Platinumming Assassin's Creed Unity - The Best and most Underrated AC Game

 For the most part, there aren't too many difficult trophies. There aren't any "do this cool challenging act". Most are just complete missions and side content which I enjoyed since the gameplay is really fun. You may need a walkthrough to do some of the Nostradamus Riddles if you don't have a PHD in French History and Architecture and 100 hours to spare.

For the co-op, despite having several trophies listed under co-op, only 2 require you to party up with another person as the rest can be done solo.  "Choreography-Perform 10 Co-op sync kills. " and "Never Say Die-Revive a partner in Co-op.". The latter is easy enough but the former requires a fair amount of co-ordination since you need to stealth kill at least 2 guards at the same time 10 times. My solution was to play a co-op mission where 2 guards were guarding each entrance to a fort, tell my partner that after I throw a smoke bomb, kill the guard on the right as soon as I killed the one of the left. It had a 70% success rate but worked reasonably well. If all those guards died, just restart the mission by jumping off to our deaths and repeat the process.

As far as online trophies go, it's not too bad but I'd rather there be offline versions or alternatives, especially as there's only 2. Perhaps something for using your co-op abilities like Disguise or Cache in certain ways. Or getting x amount of "legendary kills" where you chain 5+ stealth kills at once on your own.

Shout out to shaven_pinny2 for helping with the trophies. I don't know who you are but thanks for responding to my PSN messages and helping me out.

 

 

While I'm here, here is a review of the game:

 

Assassin's Creed Unity was released in 2014 as the 8th mainline AC game and first mainline AC game on the 8th generation of consoles (Rogue released at the same time as the 7th mainline AC game and the last one on 7th gen). Unity did have a very disastrous launch, to the point where Ubisoft made its DLC free and gave away a free extra game to people who pre-ordered plus made future AC games begin to stop being annual releases and thus had more time in development.

 

I was quite hyped for this game regardless, I bought it on my birthday on December, hoping it had been mostly patched. And it sorta was. I finished most of the story and some of the side content and reember liking the improved world and gameplay but being miffed on the story and historical aspects. I have recently revised the game. If you asked me back in 2014 how I felt about the game, I'd have said it was decent but probably the worst AC game. If you asked me a few months ago when I started playing this game again, I'd have said it was really good, definitely in the top 3 AC games. And if you asked now that I 100%ed this game, I'd say it's the best AC game and shame it was received the way it was.

Let's begin with the core mechanics of every AC Game, combat, stealth and parkour/navigation. Unity overhauled a lot of AC's mechanics for the better.

Combat

Prior AC games had plenty of issues with their combat system. Being able to counter kill entire armies very easily and quickly meant it got boring quickly since there was no challenge or penalty in combat. At least in AC1 the timing was kinda strict and it took a while for enemies to attack but from Brotherhood onwards, chain kills made the player an absolute monster. It made every other attack or move redundant or useless since in order to have any chance of being useful, they'd also have to oneshot enemies as well. Additional armour and health potions made it impossible to die when enemies could only do like 1-2 damage max every 30 seconds and you could get 15+ health with potions to heal you on the spot that were dirt common and cheap. This also made stealth less useful since any time spent sneaking through an area could be done at a fraction of the time if you stealthed.

Unity fixes almost all of these issues.

Counters don't instakill enemies anymore. Instead if you parry somewhat early, you'll just block the attack. And if you parry at the correct time, you'll stun the enemy without damaging them leaving them open to attack. Mistimes result in you taking damage. Meaning you have to actually attack to damage enemies instead of automatically killing them with no effort. But other enemies can now attack you in close succession if they're using melee attacks, requiring you to do multiple parries at times, and at the same time if they're using ranged or a mix of ranged and melee. And you can't dodge or evade ranged attacks when in a counter animation. Enemies can swap between melee and ranged attacks. All this means is that for the first time in a mainline AC game, it is possible (and common) to get overwhelmed by a large group of enemies as the overlapping melee and ranged attacks can get too much to handle. This is great because it means the player actually has to be smart about fighting enemies. Doing stuff like crowd control and managing threats to ensure enemies don't start shooting the player while not leaving themselves vulnerable while parrying to other enemies. It's often necessary to pick off enemies before getting into a fight or even running away, something never required in prior titles. 

There are other additions like some enemy types require parrying several attacks in a row before they can be stunned, or some being immune to being stunned or being able to dodge your own point blank gunshots. Medicine/Potions are pretty expensive and rare in the early game and during certain missions so you can't just tank damage and heal it off later. The armour and gear system now become more necessary as higher levelled enemies will do a lot more damage so getting money to get kitted out is more useful.

 

 

All this means you have a combat system where combat is genuinely difficult but faster if you can pull it off. Leaving stealth as the slower but safer option. Striking a good balance between the 2 playstyles for the first time in the series.

There are some issues sadly. You can only attack or defend when Arno is in a combat stance, but the game decides when he enters it and isn't always accurate with it. So it's possible to have sections where enemies attack you for a while and you're unable to defend yourself. You can't even dodge roll when a far away sniper is aiming at you since you're not in combat mode. Though in a roundabout way, this does suit the game since it means you need to make sure you're ready for a fight since your performance isn't reliable so stealth may be more useful more often.

 

The different weapon types feel somewhat interchangeable or lacking and don't really offer significant differences in speed, defence and combo potential. For example, Rifles don't have any more range, accuracy or power than pistols aside from being slightly slower to shoot so there's no real reason to invest in them. Swords are quite well balanced in speed, attack and parrying. They have a strong attack that's quite fast and can break through blocks. Meaning they're great weapons. Spears have a wider range and their strong attack is a knockdown that doesn't deal damage but can then be used to follow up with a ground kill but it doesn't work on anyone other basic enemies. Axes have a more powerful charged attack that does a lot of damage but needs to be manually triggered unlike swords. The point is that Swords and pistols are the best equipment set in the game and the other weapons don't really offer anything better then them. Some improvements could have been like rifles have greater range and power compared to pistols. Spears can hit multiple opponents at once and axes can't be blocked ever. Odyssey did that and it improved the different weapon types significantly.

 

Smoke Bombs take away much of the challenge as enemies become completely vulnerable and passive in them. I wish there was more of a restriction on them as they can get quite easy to cheese. Perhaps some kind of cooldown after using them? Once you do get really good gear, much of the difficulty is gone for lower levelled missions and areas. I wish there was some sort of difficulty or challenge modifiers you could put on the game when doing lower levelled content for extra money and EXP and even synch points.

