Oh man, back when it was announced I thought this will be a day 1 purchase for me, but peoples opinions so far are scaring me off... I'm kinda glad I waited. This was one of my most wanted games but now I think I'll wait for a platinum version for 20 bucks...

I'd say it's a bit of both, we're on the fifth game now and the basics haven't really changed much. My main issue so far has been the insane amount of bugs and glitches.

@Morrow: You're probably better off waiting, at least there might be a chance they patch it to fix some of the bugs.

So, I've been making myself play through this game, but I'm not enjoying most of it. I can't figure out if it's because of particularly bad and annoying game changes, or just too much Assassin's Creed in general, anyone feel the same? Some examples of really annoying stuff in the game:

• Almanac pages: I guess they replaced the challenges of running after dudes on rooftops? but goddamn these are annoying. It's hard to tell where the page is in 3D space, and if you will catch it by jumping off a ledge. The suddenly disappear too, seem to be time-trials. I just ignore them now.
• Reloading Guns: I can see they went for "realism" for the era, but then why the shit did Ezio have way more advanced weaponry? he could shoot fucking guns like terminator and throw real intricate grenades and traps. They just made that incredibly annoying, to the point where a bow is way better than a gun.
• Sneaking: AC has always been particularly bad at sneaking, even though they added those sneak bushes in a lot of places, it doesn't seem to be any better. The worst part is when someone spots you (without setting off alarm mode), and if you were just about to enter a bush, you wont anymore. You will just stand there like an idiot until the guard comes.
• Breaking LoS and Hiding: This has definitely gotten worst,right? I guess because the cities are smaller and there's more open spaces or something, but running away to try to hide from a group of guys is so annoying. It seems to just get worse since you pull more guys. I just end up stopping and killing everyone, but its such an immersion breaker to leave 15 dead bodies every time someone catches you stealing something.

Also restarting missions over and over, missions failing over nothing, I dunno, I guess the game is just janky as hell. It's a damned shame because the naval stuff, and the tree climbing tech I did enjoy, they seem to be solid.

The only thing I really agree with you on is the sneaking stuff; most of the time it's better to just run in to a fort guns-blazing than to try to sneak around. Especially since you can't interact with objectives until you're anonymous, which seems a little harsh. I mean, why can't I throw a torch in to a shack just because everyone is watching me?

Your first two points aren't really poor design, as you said they just went more realistic with the guns, and the pages really aren't that hard to find(90% of the time they are on a rooftop, the other 10% they are on a ledge). You can also buy a gun with fucking 4 barrels and increase your bullet capacity to 40 so it's not like the gun is underpowered. I prefer the longer reload cause by Revelations the reload time on the gun was laughable, it was so overpowered. I do sort of agree with the last two points. The stealth is not that great, I had a ton of trouble with the first eavesdropping mission, although the addition of pressing against a corner makes some parts of sneaking incredibly better. Enemies do seem a lot more persistent when tracking you, but getting away from them is pretty easy due to the enemies no longer possessing climbing skills on par with Ezio. By taking to the rooftops it's fairly easy to avoid enemies, or using the alleyways to out maneuver them.

I've been asking myself the same question throughout my play through. AC2 was one of my favorite games of this generation, but they implemented some poor mission types in Brotherhood that have carried over to the last two installments of the series. Namely, the stealth missions where you automatically fail when you're seen. Even outside of that mission type there's seems to be a lot of trial and error here.

I'm gonna quote myself:

Revelations and AC3 are as bad as each other to be honest. This series needs to take a break and go back to the drawing board to fix the combat, AI, and stop forcing us to re-learn the mechanics every fucking game for a few hours. The padding to stretch out the time it takes to get through the game is extremely annoying to me, there's so much fluff that could be cut out in favour of a more concise and interesting game.

I wouldn't even bother trying to read the 'lore', this series is way past the point of being convoluted nonsense, I wish they just scrapped the Animus crap and told a self-contained story in the time periods in which the games are set.

Would anyone argue that 2, Brotherhood and Revelations would have been worse if it was just 100% Ezio? I didn't care at all about what was going on with Desmond and all the modern day nonsense, it was what was happening with Ezio and his family that I was interested in.

tl;dr - fuck this series

Or maybe ya'll just suck at video games. Too bad AC doesn't have difficulty settings.

