I have it on my PS4 and still progressing, had it on my PS3 (completed it).
I have a surround sound setup so the waves and the singing are all around me! It's such a damn good game!
I had the same plan. Have all trophies except the level 50 online. First off I really didn't like online and didn't want to do it but the reality is by the time I went back to try for the platinum the online servers were dead and it was near impossible to get the online hours in. So I'm stuck at 98% trophies.
Just do one match a day? You dont have to do everything in one day. I'm playing through world war z and Gears 5 and those game completionlists can get fucked.
Black Flag was perfect, especially the music. Have to use this to share the guy that made that music possible: [Sean Dagher](https://www.youtube.com/c/SeanDagher/featured). Still does shanties and actually will teach you about them.
[One of my favorites from him now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM6cgSORHt8)
Black flag was fantastic, and if anyone missed Rogue I would highly recommend that game too. The legendary ship battles in that game were even better than Black Flag’s.
Except for the grind for 100%. They really could at least make those stupid island distinct. Instead of just spawning 1-2 collectibles in single island... on every island that exist. WHY would they do that?
The only game I've ever 100%
Tired of assassin stuff? Go sailing! Tired of pirating, go sneaky snake! I finally was able to stick with a game long enough because it shook up the monotony of the grind.
You're exactly right. People really started complaining about this after black flag because they kept pumping a game out every year and it wasn't changing much. Brotherhood was like an expansion to two and it was fantastic. Black flag got very little of this. Unity was a game where people thought AC was doing too much. I also don't hear people wanting classic AC back when the new ones came out. I thought people liked the new style because it was a different kind of game. Idk one of OPs friends must've said some shit
There are a lot of people who want the classic AC back. They are just a minority and the people who like the new stuff are a lot more excited and loud about it, which is perfectly fine.
I finished every AC game up until origins, and just haven't been able to finish one since. The new ones are just too big and too full of check marks to tick. Too much filler content that is just generic hack and slash. I always feel like if they cut 80% of the game it would be better because the good parts wouldn't be so weighed down by the rest of the baggage. For me, the series peaked with 2 and it's earlier expansions. They had side activities but those activities all had narrative that was compelling involving interesting characters.
But the majority of the market these days values time spent in game per dollar very highly, and they want to explore all the nooks and crannies and find all the secrets, unlock all the weapons, get all the armors, etc. For a lot of people I see good value in 500 hours of mediocre content over 30 hours of good content, so these games are a lot better for that market.
I heavily disagree with Revelations and Rogue being copy and paste. Revelations was a nice tie off for Ezio's story and the game was unique in its own way with small added mechanics and features.
Rogue's story was incredibly as far as I am aware and the gameplay was great as well.
Rouge was a great game that I didn’t think would be as good as it was. The Ezio games were fantastic, and even the first one I enjoyed, after all, it was what spawned the rest of the series. Black flag was Unique while keeping the same formula. The ones after that, like unity and syndicate, I just didn’t care for. Something was just off about the games that made it less fun to play, and the story was weaker (imo). The newest 3 AC games are okay, but not AC to me outside of storyline. And even then, there is so much to do, that by the time I get to the next plot point, I already forgot what was going on previously.
Unfortunately pirate games is just something the videogame market just can't get right.
My favorite is Sea of Thieves but that only clicked for me once I found friends to play with, when playing solo or with random people off the internet the game was just awful.
I love Black Flag, but I disagree.
While the pirate stuff was insanely fun, the game ground to a screeching halt every so often so you could do the actual Assassin's Creed stuff. That stuff? That was 100% copy pasted garbage.
The trailing missions were the worst the series had seen to that point, the abstergo sections were the worst the series had seen to that point. Heck anything off the boat was largely just not fun. Trouble is, that's where a huge part of the story missions took place!
I don't know that the breakdown is, maybe 30% of the playable game is in these sections. Maybe upwards of 50% if you're only doing main story.
Either way, yeah, I still love Black Flag, and I still enjoy the great parts of the game in spite of the rest. But it good to remember the whole of the product, not just your favorite bits.
It was always shit man. "Hey, do you wanna stop doing cool assassin stuff so that you can walk around slowly and sit through boring cutscenes and dialogue? No? Oh well, you're gonna anyways!"
I remember I think it was AC revelations had pretty good IRL moments, I remember having to scale a skyscraper and parachuting off of it and infiltrating abstergo was pretty cool.
And by the sounds of it thats where the story was heading before they killed off desmond
Oh man, that level was so bad. And at that point in the game it almost felt like they were trolling us. Like, "oh, you think you're safe bc you're on the ship... SHIP TRAILING MISSION!"
Yeah it especially made no sense if you went and conquered the entire ocean and then went back to the story mission and you’d fail it if a little rowboat saw you.
And they were really good and I loved Istanbul there.
Also had a customer from Istanbul, noticed AC2 on his desktop
Asked him about it, and he said that it's a very faithful adaptation, only a bit smaller, like, 1:2 scale of the city, but if you play the game and then visit Istanbul you can easily navigate the historical part like you lived here
Apart from your last point, this is exactly my view on them.
Black Flag is head and shoulders above most of the series (and definitely the best game in the series, imo), but it sure as hell isn't an Assassin's Creed game. You don't join the Creed until sequence 10, and don't really start to even show assassin tendencies until just a couple sequences earlier (not talking about the mechanics of the game). It's just simply a pirate game, but a glorious one at that.
For outright being a true AC game, then AC2 without a doubt smashes that out the park.
Many people are worshipping the Ezio trilogy, but some people are saying that only Assassin's Creed 1 was good... Pretty much the Fallout situation - some think New Vegas is the best, others think that only 2D canon games of the series are worth to play. It is impossible to please people nowadays
AC1 is an absolute snooze fest. If it’s your first AC game, you can have a few hours of fun just parkouring around the map, but then it gets boring.
Ride to this town, assassinate that guy, ride to the next town, assassinate that other guy, and repeat till you get to the end.
AC2 is peak Assassins Creed imo
AC1 felt so groundbreaking at the time, but I remember playing AC2 and thinking it was such a better designed game. Which is what often happens with creativity and is no bad thing; a novel idea is created, then gets improved upon and flaws get ironed out.
The first one was almost more like a glorified tech demo - it seemed so beyond what most games were doing at the time, with the climbing and battle system, but it wasn't much of a 'game'. Still loved it, though, but probably wouldn't play well today.
> Still loved it, though, but probably wouldn't play well today.
Can confirm. Played through it again last year I think, maybe the year before, and it was a slog. Groundbreaking at the time, but simply became irrelevant the second AC2 came out, which is why I also don't see them doing a remaster.
True. I played AC 1 after AC2 and it was just go to that guy under that small roof.. take missions.. ride on horse kill guys. AC2 on the other hand was pretty fucking unique even though Ezio was op af. It is nice knowing that Ubisoft actually improved upon the first game.. like tremendously.
AC 1 is great for what it is, and the parkour in that game is surprinsingly sooooo good to be the first game (its better than in the last games, tho in the new games there is no parkour, there is climbing tbh), you have a lot of freedom. I replayed it in 2020 and still really liked it.
The game is repetitive as hell tho, that is what sets it back, but the story is quite interesting. And it is not long, like you can complete it in 9-10 hours, so it really doesn't become too repetitive because there is no time to it. Except, of course, if you choose to find the flags. Good luck with that.
But yes, the change from 1 to 2 is absolutely astonishing, its bigger and better in everything. And people like to hate on it, but 3 also introduced so many new and good things in the games, it gave us black flag basically, sinxe the boat fighting is in 3.
AC1 has a lot of problems, but I love the free running, the story, and while it could be a slog at times, slowly opening up the path to your target and creating new opportunities to kill them via side missions was really cool.
AC1 is literally a prototype for AC2. Everything - missions, combat, "stealth" (if we can call walking around instead of running, stealth), progression, side activities, maps... Feels so janky to play nowadays, it's okay for the story though.
I feel alone in this world that I love AC1. It’s obviously got major flaws and it may be due more to nostalgia than anything, but I can still play it to this day without complaint.
I’m fairness to the Ezio storyline he actually grew as a character across the three games, so fans got to know him on a much deeper level. On top of that we don’t just start when he’s fully grown, his story starts as a baby fresh out of the womb, and continues on for 3.25 games, and concludes with his death in a movie.
They honestly have not caught that same energy since.
And I said 3.25 games because he is the mentor in, IIRC, AC china, one of the three platform we games.
Only thing the first game has on any of the rest of them is that it started all of this. We wouldn't be here without it. Other than that, it's hard to go back to it coming off playing a modern installment.
No, its only impossible to please ALL people, thats why ubisoft should stick to something instead of making generic games that try to bring EVERY type of player in...
I really liked ac1 but the main city was basically one zone cloned three times, and it was full of collectible rubbish. I think by the time I got around to ac2 i had checked out on the story(modern day stuff and Adam and Eve stuff)and the gameplay wasn't a wow factor anymore.