 

Future games like Odyssey did improve the mechanical nature of combat by letting you dodge whenever, giving different weapon types different animations and roles, further adding more gear builds and tying stuff like smoke bombs and their equivalent to an adrenaline meter to prevent easy abuse. You also had a scaling option to prevent lower levelled enemies from getting too low a level.

I also feel a few more additions could have been made to make Unity's combat more fleshed out. Especially as now some of the moves in prior AC games can actually have a niche now. For example, in AC2, you could grab enemies and use them as human shields and either kill them on the spot or throw them. It wasn't ever useful because you could just counter kill them. But with Unity's system, it could work better. Imagine after you stun an enemy, you could grab them to absorb the shot of a nearby ranged enemy. It could be balanced by requiring some strict timing to pull off and making sure enemies don't attack you from behind while you're doing it. It would be much more satisfying pulling off a move like that on your own instead of it either being useless or automatic.

Stealth

Past AC games had the issue where stealth was seldom used because it was much faster and easier to just fight everyone. And even if you did choose to stealth, it wasn't much fun. Movement was stilted as you could only walk or run with no dedicated crouch.

Unity improves on these flaws. Since as I explained earlier that combat is finally dangerous, there can be good reasons to avoid getting spotted in areas with lots of enemies.

You can also crouch to sneak more effectively through areas. The "disguise" skill is quite useful as well here. You get a Splinter Cell Conviction style outline of Arno when you break line of sight. Level design is fantastic as many environments feel great with many different approaches and ways to navigate offering a lot of replayability even when the areas are reused in other missions. This in particular makes the game so much fun. One criticism I had of subsequent ACs is that many stealth environments felt copy and pasted as the games wanted to have as much content as possible at the expense of making individual forts less interesting and interchangeable. Unity mostly avoids that. Large Crowds are common in many areas and function great as cover, hiding spots and aid that Assassin Fantasy (I do wish there were more ways to manipulate the crowd).

 

The animations are also great. Arno only has 1 hidden blade instead of the usual 2 so his kill animations are far more creative and stunning, especially is double assassinations.

There are sadly some issues. The biggest is that stealth is still buggy. Enemies will sometimes see, hear and track you through walls when they shouldn't. The outline that normally triggers when you break line of sight that indicates this won't trigger confirming this.

In one situation, I played a particular co-op mission twice. In this mission, there's a 3 story building with 7 guards on its 3 floors and outside and 2 snipers on the roof. When I dropped on the roof and killed one sniper, the other detected me and started attacking me. I killed him quickly. Because this encounter happened on the roof. None of the enemies below heard me so I could easily drop to the street below when I was done and enter through the side door. On the replay, I did the some strat but somehow after killing the snipers, the enemies on the lower floors could still "see" me through the walls. The line of sight outline didn't trigger. . Turning on Eagle Pulse showed me they were trying to run around looking for a way to the roof even though there wasn't one. When I dropped on the street, I was ambushed by several soldiers who saw me get to street level despite there being a building in the way.

Normally this shouldn't happen. The enemies inside the building shouldn't have been able to detect me fighting enemies on the roof. And even if happened, at most, the enemies inside of the building shouldn't have been able to track me since they didn't have line of sight on me.

About 70% of the time, Stealthing and its AI works as you expect. But 30% of the time, they'll see you through walls, or fail to hear you kill their friends right beside them.

Later games like Odyssey did improve on this. I never encountered such errors when I was sneaking around in that game. Odyssey also has a lot cooler stealth moves like chain assassinate and smoother movement when crouching and moving around. Though the environments were lacking there.

I think the bigger issue is that the game never really explains its stealth mechanics in detail. Stuff like Cherry Bombs only working if an enemy has line of sight with the device despite being presented as a sound based tool. How you can use High Profile to exit cover, the extent of Smoke Bombs' influence etc. I suspect this limited many people's appreciation of Unity's stealth mechanics since people dealt with its issues rather ways to work around them.

Parkour

 Past ACs had the issue where the parkour system would sometimes misinterpret your actions. Causing you to jump or climb or drop when you didn't intend to. You also didn't really have any challenge when climbing around. It wasn't like Mirror's Edge or something where parkour was a deep mechanic that required pressing and timing buttons to succeed.

 Unity.....kinda improves it somewhat.

The big new feature are the "parkour up" and "parkour down" commands done by holding R2+X and R2+O respectively. This means you can normally run with R2 and not usually automatically climb or jump too much. R2+X will make Arno start climbing walls and making more jumps. R2+O will make Arno automatically start climbing down walls quickly and slide over or under objects when running into them.

This does help with unintended actions somewhat as you can specify what generally you want Arno to do. But it's not perfect. Arno will still sometimes drop down or jump when holding just R2. Or sometimes jump onto a table and refuse to drop down even when you're holding R2+O the entire time. But overall it is an improvement over past games as it gives players more control while retaining momentum.

But the main thing is that, from a casual perspective, the parkour is kinda mindless most of the time. While yes you do have lots of cool animations and some movement techs and can style and show off some of those, there's almost never a need to nor does the game ever encourage it.

This is apparently an unpopular opinion as Unity's parkour is generally regarded as the peak of the series with future games downgrading it. And I don't really agree. Like, calling it the peak can be accurate but it's not mechanically that much further ahead. And when people complain that Odyssey took away fall damage which removed any challenge or risk from climbing, I point to how Unity made it so you could automatically climb down buildings quickly with no challenge just by holding 2 buttons.

But from a more experienced perspective,  Unity has a surprising amount of depth in its parkour. I recommend watching LeoK's videos on it but between angling your camera, using side hops by tapping high profile + direction, managing when to use High Profile, Unity gives you a lot of depth and control to parkour like a master by climbing faster or skipping certain animations. An inexperienced player who just uses the bare minimum the game teaches and an experienced player using all these tricks results in a chasm of difference. And it's really fun to use these tricks as the new animations can make traversal a joy to do. The problem is that it's more automated than past games. In AC1-Rev, you could manually side eject and use grasp to have way more control. Unity makes it more dependent on the camera and the game itself so you have less control even if you could still do many of the same things. Meaning there are times when you may not side hop or grab a thing even if you before with no clear indication why. Which is a shame seeing as if you had the manual control of AC1-Rev, the commands of Unity and like, the responsiveness of Origins, you'd have the perfect parkour system for AC. Though, another issue is that the games never teach or test you on these mechanics. Even the regular races in Brotherhood could be beaten without using too many advanced tricks. I wish the AC games had an online race editor with ghosts as that would provide cool extra content using the open world for free but also show people that this depth exists.

