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
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
