I'm at the beginning of sequence 8 and have decided to start hacking away at some of the side stuff. Started with a load of homestead missions because I'd managed to miss them so far and am now trying to clear up as many icons as I can on the Boston map before I head to New York. Forgot how much fun it is trying to complete every little thing in Assassin's Creed, it's really starting to make this game for me.

How bout you guys? Anyone not at all fussed about non-story stuff?

Did all liberation missions, maxed out all recruits and did all the sending them out missions. Currently going through the homestead stuff. I've beaten the main story btw.

I did the peg leg, homestead, brawler and naval missions. Basically anything with story and gameplay beyond simple collection. I really enjoyed the uncharted vibe with the Peg Leg missions. I also did about half of the assassin recruit missions, but I gave up on the random liberation quests needed for the other recruits.

I had a pretty good time with what I managed to finish before finishing the game. Now that I'm done I really don't want to dive back in, I finished with I think 89% completed.

I wish there was a more detailed version of the logbook though, I would have liked to know how close I was to being done with sidequests, particularly the Homestead missions. There are 37 of them, but sometimes you can't unlock more until you hit a certain point in the story. After finishing the main story, the final one (that isn't the Encyclopedia of the Common Man quest) popped up and I got some closure, but it would have been nice to have finished that before finishing the story.

I liked what they did in previous games with side quests, when they are available they pop up on your map, and you can just take a break from the story for a few hours while you clear them all out. When there's nothing left, you dive back into story. Here sometimes you have to seek out areas to even find out that certain side missions exist. The lack of sync points to open up the map in the frontier is not fun at all. I like exploring, Ubisoft, but not that much.

@cmpLtNOOb:

That last homestead mission popped up for me in sequence 11.

@Dallas_Raines: Huh, maybe it was a bug for me. Oh well.

I've done some of them. Not sure if I'm going to do it all.

I ended up doing most of it before I finished the game. Collected all the Peg Leg Trinkets fairly early and later all the Almanac Pages as I went along, did all the Naval and Homestead missions, liberated all regions of both cities and all the forts in the world, and leveled up all of my recruits all the way except for one. Most of the stuff I still need to do is over in the Frontier; I still need to collect all the feathers and chests (I cleared the cities of chests already), as well as do a few of the club missions and unlock more of the fast travel locations in the Underground.

There is a lot to do in this game, no doubt. However, I can't say that all of it is consistently good or completely worthwhile to the rest of the game aside from being more stuff to do. I really enjoyed the Homestead, Naval and Peg Leg Trinket missions, but a lot of the more minor side missions fell a bit flat for me.

The assassination and delivery missions are kind of soulless; for the mail courier missions, you go up to a guy and without much explanation at all, a handful of other icons appear on the screen, to which you go and whoever is at that location gives you the same exact line of "You have my everlasting gratitude, sir." There's only ONE line for that exchange! Considering each of those mail courier missions has you going to five or so people, it quickly sticks out as something that could be done better.

The crafting and trading systems are a bit overly convoluted and not done very well from a menu/UI perspective, especially considering just how much of the side missions and collectibles are tied into that system (chests, Naval and Homestead missions), and they don't reap as many benefits as, say, the economy system of the Ezio games, where you're constantly getting more money to spend on buying more shops to get more money (as well as upgrading your armor and weapons). Whereas in Assassin's Creed III, the crafting system requires you to basically stop the action and sit down for a significant amount of time, which makes it more of a hassle than anything.

Overall, I still enjoyed running around and doing a bunch of the side missions and I am really impressed with how they changed the different systems and side-missions to fit the context of the new setting, but after doing most of it, I couldn't help but think that they could have done a bunch of small things to make those minor side missions more enjoyable and worthwhile, and that the side mission and economy aspects of the game were handled better overall in the Ezio games.

@cmpLtNOOb: The DNA Tracker menu in the Pause screen tracks your progress with the major side missions like the Homestead Missions (it lists each member of the community and the missions they have), but I don't think it shows when in the story progression some of those missions can unlock. I had the same problem of not knowing when some of those Homestead missions become available; it turns out that the last couple of those only show up really late in the game.