All jokes aside, I'm of the opinion that this game has solid stealth gameplay. I was able to infiltrate a fort full of soldiers, liberate slaves and only kill 4 enemies in the process (3 of which were for that dumb "get 3 corner assassinations" side-objective & one for "kill the general") without being detected. Same goes for the mission where I had to steal the map from the camp.

I'm still early in the game and my experience has been a lucky bug-free one so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I also happen to really like AC, including AC 1 & Revelations so maybe you are burning out on it, who knows?

I don't really know where I stand on assassins creed games. I was super on the fence about buying this one just because of how burn out I already knew I was. I think I bought it because I actually care about the storey.

I'm not minding this one so far but I agree with you on most of your points. In particular the stealth stuff, assassins creed is not a stealth game (why cant't I crouch!).

For me I'd say I'm not loving it so far because I'm burned out on these games. I wish I wasn't. A trilogy with a good storey would have been great. I intend to finish this game (and I guess whatever comes after, if there is more).

AC 2 was enough for me, I just have no desire to ever touch that series again.

I'm with you on the stealth and hiding. After getting a level 3 awareness, trying to remove that was a BITCH. Super aware guards who automatically spot you from 60 yards away and can Benny Hill you for a decent 5-10 minutes in a city was just so frustrating to deal with. I'm glad it was rented.

I had the fatigue going from 2 to Brotherhood. The stealth is barely there, the combat's too easy to be rewarding and, while I don't expect much innovation from an annual series, the core gameplay remains unchanged. I'm just interested in seeing where they take the series, will they explore an era where you can't justify counter-killing a company of soldiers/guards in melee combat?

Brotherhood blows AC3 out of the water imo, and I think personally I enjoyed Revelations a lot more than others did, and more than I am with 3, because Connor is just so cliche and boring as fuck. Ezio was a bad ass and for all of them setting up Connor's story I really don't feel invested in it. And the guard chasing stuff is by FAR the worst part of it, I too just turn around and murder everyone that's chasing me because its such a pain in the arse to fucking get away from them

@Dredlockz: yep I couldn't agree more, I'm pretty disappointed by AC3. To much trial and error

Only thing that really annoys me is the slowness of the menus. It seems to differ somewhat but almost always pulling up the weapon select menu takes too long. It's really cool you can do all the assassin guild stuff anywhere, I just wish you could do the same with the convoy stuff. Also the whole convoy menu is beyond aweful. I have decided that no-one actually play tested that shit. If I want to sell 5 elk pelts why do I have to select them individually through the menus? It's like 15 clicks too many. So I guess that's few more than one, but those are still pretty minor things. Enjoying the shit out of the game otherwise.

@Dredlockz said:

• Breaking LoS and Hiding: This has definitely gotten worst,right? I guess because the cities are smaller and there's more open spaces or something, but running away to try to hide from a group of guys is so annoying. It seems to just get worse since you pull more guys. I just end up stopping and killing everyone, but its such an immersion breaker to leave 15 dead bodies every time someone catches you stealing something.

Be on a lookout for open doors and windows. There are quite a lot of them when you just know what to look for and it's an instant getaway. Literally instant. No waiting around unlike hiding in hay etc.

I skipped Revelations before this one and I'm glad, it didn't burn me out on AC and I am really enjoying this so far.. I haven't run into any of the major bugs I've heard people talking about, mainly minor glitches here and there, but so far this is one of my favorite games of the year!

@Zaccheus said:

I just wish you could do the same with the convoy stuff. Also the whole convoy menu is beyond aweful. I have decided that no-one actually play tested that shit. If I want to sell 5 elk pelts why do I have to select them individually through the menus? It's like 15 clicks too many. So I guess that's few more than one, but those are still pretty minor things.

I find everything about the Convey really poorly done.. The tutorial is terrible, and now I have no convoy and I don't know why.. It's a neat idea badly executed..

I have had very similar experiences with the game. I have really struggled with the stealth sections and breaking line of site. Some missions such as go and warn these people were extremely dull. It is still a great game but there are definitely a lot of things that should have been developed for a big sequel like this.

