The quick summary is that, for a casual playthrough, these games are pretty good. But 100%-ing them isn’t very fun.
So let’s get started
- Story
—AC3
I would rate 3’s story as one of the best of the franchise and in gaming in general. I love how it characterizes the cast and develops them, the grey morality of the world.
These post from other people explain how I feel about our protagonist, Connor
"Externalities aside, Connor has a variety of internal conflicts which he struggles with over the course of the Revolution. To put it bluntly, he has the most daddy issues in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. To make that statement more general and abstract, Connor has authority issues. He’s forced to bounce from one authority figure to another because of his own lack of knowledge about the world. Beyond that, as was intended, there’s a struggle between his Native American and European roots. In addition, he struggles with accepting his father and seeking a stable parental figure in his life as evidenced by his willingness to see the good in Haytham and attempt to work with him despite his Templar allegiance. All of these issues reach a fever pitch toward the climax of the story where Connor, fully
educated in how both Haytham and Washington have been manipulating him, dissolves his ties to both and truly takes power and control for the first time. While it isn’t a total resolution of all of his character flaws and issues (for example he’s still rather naive by nature), it does mark a point of true growth for a character. While it doesn’t mark Connor’s ascension into a master assassin, it does bring a logical, human conclusion to a well developed character arc." Source: https://leviathyn.com/2013/04/03/hes-not-perfect-but-connor-kenway-doesnt-suck/
Connor Kenway was one of the most well developed characters in the entirety of the Assassin's Creed Franchise. What Ubisoft did with Connor is what inspired me to want to write and gives me hope that more writers can take note of what Darby McDevitt and his team did with Connor, Native Americans everywhere, and Assassin's Creed in general. Ubisoft's team of writers did what many in the industry are afraid of doing; They told the harsh but undeniable truth about America's history
Connor was a very stoic and troubled young man, there's no doubt about that, but its not because he's a dick, or a douche as I've read, but because in the Mohawk tribe men and women are taught at a very young age that to show emotion is to show weakness. This is why Connor seems very stern and straightforward when talking to "the white man" and he even goes out of his way and refuses to speak with contractions so as to keep himself on a higher level than non natives. Not only that, but these are the people who have abandoned him, shunned him, taken his land his home his life, and spat on him afterwards. Oh, and when I say him I mean his people and Native Americans in all of Colonial North America.
Connor is the soul embodiment of millions of Native Americans who fought and died for what they believed
knew was right, and Ubisoft did a beautiful job of expressing this. If
you study Connor as a character you will see that whenever someone who
is not from his tribe touches him, he will look at them and move away
quickly and scornfully. However, as he spends more time in the new world
he digresses from his native culture and even uses contractions when
speaking, allows himself to befriend non natives, and later on he even
begins to show much emotion in his voice, which is completely different
from the Connor we met in the beginning of his life.
But after everything he went through he saw that what these men were doing to his people was also being done to their own men. He witnessed The Boston Massacre and saw that the world was more than he once thought, and the corruption of these people was much more than he thought. It was then that he learned to not only fight for the freedom of his people but for the freedom of all people, no matter the cost. Even if he must go at it alone, Connor had a moral obligation to help save the world around him.
Lee: "Even those men you sought to save have turned their backs on you. Yet you fight, you resist. Why?"
Connor: "Because no one else will!"
Ubisoft honored Native Americans by not making this a game about some angry red skin who goes by the name Soars With Eagles who is covered head to toe in feathers, but instead they focused on remaining true to history and truly expressing the hatred, fear, and will power of The Native Man in The New World. Ubisoft even went so far out of their way as to learn that in Mohawk Culture people do not use a name more than once and after learning this, Ubisoft had to do extensive amounts of research to find a suitable name for their new conflicted protagonist that has never before been used in recorded history. And thus, Ratonhnhaké:ton was born. Yet after all this work, Ubisoft got hurt by bringing to life the heart of the real Native American Culture instead of tarnishing it like the media enjoys doing so often. And its because of this, that I have lost a lot of hope for the culturally diverse world that I thought I was now living in.
Connor was a significantly more believable character than most people's beloved Ezio was. He saw things at a young age that scarred him for life and experienced so much that it made him into the tragic hero that is praised by few and underappreciated by many more. The only mistake Ubisoft made was not releasing Connor's Epilogue that summed up the tragic story that is his life and after ACIV is now the Kenway Family Tragedy.
All of this was not done by Connor but by a team of gifted writers who know that telling a story the way it should be told is more important than showing a blatant disregard of the harsh truth of the Native American culture.
Edit: Connor's Written Epilogue for those who cannot watch it...
Mother, Father, I am sorry. I have failed you both.