Sandbox Assassinations:

One of Unity's biggest new features are Sandbox Assassinations feeling like an attempt to modernize AC1's interesting approach to mission design. Taking cues from Hitman, you're dropped next to a large fort and told to go Assassinate the target. You're presented with different "opportunities", activities that can help you either by getting closer to your goals or distracting enemies. These missions can be quite big, have lots of different ways to be played, can be quite challenging and are very fun. Arranging a kill by knowing your target will be in a confession booth by killing his confident outside, sneaking into the Notre Dam through an open window and hiding in a booth to Assassinate your target mid confession is an amazing experience. It's odd to be that it took AC 7 years to try attempting again something the first game had.

There are sadly some issues. For one, the Opportunities themselves are either stupidly good or useless with little indication of this until you try it. One Mission requires you to Assassinate a target at a party. You can either poison their wine, which brings them to a side room allowing you to easily kill them. This is incredibly easy to do as the steps are simple. The same mission also has an opportunity where you can pay 4000 Livres to open a window to get closer to your target. Except not really because the room you enter doesn't have an easier route to the target as it's still guarded as well as the "normal" route. You paid 4000 Livres to accomplish nothing.

Hitman pioneered the Opportunities system but at least there, opportunities usually took a fair amount of effort to set up and were almost always rewarding. High Amount of risk now for low risk later. Plus, AC1's system still had the player gathering information prior to Assassinating a target which revealed stuff like a target's plans, guard positions, secret pathways etc.

If Unity's systems ever get a sequel or follow up, I'd love to see Sandbox Assassinations take place in the open world itself rather than needing to enter a missions. The player is just told "here's your target. Go find and kill them". And if you know where they are, you can go Assassinate them right there and then. Or you can go do side missions and other activities to either get more information on the target and set up some opportunities to later exploit. Then you may try to Assassinate them. If you mess up, the target gets permanently aware and may even move to another part of the map. This would fully combine what AC1 started all those years ago with Unity's approach.

 Co-op

 

Unlike prior ACs, Unity drops the unique PVP Social Stealth Multiplayer in Favour of co-op. Allowing players to explore together in the open world and do certain Co-op missions and heists together.

 

Co-op is a blast. Even with Randoms (except on heists). Co-ordinating kills, dividing and conquering, splitting the work load and helping each other out is great fun and something I wish was more present. The co-op missions themselves can be done solo, feeling like the ultimate endgame activity in that case. I even like that some co-op missions change depending on your prior actions. Like The Tournament having more enemies by the end if you kill guards beforehand.

 

There are some issues. Co-op is quite buggy. Feeling like all the bugs of Unity's original launch are preserved there. Heists are a pain to play with randoms since detection loses part of the score. Arno also doesn't ever talk during these which limit his characterization. Also, the way they are presented from a narrative perspective is odd. Co-op missions are framed by Bishop from the Modern Day as "happening now" as you and other Initiates team up. The mission with Danton has Bishop describe what's going on with Danton, why it's so important he doesn't get killed and tasks the players to go find him now before he gets executed. Which is odd given these are events of the past and the Animus only lets users see the past. It doesn't matter what you want the initiates to do. If Danton runs away or isn't freed by the Assassins, then there's nothing the Initiates can do since they can only replicate Arno's memories. And once you free Danton, Bishop tells you "oh by the way, he ended up joining the Assassins". This jump from talking about these missions as if they are happening in the present and acknowledging them as past events is strange.

The Map:

Paris is the best map in an AC game. It's massive while still being dense with buildings and details that feel like Ubisoft had a time machine when making  this game. Everything from Aristocratic interiors, to major landmarks, to slums feel immaculately constructed. What's more is that the map does a great job in facilitating parkour and social stealth as the dense streets allow more ways to climb and parkour away and have it actually be faster than just running around. The dense streets also allow dense crowds to be present, allowing for blending and social stealth elements to be more useful. 

This is a rare feat. Past and later AC games often had long stretches of wilderness or rural areas that lacked ways to facilitate parkour and social stealth. Like, in AC4, you're not going to find crowds on random islands. And Trees can only really be climbed from one directions so you lack that freedom of movement that urban environments have.

 

The Story:

Unity's story is widely criticized even by people that like it. I... mostly agree.

Let's start with the Modern Day.

The story here is that you the player are a player playing Abstergo's new Helix Video Game exploring their takes on history when the Assassins hijack your system and recruit you as a new Initiate of the Brotherhood. Then have you explore the memories of Assassin Arno Dorian since it's suspected he came into contact with a Sage (a Dr. Who style reincarnation of an Isu individual whose new body contains a higher amount of Isu DNA than normal). Abstergo want to find Sages to collect this Isu DNA and the Assassins want to stop them by finding this Sage first. Along the way, you can enter Helix simulations to snoop around Abstergo data servers and rescue any other initiates trapped there.

By the end of the game, it's revealed that the Sage Arno came in contact with had his DNA degraded and lost in the Catacombs under France. Having the Assassins give a sigh of relief that at least Abstergo can't get their hands on it.

As you can expect, this Modern Day is quite disliked since almost nothing of importance happens. The ending is a Shaggy Dog Story. There's nothing to care about. Nothing to take away. Not even some development or points to follow up on.

I imagine that even if the Assassins were like "great job. We know where the DNA is so we can go and destroy it thanks to your help" or "Oh no, Abstergo was spying on you and learned where the DNA is. We messed up" would probably have been something.

On the other hand, even if those ideas I presented earlier happened, or the Modern Day story was more substantial, it wouldn't have been very interesting either. If the Assassins got to and destroyed the Sage DNA, then like, yeah, you did something but you had no real involvement in nor does it really progress the overall story forward. And if Abstergo got their hands on it first, well nothing would happen since it would have been dropped like how Syndicate dropped the storyline regarding the new blanket. There's no wider plot or stakes happening at this point aside from maybe Juno (which never got resolved in a game) and any Modern Day Storyline that is created won't ever be payed off or amount to much.