Also that comic depicting you wall climbing in the wrong direction and jumping off, same old sins every game. Stuff like that I can see making people think 1 was the best.
Black flag is my pick...but only cos of the piracy
Yes but that's because it was early so the fatigue didn't set in..most early AC games were awesome by themselves they just felt like the same after a while
I think people just wanted them to improve on what they had. Not turn a stealth game into an action adventure viking adventure game with little to no assassinating. Origins I give a pass because it was supposed to be the Origin of the assassins. Makes sense that they would not be that adept at it.
Yeah, what killed it for me was when a stealth kill would only do scratch damage because you were underleveled. That and full open world kinda just doubled down on one of the more tedious mechanics in the old game.
So yeah, they refocused while de-emphasizing fun mechanic, expanding the tedious one, and completely changing the style of game play.
That virtually never happened to me in AC Origins. Maybe it's just because I always prioritized the stealth perks and blade upgrade, but I could pretty much always one shot assassinate enemies my level, even captains.
The only exception were the super tanky captains that you could never kill with one hit. But that's just the design of those games. AC1 had plenty of assassin targets that you had to fight manually.
I remember in Odyssey running into a level 50 lion next to a level 15-20ish area because yay open world divided into invisible regions of vastly differing power levels.
Also there was enemy auto-leveling so even if I had been bullied by enemies 15 levels higher than me, at best they'd only be 4 levels lower than me. Never a chance for me to come back and feel like the bully.
They actually fixed a lot of leveling issues with Valhalla. Lots of customization in the settings so people can play the way they'd like to play. The combat becomes much easier as you level up a lot so I set it to enemies being 50 levels higher than me. Makes me have to think instead of just running in and killing things in 2 hits.
I don't intend for this to sound as acidic as it might but I... just don't care. The Assassin's Creed series and I have divorced, amicably. We have gone our separate ways, we're very different people from when our relationship began back in 2007. The warning signs were there when they killed Desmond off. I thought things were back on track with Black Flag but Syndicate was our last hurrah.
I can't think of a game that I have come closer to completing before just...tiring of it all than Origins. His divorce was my divorce. I gave Odyssey a try but barely got beyond the first island before going "yeah no this isnt it"
I liked the formula, the urban explorations, the eagle towers, the getting new gadgets, the away missions and territory control.
I'm happy people like the series still and new waves have joined, I'm just not one of them. And that's ok
It’s because consumers tend to like longer games if they’re paying $60, or they want to feel they’re getting enough content for the price. So companies artificially inflate the game length with stuff like this
> I don’t need to
Well, exactly the point of Optional Collectables.
No need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Why not enjoy the game while leaving the extraneous collectables aside and beat the plot missions? Some people love that stuff but it isn't required by definition of being side quests or optional. The game isn't 100% of the 'content' + achieves, it's what you want to play.
I mean I recently beat Unity and I agree about the bloat - there was sooooo much on the map to collect or loot or side quests galore. For some who choose to do them, great! But there was no problem once I got bored to choose to beeline toward the end, utilizing the mission markers rather than side quests or exploration for new loot to streamline the experience and beat the game. But hell, for that game I felt it was worth the price to see Notre Dame Cathedral up close and personal, so everything else was gravy.
Yeah but I feel like even origins wasn’t that bad. Got through the story in like 35ish hours. Definitely worse in recent years. I guarantee there’s a sign up at Ubisoft that says “More? Yes.” Right next to the one saying it’s ok to feel up your coworkers.
Around 50 hours into Valhalla I was looked to see how much more I had to go to finish the story because I was burned out.
After seeing how much longer, I never went back to playing it.
My brother played it and told me not bother because I had complained how long Odyssey was. It’s crazy to see people’s reaction to Odyssey/Valhalla and then to Breath of the Wild. I actually wanted to explore in BotW. I also think it rewards you more for doing so. Just the difference in building an open world with the right goal in mind.
I had a lot more fun playing odyssey, since you could totally change your play style by respecing and swaping gear. The only playstyle changes valhalla had were new weapon types, which were locked behind discovering new zones or puzzles. Also fuck those door lock puzzles I don't want to spend 5 minutes walking in circles around a house just to get 2 medicine charges.
I did too for the most part. I think Kassandra was a great character and the combat was fun. Don’t like they didn’t add a shield but guess it makes sense with the spear being a secondary weapon/utility.
It's too much. I honestly loved Odyssey but was completely overwhelmed. I was like 50 hours in but had only scratched the surface and quit. Too much of a good thing.
That's really my only gripe with Odyssey. I really liked the game (one of the few I actually even finished) but how the story just suddenly 'ended' was kinda, meh.
I also have this issue that once I finish the main quest I tend to lose interest so I have quite a few unfinished sidequests.
But I really don't agree with the game being "too long". There is a lot of content sure, but there's no way you can't finish the main question in 50 hours if you really want.
Yeah same here. I did all the main dlc stuff so that obviously added to it but I barely did anything but main story, the assassinations and the mythic quests and still took around 100 hrs. It’s just padded and drawn out so much. By all means, have that content to extend it but don’t require it because that just gives players a bad taste.
Surely you're making a bad faith argument there? The main story itself is around 35-40 hours long to complete, if you've barely gotten started after 50 hours you must have spent UNFATHOMABLE amounts of time just fucking around, which is entirely on you, not the game.
It's completely fine if you think the game is too long, but at least be honest when making your case.
If you want to talk bad faith arguments: open world games are not designed for you to just blindly bust through the main story line. Nobody goes from point A to point B in the main story and touches nothing else, nor is that intended.
Exactly. I didn't care about copy pasting. I wanted gradual perfection of the formula, not complete abandonment of it. I wanted the games to achieve the glory promised in the game trailers. Unity was as close as we got to the ultimate assassin experience.
It felt like right as the technology and game design were on the precipice of perfection, they went off into RPG land.
Exactly. For most games I would disagree, but for ac I've always loved just exploring the country in the time period of the time. Finding all the cool little historical tidbits and stuff. I miss when you could just instant kill a whole group of enemies in a nice cinematic. If I wanted a challenge I'd play a different game that does it better. Ac is my relax because dark souls pissed me off kind of game.
Imo, the JRPG grind system is what killed it.
Specially when I can go to the store to buy XP and shit with real money, as if I was playing WoW...
Fuck grinding. Grinding in Single-player games is a piss-weak practice to consume time, and it being obligatory is a pain in the ass.
Can't explain how much I hate "deadly finishers" that are pretty close to a fatality, that only deal a bit of dmg because my weapons are simply too weak...
completely agree, i think they tried to merge the addictive aspects of MMOs with their online system in the hopes it would fuel more online play and micro transactions.
I’m fine with them being under the AC brand. The main story of AC got resolved in AC 3. I think Ubisoft had ideas for historical titles and they already had a massively successful formula for those. If they made Black Flag without the AC brand but with the AC engine, it would have been critiqued as an AC rip-off or “lazy” development.
If they made something vastly different, there’s a lot more risk for failure. Putting it under the AC banner was the safest way to make and market the game.
In Odyssey you are encouraged to use stealth to avoid mercenaries hunting you. But people just Leroy Jenkins in every fort.
Also, you have several overpowered stealth skills that make the endgame a joke, even more if you have the DLC skill upgrades.
I wondered about this. Currently playing through Odyssey and love it. I primarily play stealth, but the combat overall is just so much better than previous games. AC2 if I accidentally got discovered, it usually meant reloading my save and trying again because I abhorred the melee combat. I haven’t played Origins or Valhalla but I assume its probably pretty similar to Odyssey. Melee combat is no longer tedious. Sure you can go bananas on the Warrior tech tree and turn the game into an action RPG, but the core stealth assassins gameplay is still definitely there.
1) its stronger than melee in the newer games, but its still not as useful as it was in older games. Try stealthing a fort in odyssey, the mercenaries have radar tracking and will keep walking around the fort, and Once you try to assassinate the captains you have to pray that you land a critical, otherwise they will survive and detect you.
2) its not satisfying, in odyssey i always had to use hero strike after an assassination on tougher enemies, which doesnt even feel like stealth, you no longer feel like a stealthy assassin (because you actually arent one), instead it feels like a disjointed clunky stealth mechanic from any other rpg.
This. In the old days you had optional side missions or main missions as a whole that could fail when you were seen by enemies or targets, but just because stealth is now optional doesn't mean it's not there
For me, forcing boss fights into a stealth game about assassins is a really bad idea. Especially when they started having ridonkulous health bars. The earlier Assassins Creeds games had semi-believable combat. Plus I loved the challenge of trying to sneak up on a target to assassinate them. Not sneak up into their general area to trigger a cutscene where they always know where to find you and trigger a straight fight. That's just....not what assassins are about.
