ASSASSIN'S CREED 3 (PS4)

 
Ok, so I forgot to add this game to the list, although I finished it more than a month ago. It was a good deal, I got AC3 plus The tyranny of king Washington DLC AND AC Liberation at a discount. Black Flag was also on sale, so I bought it as well. To be honest, maybe it was more Assassin´s Creed in one take that I actually could deal with. Years ago I got AC Unity and Syndicate copies, but they´ve been waiting on the shelf since… because I play AC chronologically. With this purchase I was just trying to fill the gap quick, so I could jump to the latter. I didn´t expect Liberation and a DLC to be on the same package, but what the hell

But let´s focus on AC3. Mixed feelings, mostly. It´s one (if not the most) NOT loved Assassin´s Creeds. After playing it, I understand why. To start with, the game world (XVIII century US colonies) is not visually striking. Basically wooden houses and forests. Not precisely what you would say “I want to be there”. Think about previous or later titles: Rome, Istambul, Paris, London… Second, the historical time is somehow limited in its impact on potential audiences. It will surely resonate on the US audiences, not so sure in the rest of the world

On top of that, the game feels less responsive to the controls than previous titles: You press the stick to go in one direction and goes into a slightly different one, it´s not easy to chain parkour jumps, while moving around the city very often the character feels irresponsive and the game takes you in a direction completely different… Inherited from the Ezio series, this AC has a lot of side missions that don´t necessarily fit into the assassin fantasy (village recruitment / management, ship missions, hunting…), so many times the game experience is blurry. The story is very uneven (weird decisions, strange alliances, things that happen because the script says so) and the protagonist is consistently angry, often behaving like an asshole for no real purpose. It´s kinda difficult to empathize with him. It was also plagued with bugs, crashes and blockers, a number of times I had to restart the game because I was stuck, or the UI prevented me to achieve the current objective. Really frustrating

I honestly finished it out of stubbornness, but it´s still a great deal of content if you have the patience to overcome all obstacles. AC games are normally comforting in the sense they´re not difficult to complete, and they offer so many things to do that it´s relaxing to get yourself lost in the world and let the hours pass by. It’s just that AC3 makes it harder than it needs to be (or other games of the series did)