It's probably AC burnout.

I'm loving it but I haven't played an AC game since 2 back in '09.

Most of the missions are poorly designed and don't allow enough freedom to approach your own way. So much of the game feels like running to a waypoint, having the screen flash white, and watching a cutscene - instead of actual gameplay.

I've always enjoyed visiting a living city and admiring the architecture in this series. Wandering the frontier took some good inspiration from Red Dead and building out the Homestead feels like an RPG on the founding of America. Naval stuff turned out better than I expected as well.

But I'm pretty much slogging my way through in the interest of seeing how Connor's story plays out (don't give a fuck about Desmond and the Greek mythology precursor nonsense). Can't say I remember much that has happened because I've just been going through the motions and avoiding most of the side content. I think they were overly-ambitious with the amount they crammed into the game while also dumbing down the basic mission structure.

I still love the first game the best and the second game for its vivid setting (Brotherhood felt like a map checklist to me even though the setting was still good and they added assassin recruits).

I agree with you on most of those points, but I haven't found myself super frustrated by any of it. None of those have turned me off in quite the same way that the introduction with Haytham did.

I don't like how stuffy his personality seems, even when he is a badass. I don't like his outfit, which may be totally nitpicky, but whatever. I don't like how vague the game is about everything that is happening with him as they attempt to set up a Moffat-esque twist by just not giving you information and then going ISN'T THAT FUCKING CRAZY!? And I just wasn't interested in anything that was happening and felt really disconnected until they finally gave me control of Connor. And now I'm in a spot where I don't know what a lot of the mechanics of the game are, but I don't know if that's just because I'm not far enough in or what.

Like you said, it's kind of a bummer since naval combat is actually pretty sweet, and flying through the trees (I'm a fan of the rope dart execution on them) is just really kind of cool, even if traversing a large majority of the Frontier is kind of tedious and takes way too long.

I'm really enjoying it with a few gripes. Fuck some of the chase scenes, especially one in New York, the stealth stuff has been frustrating though I feel I'm getting better at it, and I'm finding that aside from his mentor nearly every other character is more interesting Connor. But the other stuff is great! Tree running, the setting, hanging with George Washington and Samuel Adams, a really interesting villain the insane Desmond stuff, the naval combat, pretty much everything else. It's a worthy sequel with a few rough edges and a protagonist that will take some getting used to and isn't as instantly likable as Ezio. Still great.

My least favorite part of the game is the horse riding. Instead of stepping over that log that Desmond can lets just fucking glitch out like crazy. I only use the horse in the missions that make you use one. I am enjoying the game though. I have to collect everything before I move on so it's taking me a while to get through the story.

I think they made a big mistake making the Haytham part go on as long as it did. By about halfway through, I was staring to get pretty annoyed and just wanted the game to get to the fun stuff.

On the one hand, from a story perspective, it goes on way too long. I felt like they could have gotten to their big "twist" in about half the time they did and lost nothing in terms of the story (The part on the ship I found particularly offensive for some reason. Probably because somewhere along the line someone decided it would be fun to show an Atlantic crossing in real time). On the other hand, if the beginning was meant to be a tutorial, it was a really bad tutorial. A lot of the game mechanics were not adequately explained, and although I eventually figured them out, I felt that was more of a byproduct of having prior AC experience than the game itself walking me through it. I feel like if I was a newcomer to the series, I would have been completely lost.

For example, one of the early missions wants you to perform a "corner assassination" to get 100% synch, but it never explains what a corner assassination is. Since nothing popped up to explain this, I kept reading the condition as "cover assassination" instead, since that's what I was familiar with from prior games. I wasn't even aware you could stick to corners until I discovered it by accident, and even then some corners aren't stickable, even though they look like every other corner.

I will say that once you get to Conner, things go get substantially more awesome, but man does the game give a bad first impression.

@LawGamer said:

For example, one of the early missions wants you to perform a "corner assassination" to get 100% synch, but it never explains what a corner assassination is. Since nothing popped up to explain this, I kept reading the condition as "cover assassination" instead, since that's what I was familiar with from prior games. I wasn't even aware you could stick to corners until I discovered it by accident, and even then some corners aren't stickable, even though they look like every other corner.