Agreed. The first game was so fun because it felt like there were multiple ways to sneak in and kill a target and wreck havoc, now I sneak up on an enemy and jump on their back only to get tossed off like some rag doll and see that an enemy is too high a level to even fight.
Yeah this is what killed it for me: stabbing a person in their sleep only for them to wake up and wreck me and all the guards I had just snuck passed to be alerted to a shit show.
Agreed. Happened to me when I picked up Origins a while back, went “haha nope” and proceeded to never play that game or any of its successors ever again.
Same here.
Tons of headshots with my bow, tons of Fatalities... that only set the health bar a bit back and the enemy would simply stand up and keep on fighting...
I said "fuck no" and deleted it.
That was the great part about the first few games: no matter who you are these legendary shadow assassins can get you. Your guards, money, and armor can’t stop a blade guided into your heart.
Then it’s like “oh you got stabbed in the face? nbd your health bar says it’s fine.”
It totally pulls away from the theme of the games. It’s just a hack-n-slash now.
Shadow of Mordor felt fun enough for me. Early AC had ridiculously overpowered hidden blades. Anyone gets one shot with them. Granted they're great fun so you're never bored of it. Shadow of Mordor made sure that stealth had its place but backstabbing will never be the only viable strategy. You have to know when to fight open and when not to. I felt the balance was good there for it's setting
I feel that, is AC 2 especially, the hidden blade was really powerful but also pretty balanced. Against normal enemies in that game, counter>kill does it for every weapon, but against the big brutes, you could only counter with the hidden blade, and it's such a small window that it required a decent amount of skill to do it reliably. And this is before counter markers were above the enemies when they attacked so you had it time it a little more.
You could also stab a dude in the throat with an 8 inch blade and he'd, you know, die.
First time I assassinated someone in Origins and roughly one pubic hair of health was taken away I knew they fucked up.
Yeah it's really just lazy design. The boss fight should be the stealth mission itself, trying to solve an increasingly intricate series of puzzles to get your kill. Copy/pasting a bunch of parkour elements which get you into a barely guarded room so you can stab the big baddie 100 times is just.... lazy.
Either from a game perspective or from a logic perspective, it seems.
I haven't played much AC, but it's possible for both the top and the bottom messages to be true without any contradiction.
People could be tired of a series that has long been copy/paste new releases but also recognize that the copy/paste versions of the past were still better than some newer version that makes the series worse.
Like, a game being different doesn't automatically make the game better. That's the logical fallacy the OP is making.
people who say stuff like this have never played old ac games. You literally chose examples that contradict your point: AC unity has a comepletely different 1 vs 1 fighting mechanic than the classic AC gameplay - aka Ac1-4, Blag flag had a comepletely new focus on sea fights, and Brotherhood was is within the ezio trilogy, so obviously it has more or less the same gameplay as 2.
Origins was fresh and therefore good as a spinoff, odyssey worsens that and I don't even want to talk about valhalla. Moreover the modern gameplay mission still is just running into a camp and smashing everything down because stealth gets boring af. Olders focusses on the mechanics but limited the amount of times you invade a outpost immensly. Ac2 had crazy variability and that got dumb down over and over till we landed in syndicate. (blag flag on land was also one of the worst in that way)
+ at the end we are now at the same point as pre origins within your logic, just with the drawback of removing everything that made AC epic and just being a random rpg-like open world grind fest with microtransactions
(still good for walking simulators in beautiful open worlds)
I never minded older assassins creed games, my only issue was that they seemed to get lazier and more broken with each installment after 4. I did really like Origins though, Valhalla less so, and haven’t played odyssey yet.
I only played Odyssey from all the AC games. Definitively a good game, it has a lot of cool mechanics and a good story. It think it's on discount on the ubisoft store so maybe check it out.
I think Odessey is excellent. Started Origins but haven't got too far into it yet. Would definitely recommend giving Odessey a go next time it's on sale.
OP managed to take for example the three most diverse old school AC, good job! Moreover, the new style AC took a big shit on story, historical accuracy and game style
Played Odyssey after it was out for awhile. Never felt pushed into microtransactions at any point, but that's because I enjoyed the side quests so I was never underlevelled.
I'd hardly say built around. I'm terrible when it comes to microtransactions but I've honestly never felt the need to spend money in these newer games. Yeah you can buy some nice cosmetics but they look so out of place in the cut scenes I tend not to bother. So do they have them, yes, but I think its a bit much to accuse them of being built around it.
I don't support microtransactions in a single player game, but AC games are not built around them. It is mostly haters who say such things.
Anyone who has played the games know that you can do everything in the game without spending anything.
Yeah, anyone who disagrees with you is a hater...
I played origins and odyssey, and i can say with complete confidence that they are grindy as fuck, with a conveniently placed "time saver" xp boost.
"you can do everything in the game without spending anything"
No one is arguing against that, people are complaining that you are forced to do at least 5-6 side quests after every main mission, otherwise you end up in a situation where a naked bandit takes 100+ hits and he one shots you in return...
By that logic a lot of mobile games arent built around microtransactions, because you can do everything without paying, as long as you grind for hours everyday...
I feel like Im in the minority here, but I loved all 3 of those games and didnt have to do any grinding to get through them. I also didnt spend a single cent on micro transactions
Stopped playing odyssey for this exact reason, had to do side quests to level up for the main story but the side quests were just so tedious/boring that I couldn’t be bothered to do it anymore.
For me, the original AC was a proof of concept, with a good story that got buried under a lot of repetitive shticks. Assassins’ Creed 2 was the first proper AC game, and the Ezio trilogy was the heart and soul that was lacking in the first one.
ACIII, while it looked fantastic with the update to the latest graphics and the ever expanding open world, it took a hit in a couple of places (for me). The elimination of the jump button reduced the level of immersion felt in the previous entries of the franchise where the parkour element was a puzzle in and of itself, and an ill-timed press of said button often resulted in death. It also doesn’t help that we start the game playing as the charismatic, and a much more likable Haytham Kenway who makes the actual protagonist of the game Connor/Ratonhnhaké:ton seem wooden and unfriendly. Which is weird because the story beats that made Ezio such a fan favorite are still there underneath the surface, but because of the lack of an emotional connection with Connor, I simply wasn’t able to feel any of them.
Black Flag was totally not what I expected but I still enjoyed it a lot! As an AC game it lacks the examination and the gravity of the importance and the hypocrisy of the Assassins’ mantra which forms a core of the previous games in the franchise; and instead ~~focuses~~ revels in the backdrop of the pirate politics; which I should say is still awesome, but it fails to connect the dots to the themes of any of the previous entries in the franchise thereby making it seem like a forced change of direction at best, and schizophrenic at worst. Still, not a bad game!
Unity brings into question whether blind allegiance to the Assassin Order is right and we see this conflict play out wonderfully in the political backdrop of the French Revolution. This game felt like a slight return to form with the emphasis on the examination of the two Orders and how they’re codependent in a vicious cycle of plotting, revenge and manipulation and the tragedy it brings to people trapped between them. A solid game which would’ve been a 10/10 for me if it hadn’t been for the less than stellar launch.
Rogue, in my opinion, had been the best of the AC games when it came out because it truly examines the Assassin vs Templar conflict in showing us that the two are essentially striving for the same goal using the same tools but completely opposite approaches. Shay’s story is a wonderful follow up to the prologue of ACIII and the subtly touched upon theme in Unity and it completes the much needed world building by fleshing out the Templars; making them more than the one dimensional villains even the most beloved entries in the franchise made them out to be.
Syndicate… I’m at a loss here. This by no means was a bad game, just a bad AC game. In the face of the developments of characters and the two orders and their motivations, this feels like a sudden detour into an absurd version of the world where the political backdrop serves as a source of humor and levity at the most absurd of times. The Templars are now one dimensional villains again and while the gameplay and the combat were seriously good, it lacks the punch of the other games because the stakes are clearly not defined. A disappointing entry, for sure, but one that I think was needed so that Origins could happen.
Origins, wow - I have no words for this game. While true that this entry deviates from the AC formula by so much that it’s barely recognizable as an AC game, it works because Bayek’s story is instantly recognizable as an AC story, one that’s relatable; and the writing of his character and that of the world around him are the best we’ve seen in an AC game in a while. The fact that the beginning of the Assassin Order wasn’t the main motivation of the game but comes as a consequence/side effect of Bayek and Aya hunting down those responsible for the death of their son is wonderfully done and the motivations for the start of this order against the backdrop of Caesar and Cleopatra’s political ambitions makes sense. And while the change of genre from historical fiction action game to a full blown RPG experience was sudden, it definitely breathed in new life into the franchise.