 Even if the Modern Day storyline had potential as a way to see the progression of the Assassin/Templar War and as a way to provide commentary and satire of our current world, The AC games at this point onwards seemed very uninterested in actually exploring that. Leading to Modern Day Stories that might as well not exist. To that end, at least the games at this point are mericifully short with their Modern Day Stories. Better to "do it right or not do it at all".

Though the thing is that there's still ways of using this premise despite its limited nature. For example, you could pull a Liberation and use your current Helix product to explore Abstergo's other products through a backdoor. Something Unity already attempts with Helix Rifts that provide you extra tidbits of lore and information. Something 2 and Brotherhood already did better with the Subject 16 Puzzles. You could use what Republique and Watch Dogs did and allow the player to control drones and camera to help other characters do stuff in the present using your knowledge from the Animus. I'd love if stuff like this was expanded and made fun and engaging because it is a shame to see such a rather unique premise be so neglected and only sticking around out of obligation rather than because it provides value.

Onto the story in the Animus:

Here's the Wiki to Summarize it:

https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed:_Unity

I'm mixed on this story.

 

I love the premise. A story of an Assassin and Templar in love and having to use each other's resources and knowledge as they navigate the French Revolution and opposition from both Orders is Gold. Arno as a character is interesting and I like that he's more of an ordinary dude rather than a prophet or superhero like past protagonists. Elise works as a focused Templar that Arno is torn between due to her new occupation but also her personality. Elise is obsessed with getting revenge on Germaine no matter what. Arno worships Elise more than anything else which causes friction. And it ends in the most appropriate way for such a toxic relationship, Elise dying as a result of pursuing her revenge and Arno being heartbroken afterwards. Left with nothing.

 

 

But Unity suffers in the execution. For one, Sequence 3-8 have Arno dealing with side Templars close to Germaine. So there's no real story progression here. Characters like Bellic and Elise don't show up until like Sequence 8 so almost half the game has its plot stand still. At least in AC1, Altair had character development after every target killed as they talked and Altair came to see his flaws in his targets. AC3 had the targets already introduced to us as Haytham so seeing how they interacted with the Revolution and Connor was engaging. Revelations had more of a mystery as killing the targets got Ezio closer to his goals and there were stuff like Altair's memories. Unity doesn't really have anything going on here.

 I still enjoyed playing through these parts because the gameplay in these sequence was great. I wonder if this could have been addressed by having Arno interact with Bellic and/or Elise more earlier and throughout these sequences. Maybe by like Sequence 5, Arno runs into Elise and the 2 start working together to get information from the Templars? You could have more scenes of Bellic and the Council getting frustrated with his.

Even more odd is the ending. After Elise is dead, the story jumps forward several years where Arno is back in good graces with the Brotherhood, even having Master Assassin Armour, giving a speech about how fanaticism leads to extremism and how the Creed helps its followers rise above that and how Arno is more wise now. But, that's not what Unity's story is about. I mean, sure, it fits given the extreme turn of the French Revolution, but most of Arno's story in Unity is this Shakespearean Tragedy with Elise rather the exploration of the extreme turn. It's out of place. It's like if after AC2, when Ezio refuses to kill Rodrigo Borgia, the game jumps forward to Revelations' ending where Ezio realizes his purpose is to be a messenger for Desmond and is tired after his fight with Templars. It would feel out of place because Ezio's story in 2, a story of a young man seeking revenge and growing wiser in the journey, and Revelations, a story of Ezio realizing his purpose as a messenger and being tired, are different.

Compare this to AC3. Connor's story there is the result of his naive belief in how the American Revolution would save his people. So when it doesn't, his ending speech makes sense since his story was intertwined with that of the Revolution. It's a similar case with AC4. Edward's story of growing beyond a selfish pirate is intertwined with the historical story of consequences of Selfish Pirates and their "Utopia". So his speech on his self reflection works much better. Unity doesn't really have that. It's story is mostly disconnected from the French Revolution which is mostly treated as a backdrop. To say nothing of how having Arno suddenly get in good graces with the Assassins in like, a time skip isn't satisfying.

Like, I think a better ending would have just been Arno mourning Elise, or entering a depressive state and being found by the Assassins who discuss if he could be considered a traitor at this point. That would have been a much better way to summarize this plot of the game.

As always, Mirror and Image's fan novelization addresses all my issues and makes the story amazing by giving Arno more of an arc as he learns critical thinking. And leans more into these themes that the base game already has going. I totally recommend it.

The DLC, Dead Kings, isn't much of an improvement. The story of Leon helping a more cynical Arno is fine but quite rushed with not much punch. It still retains the issue of Arno being friendly with the Assassins again so soon.

Stuff like collectibles aren't very interesting to get. I wish stuff like Cockades had more of a challenge to get them, like the papers in AC3-Rogue. Chests are fine since they're guarded by enemies which facilitate the fun gameplay

 

Paris Stories are odd. They are fun to play but their stories lack context and don't involve any characters from the main story. Arno also never speaks during them. So seeing these characters who you never met before, order Arno around to do all kinds of things and Arno just goes along without a single word is a surreal experience. I feel these would have been great times to get more characterization out of Arno. It's a similar case for Murder Mysteries. Arno never questions his suspects directly in the main game. He does in Francide's which improve the characterization immensely.

Speaking of which, Unity isn't afraid of not holding your hand. Murder Mysteries are these complex puzzles where you go from area to area finding clues and investigating suspects. The harder ones have conflicting evidence and even secret areas the game never points to as places for more clues. Nostradamus Riddles task you with finding the location described in the Riddle and require you to cross reference the in-game database and have a degree in French history and archecture if you want to do it legit. Stuff like this is incredible and I'd love to see more games have this. The riddles are less interesting in Francide seeing as the stuff they refer to like rats and crypts are everywhere and the in-game database is much more sparse. Helix Rifts are great parkour challenge maps that push your skills to the limit if you want to 100% them all. I only wish there was a race editor for Paris as that would be amazing.

Dead Kings:

Dead Kings is Unity's free DLC campaign. It adds the town of Francide, which is quite atmospheric. I dislike the amount of tunnel environments as I feel they limit parkour and stealth gameplay. The gameplay here is more of the same. Though the final puzzle parkour room is quite neat. The big new gimmick is a lanturn which can scare away insects and bats with light and needs to be dipped in oil after a while or when it gets wet. Honestly, I found this underwhelming as the Lanturn is incredibly situational. I wish the concept was taken further like those torch puzzles in Uncharted 3 where you could throw your torch as part of solving puzzles.