I made a promise to protect our people. I thought…I thought if I could stop the templars... if I could keep the Revolution free from their influence...that those I supported would do what was right.
They did... I suppose, do what was right… What was right for them.
As for you, Father: I thought I might unite us, that we would forget the past and forge a better future.
In time I believed you could be made to see the world as I did; to understand…but it was just a dream. This too, I should have known.
Were we not meant to live in peace, then?! Is that it?
Are we born to argue? To fight?
So many voices, each demanding something else… It has been hard at times, but never harder than today to see all I worked for; perverted, discarded, forgotten!
You would say I have described the whole of history, Father. Are you smiling, then? Hoping I might speak the words you long to hear? To validate you? To say that all along, you were right?
... I will not.
Even now, faced as I am with the truth of your cold words, I refuse, because I believe things can still change. I may never succeed... the Assassin's may struggle another thousand years in vain... but we will not stop!
Compromise. That is what everyone has insisted upon. And so I have learned it. But differently than most, I think…
I realize now that it will take time; that the road ahead is long, and shrouded in darkness. It is a road that will not always take me where I wish to go, and I doubt I will live to see its end. But I will travel down it nonetheless.
This is my compromise.For at my side walks hope. In the face of all that insists I turn back, I carry on. This…
Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1wi6w7/one_of_the_best_character_developments_from_the/cf2ffds/
Anyway back to me, I've heard people complain that the first 5 sequences are too long and boring, and I get where people are coming from but I really can't think of anything that could be taken out without affecting the overall quality of Sequences 6 to 12. The first sequence does a phenomenal job at introducing the new mechanics and Haytham. It makes him likeable and sympathetic while showing that there's something that's not quite right with the way he is. The second introduces the entire Colonial Rite and you get the chance to hear each of their pieces after you recruit them and talk to them at the Green Dragon; it let's you know about the Templars and their personality without the risk of bias affecting your judgment. It also does a great job showcasing the dynamic between what I think are two of the best characters in the franchise, Haytham and Charles Lee. The third sequence develops the relationship between Haytham and Ziio while also showing that there's a lot to Haytham's background that we're not seeing. If anything, it actually cuts off a huge chunk of story regarding Haytham, his sister and Reginald Birch because that bit isn't necessary anymore. The fourth is Connor's childhood and the events that'd lead him to become an Assassin and that shaped up his entire character. We also get introduced to aspects of the game that Haytham himself didn't have access to since his background doesn't allow him to have skills such as hunting and tree climbing that a native like Connor would have. The fifth sequence feels a bit filler-y but at the same time it's extremely important since it's Connor's journey to becoming an Assassin condensed into just one sequence. We get a feel for Achilles character and the society they live in (The line Achilles says "You could pass off as Spanish or Italian. Better to be thought of as a Spaniard than a native, and even then, both are better than what I am", for example)
and we get to see how amazed and confused Connor is after entering the city for the first time and how english is about the only thing he knows about society and how he's an idealistic boy with his heart on the right place, which ultimately leads him to a bittersweet ending. Everything that happens there is needed because the story was far more ambitious than even AC1 and ACR were, so the long introduction is a comprise I feel is absolutely necessary to get such a solid of a story as AC3's.
Desmond
A lot of people criticize the way AC3 handles its modern-day, most notably how it kills Desmond and how it lets out Juno only for her to do nothing until her death in the comics. I'd argue 3's take on the modern-day might be the best of the series.
For one, Desmond and crew aren't just chilling in a single spot sharing snappy lines. The characters have different lines, feelings and opinions on what's going on. You can talk to Rebecca on things like the animus, Lucy, what's going on and she feels much more varied and real in these conversations. Talking to Shaun can have the 2 debate on the cause of the Revolution, minorities with issues being told to "wait for their time", the glorification of US founding fathers etc. The conversations with William go from being all business to more compassionate as the 2 work through their feelings for each other.
Desmond is also given actual missions in the present day. Granted these are basically reskinned and diet versions of the past but are at least decent changes of pace.
I'd argue Desmond's death was necessary. Desmond's whole arc was that he went from an average nobody who wanted nothing to a heroic master assassin due to circumstance. He effectively completes his arc at least by Brotherhood. He has no other goals and motives beyond the immediate. If he survived, what next for him? More looking for artifacts and doing the odd mission? His character would be stagnant. His death and sacrifice has his story end with a bang rather than be dragged out.
