I would say my favorite AC games are based on a combination of setting and playstyle. Currently, it's Assassin's Creed Origins at the top, with the "Desmond Games" (Assassin's Creed 1 - 3) right after.
I put the "Desmond Games" together because I like to play the entire story of connected games together. However, if I have to rank them:
1. Brotherhood (I really loved the design of the City of Rome, as different districts have different feelings when you travel through them, and I personally think the whole assembling a team together was done really well in this game).
2. Assassin's Creed 3 (I'm a fan of the Revolutionary War setting, plus I think the Parkour is definitely improved as you can even parkour through a forest. I also really enjoy the concept of building a whole community by finding and helping people each with their own stories.)
3. Assassin's Creed 2 (A lot of people consider this the best, and for good reason. There's something about the Rennessaince aesthetic I really like, and the concept of using different groups of people to help with your missions is probably done the best here.)
4. Assassin's Creed (while the first game definitely had the weakest combat and stealth, I guess the story is actually pretty interesting in the first game and I do dig a Middle Eastern setting which I REALLY wish AC can return to)
5. Revelations (This to me had the weakest story and the most unimpressive of new features. Sure the hook is fun when ziplining, but the bomb system is useless for me. The only thing I found enjoyable was the setting of Istanbul Turkey, which I found to be a really awesome recreation of the same city I visited before.)
My Rules: THE BOOKS MATTER. THE EXTENDED CUTS DO NOT MATTER. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OBJECTIVELY GOOD STUFF. THE WORST THING SOMETHING CAN BE IS BORING. THE WORST ATTENTION IS NO ATTENTION.
As for the others? Well, I've only ever played a bit of Black Flag, Syndicate, and Odyssey. While I appreciate those settings, I usually like them more for their usage in fantasy rather than the real-life period. That and gameplay wise, neither of them have really gelled with me.
My Rules: THE BOOKS MATTER. THE EXTENDED CUTS DO NOT MATTER. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OBJECTIVELY GOOD STUFF. THE WORST THING SOMETHING CAN BE IS BORING. THE WORST ATTENTION IS NO ATTENTION.
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As for the others? Well, I've only ever played a bit of Black Flag, Syndicate, and Odyssey. While I appreciate those settings, I usually like them more for their usage in fantasy rather than the real-life period. That and gameplay wise, neither of them have really gelled with me.
That's a shame, Black Flag and Odyssey are by far my favourites.
One of the reasons I stopped Black Flag was (at the time) I thought it wasn't really an Assassin's Creed game, as it leaned harder on the pirating stuff. Looking back, the pirating stuff is fun, but personally I've never really been the guy who cared too much about customizable vehicles just so the primary function (other than attacking ships for resources) was getting from point A to point B. (Ironically, it was one of the things I proposed Bioware should implement in a future Mass Effect game.)
Odyssey's problem is it's size, mainly that it's too big for me.
My Rules: THE BOOKS MATTER. THE EXTENDED CUTS DO NOT MATTER. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OBJECTIVELY GOOD STUFF. THE WORST THING SOMETHING CAN BE IS BORING. THE WORST ATTENTION IS NO ATTENTION.
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Black Flag ends up having a very strong "Assassin vs Templar" storyline. It had some of the best written Templars and Isu stuff, in my opinion. I wish we could've enjoyed another game with Edward, but they elected to tell the rest of his life in comic books. 🙄
I picked up Unity again this week. I just really wanted to enjoy Paris, again. I've been doing tons of side content, and I'm sitting at around 28% Completion, I think.
I've actually played the game from 0 to 100% Legend multiple times. (Not to mention the millions in XP/Creed Points I accumulated after already achieving Legend.) I had a Legend save file on a flash drive that I'd periodically load and enjoy. I guess I waited too many PSN updates since the last time. My PS4Pro doesn't even recognize the drive as being formatted. Well, shit.
If I want to have that empty map, all the unlockables and the Legend moniker again, I guess I'll have to again earn them. There are a couple of unlockables that are mildly annoying to get, but meh. There's no rush.
I wish my Club had finished the club goals. We got 8 out of 11 before it became too hard to keep 4 members online at the same time. I pretty much single handedly won all of our Club Competitions. Beside the fact that I like winning, I do still reap the rewards with each playthrough. I begin the game with all of those prizes in my inventory.
