VIDEO Assassin's Creed Series

So, I've been catching up on the AC series (on PC), and just finished Revelations. It was a bit slow to get started and the story seemed pulled out of thin air, and the mechanics were a chore, but I wound up loving it as a story piece because of how it dealt with both Altair and Ezio.

I'm trying to decide whether to get into AC III, and wondering if anybody here can help me decide if it's worth getting straightaway, or better to wait until the price drop.

- I'm a very paranoid, stealthy player. How hard is it to manage notoriety? I hated managing it in the first place, but it was even worse in Revelations without posters everywhere.

- In Revelations, I hated Den Defense, so my only alternative was to train my assassins vigorously... which was a chore in its own right, because Mediterranean Defense broke my immersion way too often. Are there constraining elements like that in AC III, or are the minigames more optional like they were in AC2?

- I've heard complaints about Connor, but I'm wondering if that's just because people missed Ezio. Is he whiny, or is he more of a strong silent type?

- I've heard climbing is less clunky. How's the fighting? Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of games being really difficult, and more about the world experience.

- Tyranny of King Washington... worth getting?

 

Posters make a return, and town criers take over the role of heralds. Never really had a problem with notoriety that wasn't an intentional part of the story, myself.

Den Defense is gone. The Mediterranean Defense concept returns to allow your Assassins to aid in the colonial war effort. The one thing you may find more constraining is that now the Assassins you recruit are much more fleshed out, fully individual characters in their own right. There's only six, and they can't die; when they're beaten in a battle, they're only wounded and become unavailable until they "heal." However, recruiting them is a bit more of a chore because they have story demands that need to met, like stopping a number of tax collectors from harassing citizens, destroying cashes of enemy supplies, and other things like that. For them to follow you, you have to prove you're a good person worth following, and I found it works well as far as the story goes. There's a good bit to do for each of them, though.

Connor is not Ezio. If you're one of those people who hoped he'd be Ezio 2.0 packaged in a Mohawk shell, you will be disappointed. To put it plainly, Connor is Captain America before there was an America. He's a soft-spoken, all around nice guy who does whatever he can to help people. He's a young guy, who when we leave him is barely older than Ezio when we found him, and you'll notice some immaturity in his attitude at certain points. He's the kind of genuinely good person who believes that other people are good, and is more than a little disappointed when people fail to live up to his expectations. There are really two stories when it comes to Connor: one of an Assassin destroying the bad guys, and one of an Assassin uplifting the good guys. While the later is ultimately optional, when played together, they provide a much fuller look at a very rich character.

The combat system's been overhauled, and will probably be a little tricky to get a handle on when you first start. Muscle memory is going to kick your ass in the beginning, and there's no shame in that. Once you get a feel for the new system, though, you're a warrior without peer. Connor's got a load of great weapons and a lot of great, fluid fight animations.

 

Awesome. This is super helpful. I think I can handle recruiting assassins, as long as it doesn't have that same "not very important, but looming annoyingly overhead" feel of the previous games two systems (which were kinda like the dull parts of an RPG but without any character-building fun).

But I hugely appreciate the description of Connor, as I couldn't really read any more about him without spoilers. I had it in my head that he was either legitimately irritating, or just more subtle than Ezio and people weren't picking up on it. But the personality you describe makes sense, especially considering the direction the Templar death speeches were going in Revelations... lots of targets who actually believed their cause.

So I'm in. AC IV looks amazing to me, and mechanically, I'm actually somewhat fond of this gradual refinement process Ubisoft is using. Sure, it can cause a glut and result in day-one bugs, but it has its benefits in regards to world-building and figuring out which extra bits work and which don't.

 

I've actually been doing a replay of the series in time for AC4, and have just finished Revelations myself. I've heard many express they were annoyed by the Tower Defense mechanic... how does that get activated?

This is the second time I've played Revelations and, both times, it only happened during the story mission in Sequence 2.

I echo all of Mia's sentiments. Connor's arguably more interesting than Ezio as he's much less conventional, which is most likely the reason he wasn't received as well. He doesn't emote as directly as protagonists generally do.

On the Tyranny of King Washington - it took me 11 hours, getting full sync and all treasure chests, which was a good length I felt. The gameplay throws in some curveballs from standard AC3 and the story falls in the realm of crazy-AC plotline while very much wrapping up Connor's character development.

If you've got the money, I'd recommend it. Best DLC for an AC game so far and it seems AC4 will likely be following the 3-part, one story format too.

 

*sighs*

There's already an AC thread, guys:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/altair-you-a-new-one-the-assassins-creed-series.30933421

 

Jones: It's if your notoriety gets high enough. Templars try to take back a den, but alternatively, you can start training your master assassins up to lock them. Unfortunately, that just meant that I was trying to wrap that up and lock my dens without really doing any story missions, so it made the first half of my playthrough quite crappy.

Invidious: I searched for Assassin's Creed, and the only posts that showed up were locked. That one didn't appear. Sorry, but also, not exactly my bad...

 

Thought there might be an AC thread in here somewhere. Anyway, I replayed sequence 1 on AC4, to collect things I missed. It shows that I obtained all the chests in my progress, but it didn't save gold amount, which would be about 6000 instead of 500. What gives? Also keep in mind that if the answer seems obvious, I am new to AC. I'm currently halfway on sequence 2.

 

Already a thread for this

 

Connor is my favorite of the Assasin's Creed characters and I'm really irritated we're not going to see him during the French Revolution. I really wanted to see him becoming a full sea-Captain and dealing with the situation from an outsiders perspective.

I think people missed Ezio but they were also irritated that Connor seemed far more naive. After all, the idea of a Mohawk revolutionary soldier is inherently funny in a very black humor sort of way.

 

Wrong Thread Fellows.

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/altair-you-a-new-one-the-assassins-creed-series.30933421/unread