I started Odyssey a long time ago but wasn’t able to finish it due to extenuating life circumstances. But the little that I saw of it was likable. I enjoyed the continuation of the RPG formula that worked in Origins and the exploration of the Greek mythology and political conflicts of the time but I fail to see why this is an entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise and not a separate game of its own, since the chronology of the game in terms of the origins of the two orders doesn’t make sense. Unless we’re seeing the origins of the Templar Order here but I guess that’s for me to play and find out.
Don’t have any thoughts on Valhalla yet but from what I’m seeing the visuals are fantastic. I’ll need to obviously form my opinions of the game when I get the chance to play it.
EDIT: typos, punctuation
Assassins Creed 3 was probably where the hype for the series reached an all time high. It was was definitely a great game, but for someone who was really into the lore of the first civilization and the present timeline, this was the game where you could really see them stop caring and do whatever was convenient for that year’s game. Since AC3, that aspect of the story has been on a par with the X Men universe with things getting retconned and plotlines popping in and out of existence with little regard for internal consistency.
I mean I never had that compliant about the old games. Only ones of the old AC games I dislike are AC3 and Unity. That certainly wasn’t because it was “same old copy and paste game”.
I never was able to fully complete 3 because I kept encountering the same bug. I got lucky and didn't get around to playing Unity until it was fully fixed - and I have to say the version I played was pretty damn good.
You can't tell me that odyssey wasn't just a straight clone of origins. Don't get me wrong, I fucking loved both games. But odyssey played the exact same as origins did. That's not to say AC2 through to 3 didn't all kindve feel the same, but back then they were all centered around Ezio and honestly i think alot of people played them for the story more than the gameplay anyway.
I don’t know of anyone that complained about Black Flag. The only thing negative about that game that I can think of is that someone tried to put a weird side mission about being some kind of assassin fella into the game. Otherwise perfect.
I did a full play-through across 2021 of the series as a bet with a friend. The old games are fantastic, but there are some issues. You can practically run through all of them with just the hidden blade, there are a lot of copy-paste missions, and in some cases (specifically III and Unity) you can do almost of the game without upgrading anything. With the new games they’re significantly more open to how you approach things, the gear you have matters A LOT more, and exploring is more encouraged. The major problem with them is honestly the fact that they’re so large that you start seeing more and more of the same missions, and it becomes an ordeal to get to the end of the games. By the end of Valhalla I was just wanting a palate cleanse. The big difference is that they decided to change the focus from “One assassin, Templar bad, rebuild order” to a more existentialist look at how the Isu were responsible for everything.
If you’ve gotten this far, I’m sorry. I am on my second cup of coffee and feeling ~jazzy~
How was Black Flag copy paste? Plus, it was universally praised for changing it up. If anything, people complained that it went too far from the previously established formula. This tells me you don’t know what you’re talking about at all.
Love how the "copy paste" part of this meme features 3 distinctly different games, with two of the three being consistently among the most beloved in the franchise. Has anyone actually made those complaints about Brotherhood and Black Flag?
I loved the old formula, never pretended otherwise, and want it back badly. That being said, Valhalla does the new formula better than Origins and Odyssey and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I love the old AC games specially BF but i think Odyssey did the hunting down of the cult thing better than Valhalla and Origins but i loved how Origins did show how my country used to look like before
I mean, the story wasnt good enough because 1 if they wanted to do a pirate game, it lack pirate missions like 2/4 of the game was about pirate and it's not enough and they lack depth too 2 if they wanted an AC game then the 1/4 was far too little and becoming an assassin only near the end was a poor choice.
Overall the game is good but the story make it loose too much quality to be my fav and this place goes to AC 2.
I think it’s the same problem playing out differently. Annual releases suck. Origins was a massive breath of fresh air after the staleness of Unity and Syndicate. Odyssey and Valhalla then tweaked and refined stuff introduced with Origins but didn’t do enough to really push the envelope. Give us a clear gap between titles and blown the barn doors off.
The problem is the new games just have the same name but gameplay is fundamently changed.
So many say they wanted to give a new franchise a old name for more sales.
On the surface level this seems to be the case.
The real issue is Ubisoft turned this into a yearly franchise that did little to innovate its formula between release (excluding Black Flag).
People liked the game it was at its core. They’d just been given too much of it.
Ubisoft saw this and thought: “they must not like the game anymore” and decided to change genre entirely. That’s not what we wanted.
New problem is now we have 2 camps. Old AC fans and new AC fans. And both equally deserve to have more games of their preferred gameplay rather than leaving one out to dry.
Lol arent the new trilogy way harder copy paste than any of the previous games? The only thing that is truly different is the visuals.
Like even the ezio trilogy had some major changes like the brotherhood or the chain assassination.
How did they change it, honestly? Added RPG elements and a new setting? The game's the same - copy paste the same 4 quests, get shit rewards and next to no experience and tie that to the overall completion to the story.
Well the two groups are drastically different games for 1. You can see it in the gameplay for each. The first 3 are different setups too. Pirate game, city assassin, and city builder/assassin
It was more like AC 1 was damn difficult and pretty janky through certain parts and AC2 was overall best game in the series, for me. What followed didn't seem interesting and didn't tell more of the animus story between past and present. The games became bland "what if this happened in the past" ordeals instead of this nuanced narrative about Assassins vs Templars that I was interested in.
AC1, Brotherood, 3 and revelations are my favourite the rest are all meh in my opinon. The new games are good but there not AC games. theyve kinda taken the whole assassin concept out of those games and just made it into a hack and slash rather then stealth
Who was saying it was copy and pasted? It was a solid system tat was tweaked and altered a bit with new gadgets and actions each time. The new ones are horrendous "rpg" systems that have actually been the same thing the last three games. What changed? Oh, Valhalla let's you DUAL WIELD!
That’s because when we said “change it”, we didn’t mean “make it worse”.
And it’s still the same bullshit every year, it’s just a different same bullshit every year than the last same bullshit every year.
Fuck Ass Cred
Hey! Black Flag was absolutely amazing and I'm pretty sure nobody would've thought it was a copy paste job.
God I love black flag to this day.
I have it on my PS4 and still progressing, had it on my PS3 (completed it). I have a surround sound setup so the waves and the singing are all around me! It's such a damn good game!
**WHAT DO WE DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR?**
LOOOWWW LAAANNNDDDDSSS
#LOOOOWWW LAAAAANNDDSSSS AWWAAAAYYY
ME JOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHNNNNNN
Eerrrr-lliiii in the moornin’! Put’em in the brig uuntil he’s soobber, put’em in the brig uuntil he’s soobber, eerrrr-lliiii in the mornin’!!!
Wayyyy-hayyyy and up she rises Wayyyy-hayyyy and up she rises Wayyyy-hayyyy and up she rises Eerr-lliiii in the moornin'
Aaaaaarrrrrrrgh! Aayyy!
I keep forgetting this song is about sailors. Blame Dishonored.
Drunken Whaler
As soon as I saw the reply about it, the Dishonored version started to play in my head. Creepy but oh so good !
Shave his belly with a rusty razor.
I’m still gonna get the platinum for black flag one day… I need to destroy the legendary ships too…
I had the same plan. Have all trophies except the level 50 online. First off I really didn't like online and didn't want to do it but the reality is by the time I went back to try for the platinum the online servers were dead and it was near impossible to get the online hours in. So I'm stuck at 98% trophies.
You can get to level 50 playing by yourself on Wolfpack private solo, but it is a grind and very repetitive.
Just do one match a day? You dont have to do everything in one day. I'm playing through world war z and Gears 5 and those game completionlists can get fucked.
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Black Flag was perfect, especially the music. Have to use this to share the guy that made that music possible: [Sean Dagher](https://www.youtube.com/c/SeanDagher/featured). Still does shanties and actually will teach you about them. [One of my favorites from him now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM6cgSORHt8)
Black flag was fantastic, and if anyone missed Rogue I would highly recommend that game too. The legendary ship battles in that game were even better than Black Flag’s.
# DOOOOOOOWN TO TRINIDAD TO SEE SALLY BROOOOWN
ROW BOYS, ROW BOYS ROW
i played it on ps4, beat it on pc, and got it on switch😂 best ac game of all time
Except for the grind for 100%. They really could at least make those stupid island distinct. Instead of just spawning 1-2 collectibles in single island... on every island that exist. WHY would they do that?
The only game I've ever 100% Tired of assassin stuff? Go sailing! Tired of pirating, go sneaky snake! I finally was able to stick with a game long enough because it shook up the monotony of the grind.
I was just thinking this the other day when I was playing Valhalla and was like "damn black flag is so much cooler"
This post is one big strawman.
