Assassin's Creed III

[Ayen]

Oh that Templar twist.

I've made it to Connor as a little boy. I'm an Indian!

[Skyblade]

Oh that Templar twist.

I've made it to Connor as a little boy. I'm an Indian!

Prepare for seven hours of annoying "growing up and becoming an assassin" plot. If you can get through that bit (which I basically couldn't, it just got too dull), you can then try to enjoy the actual game.

[Ayen]

Oh that Templar twist.

I've made it to Connor as a little boy. I'm an Indian!

Prepare for seven hours of annoying "growing up and becoming an assassin" plot. If you can get through that bit (which I basically couldn't, it just got too dull), you can then try to enjoy the actual game.

Oh dear sweet Jesus, I already know what you mean. Jumping through trees and whatnot is cool but goddamn I hate hunting and why the smurf do I need to fix this old man's house? You know, game, if you wanted to do the growing up phase, that's fine, but don't put it after I already did a bunch of real trout at the beginning of the game!

[Skyblade]

Oh that Templar twist.

I've made it to Connor as a little boy. I'm an Indian!

Prepare for seven hours of annoying "growing up and becoming an assassin" plot. If you can get through that bit (which I basically couldn't, it just got too dull), you can then try to enjoy the actual game.

Oh dear sweet Jesus, I already know what you mean. Jumping through trees and whatnot is cool but goddamn I hate hunting and why the smurf do I need to fix this old man's house? You know, game, if you wanted to do the growing up phase, that's fine, but don't put it after I already did a bunch of real trout at the beginning of the game!

Yeah, that's the part that seems really weird to me. They give us a fantastic opening, including a compact yet solid tutorial, with a brilliant main character, exciting events, and great look at the world...

Then they dump us in Conner, a character with no personality, and put us in a holding pattern for hours. The Desmond plot is as convoluted, annoying, and nonsensical as ever, so that doesn't pull us along, but there is nothing at all about Conner's training to engage us. With Ezio, they gave us a reason for it (we were learning to be an Assassin from the ground up, we needed to go through the training steps along the way), they gave us a strong personality to hold the experience together, and they actually put a plot to it all. Ezio was seeking to kill those who conspired to destroy his family, and learned about the way of the Assassins and of the threat of the Templar along the way. Conner goes on a similar revenge story, or so you would think, except he just goes outright to get trained, and rather than interesting plot points and hunting for foes, we just get boring training, house repair, and bandit fighting for hours.

I did eventually finish the sequence, but at that time I was so thoroughly sick of it that I just quit. I got the open world, did one mission, and just basically thought: "Why am I here? Why am I doing this? I don't care about Conner. I don't care about his tribe. I don't care about Desmond. The only character left I do care about is the villain, and I know I'm not going to see him again for another forty hours. I'm done." So I shut the game off. I haven't started it back up since, and I don't really have any intention of doing so. I was gifted Assassin's Creed IV, and I haven't opened it. I just don't care about the world any more. I'm sick of running through ten hour introductions (Assassin's Creed III makes Kingdom Hearts II look fast) every game. I'm sick of the constant overly convoluted nonsense that makes up Desmond's story. And I don't have anything worthwhile to get me invested in the experience, because now even the Animus characters are boring, and the story seems nonexistent. ACIII killed the series for me.

[Ayen]

Well, I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who finds Desmond's plot confusing as smurf. Assassin's Creed is the only game I have trouble writing about because even after I played for hours I still have no clue what's going on. Most of the time I'm just going through the motions. They really should have kept Haytham as the main playable character throughout. I don't mind Connor as much and I'm probably more invested in the tribe because my heart always bled for the Indians and what happened to them at this time, but even then going from Haytham to Connor is like MGS2 going from Snake to Raiden. The latter just can't hold a candle to the former.

[Quindiana Jones]

As someone who also had the series killed by AC3, Skyblade, I strongly recommend you give 4 a try. It rekindled my love, and it's just awesome. Did basically everything in, including all the collectibles, just because it was fun, and the real world missions are genuinely interesting to do. They completely 180'd the boring pointlessness of so much of AC3 and made pretty much everything worth doing.

[Skyblade]

As someone who also had the series killed by AC3, Skyblade, I strongly recommend you give 4 a try. It rekindled my love, and it's just awesome. Did basically everything in, including all the collectibles, just because it was fun, and the real world missions are genuinely interesting to do. They completely 180'd the boring pointlessness of so much of AC3 and made pretty much everything worth doing.

I probably will play ACIV, but it currently has to compete with Bravely Default, Fire Emblem Awakening, Conception II (just released today!), and the last half of Dishonored.

Plus, although I didn't like Desmond's story (especially after they killed off Lucy for no reason), I am not sure I could go in without knowing what happened.

[Quindiana Jones]

I did, and it all went perfectly well.

[Ayen]

As someone who also had the series killed by AC3, Skyblade, I strongly recommend you give 4 a try. It rekindled my love, and it's just awesome. Did basically everything in, including all the collectibles, just because it was fun, and the real world missions are genuinely interesting to do. They completely 180'd the boring pointlessness of so much of AC3 and made pretty much everything worth doing.

I'm assuming by the sheer excitement whenever it's brought up, and it being about pirates, that the naval missions have been improved by a large margin? Because those swivel guns were a pain in my ass.

[Del Murder]

The entire game is a giant naval mission. But yes the swivels are much more intuitive to use.

[Quindiana Jones]

It's also the first AC game ever to have a proper reason for having money, which is nice. All of the gameplay components work really well together and there are very few loose ends, I found. It has a Windwaker sense of bigness and grandness without being Just Cause 2ily too massive.