I disagree. The game tells you that you can stick to corners during Haytham's missions, and 90% of them are stickable. As for corner assassinations, really? You didn't get how to do them? As for me, I hate hand-holding, especially for the obvious stuff. I like games that throw me in, and tells me to get good at it on my own.

I agree with all your points and personally I dont think AC burnout is a valid excuse. If a sequel's good it should do enough to differentiate itself enough from its predecessor. Regardless of whether it has yearly incarnations or not.

My biggest problem with AC3 is that it feels mechanicly a huge step back. Granted i'm only about half-way through the game but it feels stripped down. Why did they take away the different movement modifyers? Why didnt they improve the combat instead turning into a series of glorified QTE's?

I know it's easy to bash a game for not meeting your expectations but as much as I didnt like Revelations at least that game prioritised what mattered. (the gameplay) Everything in AC3 from the setting, pace, mission structure, level design all felt as if they were there to complement the story.

I'll admit the story's relatively well-told (even if I dont care for the characters) but it shouldnt gimp everything else in the process. Even MGS introduced a lot of new mechanics with each iteration.

(I like climbing trees though...)

EDIT: Also do you ever actually fight people with different weapons or armour? So far i've only fought people with guns and people without them. I know AC isnt known for its combat but there's no reason it should get worse.

I'm kinda with you. Assassin's Creed is a mixture of stealth and parkour game with some simple but enjoyable combat mixed in. I do find it difficult to escape being chased. What happened to the hiding spots on roofs? I don't like the new hud as much or the way you now change items. Some bizarre changes in AC3 for sure but I like what I have played overall.

I'm really enjoying this game. Just running around hunting and climbing trees is awesome but I also care for the characters a lot more than I did for Altair or Ezio. The setting itself is also a lot more interesting than any of the other games.

Haven't noticed any bugs after 16 hours either.

I think it's my favorite AC game.

@Dredlockz said:

• Almanac pages: I guess they replaced the challenges of running after dudes on rooftops? but goddamn these are annoying. It's hard to tell where the page is in 3D space, and if you will catch it by jumping off a ledge. The suddenly disappear too, seem to be time-trials. I just ignore them now.

What I've found helpful in collecting the Almanac pages is:

A) Set a waypoint on the page from the map. That way, there'll be a waypoint marker to help you keep track of it even if it's flying around off-screen.

B) Get close enough to observe it a few times to see where it can go, and then gun straight for it on one of those paths. They can usually go along a couple different routes depending on the direction from which you approach it, so test it out.

I agree, though; those pages can be a little frustrating to collect, especially if you accidentally engage in open combat or have to deal with weird architecture along the way.

I agree with a lot of the points being made in here.

The setup takes way too long, I was very frustrated waiting that entire time for the game to open up. But now that it has (I think it has), I am not even sure I want to play it anymore.

The new combat, I don't like. I don't feel like a badass assassin anymore. I can't just mess dudes up. I have to play these little qte's to counter & throw dudes around before killing them. Its really boring and I miss the old combat.

The first time you get to Boston as Connor I almost broke my controller. That mission where you have to elude everyone with a level 3 what ever the hell its called. I had to play that so many god damn times. It felt impossible to break line of sight and get away. And there were hardly any hiding spots. That whole sequence was terrible.

Also, not too into this whole story so far. I am just now at the start of sequence 6, and I don't really care about any of it. I just want to stab dudes in the face like uh uh uh, and it wont let me.

They also could have crammed more crap into this game for us to collect. I mean really. There just feels like way to much small unneeded stuff to do, and not enough main AC gameplay. I don't care about crafting to sell goods, or running a manor. I don't care about collecting things. I just want to play some missions and kill some dudes. The hunting was fun for about an hour. Now its pointless and completely unnecessary. Maybe I spent too much time doing that when I first got to the frontier as Connor.

I don't know if I really like the game, and I feel like I am forcing myself to play it, in hopes that it gets better.

@Dredlockz said:

• Almanac pages: I guess they replaced the challenges of running after dudes on rooftops? but goddamn these are annoying. It's hard to tell where the page is in 3D space, and if you will catch it by jumping off a ledge. The suddenly disappear too, seem to be time-trials. I just ignore them now.