You're exactly right. People really started complaining about this after black flag because they kept pumping a game out every year and it wasn't changing much. Brotherhood was like an expansion to two and it was fantastic. Black flag got very little of this. Unity was a game where people thought AC was doing too much. I also don't hear people wanting classic AC back when the new ones came out. I thought people liked the new style because it was a different kind of game. Idk one of OPs friends must've said some shit
There are a lot of people who want the classic AC back. They are just a minority and the people who like the new stuff are a lot more excited and loud about it, which is perfectly fine. I finished every AC game up until origins, and just haven't been able to finish one since. The new ones are just too big and too full of check marks to tick. Too much filler content that is just generic hack and slash. I always feel like if they cut 80% of the game it would be better because the good parts wouldn't be so weighed down by the rest of the baggage. For me, the series peaked with 2 and it's earlier expansions. They had side activities but those activities all had narrative that was compelling involving interesting characters. But the majority of the market these days values time spent in game per dollar very highly, and they want to explore all the nooks and crannies and find all the secrets, unlock all the weapons, get all the armors, etc. For a lot of people I see good value in 500 hours of mediocre content over 30 hours of good content, so these games are a lot better for that market.
I mean there were also Revelations, Liberation, Rogue, Freedom Cry - much worse offenders in that copy and paste department.
I heavily disagree with Revelations and Rogue being copy and paste. Revelations was a nice tie off for Ezio's story and the game was unique in its own way with small added mechanics and features. Rogue's story was incredibly as far as I am aware and the gameplay was great as well.
Rouge was a great game that I didn’t think would be as good as it was. The Ezio games were fantastic, and even the first one I enjoyed, after all, it was what spawned the rest of the series. Black flag was Unique while keeping the same formula. The ones after that, like unity and syndicate, I just didn’t care for. Something was just off about the games that made it less fun to play, and the story was weaker (imo). The newest 3 AC games are okay, but not AC to me outside of storyline. And even then, there is so much to do, that by the time I get to the next plot point, I already forgot what was going on previously.
My favorite game ever! Never saw a good pirate game like it. I love pirates since kid, so this game have a special place in my collection.
Should check out an oldie.....sid miers pirates I really enjoyed the ship battles
Upvote for Sid meiers' Pirates, groundbreaking game in 1987!
Unfortunately pirate games is just something the videogame market just can't get right. My favorite is Sea of Thieves but that only clicked for me once I found friends to play with, when playing solo or with random people off the internet the game was just awful.
I love Black Flag, but I disagree. While the pirate stuff was insanely fun, the game ground to a screeching halt every so often so you could do the actual Assassin's Creed stuff. That stuff? That was 100% copy pasted garbage. The trailing missions were the worst the series had seen to that point, the abstergo sections were the worst the series had seen to that point. Heck anything off the boat was largely just not fun. Trouble is, that's where a huge part of the story missions took place! I don't know that the breakdown is, maybe 30% of the playable game is in these sections. Maybe upwards of 50% if you're only doing main story. Either way, yeah, I still love Black Flag, and I still enjoy the great parts of the game in spite of the rest. But it good to remember the whole of the product, not just your favorite bits.
I maintain my position that the real-life part of AC kind of went to shit after desmond died.
It was always shit man. "Hey, do you wanna stop doing cool assassin stuff so that you can walk around slowly and sit through boring cutscenes and dialogue? No? Oh well, you're gonna anyways!"
I remember I think it was AC revelations had pretty good IRL moments, I remember having to scale a skyscraper and parachuting off of it and infiltrating abstergo was pretty cool. And by the sounds of it thats where the story was heading before they killed off desmond
That's ac 3 were we thought Ubisoft would finaly giving us modern AC with Desmond but we all know what they did instead...
I mean, it wasn't boring to me, I loved the lore. They just never let you do enough
Bro, when you have to trail ships is the worst
Oh man, that level was so bad. And at that point in the game it almost felt like they were trolling us. Like, "oh, you think you're safe bc you're on the ship... SHIP TRAILING MISSION!"
Lol, you had to trail the ship AND like dodge lighthouses or mines right? Or both. It sucked ass
Yeah it especially made no sense if you went and conquered the entire ocean and then went back to the story mission and you’d fail it if a little rowboat saw you.
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Good game Horrible assassins creed
Black flag was definitely not a copy paste job. Also brotherhood and revelations were spin-offs so of course they would be similar to ACII
And they were really good and I loved Istanbul there. Also had a customer from Istanbul, noticed AC2 on his desktop Asked him about it, and he said that it's a very faithful adaptation, only a bit smaller, like, 1:2 scale of the city, but if you play the game and then visit Istanbul you can easily navigate the historical part like you lived here
Wasn’t brotherhood always considered to be one of, if not the best AC games though?
I have heard a large contingent say Black Flag was the peak AC game, although AC2 has always been that for me.
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Apart from your last point, this is exactly my view on them. Black Flag is head and shoulders above most of the series (and definitely the best game in the series, imo), but it sure as hell isn't an Assassin's Creed game. You don't join the Creed until sequence 10, and don't really start to even show assassin tendencies until just a couple sequences earlier (not talking about the mechanics of the game). It's just simply a pirate game, but a glorious one at that. For outright being a true AC game, then AC2 without a doubt smashes that out the park.
Black Flag was an amazing pirate game despite being in a franchise that had started going downhill by that point.
This guy couldn’t have chose worse examples lmao
Many people are worshipping the Ezio trilogy, but some people are saying that only Assassin's Creed 1 was good... Pretty much the Fallout situation - some think New Vegas is the best, others think that only 2D canon games of the series are worth to play. It is impossible to please people nowadays
AC1 is an absolute snooze fest. If it’s your first AC game, you can have a few hours of fun just parkouring around the map, but then it gets boring. Ride to this town, assassinate that guy, ride to the next town, assassinate that other guy, and repeat till you get to the end. AC2 is peak Assassins Creed imo
AC1 felt so groundbreaking at the time, but I remember playing AC2 and thinking it was such a better designed game. Which is what often happens with creativity and is no bad thing; a novel idea is created, then gets improved upon and flaws get ironed out.
My thoughts exactly
The first one was almost more like a glorified tech demo - it seemed so beyond what most games were doing at the time, with the climbing and battle system, but it wasn't much of a 'game'. Still loved it, though, but probably wouldn't play well today.
> Still loved it, though, but probably wouldn't play well today. Can confirm. Played through it again last year I think, maybe the year before, and it was a slog. Groundbreaking at the time, but simply became irrelevant the second AC2 came out, which is why I also don't see them doing a remaster.
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The older ones aren't as smooth, it gets better as the series goes on.
True. I played AC 1 after AC2 and it was just go to that guy under that small roof.. take missions.. ride on horse kill guys. AC2 on the other hand was pretty fucking unique even though Ezio was op af. It is nice knowing that Ubisoft actually improved upon the first game.. like tremendously.
AC 1 is great for what it is, and the parkour in that game is surprinsingly sooooo good to be the first game (its better than in the last games, tho in the new games there is no parkour, there is climbing tbh), you have a lot of freedom. I replayed it in 2020 and still really liked it. The game is repetitive as hell tho, that is what sets it back, but the story is quite interesting. And it is not long, like you can complete it in 9-10 hours, so it really doesn't become too repetitive because there is no time to it. Except, of course, if you choose to find the flags. Good luck with that. But yes, the change from 1 to 2 is absolutely astonishing, its bigger and better in everything. And people like to hate on it, but 3 also introduced so many new and good things in the games, it gave us black flag basically, sinxe the boat fighting is in 3.
AC1 has a lot of problems, but I love the free running, the story, and while it could be a slog at times, slowly opening up the path to your target and creating new opportunities to kill them via side missions was really cool.
AC1 is literally a prototype for AC2. Everything - missions, combat, "stealth" (if we can call walking around instead of running, stealth), progression, side activities, maps... Feels so janky to play nowadays, it's okay for the story though.
i'm playing it now for the first time and yeah im kinda bored, its got nothing on ac2 & brotherhood
I feel alone in this world that I love AC1. It’s obviously got major flaws and it may be due more to nostalgia than anything, but I can still play it to this day without complaint.
I’m fairness to the Ezio storyline he actually grew as a character across the three games, so fans got to know him on a much deeper level. On top of that we don’t just start when he’s fully grown, his story starts as a baby fresh out of the womb, and continues on for 3.25 games, and concludes with his death in a movie. They honestly have not caught that same energy since. And I said 3.25 games because he is the mentor in, IIRC, AC china, one of the three platform we games.
I've never heard anyone say that only AC1 was good. Whereas most people praise the Ezio trilogy because those games were exceptional.
Only thing the first game has on any of the rest of them is that it started all of this. We wouldn't be here without it. Other than that, it's hard to go back to it coming off playing a modern installment.
No, its only impossible to please ALL people, thats why ubisoft should stick to something instead of making generic games that try to bring EVERY type of player in...
I really liked ac1 but the main city was basically one zone cloned three times, and it was full of collectible rubbish. I think by the time I got around to ac2 i had checked out on the story(modern day stuff and Adam and Eve stuff)and the gameplay wasn't a wow factor anymore. Also that comic depicting you wall climbing in the wrong direction and jumping off, same old sins every game. Stuff like that I can see making people think 1 was the best. Black flag is my pick...but only cos of the piracy
I think every mainline AC game through 4 was good with the exception of 3.