 

 

Other Stuff

The game thankfully isn't as buggy as it was on launch. Though, I still suffered 3 crashes and somewhat common framerate dips on large crowds. Worse, sometimes whenever I restarted a mission or checkpoint, Arno would freeze when jumping and would be softlocked. Co-op with others is significantly more buggy. As if it was never patched.

The game isn't very historically accurate.

 https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/9d9ra2/assassins_creed_unity_a_near_complete_list_of/

 

 

Bit of an aside, but the game presents all its characters speaking with British accents instead of French ones. Despite being made by a French and Quebec company. The reasoning given by Ubisoft include "French Accents are harder to understand without subtitles, making it harder to understand ambient voice barks", and "The game is already set in France. Everyone already knows what a French Accent sounds like so it's not necessary".

I'd argue this is a mistake. For one, the AC games go through a huge amount of effort to be as authentic as possible for the sake of immersiveness. AC2 had its characters give Italian Accents, even going so far as to get voice coaches for non Italian Actors, even if it sounded cheesy at times and people already being familiar with Italian Accents. AC3 went out of its way to have Native American actors, language and performances. Origins had people trying their best to recreate what the accent and music of the time would be. So why stop for the French portion? 

Even from a narrative perspective, this causes issues. For example, Napoleon spoke French with a thick Corsican Accent, not a posh British one. This was significant because Napoleon was considered an outsider to the French People. People mocked him for his accent. Tsar Alexander even joked that he spoke French better than Napoleon. Which makes it all the more surprising when Napoleon did rise which was only now possible for him as a result of Revolution. Giving him a Corsican accent and other people French would have been a great way to highlight this aspect. It also makes that one co-op mission where his wife Josephine comments on his "exotic accent" make sense.

 

 

Money

The game's economy is really expensive. But stuff like Social Club and its passive revenue are great ways to have the player earn money as they mark progression, encourage playing side quests and offer lots of money rewarding you for your continued play.

 

Conclusion

Unity's biggest issue wasn't its bugs or its story. It was its circumstance. It was rushed out at a time when it was popular to hate on Ubisoft due to the launches of games like Watch Dogs and their cliches in open world games, as a game that took away aspects considered cool with AC games like ship combat and flashy gameplay in favour of a more challenging and traditional AC experience that was more polished and fleshed out. And it was treated as the worst crime ever committed. This meant the game's more interesting and positive aspects were never seen by many people. Ubisoft has distanced itself from Unity and later AC games take more cues from games like the Witcher 3 than they do Hitman or AC in a bid to rejuvenate the franchise in a different direction. Not to say the new AC games aren't bad but it's a shame to see this more generic direction being the focus instead of the unique aspects of AC that Unity had

 

It's only recently that people have gone back to it and discovered this. It's silently made a bit of a comeback but it's shame how it was received initially because it means many still haven't experienced its positives, nor have Ubisoft been encouraged to expand and improve on its gameplay in sequels. The sad part is that even if Unity wasn't rushed out, that it released without any bugs, I still believe it would likely have had lukewarm reception at best given the landscape of the time.

I recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of open world games, of stealth and action and those that like AC. It still has its flaws. Some bugs are still present which can hurt the stealth, combat and parkour that can break so easily as a result. The story lacks impact and needs a fan novelization to get most of its value. Other AC games do specific elements better. 3 and 4 have the better narrative. Odyessy has way better combat, RPG systems and abilities to play around with. But Unity's core gameplay, world and aspects are a fantastic mix even 7 years later and are worth experiencing.

Assassin's Creed 3 Liberation - The "Best" AC game on Vita

 

Hello everyone. Today I want to talk about the 2012 PS VITA game Assassin's Creed Liberation. Fun fact, this was my first Vita game. I remember buying the special edition White Vita just so I could play Liberation on it. I have a fair amount of nostalgia for this game. But man, is it ever rough to go back to.

So Liberation was released at the same time as AC3 but on the Vita as an exclusive. It's best described as a "diet version of AC3" Like Bloodlines did for AC1 and 2 on the PSP 3 years earlier. Liberation translates several features from 3 into the Vita like a decently sized urban city (New Orleans instead of New York or Boston), a decently sized "wild" area (The Bayou instead of AC3's Frontier), the business system. It uses the same combat, parkour, animations, controls and general gameplay of 3. So if you love 3, you'll probably like Liberation. The only thing it doesn't carry over is the ship stuff, which I prefer since I wasn't that fond of it in the first place (I've written about that before but the gist is that I find the ship stuff boring and disconnected from the main AC gameplay).

Now, I have quite a few issues with early AC games. With 3 specifically, I find that the Arkham Inspired Combat is too broken in the player's favour so you don't get that decision making and challenge Arkham's combat brings. Parkour is quite automated so it's often not in your hands if your character will make a jump or climb or stick to a surface or whatever. The stealth, despite having some notable improvements like corner takedowns, bushes and trees to hide in, suffers because the AI is often unpredictable. Sometimes, it's brain dead and lets you pass and exploit them to no end. Other times, they will detect you instantly. The AI Works fine for like 80% of the game, but 20% of the time, you either get an even easier pass or have to fight and you can't tell beforehand which state the AI will be in. And given how broken combat is, it's often more efficient to fight your way through and ignore stealth altogether. You only have to stealth in a couple specific missions and the rest have it optional which I've used to argue AC was never a stealth series to begin.

All these still apply to Liberation. Except surprisingly worse. Issues with parkour happen more often so you may find yourself missing jumps, not jumping or climbing etc and since parkour is automated you can't manually climb or jump. Issues with the AI happen more often as shown earlier. Only combat is pretty much the same. It's rare if your attacks don't register or whatever. All this does is further discourage stealth and a tactical approach since those are, for whatever reason, more likely to fail through no fault of your own. This game is still quite buggy even years later.