Once I realized I was supposed to be catching the almanac pages in mid-air and not chasing them to a destination, they became extremely easy to pick up. Granted I've only gotten the first 12 or so, but most of them I snagged on my first try. I had to try a second time for maybe two of them.

• Reloading Guns: I can see they went for "realism" for the era, but then why the shit did Ezio have way more advanced weaponry? he could shoot fucking guns like terminator and throw real intricate grenades and traps. They just made that incredibly annoying, to the point where a bow is way better than a gun.

Ezio didn't get his crazy intricate stuff until later on, Connor is a new assassin. Maybe it's the new setting and the new character, but personally I can accept a power rewind for the series and actually welcome it. And I like that they balanced the bow with the gun. They both have their advantages depending on the situation. This gives you good reason to use both.

• Sneaking: AC has always been particularly bad at sneaking, even though they added those sneak bushes in a lot of places, it doesn't seem to be any better. The worst part is when someone spots you (without setting off alarm mode), and if you were just about to enter a bush, you wont anymore. You will just stand there like an idiot until the guard comes.

The difficulty of AC sneaking has always been due to the fact that it's almost impossible to tell whether or not an enemy is going to be able to spot you. You don't have the situational awareness of an MGS. But the bushes help a LOT since they gives you a range of freedom to move while sneaking which was lacking in the previous games.

• Breaking LoS and Hiding: This has definitely gotten worst,right? I guess because the cities are smaller and there's more open spaces or something, but running away to try to hide from a group of guys is so annoying. It seems to just get worse since you pull more guys. I just end up stopping and killing everyone, but its such an immersion breaker to leave 15 dead bodies every time someone catches you stealing something.

I'm almost positive this is because there are no more hidey-holes on rooftops. But you're right, more often than not I end up killing a billion dudes rather than find a way to break LoS and hide.

Anyways, it sucks that you are having such a bad time with the game. I was actually feeling pretty burned out on AC myself, having forced my way through AC:Rev just this August, but somehow I am still really enjoying ACIII. All I can say is maybe step away from the game and try picking it up again later on. There's no point in suffering when all you get out of it in the end is an overwhelmingly negative opinion of an amazing game.

@Tylea002 said:

@Sooty II is the only game where it was improved by the animus bullshit, with the ending twist revealing that ezio's quest was for a message to Desmond. I felt real bad for ezio, as if I had somehow manipulated his life by playing thegame, a nice bioshock esque twist that only works because you are PLAYING it, wouldn't work in another medium with another premise. But apart from that, yup. They handle the balance appallingly.

Not to get entirely off topic or anything, but I don't think I've ever had an 'OH SHIT' moment quite as powerful as the one where it started to dawn on me that either the camera was panning or the god was slowly turning, but either way slowly realizing like 'She is looking at me. Not at Ezio, she is staring with intensity at the screen holy shit holy shit', and then basically tells Ezio to sit down and shut up, the message isn't for him and he's not meant to understand.

It didn't have quite the same effect on a lot of my own friends who played it, but I was blown away by it, whereas the following two entries just made me question what the hell was going on as the story grew more and more convoluted and messy. I didn't even know what was up with Lucy until I looked up her wiki page here, after character in AC3 were going on about how she was another dead traitor.

You know what, I feel like that lumps itself in with the bad design here though. Having a previously major character killed in a sub-game in the franchise, only to lock her full story behind DLC for ANOTHER sub-game and then address it casually as if it was common knowledge for everyone in the next major installment?

That bugged me.

@briangodsoe: That chase scene in New York was the first incident in years that caused me to hurl my controller across the room because he kept just fucking jumping into bushes running up fences. I ended up restarting it and just going to the place I knew he'd run to and tackled him.

I had similar issues with the stealth that people are mentioning. I liked the sneaking in AC2 and Brotherhood, but I think in AC3 they really wanted to show off how many NPCs they could render on the screen at once. Unfortunately this meant that infiltration was more difficult or just flat out impossible given how many eyes can be on you. There were only a handful of missions where I felt like it was possible for me to sneak around and methodically take guys out like in AC2 or Brotherhood. When I saw the trailers I had hoped there'd be moments in the game where you'd be taking out redcoats one at a time from the trees and stuff, but most of the time the trees were just to get around.