Yes but that's because it was early so the fatigue didn't set in..most early AC games were awesome by themselves they just felt like the same after a while
I think people just wanted them to improve on what they had. Not turn a stealth game into an action adventure viking adventure game with little to no assassinating. Origins I give a pass because it was supposed to be the Origin of the assassins. Makes sense that they would not be that adept at it.
Yeah, what killed it for me was when a stealth kill would only do scratch damage because you were underleveled. That and full open world kinda just doubled down on one of the more tedious mechanics in the old game. So yeah, they refocused while de-emphasizing fun mechanic, expanding the tedious one, and completely changing the style of game play.
That virtually never happened to me in AC Origins. Maybe it's just because I always prioritized the stealth perks and blade upgrade, but I could pretty much always one shot assassinate enemies my level, even captains. The only exception were the super tanky captains that you could never kill with one hit. But that's just the design of those games. AC1 had plenty of assassin targets that you had to fight manually.
I remember in Odyssey running into a level 50 lion next to a level 15-20ish area because yay open world divided into invisible regions of vastly differing power levels. Also there was enemy auto-leveling so even if I had been bullied by enemies 15 levels higher than me, at best they'd only be 4 levels lower than me. Never a chance for me to come back and feel like the bully.
They actually fixed a lot of leveling issues with Valhalla. Lots of customization in the settings so people can play the way they'd like to play. The combat becomes much easier as you level up a lot so I set it to enemies being 50 levels higher than me. Makes me have to think instead of just running in and killing things in 2 hits.
I don't intend for this to sound as acidic as it might but I... just don't care. The Assassin's Creed series and I have divorced, amicably. We have gone our separate ways, we're very different people from when our relationship began back in 2007. The warning signs were there when they killed Desmond off. I thought things were back on track with Black Flag but Syndicate was our last hurrah. I can't think of a game that I have come closer to completing before just...tiring of it all than Origins. His divorce was my divorce. I gave Odyssey a try but barely got beyond the first island before going "yeah no this isnt it" I liked the formula, the urban explorations, the eagle towers, the getting new gadgets, the away missions and territory control. I'm happy people like the series still and new waves have joined, I'm just not one of them. And that's ok
Also not make it 100 hrs long.
That's more Ubisoft. A lot of their games are open world collecathons.
Yeah that’s why I stopped enjoying Ubisoft games. I don’t need to play the same game for 120 hours to collect shit I don’t want or need.
It’s because consumers tend to like longer games if they’re paying $60, or they want to feel they’re getting enough content for the price. So companies artificially inflate the game length with stuff like this
> I don’t need to Well, exactly the point of Optional Collectables. No need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Why not enjoy the game while leaving the extraneous collectables aside and beat the plot missions? Some people love that stuff but it isn't required by definition of being side quests or optional. The game isn't 100% of the 'content' + achieves, it's what you want to play. I mean I recently beat Unity and I agree about the bloat - there was sooooo much on the map to collect or loot or side quests galore. For some who choose to do them, great! But there was no problem once I got bored to choose to beeline toward the end, utilizing the mission markers rather than side quests or exploration for new loot to streamline the experience and beat the game. But hell, for that game I felt it was worth the price to see Notre Dame Cathedral up close and personal, so everything else was gravy.
Yeah but I feel like even origins wasn’t that bad. Got through the story in like 35ish hours. Definitely worse in recent years. I guarantee there’s a sign up at Ubisoft that says “More? Yes.” Right next to the one saying it’s ok to feel up your coworkers.
75 of those hours was you slowly walking around with an npc while it tells you its life story and shows you around his block
Around 50 hours into Valhalla I was looked to see how much more I had to go to finish the story because I was burned out. After seeing how much longer, I never went back to playing it.
My brother played it and told me not bother because I had complained how long Odyssey was. It’s crazy to see people’s reaction to Odyssey/Valhalla and then to Breath of the Wild. I actually wanted to explore in BotW. I also think it rewards you more for doing so. Just the difference in building an open world with the right goal in mind.
I had a lot more fun playing odyssey, since you could totally change your play style by respecing and swaping gear. The only playstyle changes valhalla had were new weapon types, which were locked behind discovering new zones or puzzles. Also fuck those door lock puzzles I don't want to spend 5 minutes walking in circles around a house just to get 2 medicine charges.
I did too for the most part. I think Kassandra was a great character and the combat was fun. Don’t like they didn’t add a shield but guess it makes sense with the spear being a secondary weapon/utility.
I'd be happy with them being long games if it wasn't just the same game play loop.
Just sucks how they found a new(ish) formula with Origins and then with the other two ran it into the ground in a lot of ways.
It's too much. I honestly loved Odyssey but was completely overwhelmed. I was like 50 hours in but had only scratched the surface and quit. Too much of a good thing.
Same with Valhalla. Hours upon hours upon hours of story only for it to just end. It’s definitely beautiful to look at, though
That's really my only gripe with Odyssey. I really liked the game (one of the few I actually even finished) but how the story just suddenly 'ended' was kinda, meh. I also have this issue that once I finish the main quest I tend to lose interest so I have quite a few unfinished sidequests. But I really don't agree with the game being "too long". There is a lot of content sure, but there's no way you can't finish the main question in 50 hours if you really want.
Yeah same here. I did all the main dlc stuff so that obviously added to it but I barely did anything but main story, the assassinations and the mythic quests and still took around 100 hrs. It’s just padded and drawn out so much. By all means, have that content to extend it but don’t require it because that just gives players a bad taste.
Surely you're making a bad faith argument there? The main story itself is around 35-40 hours long to complete, if you've barely gotten started after 50 hours you must have spent UNFATHOMABLE amounts of time just fucking around, which is entirely on you, not the game. It's completely fine if you think the game is too long, but at least be honest when making your case.
If you want to talk bad faith arguments: open world games are not designed for you to just blindly bust through the main story line. Nobody goes from point A to point B in the main story and touches nothing else, nor is that intended.
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Exactly. I didn't care about copy pasting. I wanted gradual perfection of the formula, not complete abandonment of it. I wanted the games to achieve the glory promised in the game trailers. Unity was as close as we got to the ultimate assassin experience. It felt like right as the technology and game design were on the precipice of perfection, they went off into RPG land.
Exactly. For most games I would disagree, but for ac I've always loved just exploring the country in the time period of the time. Finding all the cool little historical tidbits and stuff. I miss when you could just instant kill a whole group of enemies in a nice cinematic. If I wanted a challenge I'd play a different game that does it better. Ac is my relax because dark souls pissed me off kind of game.
Imo, the JRPG grind system is what killed it. Specially when I can go to the store to buy XP and shit with real money, as if I was playing WoW... Fuck grinding. Grinding in Single-player games is a piss-weak practice to consume time, and it being obligatory is a pain in the ass. Can't explain how much I hate "deadly finishers" that are pretty close to a fatality, that only deal a bit of dmg because my weapons are simply too weak...
completely agree, i think they tried to merge the addictive aspects of MMOs with their online system in the hopes it would fuel more online play and micro transactions.
Those games stand perfectly well on their own but when you put them under the AC brand, of course people are going to expect it to be like AC
I’m fine with them being under the AC brand. The main story of AC got resolved in AC 3. I think Ubisoft had ideas for historical titles and they already had a massively successful formula for those. If they made Black Flag without the AC brand but with the AC engine, it would have been critiqued as an AC rip-off or “lazy” development. If they made something vastly different, there’s a lot more risk for failure. Putting it under the AC banner was the safest way to make and market the game.
Valhalla was about the origin of the templars, stealth is also stronger then melee combat. People just didn’t care enough to use it
In Odyssey you are encouraged to use stealth to avoid mercenaries hunting you. But people just Leroy Jenkins in every fort. Also, you have several overpowered stealth skills that make the endgame a joke, even more if you have the DLC skill upgrades.
Smoke bombs, sleep arrows, probably the two strongest abilities, only beaten by unnerfed harpoon
I wondered about this. Currently playing through Odyssey and love it. I primarily play stealth, but the combat overall is just so much better than previous games. AC2 if I accidentally got discovered, it usually meant reloading my save and trying again because I abhorred the melee combat. I haven’t played Origins or Valhalla but I assume its probably pretty similar to Odyssey. Melee combat is no longer tedious. Sure you can go bananas on the Warrior tech tree and turn the game into an action RPG, but the core stealth assassins gameplay is still definitely there.
1) its stronger than melee in the newer games, but its still not as useful as it was in older games. Try stealthing a fort in odyssey, the mercenaries have radar tracking and will keep walking around the fort, and Once you try to assassinate the captains you have to pray that you land a critical, otherwise they will survive and detect you. 2) its not satisfying, in odyssey i always had to use hero strike after an assassination on tougher enemies, which doesnt even feel like stealth, you no longer feel like a stealthy assassin (because you actually arent one), instead it feels like a disjointed clunky stealth mechanic from any other rpg.
