Assassin's Creed: Revelations Thoughts
By HumanityPlague 4 Comments
I got AC: Rev a few weeks ago, and managed to beat it a few nights ago. I have thoughts on the game:
1. Their dumbing down of the property/notoriety stuff bugged the shit out of me. Basically, whenever you buy a building (bank, doctor, landmark, etc.) you gain 25% Templar awareness. Every single time! And as opposed to AC2 or Brotherhood, there's no wanted posters to find. The only ways to decrease your notoriety is to bribe a herald (25% decrease), or kill an enemy official (50% reduction). This is a huge pain in the ass, because sometimes you can't find heralds, or if you're at 10% suspicion they won't activate, until you're at 15%. The system in the previous games worked, so why did they break it?
2. Speaking of broken systems, ALL the treasure chests in the game and the bomb making stuff. Yes, making bombs is kind of cool, but they're not really used much. In Brotherhood, you find dozens of random crap in treasure chests or on bodies. Jars of Leeches, coins, or the like. This was used as currency to complete shop quests and gain access to shop upgrades. Now, there's no shop quests, or loot. All you find in treasure chests are bomb making parts (either casings, gunpowders, or ammo). And there is a LARGE number of chests around. So it ultimately serves to weaken what Brotherhood set up, with having you try and track down every chest you could find, to see if there was anything valuable inside.
3. Lack of good characters -- There's Ezio, Sofia, Ahmet, Piri Reis, Yusef, and Suleiman. There was also a Romani woman who was around for one mission. That's about it, in Ezio's tale. No Thief leader (like La Volpe), or Mercenary leader (like Bartolomeo). There is Yusef who is decent, but he isn't around for a lot, and meets a fairly ignoble end. Sofia is a good character, as is Suleiman, but both are a bit hollow. Piri sucks though, and you only have one mission with him. There's also some swerves in the story (with Ahmet) that are a bit too convenient for the plot.
4. The Assassin's guild stuff is kind of boring now. It wasn't great in Brotherhood, but you kind of bonded with those characters. In this game, they are literal disposable people, that once they reach a certain level you're supposed to either force them into taking over a city, or having them take over an Assassins den. After you cut them loose, you just pick up more and more, repeating the process. Because of this, there is *always* missions to do, because the game never really wants you to stop grinding out levels for them.
5. Plot was fine, but the ending bugged me. It just ended on such a cliff-hanger let down, that I was underwhelmed.
6. Technical problems: The game kept failing to sync my save games with Ubisoft's stupid uPlay servers. Also, a few times, on rooftops, guards were clipping through the roof about halfway through. That's never happened to me in an AC game before. The only way I could kill them was to shoot them in the head with a weapon. I couldn't attack them any other way.
7. Some of the chase missions were very cinematic. One involved chasing a band of Templar's in a boat through an underground temple, while they're in a boat. Another one was similar to it, as you had to get a key. There was a lot of great camera work in these few examples.
8. There was kind of a lack of exploring buildings. Only about two times are you inside a massive building, and have to explore around it, doing stuff. I kind of miss that.
9. Janissaries are pains in the ass.
10. The data fragments collecting felt super tacked on. Yes you get rewards for everything up to collecting 50, but that's it. If you get 100, you just get an achievement. Yay?
11. They took out cheats for getting 100% sync for a chapter.
All in all, I was severely disappointed with AC: Rev. It just felt tacked together, and not special. Here's hoping AC3 is better.
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