Also there's a curious lack of explanation of mechanics in the game. I'm not talking about hand holding, just the mere mention that things exist. I didn't send out my assassin's on missions for the longest time, and also I was bashing my head against the combat because I was only tapping B to counter which meant that usually Connor would shove a guy out of the way. I realized later it was better to hold B and then counter to do an instant kill. Also I didn't realize that chain-kills still existed until I just tried it out. Anyone who didn't play Brotherhood or Revelations probably don't know you can even do that.

Speaking of instant kills, the super long combos Connor does before killing a guy are cool but over time get tiresome. I mean, he'll smack, kick and stab a guy maybe six times before the killing blow. Meanwhile, the other guys are closing in and after all the stabbing, my original target is totally okay.

I think the overall problem was many missions had very specific ways they wanted you to go about them. Especially chase sequences that required some on the run assassinating (which is cool in concept) because there was very little room for failure and when you add some open world jank/randomness then it turned it into a massive game of trial and error.

The lack of situational awareness in this game just made me want to play Mark of the Ninja again. Or Arkham City, stealth in that game is so spot on.

Oh man, back when it was announced I thought this will be a day 1 purchase for me, but peoples opinions so far are scaring me off... I'm kinda glad I waited. This was one of my most wanted games but now I think I'll wait for a platinum version for 20 bucks...

And sometimes you can't even fight your way out! I killed like 100 guys before deciding they were probably infinitely respawing .

It's designed poorly. The missions later on are obviously designed to simply artificially take more time than they should in context of the actual mission/story. A 20 hour game is not a crime, but a 35 hour game that's artificially drawn out should be.

Assassins Creed is the best Assassins Creed game.

"Drops the mic"

@DharmaBum said:

So much of the game feels like running to a waypoint, having the screen flash white, and watching a cutscene - instead of actual gameplay.

I've noticed this a little less since playing as full blown Connor, but it happens damn near constantly at the outset. I guess the alternative is having hour long, Kojima style cut scenes?

@Dredlockz: The pages are pretty annoying but they aren't bad. Sometimes I fail at getting them and other times I don't. They don't even matter much unless you want trophies/achievements so yeah.

Don't rely on the gun much. I only use it when my targets pretty far and surrounded by enemies. Yeah it takes long but I like it because it fits well with the time period. Ezio's "gun" was a tube on his wrist that shot pellets out. This is a real gun. Less gun=more fun. Well, that's what I think.

The sneaking is better then the other AC games. Yeah it's annoying when they spot you and you can't hide but I just run away. It makes sense though. If someone saw YOU about to enter a bush, would you still hide in the bush? No.

Breaking the LoS is really easy so I don't see how it's hard. I always manage to slip away. As someone above said. These guys can't climb after you like in the older games and there's also those (rare but open) doors and windows. You have to be aware for those but they make running away much simpler. If not, just zig zag through alleys and jump into a haystack and BOOM. You're incognito. The first time I went on a building with soldiers on them, they attacked me and I ran to the next roof, jumped off and landed in a haystack attached to a wagon that a dude was driving (horsing?) around the streets.

Plus, only glitches I've seen were Connor being invisible in 1 cutscene, a gun floating and someone fell halfway into the ground. Nothing bad.

@Morrow: The games awesome. OP's complaints aren't much to go on. The bugs depend on your console I THINK. I'm playing on PS3 and as I said in the sentence above this one, I haven't had any bad bugs. Maybe it's buggier on 360, but I don't know. The game looks gorgeous, it's fluid as hell, and it plays great. There's a ton of side stuff to do and including multiplayer, which I love, it's well worth full price to me. Hell, I paid $130 for the collectors edition. Maybe wait a month or so if it's bad on 360 for some more patches, but I think waiting for it to hit platinum is kind of harsh for a game this good. If anything bothers you, it'll be small stuff.

@awesomeusername: Well I have a PS3 too and also didn't experience any of the infamous Skyrim bugs. But still, I'll wait. My desire to play it isn't as big as wanting to clear my backlog a little before buying even more games...