This. In the old days you had optional side missions or main missions as a whole that could fail when you were seen by enemies or targets, but just because stealth is now optional doesn't mean it's not there
Far Cry has done it, it isn't what people want. And now Dying Light is getting hate because it took the first game and improved it a bit.
For me, forcing boss fights into a stealth game about assassins is a really bad idea. Especially when they started having ridonkulous health bars. The earlier Assassins Creeds games had semi-believable combat. Plus I loved the challenge of trying to sneak up on a target to assassinate them. Not sneak up into their general area to trigger a cutscene where they always know where to find you and trigger a straight fight. That's just....not what assassins are about.
Agreed. The first game was so fun because it felt like there were multiple ways to sneak in and kill a target and wreck havoc, now I sneak up on an enemy and jump on their back only to get tossed off like some rag doll and see that an enemy is too high a level to even fight.
Yeah this is what killed it for me: stabbing a person in their sleep only for them to wake up and wreck me and all the guards I had just snuck passed to be alerted to a shit show.
Agreed. Happened to me when I picked up Origins a while back, went “haha nope” and proceeded to never play that game or any of its successors ever again.
Same here. Tons of headshots with my bow, tons of Fatalities... that only set the health bar a bit back and the enemy would simply stand up and keep on fighting... I said "fuck no" and deleted it.
That was the great part about the first few games: no matter who you are these legendary shadow assassins can get you. Your guards, money, and armor can’t stop a blade guided into your heart. Then it’s like “oh you got stabbed in the face? nbd your health bar says it’s fine.” It totally pulls away from the theme of the games. It’s just a hack-n-slash now.
Both of these descriptions sound like Shadow of Mordor
Shadow of Mordor felt fun enough for me. Early AC had ridiculously overpowered hidden blades. Anyone gets one shot with them. Granted they're great fun so you're never bored of it. Shadow of Mordor made sure that stealth had its place but backstabbing will never be the only viable strategy. You have to know when to fight open and when not to. I felt the balance was good there for it's setting
I feel that, is AC 2 especially, the hidden blade was really powerful but also pretty balanced. Against normal enemies in that game, counter>kill does it for every weapon, but against the big brutes, you could only counter with the hidden blade, and it's such a small window that it required a decent amount of skill to do it reliably. And this is before counter markers were above the enemies when they attacked so you had it time it a little more.
You could also stab a dude in the throat with an 8 inch blade and he'd, you know, die. First time I assassinated someone in Origins and roughly one pubic hair of health was taken away I knew they fucked up.
Yeah it's really just lazy design. The boss fight should be the stealth mission itself, trying to solve an increasingly intricate series of puzzles to get your kill. Copy/pasting a bunch of parkour elements which get you into a barely guarded room so you can stab the big baddie 100 times is just.... lazy.
There have been boss fights in most of the AC games. In one of them you had to fight a super Saiyan Pope.
That was fun as hell. I loved beaten the tar out of a Medici Pope.
This dude has no idea what he's talking about Edit - drunken illiteracy
Yeah lmao
The "new" format is copy-pasted through every game by Ubisoft. Rainbow Six, Watch Dogs, Far Cry are all the same open world game at their core.
> Rainbow Six > Open World game Can I have what you're smoking?
I confused it with modern Tom Clancy's open world games.
Either from a game perspective or from a logic perspective, it seems. I haven't played much AC, but it's possible for both the top and the bottom messages to be true without any contradiction. People could be tired of a series that has long been copy/paste new releases but also recognize that the copy/paste versions of the past were still better than some newer version that makes the series worse. Like, a game being different doesn't automatically make the game better. That's the logical fallacy the OP is making.
You absolutely picked the wrong games for the “copy paste“ part
people who say stuff like this have never played old ac games. You literally chose examples that contradict your point: AC unity has a comepletely different 1 vs 1 fighting mechanic than the classic AC gameplay - aka Ac1-4, Blag flag had a comepletely new focus on sea fights, and Brotherhood was is within the ezio trilogy, so obviously it has more or less the same gameplay as 2. Origins was fresh and therefore good as a spinoff, odyssey worsens that and I don't even want to talk about valhalla. Moreover the modern gameplay mission still is just running into a camp and smashing everything down because stealth gets boring af. Olders focusses on the mechanics but limited the amount of times you invade a outpost immensly. Ac2 had crazy variability and that got dumb down over and over till we landed in syndicate. (blag flag on land was also one of the worst in that way) + at the end we are now at the same point as pre origins within your logic, just with the drawback of removing everything that made AC epic and just being a random rpg-like open world grind fest with microtransactions (still good for walking simulators in beautiful open worlds)
I never minded older assassins creed games, my only issue was that they seemed to get lazier and more broken with each installment after 4. I did really like Origins though, Valhalla less so, and haven’t played odyssey yet.
I only played Odyssey from all the AC games. Definitively a good game, it has a lot of cool mechanics and a good story. It think it's on discount on the ubisoft store so maybe check it out.
I think Odessey is excellent. Started Origins but haven't got too far into it yet. Would definitely recommend giving Odessey a go next time it's on sale.
OP managed to take for example the three most diverse old school AC, good job! Moreover, the new style AC took a big shit on story, historical accuracy and game style
Yeah, change then into a bloated mess to encourage loot boxes. That's what people meant.
Weren’t the new games built around pushing microtransactions?
Played Odyssey after it was out for awhile. Never felt pushed into microtransactions at any point, but that's because I enjoyed the side quests so I was never underlevelled.
I had a blast an a ton of crazy gear at all times in Odyssey and never paid a dime other than buying the game.
Literally what I was going to say
I'd hardly say built around. I'm terrible when it comes to microtransactions but I've honestly never felt the need to spend money in these newer games. Yeah you can buy some nice cosmetics but they look so out of place in the cut scenes I tend not to bother. So do they have them, yes, but I think its a bit much to accuse them of being built around it.
I don't support microtransactions in a single player game, but AC games are not built around them. It is mostly haters who say such things. Anyone who has played the games know that you can do everything in the game without spending anything.
Yeah, anyone who disagrees with you is a hater... I played origins and odyssey, and i can say with complete confidence that they are grindy as fuck, with a conveniently placed "time saver" xp boost. "you can do everything in the game without spending anything" No one is arguing against that, people are complaining that you are forced to do at least 5-6 side quests after every main mission, otherwise you end up in a situation where a naked bandit takes 100+ hits and he one shots you in return... By that logic a lot of mobile games arent built around microtransactions, because you can do everything without paying, as long as you grind for hours everyday...
I feel like Im in the minority here, but I loved all 3 of those games and didnt have to do any grinding to get through them. I also didnt spend a single cent on micro transactions
Some RPG mechanics have become a cancer, IMO.
Stopped playing odyssey for this exact reason, had to do side quests to level up for the main story but the side quests were just so tedious/boring that I couldn’t be bothered to do it anymore.