Done a couple Frontier quests, some of the liberation missions too.

@cmpLtNOOb said:

@Dallas_Raines: Huh, maybe it was a bug for me. Oh well.

Yeah I had problems with homestead missions popping up. Stumbled across one in the frontier in sequence 8 and after that about five missions popped up in the homestead ... weird

I'm doing all side stuff as it becomes available. So far I've cleared Boston of missions and collectibles and also the Frontier of feathers, trinkets and chests. It's probably the easiest way to go about it, since you get some scripted story stuff once you've ran out of side stuff, then you get more side stuff! YAYYYYYY!

Also, i think i'm sequence 6? I dunno whatever sequence the Tea is in.

Doing the side stuff is probably the most fun I have with this game, so doing it all as it becomes available.

Just finished the last homestead mission. Going to bring this to eb and trade in on Halo 4 shortly. Never even touched the multiplayer.

I can't take this.... I need my fucking Assassin's Creed, fuck the PC delays god damn it.

@AhmadMetallic said:

I can't take this.... I need my fucking Assassin's Creed, fuck the PC delays god damn it.

On the brightside, by the time the PC version comes out some of the bugs might be fixed.

It's a shame that the game doesn't really give you any incentive to do the side missions. There's some REALLY good stuff in AC3 that most people won't ever see.

My Assassin's OCD makes me complete all available side stuff before moving on with the main mission. I hate seeing my screen cluttered with Icons. It's probably the reason I haven't completed Sequence 7 yet but regardless I'm still enjoying myself.

All of it.

I fell into the wormhole last night of doing everything. All I really want is that armor from Achilles but it's taking forever. Fortunately that time is well spent and I'm having fun helping people out.

One shitty part is that the homestead missions only pop up if you finish previous ones, and one of the missions doesn't have an icon (find Dave's tools) so it took me forever to figure out that I had to buy them from a general store. I thought the game bugged out and stopped showing icons....

I keep telling myself I'll do one set of side stuff then move on but I end up just doing a little of everything. Been doing some Frontiersman missions, liberating missions in both cities, some of the trinkets have been collected, and i'm in the third set of hunting challenges to complete in the Frontier. Also, I've liberated a few forts which is a lot more fun than previous games since the damn leaders don't hide thank god. I love all the extra stuff to do.

Just a fun thing I like doing throughout the cities is starting riots and pick pocketing everyone in the crowd. It's easy and fun.

Edit: I just completed the Mayan DLC to the game. I'm kind of disappointed in how short it was. I completed the whole mission in about 15 minutes. No challenge whatsoever. Kind of a waste if you ask me.

Have you guys bothered much with the optional objectives? I was trying to make a point of doing absolutely all of them as I go along but they can get really fucking frustrating so I've kinda started putting them aside for later if it's taking more than a few tries

@BomberDude: Methinks you're better off skipping them. "Play this stealth mission like it was 1997!" "Use this new mechanic that doesn't work half the time!" etc.

Everything whenever it was available. I'm in sequence 8 now as well.

I think I`m like 85% complete. I`ve done all homestead stuff, all naval stuff including the peg leg trinkets, opened all the chest, done all liberation missions with all but one of my recruits at max level and I think 2 areas not fully liberated on the map, got most of the pages, all feathers in the cities though have a billion to collect in the frontier, and have unlocked 15/21 fast travel points, playing the PS3 version so I've done the Benedict Arnold stuff too, finally have completed probably 80% of the various guild quest. Fast travel stuff is the worst, it just takes forever and the underground is pretty boring.

@BomberDude said:

@cmpLtNOOb said:

@Dallas_Raines: Huh, maybe it was a bug for me. Oh well.

Yeah I had problems with homestead missions popping up. Stumbled across one in the frontier in sequence 8 and after that about five missions popped up in the homestead ... weird

I had a similar situation, I think it's because many of the missions rely on having homesteaders there, thus you can have done everyone's story up to a point that requires a new character and once you get him the rest unlock.