Liberation's Main new gimmick is the Persona System. Aveline can wear one of 3 outfits from changing points scattered throughout the maps, each with their own pros and cons. The Assassin suits gives the player all their tools and abilities (as well as a "mark and execute" move similar to Splinter Cell Conviction) at the cost of always having at least minimal notoriety (so guards will always be suspicious at least whenever they see the player) and being unable to blend in with any groups or hide with crowds. The Slave outfit restricts the player's gear to hidden or easily disguised common stuff like small knives and gains notoriety quickly when climbing but allows the player to blend in with select groups and crowds. The Final outfit, The Lady, takes away the Player's ability to run and climb, all weapons and tools except for the hidden blades and poison umbrella but as positives, slows notoriety gain and allows the player to charm some guards onto the player's side to fight opponents or to turn a blind eye to your actions.

Let's start with the positives of the current system, it's cool on paper and gives the player 3 minor avenues of progression (especially with side quests). It would allow players to specialize in a particular approach and prevent players from being so OP and loaded that they can't be challenged like prior AC Games as well as encouraging the player to swap their approach. It can increase replayability as well as encourage players to better plan their approach. It also makes the gameplay line up more with the story because Aveline isn't armed to the teeth or dressed like a slave during aristocratic events and vice versa (A common "Mario breaks bricks with his head but dies when touching a turtle" style complaint about the prior games).

Now let's look at the negatives.

The lady suit does not compliment the game. Firstly, imagine playing GTA and you have a suit that lowers your ability to get a wanted level but you can't use vehicles. The lady can't run or climb so navigating the city is very tedious and uninteresting. In addition, 2 of the 3 maps, don't have anything for the lady to use as they are all parkour based due to being set in a bayou and rainforest (not to mention having few to no changing stations). The combat limitations aren't really limits because the player can counter and chain kill everything with no difficulty regardless of equipped weapon and take little damage from attacks. This was always a problem with the pre-Unity Combat. All your weapons are equally OP so taking away one or 3 doesn't lower your effectiveness (consequently this also makes similar sections in past and future games like AC4's diving sections lack the tension and effect they should have). So charming guards for combat is redundant. So all the lady has left is being able to charm guards for stealth, which far less practical than sneaking past or parkouring over, and use her poison umbrella in public, while the other outfits have a blowdart the player can use just as well and in more situations. The HD Version at least allows the Lady Suit to now run instead of having a max speed of lightly jogging which makes the experience more tolerable.

The Slave suit fares a bit better for stealth on the streets but isn't really all that useful because opportunities to blend in are few and far between. Unlike prior games with already shallow social stealth mechanics, Liberation makes it so the Slave can only blend in with preassigned groups and crates as opposed to any group of people. Especially in the Bayou where you're better off just wearing the assassin suit. As for fewer weapons, they don't really matter given the combat system. The suit doesn't even work well as a harder difficulty option.

The Assassin suit then ends up being the best choice with very little reason to pick the other suits. The notoriety penalty is easy enough to deal with and swapping to the slave suit where needed for a bit is possible but doesn't really feel like a major tactical decision. This means the suits feel like a gimmick rather than an element you need to consider and plan around.

Other problems include the structure of the story. Since it's taking AC2's story-based design over AC1 or Unity's mission-based design, the player can't really plan a strategy and act on it. They'll likely take the assassin or occasionally slave outfits as they are multipurpose.

Moving onto Liberation's other features, Liberation remixes the Business/Trading system from AC3. Only here its influence is more widespread. The system works by requiring the player to first go to the hideout or enter an owned shop to access the trading menu. Here, the player needs to have at least 1 owned ship. Then the player needs to buy cargo from whichever port they are currently at. For example, if the ship is docked at Havana, they can buy Sugar or Tobacco. If docked at say New Orleans, you can buy Cloth and Pottery. Once you have enough cargo, select a destination to send the ship to that will buy the cargo, hope there's no storms or pirates in the area and after however long in real time it takes the ship to reach their destination (around 7-20 minutes), you'll automatically earn money. And then you can repeat the process. More destinations and types of cargo unlock as you progress the story.

While the system isn't bad, there are some issues. For one, you can only access this menu from specific locations which can make it annoying to have to drop what you're doing to find said location. I wish there was an option to just access this from the pause menu. I had a similar criticism with AC3.

Now, if you aren't interested in customizing Aveline or getting new upgrades (most of which don't benefit you much given the combat system and easy difficulty), it's easy to skip the trading. Though, you'd be strapped for cash since prices are quite inflated. Simple belt upgrades which were a couple hundred in past games are now 2000+ Lycee. Everything costs several times as it did in past games. But you never need to buy anything so I guess it works out.

But in all honesty, I don't really like AC having such a system. It means that as something of a completionist, I have to constantly stop what I'm doing to do some trading. It's an interruption. I really feel that half my playthrough was me just running to be able to access a trading menu. I prefer AC2's approach where you just invest a little in a location and it starts generating passive income and the more missions you do, the more you can earn. That keeps me in the game longer playing the interesting parts.

Side Missions and Collectibles:

Liberation has a lot of generally reskinned side content for the player to do.

With regards to collectibles you have mushrooms (grow in the Bayou near sick patients. Though you can treat patients without collecting the mushroom), Assassin Coins (get them by pickpocketing certain mercenaries), Voodoo Dolls (get them by looting thugs), Pocket Watches (buy them from Smugglers), Brooches (Charm them from certain guards as the lady), Jeanne Pages (Diary Pages from Aveline's Mom) and Patients (beat them up and then interact with them)

Now most of these collectibles aren't very interesting to collect. Unlike other AC games, you can't get their location beforehand from viewpoints, they only show up on your minimap if you're near them and they aren't permanently marked afterwards. Meaning that if you want to collect them, either use a guide or remember whenever you come across them. The only interesting collectibles are Jeanne's pages since they give more backstory on Jeanne (even if it's mostly filler). And, funnily, the Brooches. Because often, the guards that have them are on rooftops and the Lady can't climb. So there's a bit of a puzzle in figuring out how to get to them. The HD version makes it so any Persona can get the coins and dolls since in the Vita version, only the Assassin and Slave persona could collect them respectively which was often very tedious. Collecting an entire set of collectibles either does nothing or unlocks a new suit to wear. So not very rewarding. I recommend skipping them.