As for Juno, I'd argue that was always a bad decision to make her present at all in the first place. For one, The modern-day sections of AC games have always been small parts of the overall experience. AC only really kicked the whole "world's going to end in 2012" plot into high gear at the end of Revelations while only barely hinting at this existence beforehand. The player has had so little time to worry about the fate of the world that there's been no tension anyway and that's assuming they were interested and not calling the bluff if it would even happen. And even if AC wanted to deal with Juno in the games after 3, handling it would have been awkward at the very least even in the best case as why would your character decide to go in the animus and mess around if they know there's an ancient goddess on the loose? Imagine playing a Pokemon game and the legendary Pokemon that's been worshipped as a God has been awoken and may destroy the world soon, and you go to the safari zone or bug catching contest. Would be a very jarring series of events. Now imagine if that bug catching contest was 90% of the game, any impact the legendary Poke would have would be lost. If there was some excuse like "we need to go in the animus to find a POE to stop Juno" it would still be suboptimal because the player would be disconnected from Juno's actions and threat in the modern-day and experiencing an unconnected story. Not to mention that it would go against the very benefit the Animus provides AC that no other Open world has: The Excuse to take your time. In most other open-world games, the main quest is very urgent and the side quests less so. Many players have found it a little jarring that your character in Fallout 4 can start out wanting save their son Shaun but spend 100 hours messing about in the open world. The goals of the player and the goals of the main character are not really aligned in this case. While I don't personally put much stock in this line of thinking, it is something many people feel strongly about. Anyway, because AC has the player explore a simulation of events through the animus with a requirement being to get additional synchronization before progressing forward, AC has an excuse if the player ignores the main quest. Because the character isn't the one delaying the events, they actually did everything in the correct order. It's the player who's taking their time and doing things in a different order. If said Juno story did happen, the guy in the animus would probably be expected to hurry up or Juno stops feeling like a threat. I know the original plan would be to make an AC game set entirely in the present day which would address many of these points as the player would directly be working against Juno, but given that most players have always either disliked or not been interested in the modern-day, it would have been unfeasible for Ubi to greenlight said game as a major AC title. It would be if GTA 6 was a minigame collection consisting of all the minigames of the series.
—TOKW
This DLC’s story manages to hit the ground running thanks to the base game. The player is made to care far more about Washington, Zio and other characters because of the amount of time or focus either they or the revolution got. Seeding Washington as a Tyrant with Putnam and Franklin backing him up twists the knife after how much you all went through during the Revolution. It doesn’t need to spend much time setting up the world because it relies on a twister version of a familiar one
—Lib
-Gameplay
The games make some improvements over its predecessors.
Stealth is expanded upon and streamlined with the player being able to use bushes and trees, stealth kill from corners and animations made more fluid. Hirable groups like Mercs, Courtesans and Thieves have all been folded into things your recruitable assassins can do making them more convenient to pull off.
Stealth still has its issues. It's still very rigid and simple in places and enemy AI is unreliable and at times will detect you even if they can't see you. The limited number of abilities compared to later games also make it boring at times.
Combat is also streamlined and improved from Brotherhood. Taking more cues from Arkham, the player can respond to counter prompts with a single button (+ another one to determine what to do next) while constantly attacking other enemies. 3 removes most of the filler moves from Rev like counter steal, pick-up and escape and moves most additional moves like regular throw into requiring a counter first rather be initiated as a straight-up attack. In addition, the player can't spam potions and health regenerates slowly and enemies can do some combo attacks so if the player takes some damage it actually has some impact rather than none at all. Enemies also have different classes that won't go down to a simple counter or chain kill and either need to be stunned, disarmed, tripped or some combination of the above to be damaged or be cheesed with a tool. The player can also instakill enemies if they attack them next to a wall or ledge or counter next to certain environmental objects like barrels and tables.
However, the combat still has its issues. For one, it's brain dead easy. Counter+Chain kill all normal soldiers and trip or disarm anybody else. There is no challenge here. If the game throws lots of soldiers at you, you can clear them all out with no real issues. The game lets you cancel inputs into a counter so you don't even need to worry about positioning or timing or planning. The only times I ever got hit was either because the game didn't read my inputs sometimes, or I was being very, very sloppy. Weapons are also interchangeable rather than have unique properties. This makes it far faster and easier to just fight everybody rather than stealth your way through.
Arkham's combat worked because the point wasn't to survive, it was to get the best/coolest combo against different enemies with unique resistance. 3 keeps the system but doesn't have anything to encourage an efficient or cool playstyle and is easy enough that skilled play isn't even required since the player is basically already OP from the very beginning.
In addition, I feel the very premise of early AC's combat has its issues
With most stealth-action games, the purpose of stealth is to be slower but safer while getting into combat is supposed to be faster but riskier. Look at say, Metal Gear Solid V. You can choose to slowly sneak your way through camps, taking care of enemies. You're at no risk of dying as long as you ain't spotted. In Combat, you can fight through enemies much faster, clearing them out sooner as well. But enemies are tough. They can use tactics like flanking, pincer movements etc to trap the player. The player also doesn't have a lot of health and enemies can call in reinforcements for backup. And if enemies are sufficiently geared up, they may even be more difficult to take down. It's often better to use stealth to clear out most enemies so if the player gets into combat it's more manageable.
