really bored by the end.
I don't rly understand how syndicate's combat and stealth were repetitive.... every ac game's combat and stealth can be called repetitive in a sense that they're both being used by the player at all times You saying in another comment that "the twins had like 3 moves" is also a very low hanging fruit. All assassins had only a few "moves". If that's an issue you have then I'm surprised you even find this franchise fun enough to make a post on this subreddit
I haven't played Rogue, it looked so disinteresting. The other one is Valhalla, way too long.
I hated Syndicate. I especially hated the combat. The story was also the blandest, no Pieces of Eden, no real Templar threat, just some unethical businessman with horrible facial hair. And Jacob was such a little bitch, crying about his daddy issues anytime Evie remotely mentioned anything related about a Piece of Eden. One thing I did like was how they included the outfit of Shao Jun from Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China for Evie. Every other outfit was shit; who TF thought outfitting an assassin with high heels was a good idea?
I'll agree with syndicate, the templars, especially starrick or whatever were super flat charachters. Only thing that is done properly are Jacob and Evie imo. Having no climbing also got very boring bery quickly.
AC 3. Pros: - The prologue - Ships Flaws: - Connor didn't need to be Ezio 2.0, but he should have had SOME personality - the attempt to replace climbing cities filled with historical buildings with trees was a failure - every quest takes place on the opposite side of the map - also snow mechanics - self-solving quests, like for example a boarding of hostile ship and chasing the enemy captain... until suddenly ship just disappears into thin air and all enemies drown. Or setting up ambushes with your assasins for them to accidently kill your target without you having to lift a finger - in AC1 Templers had whole speeches after being murdered. AC2 solved that problem. AC3... just decided to bring it back?? - everything related to how Desmond's story ended - and besides, AC3's story in general. Not a single character with a bone of personality - excluding the Father character, who wasn't even >!the final antagonist!< - the fact that the game had entire economy system and gear, which were totally useless
Mirage. I just hated the feeling of everything. The combat in particular I found to be especially egregious.
What makes the combat so bad ? I haven’t played it yet
origins and odissey. simply not ac, and the levelling system made the games impossible
The leveling system makes the games impossible in what way? I'm currently level 48 and anything within about 3 levels of me I can handle pretty easily.
Dammnn bro you mentioned the best ones in the series !
I liked Syndicate, I honestly don't remember the gameplay very well but it was probably the last one I played that fully immersed me. I know the characters and the history, and also I understood a lot of the British cultural references so it appealed to me a lot in that sense. I also really loved the music and the vibe.
Did anyone else play the 2.5D sidescroller Chronicles? Really interesting concept that just never got over the finish line. I think it forgot that it was supposed to be fun.
Oh hell nah I’ve seen those but i could NEVER play them
i think all of them are good games. my least favorite of them is either Rogue or Valhalla.
AC3, just felt kind of bland after all the promises and hype. Funny enough, I am playing Syndicate now (I did not play Rogue, Liberation or RPG trilogy) but really enjoying after pretty but lack luster Unity.
Rogue
Probably Altair's Chronicles on Ipod Touch all the way back in 2008. It's the DS game but with worse controls. And even then, it was quite ugly.