But that was my favourite part... when Altair would go on those little dates with the girl assassin Altairette and you had to press circle to hold hands just as his confidence meter filled up. I loved it! I drew pictures of it in my diary. But you can't see it!! It's my secret diary!! :D yay!!!

That sounds pretty awesome.

I just started AC3, and the several hour tutorial/intro section is killing me.

Sort of. They dish out the tutorials for mission types and whatnot over a decent space of time. They never just dump all of it on you at once. I'd played the game for nearly ten hours before I was introduced to swimming. (the swimming is shit and easily the worst part of the game)

well, im still early on, but for example, one of the side objectives in a early mission was to tackle a pickpocketer, and not only did they not say that (just said catch him) but it doenst actually tell you how to tackle either, so I would say yes, its less hand hold-y

so, can you repeat missions anyway? if not I already blew my chance at 100% sync 3% into the game lol

I don't know if its less hand holding as much as it is them saying, "Hey...we know you probably played most of the other ones, so go at it." I don't think there is a deliberate attempt at not tutorializing everything for all players as much as they are admitting that the series is selling to the same people over and over.

It kinda seems like a reaction to the feedback and reviews of AC3.

@rhaknar: Hmmmm. I may be talking out of my ass, but I think you can select previous missions from the Animus. I haven't tried it myself, I think I may have heard that on a bombcast, or the QL.

Yeah, the button prompts are a tad small, and they don't really stay on the screen for very long. I've had several occassions of trying to run up behind a guy, and stab him. Only to run right through him, lol

Yeah, AC3 is torture. I was like Jeff, "When does this game start?!" haha.

@rhaknar: Yes, you can go back and play missions and sequences you have already completed. This makes getting 100% pretty easy.

ah cool, not sure if ill bother with it, some of the stuff you need to do seems pretty annoying (sneak around without getting in combat? err no thank you). I am getting everything on the map as usual, but I probably wont do the 100% syncs

@rhaknar: Not really that hard, especially after you get stuff like the blowgun which puts people to sleep. I am around sequence 6 or 7 now and not getting into combat isn't that hard. The only thing that will keep me from possibly getting a platinum in this game is the multiplayer achievements.

Sort of... they don't even introduce many features of the game and its up to you to go explore them. Harpooning for instance, they never spoke of it in the game (as much as I remember) and one day i just decided to go check it out.

A lot of the design choices in the game feel like they're directly addressing the problems that people had with AC3.

• A streamlined crafting system that's actually USEFUL
• A protagonist that's not constantly brooding and maudlin
• An out-of-Animus experience that's FAR less up its own ass
• Guns are useful again. They still take a while to reload (because that's just how things were), but now you can carry like 5 pistols.
• A system for making money on the side (Kenway's Fleet) that makes more sense. It's still not great, but it's a lot better than AC3's caravan stuff
• Not as many instant fail stealth missions (although still far more tailing and eavesdropping missions than I'd have liked)

I agree for the most part. I think they stretch the boat tutorial stuff a little thin but other than that, I was impressed at how little time it took to have fun.

I thought this series was done, Revelations and III were fucking abysmal games, but this one hits the spot.

You still have to progress a bunch in the story to unlock all the basic features though. Diving isn't available until like sequence 5 and there's still locations you can't access yet.

I had around 20 hours of gametime with 50% completion before I even got the diving bell. It's a bit jarring to get that far but only be on the very early missions and then have to go back and 'learn' how to do stuff like take over forts when I already have them all. It's Far Cry 3 all over again.

Still love it though

Haven't they always done that? (other than 1)

Yeah, that fort mission is the biggest offender. "Yarr, here be how you seize a fort!" "I already seized seven of them already!" "Don't be intrerruptin' Blackbeard's tutorial ye scurvy swag!" It's so weird that the game gates something so completely innocuous like the diving bell, but you can attack every fort you see right off the bat.

I never noticed. It seems about the same as before to me.

Thank god for the last point. That shit was the worst in AC3, and I agree there is still too many tailing missions for my taste.

20 hours in and about 22 or so Assassination Contracts in I was shown the tutorial for said Contracts.