AC hasn't ever gotten this right (until Origins onwards which simply made both stealth and combat RPG paths you must invest in separately). Because while stealth is the slow way to play, combat is both faster and less risky. The timings are very lenient, you 1 hit kill enemies, enemies are scripted to attack one after the other as to not overwhelm the player. Said attacks also do pitiful damage. The player also has a ton of health that can easily be restored by dirt-common potions. Add in Brotherhood's chain kills and there is no danger or challenge. The player can cleave through armies like a hot knife through butter. And since enemy AI tends to be very basic, the player is more likely to get spotted and thus enter fights which brings more enemies so killing them all is always the most easy and efficient way to progress.
So how would I, If I could magically redesign these games, change the combat to be more fitting?
I would combine points from past AC games, especially Discovery and make a combat system that's somewhat time consuming and has some risk so stealth is made a more appealing option.
For defence, I'd have enemies have a bunch of different kinds of attacks and the player has chain the correct responses to stun the enemy and be able to damage them and not immediately instakill them. This is something the franchise has touched on. AC1 required the player to use R1+ square to counter attacks (and didn't instakill enemies if they had health and the player wasn't using the hidden blade) and R1+ O to counter grabs. AC3 lets the player press X to grab a nearby enemy to use as a human shield when enemies are preparing to fire at them. So in my version, if the enemy does an attack, a stun and a stun, the player would need to face them and press counter-attack, counter stun and counter stun with the correct timings to stun enemies and be able to damage them without worry. Instakill Counter attacks can be done when the enemy is at low health. Different weapons can have different properties. Like daggers can do more damage but make timing windows more strict. For offense, the player should have to time attacks to immediately strike again. The player also has to use different combos of attacks like attack, grab and stun to stun enemies and open them up for attack. The player also can't immediately counter enemies if they're striking and not facing the enemy. The benefit here is the player now actually has to do something somewhat strenuous with the risk of failure higher than normal, have some element of planning as different weapons can have different attacks instead of being OP.
Ship Stuff
Liberation mostly plays the same as 3. The only new element is the disguise system. I already wrote a piece on that:
https://mieckfram.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-critqiue-on-assassins-creed-3.html
The quick summary is the Assassin suit is too versatile while the others don't offer enough interesting gameplay or opportunities to take advantage of or stand out.
Tyranny make some changes. For one, the game does a decent job at first of selling the idea you're basically in a bad timeline through gameplay. You don't have currency so you can't buy new equipment or restock supplies from a vendor. You have to loot them and find them from the world. Enemy counts, detection and memory have also been made bigger so stealth is encouraged only because fighting takes a long time that it gets tedious even if it's very easy. Made more appealing due to the superpowers the player gets. Wolf Cloak lets the player become invisible and sneak faster at the cost of depleting health allowing players to quickly enter and exit places of interest, stealth kill multiple guards even in combat. The game makes an attempt to balance this by having dogs be able to detect and break the player's cloak, preventing the player from being able to run and climb with the cloak on.
The Eagle power allows the player to fly to a select point kinda like the "Zip to point" move in Spider-Man. The move consumes a little bit of health, makes the player invisible while active and can be used to stealth kill people by flying into them from afar.
-Side Content
--AC3
3 by far has the most side content out of these 3 games, and while some of it is done well, others have some quirks and others are just not fun. If you aren't planning on 100%ing the game, I recommend skipping some
Collecting Feathers: I actually kinda enjoyed this one. In past and later ACs, it's often very easy to simply climb and get some collectibles But in 3, you can't climb some trees directly if their trunks are smooth. So getting feathers requires you to trace a path from the feather to the nearest tree you can climb. And there sometimes some red herring paths. It's alright. I'd say it's worth doing.
Collecting Trinkets is pretty boring. There's no interesting challenge or technique with them. The quests they unlock on searching for Kidd's treasure are pretty fun. So it's worth doing.
The Boston and New York Undergrounds unlock more fast travel points by navigating mazes underground. You follow rats and other clues to unlock said points. The problem is that aside from the fast travel points, there is nothing interesting in between. I recommend just running through and unlocking however many you can.
Hunting Challenges: Hunt specific animals. Do it if you enjoy hunting
Brawling Challenges: Find specific people throughout the maps, beat them up. Nothing special. The final fight has a nice gimmick as these twins use smoke bombs and keep swaping places to give the other time to recover but it's mechanically the same. You fight the same throughout the fight. I'd say skip it.