Side Missions in Liberation also aren't generally very interesting. Though, many are grouped into small side stories. Like one where Aveline is kidnapped by some thugs, escapes and then investigates them. Or one where she helps Captain Domingo. Some can only be activated when wearing certain Personas but you won't know which ones are available until you change into a suit and then open the map. But their production is... rough to say the least. Many have poorly done cutscenes consisting of reusing regular game animations with poor camera angles. Dialogue often feels like it's missing. Though a couple do offer an interesting stealth challenge if you choose to follow optional objectives like killing a target in a heavily armed fort with an explosion. All in all, I recommend skipping them.

Regarding the open world map. There are 2.5 main locations. The city of New Orleans, The Bayou and like a small section of Chichen Itza in Mexico with some linear sections you can revisit off mission with some collectibles so I'm counting all that as half. New Orleans is a good city environment that suits AC's gameplay. There are many areas to use to parkour and stealth, there are many different districts and environments. Every Persona has at least some chance to shine if you try hard enough but the Lady Persona really still feels lacklustre. One detail I like is that after you complete a few story sequences and the Spanish take over, you'll start having civilians protesting at certain locations against Spanish guards. It's a small touch that does show the progress of time even if it is really small and situational.

The Bayou is questionable. Now, full disclaimer, I'm not really fond of non-urban environments in Assassin's Creed games. I feel they don't really play to the series' strengths. There's often less stuff around to immediately parkour to use for stealth since unlike buildings, trees can only be climbed from specific angles and have a preset path to follow rather than a custom one that any player can implement their own way organically. That organic level design is often present in specific detailed locations rather than available everywhere which generally leads to repetition as only a few areas provide any interesting level design. More time is spent just boringly running (or in Liberation's case) swimming to get to missions. The Lady Suit is completely useless here for obvious reasons. The Slave Suit has no groups of people to blend in with. There are some missions that do make use of these aspects as positives if you play in a really specific way. One mission in the Bayou tasks Aveline to defend a raft as it floats down a river but the optional challenges involve not swimming and using only melee weapons. Suddenly it's a mad rush to complete the mission and protect the raft that is quite fun as you quickly decide which action to take next. But most of the time, it's like playing a less interesting version of the city. One where navigation is less interesting, everything is farther apart and is even less visually interesting since the Bayou looks very similar regardless of where you are. It feels like the Bayou was made was because AC3 had the Frontier and Liberation needed an equivalent and not because it complements Liberation's gameplay

Chichen Itza is only really explored in like 4 missions. Think of it as the closest the game gets to the Tombs from past games.

Also, the HD Re-release removed many of the Vita specific features. To pickpocket someone, instead of needing to slowly swipe the back touchpad while staying close to them and not disturbing them (which honestly did somewhat simulate pickpocketing as an activity requiring some co-ordination and dexterity), you just hold O behind them and you'll start pickpocketing with no issue. The Uncharted Golden Abyss style "hold a document up to the light to decipher it" puzzle is gone since it doesn't appear most systems have a built in camera (would be kinda cool if there was some way to keep it just for the novelty. Imagine needing to have to get a PS Camera and shining a light into it to progress). That one motion control puzzle no longer requires motion controls, you can just use the left stick to progress (thank God. That was a nightmare on the Vita). You can just hold R2 to paddle in boats instead of swiping the back touchpad. Weapon Swaps and picking targets with the touchscreen can now be done with buttons. The lady Suit can now run instead of having a max speed of lightly jogging which makes the experience more tolerable.

The Story:

If you ever pitched me the ideas of every AC game and asked me to rank them based on how interesting I find them, Liberation would certainly be in the top 3. There are so many great ideas that you could arguably make an entire game around individually. You have this Bruce Wayne/Batman dynamic where Aveline may use her Aristocrat or Business persons to gain intel on a target, use her Assassin or Slave or Aristocrat Persona to get inside and do the deed, and then use her Slave or Aristocrat connections to free any Slaves or pursue any lose ends with some suspicion at her trying to keep all these a secret from everyone else (and all these aspects to her character individually). You have her doubts with the efficacy of Assassins and their help. You have the mystery of Jeanne and why she left. You have the Templars and their seemingly noble goals of making a Slave Colony that treats Slaves well. You have the feminist angle where Aveline (and also Madeline) have to navigate a society that restricts them despite them being quite well off. You have the historical setting where New Orleans is trading hands to the Spanish and a very rocky governance. All these are Gold. And yet, Liberation feels unfocused. It doesn't seem to have the time to really explore these ideas to make a satisfactory story out of them so it just bounces from topic to topic. Sometimes giving you whiplash. Liberation feels like the RWBY of the AC franchise.

Here's a summary of the story

https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed_III:_Liberation

From reading this it might not seem so bad. But actually playing it is rough. Imagine a version of AC2 where you start in Sequence 1-1 as normal, but then jump to Sequence 6-1, play through the rest of the game normally except that Sequence 8, 10-12 are also gone. You get the issue? Much of the story seems to rely on the player being familiar with Aveline's past but it basically glosses over stuff like her training and relationship with Agate where supposedly she was "brainwashed in her teens to kill Agate's rivals", Avenline's prior search for her mom, Aveline's current position in life, her doubt for the Assassins, Aveline's Relationship with Madeline and Phillipe. So we often get small snippets of these which are then left dangling for hours at a time. The twist that Madeline was the company man was surprising to me because I had legitimately forgotten she'd existed because she was hardly present in the game.

As another example, the game opens with the day Aveline lost her mom. This is practically the main crux of the game, where is Jeanne and why did she leave Aveline? But the next time this plot point even comes up is several sequences later when Aveline finds Jeanne's diary page in Chichen Itza that referenced a nearby artifact. Aveline then drops her search for her mother to get this artifact and when she does, she meets Jeanne who is horrified that Aveline is an Assassin, thinking she's here to kill her and warns her not to at least let the Assassins have the artifact. Aveline tries to explain the situation to her but the scene cuts to black and jumps forward 2 years with Aveline involved in other stuff in New Orleans. After an entire sequence, Aveline is back in Chichen Itza and now suddenly she and Jeanne are cool with each other. There's no confrontation where they meet up and have Aveline explain what's going on. The story just cuts to when they're cool with each other. It's so awkward. This is the main emotional core of the story that should have had the big payoff and it's treated like it's a side quest. The sad thing is that I'm a sucker for these types of mother/child reunion stories so this should have been a slam dunk in the game's favour and yet it's some of the most rushed and unsatisfying part of it despite being a part of the story from the opening. Imagine that hypothetical version of AC2 I mentioned earlier. Now imagine if at the end of Sequence 7, we cut to Ezio killing Rodrigo offscreen and just going "guess he's dead. Might as well take it easy and slowly clean up who is left I guess". And then in Sequence 14, Mario, who's had like 3 minutes of screentime so far, gets revealed as the Templar Boss. You can imagine how rushed and unsatisfying that would feel and yet, Liberation does that. Like, I have my criticisms of 2's story but at least that felt focused and complete with somewhat lacklustre execution. Liberation's story feels incomplete and unfocused.

