Assassin's Creed III: Liberation

As a fan of the AC-series I was looking forward to the first game for the Playstation Vita; see how the franchise would tickle the possibilities of the hand-held device. But the result is in fact a disappointing piece of a fast and unfinished production that, very likely, had to be finished for Christmas. No matter of ready or not.

You'll get thrown into the story without any sort of introduction to the situation or the characters. Extremely fast and uncomfortable and that is also the main problem of the storytelling with all of its symptoms. There are many logical errors and many unsolved questions throughout the game, including a mysterious family tragedy about girl between two worlds and the connection to templars and assassins. Some parts of the story are told straight, some parts confusing and not really satisfying.

The game play lacks in so many points, that I don't know where to start. There is no possibility of upgrading armor and weapons, but therefore a strange trading system. The idea might be nice, but it works not well and there is just one single location in the whole game you can use. A situation that becomes even worse because of the countless bugs of "Liberation". For example getting a blind map though you already discovered the whole area. Guards recognize you though you status is absolutely discreet and it happens more than once, that the game crashes. Or as reported, it may happen that your savings mysteriously got lost.

I will not kill the whole game. Indeed of the errors and the lack of storytelling, there is atmosphere and some kind of entertaining suspense. And because the player is controlling a girl, the game play offers some interesting features like playing different social roles. But don't expect these features will help you to overlook the poor quality.

This was a fun game to play and I truly enjoyed it. The storyline was great for a short assasins creed game. I recommend this game as a good game to play if you want to finish a quick story of assasins creed.

Maybe in 2012 having an exclusive AC for your portable console had felt pretty good, but as of 2022 even remastered version of liberation sure feels outdated. It looks awful and plays even worse. So if you are not a trophy hunter(the game delivers easy and fast plat), don't waste your precious time on ACL.

After beating ACIII, I was going to take a break from going through the series but then realized, the remastered version had a whole other game with it. I read up about the story online and had to jump right in. Originally, this was a PS Vita game and since I had no Vita and wasn't playing Assassins Creed back then, I completely missed out.

The story is unfortunately not very interesting, it felt like I could guess the main twist very early on. I did like Aveline as a main character and it was cool that they gave her some new mechanics like charming guys for various bonuses, shooting blow darts and changing disguises. I ended up using the blow darts a lot once I got them. There are interesting moments in her journey so I didn't hate the story or anything but I think with this being originally a portable game, they couldn't or didn't want to get too deep with the plot.

The portability did bring one change that I loved though, the almost mission based structure that this game has. Yes, it has the open world mechanics with side missions and other collectables you can run around and grab, but being able to do a mission in a smaller world felt so much more my speed than the huge open areas in most games that you have to navigate back and forth just to get to the next mission. I know I may sound old but honestly, I hate that every game is open world now. It was cool with GTA but I still prefer missions or levels or even just a little hub, if you have to make it slightly open. Open world games usually feel dragged out with everything they throw in there and yeah, you can ignore it all but then you still have to keep going from point A to point B and they throw stuff at you in between, just let me do the missions and move on to the next one!

Ok, I'm done ranting.

All that to say, I like the more mission based structure this game has, with a smaller world to navigate.

The combat is still the same Assassins Creed style that people love, it flows, it feels good and it annoys me at times, like always. Sneaking around is still fun and even more so with this game letting you climb trees and poison dart people. I was worried that this game would have the boat combat from ACIII but thankfully it doesn't. May be controversial but I hated the boat combat in that game.

It's a pretty good side story and a decent companion to the third game. I just wish the story was more engaging but I'll never hate a game that lets me kill slave masters.

7/10.

Greetings from Lithuania.

The only reason i played this game in 2019 was that i received it for free along with "Odyssey". Assassin's Creed III: Liberation (2012) was a very poor game. I finished it, but i couldn't skip this mess anytime and would have saved some time and brain cells. This game has a worst mechanics in the entire franchise, and playing it for me was clear that this game had a very small budget - this is why it felt rushed, unfinished, full of bugs and etc.

Overall - do not bother with this poor game. Its the worst in the series by far.