Frontiersmen: You investigate rumours of monsters and urban creatures. They turn out to just be people's imagination (which is wild given what the Isu usually do). The presentation feels really cheap though. Still I quite liked this. I'd say do these.
Navel Contracts: Do these if you enjoy the navel stuff and wanted more. I personally don't enjoy it that much.
Ben Frank's Almanacs: These floating papers require a quick chase to get them. I wish they respawned quickly if you fail to get them instead of needing to fast travel somewhere and coming back. There also reading them which can be interesting if you're into the setting. There doesn't seem to be a cutscene where Connor returns them to Ben Frank or something. Or how he gets the ones from Haytham. I recommend doing a few.
Delivery/Assassination Contracts: Find a person in the world and interact with depending on the context. Nothing special or specific here. I had a glitch where the target for a delivery contract would despawn when I got near them.
Tyranny's side content is just opening chests. I'd say skip that and focus on the story.
-Other Stuff
I found a nice bug where getting Captain Kidd's treasure lets the player have the bullet deflection perk active both in the present day with Desmond and in Tyranny.
—TOKW
This DLC’s story manages to hit the ground running thanks to the base game. The player is made to care far more about Washington, Zio and other characters because of the amount of time or focus either they or the revolution got. Seeding Washington as a Tyrant with Putnam and Franklin backing him up twists the knife after how much you all went through during the Revolution. It doesn’t need to spend much time setting up the world because it relies on a twister version of a familiar one
—Lib
-Gameplay
The games make some improvements over its predecessors.
Stealth is expanded upon and streamlined with the player being able to use bushes and trees, stealth kill from corners and animations made more fluid. Hirable groups like Mercs, Courtesans and Thieves have all been folded into things your recruitable assassins can do making them more convenient to pull off.
Stealth still has its issues. It's still very rigid and simple in places and enemy AI is unreliable and at times will detect you even if they can't see you. The limited number of abilities compared to later games also make it boring at times.
Combat is also streamlined and improved from Brotherhood. Taking more cues from Arkham, the player can respond to counter prompts with a single button (+ another one to determine what to do next) while constantly attacking other enemies. 3 removes most of the filler moves from Rev like counter steal, pick-up and escape and moves most additional moves like regular throw into requiring a counter first rather be initiated as a straight-up attack. In addition, the player can't spam potions and health regenerates slowly and enemies can do some combo attacks so if the player takes some damage it actually has some impact rather than none at all. Enemies also have different classes that won't go down to a simple counter or chain kill and either need to be stunned, disarmed, tripped or some combination of the above to be damaged or be cheesed with a tool. The player can also instakill enemies if they attack them next to a wall or ledge or counter next to certain environmental objects like barrels and tables.
However, the combat still has its issues. For one, it's brain dead easy. Counter+Chain kill all normal soldiers and trip or disarm anybody else. There is no challenge here. If the game throws lots of soldiers at you, you can clear them all out with no real issues. The game lets you cancel inputs into a counter so you don't even need to worry about positioning or timing or planning. The only times I ever got hit was either because the game didn't read my inputs sometimes, or I was being very, very sloppy. Weapons are also interchangeable rather than have unique properties. This makes it far faster and easier to just fight everybody rather than stealth your way through.
Arkham's combat worked because the point wasn't to survive, it was to get the best/coolest combo against different enemies with unique resistance. 3 keeps the system but doesn't have anything to encourage an efficient or cool playstyle and is easy enough that skilled play isn't even required since the player is basically already OP from the very beginning.
In addition, I feel the very premise of early AC's combat has its issues
With most stealth-action games, the purpose of stealth is to be slower but safer while getting into combat is supposed to be faster but riskier. Look at say, Metal Gear Solid V. You can choose to slowly sneak your way through camps, taking care of enemies. You're at no risk of dying as long as you ain't spotted. In Combat, you can fight through enemies much faster, clearing them out sooner as well. But enemies are tough. They can use tactics like flanking, pincer movements etc to trap the player. The player also doesn't have a lot of health and enemies can call in reinforcements for backup. And if enemies are sufficiently geared up, they may even be more difficult to take down. It's often better to use stealth to clear out most enemies so if the player gets into combat it's more manageable.
AC hasn't ever gotten this right (until Origins onwards which simply made both stealth and combat RPG paths you must invest in separately). Because while stealth is the slow way to play, combat is both faster and less risky. The timings are very lenient, you 1 hit kill enemies, enemies are scripted to attack one after the other as to not overwhelm the player. Said attacks also do pitiful damage. The player also has a ton of health that can easily be restored by dirt-common potions. Add in Brotherhood's chain kills and there is no danger or challenge. The player can cleave through armies like a hot knife through butter. And since enemy AI tends to be very basic, the player is more likely to get spotted and thus enter fights which brings more enemies so killing them all is always the most easy and efficient way to progress.
