Assassins Creed Games - thoughts?

[JudgeDredd]

Does anyone have experience of the Assassin's Creed games?

A good story in a game rally makes the game for me - and there seems to be a fair few releases and all with very high ratings on Steam - most coming in over 80%

Also - does the story tie through (I'm presuming yes)?

[CptHowdy]

just bought iv-black flag. they say its really a pirate game with the assassins creed name. havent got far into it yet though. bought it for 6 bucks at kinguin so cant be beat at that price!

[Yskonyn]

The first one is too long for its own good because the mechanics never change. The first half is cool and then it just becomes rinse and repeat for the remainder of the game.
A thing AC2 suffers from as well, but less. They were clearly trying to think about how to keep you engaged. Still, I never finished two.
After this I stopped playing.

Still have Black Flag in the wrapper and people say it really is a great game, but I haven't come around to playing it.

Despite the repetitive gameplay mechanics, though, production values are top notch! Very atmospheric games with great art and sound design.

[jomni]

Just played first one. It was alright.

[Raied]

First one played it in full, it was nice had fun, good story etc..
My brother bought AC2 so I played it a bit, new stuff, but feels the same mechanism etc the same, got bored in half an hour.
I heard all next AC games has almost the same gameplay, but I am seeing review always praising them, so after many years I bought AC revelation when it was on super sale.... played 15 min, got bored same same same....
Story is cliche and doesn't attract me much, the only thing made me wanted to play AC games are historic setting, but even this many silly inaccuracies were not fun at all.
I heard Black Flag is different as it is more a real pirate game, maybe I will get it if its 90% off in the upcoming sale.

[Hofstadter]

Black Flag is amazing, the ship combat really sells it.

The rest though....jump off tall building, stab someone in the neck, buy a pretty cape.

Rinse and repeat

[Grim.Reaper]

Bought a couple of the versions including black flag.  Played each a little and just wasn't immediately grabbed by them so never got far.  Doesn't mean a bad game, just wasn't my thing.

[Jarhead0331]

Black Flag is arguably the best. However, I found the third in the series, which takes place in the pre revolutionary new world to be quite engrossing. What I enjoy most are the environments. They do a great job of transporting the player back in time.

You may also find Rogue interesting. This game lets you play as a Templar, rather than an assassin, which I thought was a neat twist, since in all the other games you are fighting the templars. Rogue was also the first to implement the ship and sailing mechanics, so that aspect is in the game too.

I think some of the comments above are a bit overly harsh. It's a great series that is highly regarded. It should be experienced, especially at a sharp discount!

[Gusington]

I have played almost all of them since the first one, except Revelations and Unity. I am in the middle of playing Rogue right now which I looked forward to playing for a long time because it is set in Manhattan, Albany and the surrounding countryside. All the games have great polish and production values and all play fast and loose with history, but they are all great fun if not a little samey after a while. Pick an era and a locale you enjoy and you will probably have a great time. My favorites are Black Flag and Rogue.

[JudgeDredd]

Thank you one and all...

Is there a link between them (apart from the "theme")? I'm wondering whether I should start from the beginning?

[Gusington]

I personally don't think it's necessary to start from the beginning. The underlying present day connection to the different historical stories is totally unnecessary and should be jettisoned, IMHO.

[JasonPratt]

Is there a link between them (apart from the "theme")? I'm wondering whether I should start from the beginning?

There is a continuous futuresque plot going on between major chunks of the main game -- as noted, few people seem to like playing the overarching future-plot, but it can't be dodged. (And in game one at least, I can testify the future-plot sections are CLUNKY AS HELL, although I appreciated the framing device as a way of explaining why the game has "gamey" rules about dying and health and saves etc.) The overarching plot tied off, eventually, back... before Unity I think? I don't know for sure, haven't played beyond the first one but I read and watch reviews.

If you don't play them in order, you may be confused as to what's going on during the unskippable future-plot portions. Hard for me to say, but that would be my expectation.

I think everyone agrees the first one is objectively the least-good? I spent two years completing it, not because of its difficulty (none to speak of), but because the gameplay for each mission was soooooo samey with very little variation. The main plot back in Crusader-esque time was kind of interesting, with good and bad guys on both sides (mostly bad), and the Assassin discovering that the most evil of his enemies often had good motives or a lot more nuance than he was expecting. But the overarching plot regards all religions as being the irrational responses to a malignant mind control artifact -- which turns out to be the reason why Ubisoft puts a disclaimer at the start about the game being designed by members of many religious faiths (since it radically insults all religious beliefs equally  ::) :P). (This isn't much of a spoiler since a lot of this is revealed in the opening missions.) Okay, fine, it's a sci-fi / fantasy idea, the writers can run with that if they want, I've enjoyed playing a lot of games whose cosmologies I tolerate; but after slogging through the first game this didn't help me want to play the sequels much, even though I hear they're progressively better (and I do own them from sales, up through Black Flag anyway).