I like AC III, Honestly I think its the best one so far. I think your probably just burned out on the series. I'm kind of glad that i skipped Revelations.

I feel Revelations was the better game. I don't feel like there's much of a difference between Boston and New York, and the fact that they removed some of the better game play stuff from Brotherhood and Revelations bugged me, although the removal of buying medicine was a plus.

I say bad design. For every step forward this game makes there are two steps backward when you compare it to previous games in the series. I could write an essay about it but I don't think any of you want to read it. I will say that after playing Assassins Creed 3 for 25 hours to finish the whole story, I think my time would have been better spent playing and unlocking all the naval missions, then quitting out and loading up a new game in Brotherhood.

@Morrow: Might as well get it on PS3 than since it has exclusive DLC. I understand backlogs as much as you. I have like over 20 (retail & downloaded) games that I still need to finish. I was in the middle of Max Payne 3 when my AC3 came and I.... Wait. What's a Max Payne 3???

There is way too much needless padding in AC3. I did play Revelations so maybe i'm talking from the perspective of a burnt out Assassin's Creed fan but I don't even find the main missions that great.

Asassins creed is 30% stealth 70% action/adventure. Best case scenario is you ususally sneak into where your target is, kill them in one quick mice then either run out or fight your way out.

I rented this over the weekend and after finishing Sequence 3, I don't know if I'll ever pick it back up.

• Mission design leaves a lot to be desired - lots of cutscenes after doing very little.
• I am so sick of the Desmond/Animus storyline. I. Don't. Care. I'd much rather play a game that played it straight and never returned to present day for any reason.
• The insta-fail stealth sections are simply not fun. I probably tried the disable two cannons/eavesdrop mission 10-15 times and ended up just killing everybody and running out of there. Your character has always handled strangely - sticking to random surfaces - but in insta-fail situations, accidentally popping out of cover because the animation of your dude was more flamboyant than you wanted is really annoying.
• Um, the glitches. The game locked up - no lie - six times through the first three sequences, forcing me to replay several sections again.

I have wonderful memories of AC2. Almost made it through AC:B before my son accidentally deleted my save (he was 1 and was randomly pressing buttons on the controller with the 360 on and the TV off) and didn't care for the tower defense aspects of AC:R, so I didn't play much of that.

I think I may be done with this series, which is unfortunate, because it has so much potential. Just being in the world is "so wonderful." I just wish there was a better game on top of that.

This game is a hot mess.

On one hand it's the best of the series. It's big, beautiful and absolutely packed with things to do. All the gameplay systems I've come across so far have ranged from competent to excellent and considering the shear number of systems in place that's pretty impressive to me.

On the other hand it's easily the least polished of the series. There are bugs, glitches, and questionable design all over the place. That's just not what I've come to expect from this series. There's so much jank I started writing it down so I could contribute to some official bug thread or something and I reached a page and a half in Word in an afternoon of playing. Thankfully none of it has been game breaking or even mission breaking for that matter.

I'm really enjoying some parts of this game, the naval combat is outstanding and I hope Ubisoft do something with it, the exploration and collectables is still fun and some of the side quests like the huntsman and Captain Kidd ones are pretty fun. It's these parts I've been playing the most which doesn't say much for the main storyline.

I really don't care about it, the Desmond part is fucking dumb and I couldn't care less about it, the Connor storyline is a little better but it's hard to really care about anyone when there is a new character thrown at you every 5 minutes. Connor is especially unlikeable with his angsty teenager voice. The gameplay isn't as good as AC2 or Brotherhood; the combat is bland and annoying, especially against the enemies who cannot be countered. The storyline missions for the most part have been extremely short and apart from the insta-fail stealth ones, aren't at all challenging.

One part of the game is just plain terrible in my opinion, I don't know if it's a bug or just how the game is but the Liberation missions are terrible. Not just in what you have to do but how they work. For example, I have to kill these guys hassling someone, so I kill them and get 1 notoriety which is fine except when I'm forced to chase a guy who appears from nowhere (fuck chase missions by the way) I'm instantly attacked by all the guards around me which there are dozens. So now I'm doing a chase sequence with the entire town after me, I get hit, the guy escapes and I fail. Repeat this for every liberation mission.