So how would I, If I could magically redesign these games, change the combat to be more fitting?
I would combine points from past AC games, especially Discovery and make a combat system that's somewhat time consuming and has some risk so stealth is made a more appealing option.
For defence, I'd have enemies have a bunch of different kinds of attacks and the player has chain the correct responses to stun the enemy and be able to damage them and not immediately instakill them. This is something the franchise has touched on. AC1 required the player to use R1+ square to counter attacks (and didn't instakill enemies if they had health and the player wasn't using the hidden blade) and R1+ O to counter grabs. AC3 lets the player press X to grab a nearby enemy to use as a human shield when enemies are preparing to fire at them. So in my version, if the enemy does an attack, a stun and a stun, the player would need to face them and press counter-attack, counter stun and counter stun with the correct timings to stun enemies and be able to damage them without worry. Instakill Counter attacks can be done when the enemy is at low health. Different weapons can have different properties. Like daggers can do more damage but make timing windows more strict. For offense, the player should have to time attacks to immediately strike again. The player also has to use different combos of attacks like attack, grab and stun to stun enemies and open them up for attack. The player also can't immediately counter enemies if they're striking and not facing the enemy. The benefit here is the player now actually has to do something somewhat strenuous with the risk of failure higher than normal, have some element of planning as different weapons can have different attacks instead of being OP.
Ship Stuff
Liberation mostly plays the same as 3. The only new element is the disguise system. I already wrote a piece on that:
https://mieckfram.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-critqiue-on-assassins-creed-3.html
The quick summary is the Assassin suit is too versatile while the others don't offer enough interesting gameplay or opportunities to take advantage of or stand out.
Tyranny make some changes. For one, the game does a decent job at first of selling the idea you're basically in a bad timeline through gameplay. You don't have currency so you can't buy new equipment or restock supplies from a vendor. You have to loot them and find them from the world. Enemy counts, detection and memory have also been made bigger so stealth is encouraged only because fighting takes a long time that it gets tedious even if it's very easy. Made more appealing due to the superpowers the player gets. Wolf Cloak lets the player become invisible and sneak faster at the cost of depleting health allowing players to quickly enter and exit places of interest, stealth kill multiple guards even in combat. The game makes an attempt to balance this by having dogs be able to detect and break the player's cloak, preventing the player from being able to run and climb with the cloak on.
The Eagle power allows the player to fly to a select point kinda like the "Zip to point" move in Spider-Man. The move consumes a little bit of health, makes the player invisible while active and can be used to stealth kill people by flying into them from afar.
-Side Content
--AC3
3 by far has the most side content out of these 3 games, and while some of it is done well, others have some quirks and others are just not fun. If you aren't planning on 100%ing the game, I recommend skipping some
Collecting Feathers: I actually kinda enjoyed this one. In past and later ACs, it's often very easy to simply climb and get some collectibles But in 3, you can't climb some trees directly if their trunks are smooth. So getting feathers requires you to trace a path from the feather to the nearest tree you can climb. And there sometimes some red herring paths. It's alright. I'd say it's worth doing.
Collecting Trinkets is pretty boring. There's no interesting challenge or technique with them. The quests they unlock on searching for Kidd's treasure are pretty fun. So it's worth doing.
The Boston and New York Undergrounds unlock more fast travel points by navigating mazes underground. You follow rats and other clues to unlock said points. The problem is that aside from the fast travel points, there is nothing interesting in between. I recommend just running through and unlocking however many you can.
Hunting Challenges: Hunt specific animals. Do it if you enjoy hunting
Brawling Challenges: Find specific people throughout the maps, beat them up. Nothing special. The final fight has a nice gimmick as these twins use smoke bombs and keep swaping places to give the other time to recover but it's mechanically the same. You fight the same throughout the fight. I'd say skip it.
Frontiersmen: You investigate rumours of monsters and urban creatures. They turn out to just be people's imagination (which is wild given what the Isu usually do). The presentation feels really cheap though. Still I quite liked this. I'd say do these.
Navel Contracts: Do these if you enjoy the navel stuff and wanted more. I personally don't enjoy it that much.
Ben Frank's Almanacs: These floating papers require a quick chase to get them. I wish they respawned quickly if you fail to get them instead of needing to fast travel somewhere and coming back. There also reading them which can be interesting if you're into the setting. There doesn't seem to be a cutscene where Connor returns them to Ben Frank or something. Or how he gets the ones from Haytham. I recommend doing a few.
Delivery/Assassination Contracts: Find a person in the world and interact with depending on the context. Nothing special or specific here. I had a glitch where the target for a delivery contract would despawn when I got near them.