I keep reminding myself to go back to start AssCreed 2 and its... sequels, I guess, before AC3 and 4... but eh, I always have other shiny things to play with. I'll get to them eventually I'm sure.

Also, after discovering the plot to AC1 while playing, I don't feel bad calling the series AssCreed since then.  >:D

[JasonPratt]

Probably worth adding that, from what I understand, AC4 takes place before AC3 even though the futurey plot sections happen after AC3's framing plot sections.

But everyone understands that AC4 exists because fans loved the brief taste of pirate shipping in AC3, and reasonably wanted a whole game of that.  O0

[glen55]

I've played several of them, but only Black Flag to completion (plus nearly completing it again). It is obviously by far my favorite.  It is the only game with sailing, and the sailing is really, really well done from an atmospherics perspective. Don't go expecting realistic sailing - there's not even a wind direction! - but the wave states and the way the ship handles through waves is remarkably good and really gives me the feel of being at sea, especially when me maties are going with a good shanty. It is just fun to sail around sinking stuff. You have a nifty map of the Caribbean, super-compressed so you can sail all over it in just a few minutes, but you will never travel very far before you take a prize or go whaling or diving for buried treasure.

On land, Black Flag is just like any other AC game. And AC is a fun game, it's just kind of repetitive, which is why I repeatedly fail to finish the land-based ones. The high point of the land part is literally high points, where you get fantastic views of some spectacular historic locale. There are definitely variations in gameplay from one to the next, but the biggest variation is always the locale. It's a locale game - and the land locales in Black Flag are nice, but it's not like getting to see medieval Venice or Paris laid out for you. The game is mostly seaborne, but I think it would really have been better if the land part had just been scrapped, as my #1 goal every time I entered a new town was to steal sea shanties to widen my playlist. As a matter of fact I'm pretty disappointed that the naval bit seems to have been a one off and subsequent games have been back to the old land-based AC formula of climb, race, spy, stab. I know it's a little unrealistic, but wouldn't it have been great if they had spun off an actual Caribbean pirating game featuring those same wave states and feel of the tiller and made the navigation, sailing and naval combat more realistic?

The games would most assuredly be better without the outer layer of the story, in the present. It's not very well done and very obtrusive. My attitude tends to be just do the goals I have to do to get out of it and get back into the real game. You don't have to spend any excruciating amount of time in it if you do it that way.

[Jarhead0331]

I've played several of them, but only Black Flag to completion (plus nearly completing it again). It is obviously by far my favorite.  It is the only game with sailing, and the sailing is really, really well done from an atmospherics perspective. Don't go expecting realistic sailing - there's not even a wind direction! - but the wave states and the way the ship handles through waves is remarkably good and really gives me the feel of being at sea, especially when me maties are going with a good shanty. It is just fun to sail around sinking stuff. You have a nifty map of the Caribbean, super-compressed so you can sail all over it in just a few minutes, but you will never travel very far before you take a prize or go whaling or diving for buried treasure.

On land, Black Flag is just like any other AC game. And AC is a fun game, it's just kind of repetitive, which is why I repeatedly fail to finish the land-based ones. The high point of the land part is literally high points, where you get fantastic views of some spectacular historic locale. There are definitely variations in gameplay from one to the next, but the biggest variation is always the locale. It's a locale game - and the land locales in Black Flag are nice, but it's not like getting to see medieval Venice or Paris laid out for you. The game is mostly seaborne, but I think it would really have been better if the land part had just been scrapped, as my #1 goal every time I entered a new town was to steal sea shanties to widen my playlist. As a matter of fact I'm pretty disappointed that the naval bit seems to have been a one off and subsequent games have been back to the old land-based AC formula of climb, race, spy, stab. I know it's a little unrealistic, but wouldn't it have been great if they had spun off an actual Caribbean pirating game featuring those same wave states and feel of the tiller and made the navigation, sailing and naval combat more realistic?

The games would most assuredly be better without the outer layer of the story, in the present. It's not very well done and very obtrusive. My attitude tends to be just do the goals I have to do to get out of it and get back into the real game. You don't have to spend any excruciating amount of time in it if you do it that way.

Black Flag is not the only AC game with sailing. Rogue has sailing too.