Assassin's Creed: Unity

Without doubt my favourite story and one of the best locations to be set in for sure unfortunately the overly glitchy gameplay the worst of all the series makes it hard to love the game any further.

The podcast I listened to while beating this game was really good.

The story is great. There is a wide variety of missions and thank god not may tailing mission. Also visually it's stunning. Revelitionary France is really cool.

Visually pretty typical of Assassin's Creed games with a big emphasis on the architecture, which is really well done. A bit lacking in variety, though, when compared to earlier games which alternated city vs countryside or compared to Black Flag which had the various island and jungle scenes to mix it up.

Gameplay is pretty smooth. Sometimes the auto-assist goes too far (so you jump on and climb things without meaning to, because as you run past the auto-assist assumes you're trying to climb, even when you're not really that close to an object or wall). But it does make climbing when you want to fairly quick and easy. And combat is well designed.

Gadgets are a real highlight. I didn't use them enough in the early game, but later realised they make a lot of difficult challenges much more achievable and there's some reasonable variety. And the gear system adds a bit of an RPG level-up feel to the game that earlier Assassin's Creeds never quite achieved.

But then, there's nothing exciting or different and the story is *very* straightforward and lacking in any depth. On top of that, the modern-day aspect that was one of the key things that made earlier games so awesome is a complete joke here. It'd have been better if they dropped it altogether, because the little here and there just makes it feel forced and draws attention to the fact that it was so poorly considered.

And the collectibles thing has gone waaaaay overboard. When I finished the game, putting in quite a bit of effort to not miss any nearby chests and other secrets during missions, and ensuring 100% sync each mission, I looked at the map and had barely collected 10% of all the junk lying around. Assassin's Creed was always bad for that, but it's so overdone now that it makes collecting anything feel meaningless.

A perfectly fine time killer, but too bland to really pull you in in any way.

Assassin's Creed: Unity is ambitious and a fresh overhaul for the series transitioning to a new era of presentation. But it's a rough transition at best.

The story, while interesting at first, kind of starts to feel cluttered and all over the place at the end. Plot threads don't have time to breathe and just go all over the place. The characters are also some of the least compelling that we've seen in a while. Our two lead characters, while decent, could've been more. And while there are some memorable characters and great performances, the story still ends up feeling messy.

The gameplay sees the biggest overhaul and is one of my biggest issues with the game. The new movement system is meant to feel fluid and polished, but it presents more troubles than it does improvements. It looks fluid, but it doesn't feel so. The parkour is great, for the most park. But the combat feels sluggish and unresponsive. In addition to the sluggish combat, the game also has a gear system of sorts, which also adds to the frustration of combat.

It might just be me, but after playing all the previous AC games, Unity just doesn't feel good to play compared to the Americas Saga.

At least the sandbox/open world that we're given is mostly fun to traverse and explore. It's a well-designed world with lots of interesting content.

Overall, Unity is decent and kind of frustrating. Easily my least favourite game in the series due to its clunkiness and messy story.