Forts: Conquering these forts kicks the British out of the immediate area and replaces them with American soldiers. Also lowers the tax rate when trading. These aren't that fun because some are impossible to stealth or ghost.
Treasure Chests: Find them for some extra money and recipes. But if you aren't looking to 100%, you won't need the money anyway.
Recruiting Assassins:
This one is pretty interesting. Back in Brotherhood, the game introduced the ability to recruit assassins. You could use these Assassins to help you on the field to assassinate a target or back you up during a fight. Or you could send these Assassins to increase Assassin influences on missions all over Europe. The issues were that since the Assassins were randomly generated, they had no real personality and were interchangeable. Revelation kept the same system (even though the story wasn't about building up the Brotherhood) but added some stuff like custom missions for some recruits which gave some of your recruits a small arc and story. They were still somewhat limited. 3 takes the next step. All your recruits are now actual characters with their own backstory, specific mission and conversations. You can actually learn about them as people on your own time. For starters, did you know that kid that sees Haytham kill the guy in sequence 1 is one of your recruits and you can talk about that?
For every recruit you get, you unlock a new ability. They can include going to kill a target, backing you in a fight, ambushing anyone that walks in, sniping from afar, pretending to be guards and thus acting as mobile cover (this stops working later as they insist on wearing British Uniforms while only American troops are around). The abilities aren't that useful and you get through the game without them but they're cool as options.
The problem is getting to all the good stuff. Each recruit requires you do their specific activity. For example, one requires the player deal with some of the issues Smallpox is causing in New York. You need to do x amount of kill rabid dogs, carry people to a doctor and burn blankets until the mission unlocks. These individual tasks aren't very interesting to do.
Treasure Chests: Find them for some extra money and recipes. But if you aren't looking to 100%, you won't need the money anyway.
Recruiting Assassins:
This one is pretty interesting. Back in Brotherhood, the game introduced the ability to recruit assassins. You could use these Assassins to help you on the field to assassinate a target or back you up during a fight. Or you could send these Assassins to increase Assassin influences on missions all over Europe. The issues were that since the Assassins were randomly generated, they had no real personality and were interchangeable. Revelation kept the same system (even though the story wasn't about building up the Brotherhood) but added some stuff like custom missions for some recruits which gave some of your recruits a small arc and story. They were still somewhat limited. 3 takes the next step. All your recruits are now actual characters with their own backstory, specific mission and conversations. You can actually learn about them as people on your own time. For starters, did you know that kid that sees Haytham kill the guy in sequence 1 is one of your recruits and you can talk about that?
For every recruit you get, you unlock a new ability. They can include going to kill a target, backing you in a fight, ambushing anyone that walks in, sniping from afar, pretending to be guards and thus acting as mobile cover (this stops working later as they insist on wearing British Uniforms while only American troops are around). The abilities aren't that useful and you get through the game without them but they're cool as options.
The problem is getting to all the good stuff. Each recruit requires you do their specific activity. For example, one requires the player deal with some of the issues Smallpox is causing in New York. You need to do x amount of kill rabid dogs, carry people to a doctor and burn blankets until the mission unlocks. These individual tasks aren't very interesting to do.
Sending recruits out to help increase Assassin influence in the 13 colonies + Eastern Canada is cool and all but has no impact or feedback in the wider story. Like, you could not do it and it feels the same.
Still, I recommend doing them as they pop up. They add some nice stories to the world.
Optional Objectives:
One of the most consistent criticisms of AC2 back in the day was how easy it was. Brotherhood's answer were optional objectives during missions that acted as a self-directed difficulty selector. You could make missions harder for yourself by following the objectives like "don't get detected". The narrative justification was that these were stuff the ancestor did but you don't have to do unless you want that 100% synch. Some even act as a method of characterization (e.g in Rogue, Shay's optional objective is not to kill his fellow Assassins when he's escaping from them, showing us he didn't kill any even if he could have)
There are some issues with these. Firstly, they don't work as harder self-directed difficulty because their challenge is inconsistent. Some objectives are hardly any harder like kill a person from x position. Some can be quite frustrating like "destroy x ships by blowing up their powder stores" with nothing to indicate the level of challenge or how far the challenge is valid for. The player could, while trying to complete a challenge, get to the next checkpoint and thus be unable to complete the challenge without starting the mission all over again. Some can also completely destroy the pacing of a mission if you insist on completing them. One mission in Sequence 11 has Connor chasing Lee through the docks. The optional objectives are don't shove people and don't get more than 50 meters behind Lee, both of which seem to depend at least somewhat on RNG. If you insist on replaying this mission until you get the optimal run, you break up a very climactic mission. Secondly, narrative reasoning hardly affects the story or game. In Brotherhood, completing optional objectives increased synch and thus unlocked repressed memories. It was something. I feel at the very least, optional objectives should award the player with money or resources to at least encourage it. I have written a piece on even allowing the synch to be used on cheats. Thirdly, they still feel arbitrary and inconsistent even from a story perspective. Look at ACBro, suppose there are 3 missions in a row where canonically, Ezio completed them without getting detected. In game, however, one has no restrictions, one has it as an optional objective and one has it mandatory. The game doesn't explain why it's only optional in 2 cases or why not being detected was chosen by the animus as the objective over any other thing Ezio did? In addition, some missions like Connor not shoving people out of the way tell us nothing about his character or approach.