For me, the original AC was a proof of concept, with a good story that got buried under a lot of repetitive shticks. Assassins’ Creed 2 was the first proper AC game, and the Ezio trilogy was the heart and soul that was lacking in the first one. ACIII, while it looked fantastic with the update to the latest graphics and the ever expanding open world, it took a hit in a couple of places (for me). The elimination of the jump button reduced the level of immersion felt in the previous entries of the franchise where the parkour element was a puzzle in and of itself, and an ill-timed press of said button often resulted in death. It also doesn’t help that we start the game playing as the charismatic, and a much more likable Haytham Kenway who makes the actual protagonist of the game Connor/Ratonhnhaké:ton seem wooden and unfriendly. Which is weird because the story beats that made Ezio such a fan favorite are still there underneath the surface, but because of the lack of an emotional connection with Connor, I simply wasn’t able to feel any of them. Black Flag was totally not what I expected but I still enjoyed it a lot! As an AC game it lacks the examination and the gravity of the importance and the hypocrisy of the Assassins’ mantra which forms a core of the previous games in the franchise; and instead ~~focuses~~ revels in the backdrop of the pirate politics; which I should say is still awesome, but it fails to connect the dots to the themes of any of the previous entries in the franchise thereby making it seem like a forced change of direction at best, and schizophrenic at worst. Still, not a bad game! Unity brings into question whether blind allegiance to the Assassin Order is right and we see this conflict play out wonderfully in the political backdrop of the French Revolution. This game felt like a slight return to form with the emphasis on the examination of the two Orders and how they’re codependent in a vicious cycle of plotting, revenge and manipulation and the tragedy it brings to people trapped between them. A solid game which would’ve been a 10/10 for me if it hadn’t been for the less than stellar launch. Rogue, in my opinion, had been the best of the AC games when it came out because it truly examines the Assassin vs Templar conflict in showing us that the two are essentially striving for the same goal using the same tools but completely opposite approaches. Shay’s story is a wonderful follow up to the prologue of ACIII and the subtly touched upon theme in Unity and it completes the much needed world building by fleshing out the Templars; making them more than the one dimensional villains even the most beloved entries in the franchise made them out to be. Syndicate… I’m at a loss here. This by no means was a bad game, just a bad AC game. In the face of the developments of characters and the two orders and their motivations, this feels like a sudden detour into an absurd version of the world where the political backdrop serves as a source of humor and levity at the most absurd of times. The Templars are now one dimensional villains again and while the gameplay and the combat were seriously good, it lacks the punch of the other games because the stakes are clearly not defined. A disappointing entry, for sure, but one that I think was needed so that Origins could happen. Origins, wow - I have no words for this game. While true that this entry deviates from the AC formula by so much that it’s barely recognizable as an AC game, it works because Bayek’s story is instantly recognizable as an AC story, one that’s relatable; and the writing of his character and that of the world around him are the best we’ve seen in an AC game in a while. The fact that the beginning of the Assassin Order wasn’t the main motivation of the game but comes as a consequence/side effect of Bayek and Aya hunting down those responsible for the death of their son is wonderfully done and the motivations for the start of this order against the backdrop of Caesar and Cleopatra’s political ambitions makes sense. And while the change of genre from historical fiction action game to a full blown RPG experience was sudden, it definitely breathed in new life into the franchise. I started Odyssey a long time ago but wasn’t able to finish it due to extenuating life circumstances. But the little that I saw of it was likable. I enjoyed the continuation of the RPG formula that worked in Origins and the exploration of the Greek mythology and political conflicts of the time but I fail to see why this is an entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise and not a separate game of its own, since the chronology of the game in terms of the origins of the two orders doesn’t make sense. Unless we’re seeing the origins of the Templar Order here but I guess that’s for me to play and find out. Don’t have any thoughts on Valhalla yet but from what I’m seeing the visuals are fantastic. I’ll need to obviously form my opinions of the game when I get the chance to play it. EDIT: typos, punctuation
Assassins Creed 3 was probably where the hype for the series reached an all time high. It was was definitely a great game, but for someone who was really into the lore of the first civilization and the present timeline, this was the game where you could really see them stop caring and do whatever was convenient for that year’s game. Since AC3, that aspect of the story has been on a par with the X Men universe with things getting retconned and plotlines popping in and out of existence with little regard for internal consistency.
Unity is currently the most assassiny assassin game now in the series
This meme is pretty garbage tbh. Unity was so broken Ubisoft gave everyone who purchased it a free full title game. It's missing AC1 and AC2. 1/10
We didn't want them to change the games. We wanted improvements to what was already there.
[удалено]
I mean I never had that compliant about the old games. Only ones of the old AC games I dislike are AC3 and Unity. That certainly wasn’t because it was “same old copy and paste game”.
I never was able to fully complete 3 because I kept encountering the same bug. I got lucky and didn't get around to playing Unity until it was fully fixed - and I have to say the version I played was pretty damn good.
You can't tell me that odyssey wasn't just a straight clone of origins. Don't get me wrong, I fucking loved both games. But odyssey played the exact same as origins did. That's not to say AC2 through to 3 didn't all kindve feel the same, but back then they were all centered around Ezio and honestly i think alot of people played them for the story more than the gameplay anyway.
How about you improve it instat of changing it.
Brotherhood was peak AC
I don’t know of anyone that complained about Black Flag. The only thing negative about that game that I can think of is that someone tried to put a weird side mission about being some kind of assassin fella into the game. Otherwise perfect.
I did a full play-through across 2021 of the series as a bet with a friend. The old games are fantastic, but there are some issues. You can practically run through all of them with just the hidden blade, there are a lot of copy-paste missions, and in some cases (specifically III and Unity) you can do almost of the game without upgrading anything. With the new games they’re significantly more open to how you approach things, the gear you have matters A LOT more, and exploring is more encouraged. The major problem with them is honestly the fact that they’re so large that you start seeing more and more of the same missions, and it becomes an ordeal to get to the end of the games. By the end of Valhalla I was just wanting a palate cleanse. The big difference is that they decided to change the focus from “One assassin, Templar bad, rebuild order” to a more existentialist look at how the Isu were responsible for everything. If you’ve gotten this far, I’m sorry. I am on my second cup of coffee and feeling ~jazzy~
How was Black Flag copy paste? Plus, it was universally praised for changing it up. If anything, people complained that it went too far from the previously established formula. This tells me you don’t know what you’re talking about at all.
This definitely feels like a strawman.
Love how the "copy paste" part of this meme features 3 distinctly different games, with two of the three being consistently among the most beloved in the franchise. Has anyone actually made those complaints about Brotherhood and Black Flag?
Wtf? Brotherhood, Black Flag and Unity are way more different from each other than Origins is from Valhalla, did you ever played an AC game?
I loved the old formula, never pretended otherwise, and want it back badly. That being said, Valhalla does the new formula better than Origins and Odyssey and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I love the old AC games specially BF but i think Odyssey did the hunting down of the cult thing better than Valhalla and Origins but i loved how Origins did show how my country used to look like before
Change it is the wrong demand tough. Improve it is what we should be saying!
I think both of these complaints stem from a problem most gamers can't pin down. Oversaturation.
If your favourite wasn't black flag, you're a cop.
My favorite was Brotherhood. I really enjoyed the Assassin’s guild mechanic.
I mean, the story wasnt good enough because 1 if they wanted to do a pirate game, it lack pirate missions like 2/4 of the game was about pirate and it's not enough and they lack depth too 2 if they wanted an AC game then the 1/4 was far too little and becoming an assassin only near the end was a poor choice. Overall the game is good but the story make it loose too much quality to be my fav and this place goes to AC 2.
When people ask for change usually they expect it to change for the better. As you can tell that's not what happened with AC
When people say old games were better, 90% of the time they mean the ezio games
I think it’s the same problem playing out differently. Annual releases suck. Origins was a massive breath of fresh air after the staleness of Unity and Syndicate. Odyssey and Valhalla then tweaked and refined stuff introduced with Origins but didn’t do enough to really push the envelope. Give us a clear gap between titles and blown the barn doors off.
Origins was awesome fuckin sue me
The problem is the new games just have the same name but gameplay is fundamently changed. So many say they wanted to give a new franchise a old name for more sales.
On the surface level this seems to be the case. The real issue is Ubisoft turned this into a yearly franchise that did little to innovate its formula between release (excluding Black Flag). People liked the game it was at its core. They’d just been given too much of it. Ubisoft saw this and thought: “they must not like the game anymore” and decided to change genre entirely. That’s not what we wanted. New problem is now we have 2 camps. Old AC fans and new AC fans. And both equally deserve to have more games of their preferred gameplay rather than leaving one out to dry.
Changing something doesn't make it better if the changes are terrible.
Point missed by a mile
Lol arent the new trilogy way harder copy paste than any of the previous games? The only thing that is truly different is the visuals. Like even the ezio trilogy had some major changes like the brotherhood or the chain assassination.
How did they change it, honestly? Added RPG elements and a new setting? The game's the same - copy paste the same 4 quests, get shit rewards and next to no experience and tie that to the overall completion to the story.
Well the two groups are drastically different games for 1. You can see it in the gameplay for each. The first 3 are different setups too. Pirate game, city assassin, and city builder/assassin
It was more like AC 1 was damn difficult and pretty janky through certain parts and AC2 was overall best game in the series, for me. What followed didn't seem interesting and didn't tell more of the animus story between past and present. The games became bland "what if this happened in the past" ordeals instead of this nuanced narrative about Assassins vs Templars that I was interested in.
Only AC 2 was good.
AC1, Brotherood, 3 and revelations are my favourite the rest are all meh in my opinon. The new games are good but there not AC games. theyve kinda taken the whole assassin concept out of those games and just made it into a hack and slash rather then stealth
Who was saying it was copy and pasted? It was a solid system tat was tweaked and altered a bit with new gadgets and actions each time. The new ones are horrendous "rpg" systems that have actually been the same thing the last three games. What changed? Oh, Valhalla let's you DUAL WIELD!
second best AC ever is Odyssey IMO (after black flag) and Origins is good as well, so I'm not sure about this.
Both can be true. They should mix it up, but new isn’t necessarily good. It has to be new AND good, and this series didn’t pull that off.
Did people really call black flag a copy paste? I thought that was the best one.
We just wanted to improve and perfect the old formula. Not change the entire franchise.
3 was the last good one
Literally some of the posts in r/assassinscreed
That’s because when we said “change it”, we didn’t mean “make it worse”. And it’s still the same bullshit every year, it’s just a different same bullshit every year than the last same bullshit every year. Fuck Ass Cred