There is another aspect of Liberation's Story, The modern day. And it's quite the Doozy. The Premise is that you, the player in real life bought Assassin's Creed 3 Liberation, the first of its kind video game, for your PS Vita developed in collaboration between Abstergo Entertainment and Ubisoft (explains the microtransactions in later games). Abstergo modified the game so that scenes that were negative of the Templars were removed. But Erudtio hacks your copy of the game so you can get back those original scenes. Even the ending is that the game ends with Aveline joining the Templars, complete with credits of the 20 people at Abstergo who made this game. Until Erudito hacks it so you get the real ending where Aveline kills all the Templars.

Now, as someone who normally has criticized the modern day to death, someone who is happy that many current AC games don't have a modern day. I unironically love this premise. It's simultaneously the dumbest thing and greatest thing I've ever heard. Like, it makes no sense. This is a story where 20 people that are basically part of the Illuminati develop a AAA video game for the PS Vita in 2013 that became a worldwide success based on a dude's genetic memories from the 1980's to act as Propaganda?

In AC4, you can find videos on Abstergo's computers talking about potential projects for games. They diss Altair and Ezio as complete monsters. Dismiss Connor because of his personality in his adult life and the "foreign" nature of his childhood. But Chose Aveline for the job because "they can edit out her childhood and focus on appealing to the female demographic by softening up her and her relationship with Madeline as they liberate slaves". It's so meta I'm tempted to kinda call it great. Like, it feels like Ubi intentionally wrote Liberation poorly and then used this meta story to explain in-universe why that's the case. It almost justifies the way Liberation is. It jabs at corporate marketing and interference so hard and accurately that it feels like a better satire and critique of corporations than Rockstar ever did.

Part of me wishes that if later AC games had a modern day, they used this idea because there's a lot more potential ideas it could do without resorting to a boring Desmond figure that slowly whines and is disconnected from the rest of the game. Like, the gameplay associated with this was in the Animus/Game and therefore retains the interesting world and gameplay. You get that mystery and "what it is this, I shouldn't be here" vibe that this modern day inadvertently taps into. But perhaps the novelty would have worn out eventually if that were the case so it's better as a one off.

Back to being negative, sadly, Liberation itself drops the ball despite this Godly premise. For one, most of the cutscenes you get from Erudito are useless. They usually expand scenes from throughout the story when Templars are talking. The message then in those scenes is basically "I am a Templar. I am very Evil. I am a bad guy". Like, I already got that before. These are the same generic evil Templars as the past several games. These scenes add nothing so it's a waste to expand them of all things. Many of these Templars aren't even important to the overall plot. The only interesting scene was between Aveline and Phillipe on his deathbed where he hallucinates and thinks Aveline is Jeanne and talks to her and expresses his love and regret. That's gold. I want more of that (also fun fact, when I first played this game back in 2012, I missed the context that he was thinking of Jeanne during this and thought "wait, did this dude just say he would have married his own daughter to give her a better life? What the fuck?"). Give me scenes of Aveline with the rest of the cast so they are developed more. You don't even need Erudito to hack them in after the fact. Just say "here's a cracked copy of the game, many of the removed scenes are in from the getgo. Others require you to find them for extra context. Good luck".

-Bonuses:

If you link your Vita running Liberation to a PS3 running AC3, you unlock a few goodies in Liberation. You get Connor's Tomahawk but and a bonus sequence where Aveline meets up with Connor outside of New York in Winter to get info on the Company Man. You can play this mission Twice, once as Aveline and once as Connor. Apparently, Aveline is the better climber since she can use her whip to swing across gaps to help Connor cross (even though Connor probably could also have climbed across from the side but I digress). It's a decent mission.

In the HD version, this mission and Tomahawk is included normally and doesn't need any further connection to unlock. It's not a bad way to add to that crossover feel. I do wish there was a bonus where both games got a copy of each other's money to really spice up the experience

Multiplayer:

The original Vita version had a multiplayer mode. It wasn't very interesting. You start by selecting which faction you're in, Assassin or Templar. You then select a city you live close to IRL, you send troops there to gain influence for your faction and after a week, the faction with the most influence wins like some browser-based Idle Game. Honestly, there was no reason to play this unless you wanted PSN Trophies. There was no real reward for doing it or any real strategy or tactics. It was the most tacked-on multiplayer mode I've ever seen which is a serious accomplishment.

Bugs and Glitches:

Still quite buggy despite the Switch version being released 7 years after the original. parkour often had issues working, I would sometimes start swimming land if I fell into water from a poor angle, some framerate drops. The Side Quest where you have to scan Forks softlocked for me and I couldn't complete it. It's not ideal. Still, I recommend any HD Version of the game over the Vita Version.

In Conclusion, Liberation seems like a victim of its time and circumstance. It was attached to a bigger game that was apparently also rushed out, on a console with a low userbase. So it's clear it was apparently made on a budget and tight deadlines that smothered it from being successful. There are neat ideas here that, in a better game, may shine bright. But since it isn't a better game, there's no real reason to seek out this game. I'd recommend playing AC3 instead over this since that is the "full AC3 experience" in terms of gameplay, open world and story.

Still, I'd love to see a modern remake of this game. Give me a remake of Liberation using the Ody Engine so combat and stealth are finally good. With more time and development, the story and characters, which are honestly quite interesting, would finally get the space and time to shine. And as an RPG, you can get more mileage out of the persona system. Hell, it even works in-universe as Abstergo jumping in on the "complete edition" remake trend so both the original and new versions would be simultaneously canon and actually make sense. I don't know how the Bayou could be made fun but I'm cool with it being shortened to quick missions like Chichen Itza is.

There's some great ideas here, It's a shame this is the game that had to represent them.

Well, this is probably going to be last long game post for 2021. See you all in 2023 when I finally review the Drawn to Life DS Trilogy of games