In any case, I recommend skipping the optional objectives. They aren't that fun.
Homestead:
This is probably the most extensive and important set of side content in the game.
3 takes 2's idea of building up Montgerioni and makes it an entire story and game within a game. Doing missions for the Homestead brings in more people and improves their abilities and skills which is necessary for crafting goods and furniture. I feel that the furniture stuff is a little odd and not engaging
I get what the point of it is. It's meant to expand on base building from AC2 by giving the player more steps along the way. Making upgrading the manor far more in-depth.
But the steps along the way are kinda convoluted and tedious, not to mention so abstracted from the regular gameplay and world. In AC2, you just threw money at the thing you wanted and it happened, no mess or fuss. In MGSV, base building was a major part of the experience so far more complex but your actions in the field directly contributed to your base back home. But 3 makes it an entire optional side of tasks.
At
the very least 3's menus should have been streamlined a bit more. Like,
if you want to craft something but don't have the resources but can buy them, you can press a button to automatically buy the resources for you so you can craft the thing instead of needing to remember the resources and search for them. Stuff like that would have made it a lot more
engaging.
You can also use this to send out land and naval convoys for trading. This is the best way to make the most amount of money as buying and selling just beaver and bear pelts from Miriam when she gets levelled up can net you a profit of a couple thousand pounds per convoy.
The missions and stories of the people at the Homestead can be quite interesting and also very dependent on the player. You need to seek out those optional conversations to get more info from people. But there are so many unmarked interactions. Follow your people around and you'll see Terry talk to the pastor about him reading a letter from his sister and the pastor congratulating Terry on being an Uncle now. Or seeing the women discussing their husbands. Or Miriam spending time with Norris at his little cottage. Reminds me of the camp system in Red Dead Redemption 2. And if you do the "Enclypodia of the Common Man" Quest without knowing you can fast travel to get more interactions to show up, you'll see a lot of these little stuff which are quite impressive.
You'll need to do the major quests of the Homestead to get the end of Achilles' story and how it feeds into Connor's story as the responsibility he must bear now to make the world a little better. If you don't go all the way, the Homestead feels completely disconnected from Connor's wider story with the American Revolution (and even then, it still does to an extant if you go all the way). Because as side content, the game can't be sure how much you've done as you play through the main story, so Achilles and his related material basically disappear from the main story around Sequence 9.
Also, as a nitpick, from the perspective of the animus, how is this considered side content? The explanation the animus uses for Side content is "These are memories the ancestor did at some point but we can't locate them on a timeline and/or are things they did on the side, so you're free to do them whenever". But we know the dates and years when these quests were done and some of these were major events that affected Connor going forward. Ezio picking flowers for his new crush in Revelations was considered a main memory but the death of Connor's mentor for many years is side content? I understand why this is the case. The pacing of the main story would probably be all over the place if the player was forced to go do some Homestead missions. I still find it a little funny.
Tyranny's side content is just opening chests. I'd say skip that and focus on the story.
-Other Stuff
I found a nice bug where getting Captain Kidd's treasure lets the player have the bullet deflection perk active both in the present day with Desmond and in Tyranny.
The maps in 3 are very well done with a lot of detail. Whether it's New York with its southern half full of burnt buildings due to the fire of the time, or the bustling market streets. This may be a game from 2012, but I still feel it does a great job in capturing the time period.
Beating the game on the PS3 version had this whole added section where Abstergo somehow accesses Connor's memories, finds nodes to upload Desmond's DNA to the cloud. This also unlocks cheats for the player. The Switch version removes that and just gives the cheats to the player when they finish the epilogue.
The Switch version has Gyro Aiming which is amazing. I wish more games had this. If a port of a 2012 360 game could get Gyro Aiming, then any game could have it.
I feel parkour/traversal is at its most demanding in the winter only because you can't just run over long stretches of terrain. Snow slows you down while running and swinging along trees retains its original speed. So traversal becomes a game of how efficiently you can get to a point rather than just running there, kinda like irl parkour.
The Switch version loads really fast. So fast in fact, that dialogue during loading screens sometimes has to overlap with other dialogue because the game loads before the lines are finished.
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