Fbh
Member
Somewhere around 2 years ago I decided I was pretty much done with big AAA Ubisoft games. I had given several of them a chance and found myself quickly bored by all of them due to their boring and "designed by committee" style. Of course some of that can be applied to most AAA games but Ubisoft games in particular to me just seemed liked they came out of a factory,
This also made me skip AC:O because while I heard it made some improvements to the formula, just knowing it was made by Ubisoft meant I wasn't even going to try it unless I could find it for $10 or less.
Well before Origins ever got to that price I got AC:O as a present and you know, gifted horses and teeth and all of that, I decided to give it a try.
I finished the main story last night and I have to say.... that was pretty good. It's definitely not without issues and some of the usual Ubisoft shit is still there (bloat, bad storytelling and more recently bullet sponges) but it felt like a MASSIVE improvement compared to the last game in the series that I played (syndicate) on almost every level and it has left me cautiously optimist about future entries.
I love how they took inspiration from stuff like the Witcher 3 for the sidequests. One thing that always ended up boring me in Ubisoft games was their "activity" based side content so changing that to actual quests with their own unique characters and stories was a big step up. Not all of them are great (or even good) but there's definitely decent variety and some of my favorite moments in the game (both gameplay and story wise) actually came from them. There's this one about the "battle of a hundred hands" which I honestly liked better than anything in the main quest.
Combat and stealth were also more fun than usual. No longer relying on the "wait an counter" system of previous games and instead just feeling like a straight up action RPG with a decent selection of skills and even enough room to somewhat create your own build and fight style. Stealth is still far from being as good as an actual stealth game but at least I felt more in control than in previous games (like being able to crouch and hide wherever I want instead of specific locations)
Story is definitely still and issue though, and I think now that they have shifted the franchise to be more of a full blown RPG their lacking writing is all the more noticeable. The main story is not very interesting and neither are the characters. At no point did I feel like I really wanted to move forward with the plot to see what happens and the directing on the cutscenes is still as weird as ever. Moments that are supposed to be surprising or shocking just have no weight behind them. Also at this point being an AC game and having to stick to some franchise conventions is turning into more of a hindrance as what they can do with the story is held back by having to include elements of the larger franchise narrative.
And as a side note, while I played as Kassandra (just liked her voice acting A LOT better) and I have no issue with history being altered a bit to accommodate for her being a woman. I would have liked to at least have people bring it up or mention it from time to time instead of everyone acting like it's completely normal.
And finally, I think the one thing really hurting the gameplay is how everything scales with you. Now that it's presenting itself as an RPG I would have liked to get the same sense of progression that you get in most RPG's but it just simply isn't there. Like, at the beginning of the game your hits might do 30 damage and killing a regular soldier takes 10 hits, fast forward 40 hours and I'm 30 levels higher with much better gear to the point that my attack damage has gone from 30 per hit to 1500 per hit.... but because everything scales with me it still takes 10 hits to kill a regular soldier. It makes combat start feeling monotonous and even though skills help a bit, fights 2 hours in don't feel particularly different from the ones 40 hours in.
Still, as I said, I did enjoy my time with it. I now see potential for the future of the franchise and if Ubisoft finally gets some good writers and maybe rethinks some of the mechanics to fit better with this new RPG style I can actually see AC becoming great.
PS: Also PLEASE can we get location accurate voice overs? Maybe it's just the american version but they have like 4 language options...but no greek. I fucking hate this "we all speak english but with an accent" thing
This also made me skip AC:O because while I heard it made some improvements to the formula, just knowing it was made by Ubisoft meant I wasn't even going to try it unless I could find it for $10 or less.
Well before Origins ever got to that price I got AC:O as a present and you know, gifted horses and teeth and all of that, I decided to give it a try.
I finished the main story last night and I have to say.... that was pretty good. It's definitely not without issues and some of the usual Ubisoft shit is still there (bloat, bad storytelling and more recently bullet sponges) but it felt like a MASSIVE improvement compared to the last game in the series that I played (syndicate) on almost every level and it has left me cautiously optimist about future entries.
I love how they took inspiration from stuff like the Witcher 3 for the sidequests. One thing that always ended up boring me in Ubisoft games was their "activity" based side content so changing that to actual quests with their own unique characters and stories was a big step up. Not all of them are great (or even good) but there's definitely decent variety and some of my favorite moments in the game (both gameplay and story wise) actually came from them. There's this one about the "battle of a hundred hands" which I honestly liked better than anything in the main quest.
Combat and stealth were also more fun than usual. No longer relying on the "wait an counter" system of previous games and instead just feeling like a straight up action RPG with a decent selection of skills and even enough room to somewhat create your own build and fight style. Stealth is still far from being as good as an actual stealth game but at least I felt more in control than in previous games (like being able to crouch and hide wherever I want instead of specific locations)
Story is definitely still and issue though, and I think now that they have shifted the franchise to be more of a full blown RPG their lacking writing is all the more noticeable. The main story is not very interesting and neither are the characters. At no point did I feel like I really wanted to move forward with the plot to see what happens and the directing on the cutscenes is still as weird as ever. Moments that are supposed to be surprising or shocking just have no weight behind them. Also at this point being an AC game and having to stick to some franchise conventions is turning into more of a hindrance as what they can do with the story is held back by having to include elements of the larger franchise narrative.
And as a side note, while I played as Kassandra (just liked her voice acting A LOT better) and I have no issue with history being altered a bit to accommodate for her being a woman. I would have liked to at least have people bring it up or mention it from time to time instead of everyone acting like it's completely normal.
And finally, I think the one thing really hurting the gameplay is how everything scales with you. Now that it's presenting itself as an RPG I would have liked to get the same sense of progression that you get in most RPG's but it just simply isn't there. Like, at the beginning of the game your hits might do 30 damage and killing a regular soldier takes 10 hits, fast forward 40 hours and I'm 30 levels higher with much better gear to the point that my attack damage has gone from 30 per hit to 1500 per hit.... but because everything scales with me it still takes 10 hits to kill a regular soldier. It makes combat start feeling monotonous and even though skills help a bit, fights 2 hours in don't feel particularly different from the ones 40 hours in.
Still, as I said, I did enjoy my time with it. I now see potential for the future of the franchise and if Ubisoft finally gets some good writers and maybe rethinks some of the mechanics to fit better with this new RPG style I can actually see AC becoming great.
PS: Also PLEASE can we get location accurate voice overs? Maybe it's just the american version but they have like 4 language options...but no greek. I fucking hate this "we all speak english but with an accent" thing
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