Finished the game at 80 hours. I felt I blazed through it on Easy, but the game was massive. I finished Origins in less than half the time of this.
I think this was something between a good and a great game. I'd give it a 7. I recommend playing this game on easy. The combat system is not deep enough to justify spending the time with sponge enemies. It's a lot more fun to have that push to be able to run through content and just advance. I'd suggest focusing on unlocking the synchronized fast travel waypoints, and advancing in the main story.
Minor spoilers. Be warned!
Cliff notes:
- Alexios is a great character. Good voice acting, he was well captured, and I liked playing as him. I got the "worst" ending, and I found it befitting of a greek tragedy.
- The quality of the side quests are awesome, but it still cannot touch the worst ones in Witcher 3. I think the format they are borrowing from Witcher really fits AC. The eagle vision works as Witcher senses in finding your target.
- Just like Witcher 3, the loot/item/scaling system is awkward. By the end of the game I had so much legendary gear. It didn't matter you got Thessus Boots, Achillis Spear or Jasons Breastplate. Every level you just got new blue and purple randomized versions of equal gear. While I appreciate the fact that you can get cool legendary gear at any point in the game, legendary gear doesn't feel special as it does in a Diablo game. Witcher 3 has the same problem.
- There are some disappoint and memorable historical figures in the game. On the whole side I wouldn't say that there where anyone who was as memorable as Leonardo Da Vinci in AC2, but some of the famous historical people you meet are great. They were better than many of the ones you met in Unity (like Napoleon, which just felt pointless). The greek war between Sparta and Athens is also better integrated into the story than the french revolution was to Unity.
- I think the game as a whole is bloated, but more sub systems worked better than I imagined. The Sparta/Athenian regional war and conquest battles where unnecessary. I get the idea that you are fighting as a mercenary, but you're slaughtering thousands of soldiers, regional leaders and polmarchs from both sides endlessly. NPCs just know that you are an eagle-bearer and are happy to fight with you even though you have killed batallions of their comrades. Its just stupid. The way you pick sides in the conflict feels schizophrenic and pointless.
- Cultist system was pretty good. I think the delivery mechanic of finding clues around the world was fun. I had fun tracking them all down, but it also felt like it was missing something. Some characters had a subplot with them to discover their identity, others would just be random NPCs I killed that turned out to be cultists. I would have invested less time in making less interesting side quests, and more to develop full fledged interesting character arcs for every cultist. In fact- I'd be fine with no side quests from the likes of Herrodotus, Sokrates, Alkibabes and many of the others. Those weren't memorable. I am fine with them as characters in the game, but the cultists would have been more interesting.
- The ending for the cultist plot and the plot about your father was interesting, but I wish it had more answers. And I didn't found the endings to give all the answers. I loved the supernatural mythical elements. The real world plot with Layla was once again, okay, but I am still not warmed on it. It's a bit disappointing how lame and incapable the the assassins seems.
- The skill system is too limited in playstyle. It undermines the RPG element when you get enough skill points to spec in anything. You have so many skill points you can just spec in a mix of all of them. Kinda like in a Bethesda game, you end up not choosing a role because you are just a god of everything. AC needs more individualized skill trees and paths.
- Overall good game. Build well on Origins. A viking themed AC game in 800-1000 AD next? AC Japan?
- I think Origins and Odyssey have a good format for AC. Its impossible for me to go back to the old games. In that way they have ruined them. I think AC should do what Hitman does and remake all AC titles into a unified episodic segment with some sort of meta assassin/templar element. It would be a chance to remake AC1 and Ezio trilogy, 4, Rogue, Unity and Syndicate and re-do some of the story steps, rework combat, progression, loot, quests and missions to the quality of Origins and Odyssey. They all run on versions of the anvil engine.
It would be cool if they made the remakes as you could play the time periods in different games as new templar characters that explored the complex realities of what the templars are trying to achieve.