5 years and a dozen performance nerfs post-launch, and this game still looks good. It's no longer as crisp as the latest releases, and it lacks 4K and HDR capability, but it's still a good looking game. It's been fun to get back into it. The parkour alone is worth firing up the game again. Parkour was freaking perfect in Unity. It makes me a little sad that I can't tag a few club members and run some CoOp missions and heists. I bet many of them no longer even own the game after 5 years. I find my keeping games forever is not the norm.
Last Edit: Oct 16, 2019 3:33:03 GMT by Element Zero
I would say my favorite AC games are based on a combination of setting and playstyle. Currently, it's Assassin's Creed Origins at the top, with the "Desmond Games" (Assassin's Creed 1 - 3) right after.
I put the "Desmond Games" together because I like to play the entire story of connected games together. However, if I have to rank them:
1. Brotherhood (I really loved the design of the City of Rome, as different districts have different feelings when you travel through them, and I personally think the whole assembling a team together was done really well in this game).
2. Assassin's Creed 3 (I'm a fan of the Revolutionary War setting, plus I think the Parkour is definitely improved as you can even parkour through a forest. I also really enjoy the concept of building a whole community by finding and helping people each with their own stories.)
3. Assassin's Creed 2 (A lot of people consider this the best, and for good reason. There's something about the Rennessaince aesthetic I really like, and the concept of using different groups of people to help with your missions is probably done the best here.)
4. Assassin's Creed (while the first game definitely had the weakest combat and stealth, I guess the story is actually pretty interesting in the first game and I do dig a Middle Eastern setting which I REALLY wish AC can return to)
5. Revelations (This to me had the weakest story and the most unimpressive of new features. Sure the hook is fun when ziplining, but the bomb system is useless for me. The only thing I found enjoyable was the setting of Istanbul Turkey, which I found to be a really awesome recreation of the same city I visited before.)
The Desmond games were the highlight of the series for me as well, mainly because of the (relative) coherence of the present day story, which ever since Black Flag became somewhat of a joke (though the historical settings remained on a super high quality level throughout IMO).
For me, AC2 is the best of the bunch, simply because it was such an improvement over the first game in almost every single aspect. Both Brotherhood and Revelations felt like huge Add-Ons in comparison (at least to me) and were fairly sparse on innovation. Also, I liked the mutiple different locations (Florence, Venice and the Tuscan countryside) better than Rome for some reason. I always like to travel in games.
AC3 is certainly better than the critics made it IMO but Connor just couldn't hold up to Ezio as a protagonist. I think he is still decent but Ezio was just awesome over his three game arc and it was very hard to compete with him.
I completely agree with you on AC1. You can definitely tell that they were still in the process of finding the right gameplay for the series in that one but the middle eastern setting was fantastic and the sense of scale (for a game of that time) was very very cool. In general, first games in a series get a bonus from me.
I do encourage you to try at the very least both Black Flag and Rogue again. Just ignore all the collectable crap and do the main story (they are easy enough that you don't need all the extra gold and stuff). Not only are they really nice and true open world games in their own right but I ended up loving the "18th century arc" that is told through AC2, Black Flag (and its Freedom Cry DLC, which is actually an important bridge), Rogue and also Liberation (to a lesser extent). There are many many crosslinks between the games.and once you are through the entire arc, you really get a full understanding of a lot of the AC3 characters like Haytham Kennway or Achilles Davenport. If you stick to the main questlines, they aren't really that long either.
Not only are they really nice and true open world games in their own right but I ended up loving the "18th century arc" that is told through AC2, Black Flag (and its Freedom Cry DLC, which is actually an important bridge), Rogue and also Liberation (to a lesser extent).
I just recently played Liberation for the first time (free with AC Odyssey's Season Pass) and the only thing I will remember the game for is the line from Élise:
"Aveline, old girl! Where you been? The swamp's not the same without you. The gators are getting uppity!"
Floored me with laughter since I did some gator hunting the first time I visited the swamp
That's a bit too much for me I think. A free glowing winged Unicorn???
Winged mount is awesome though. Never dies after jumping from cliffs. I lost count how many Phobos's I...umm..."sent to a farm" because I misjudged some steep corner If I didn't have my winged Sphinx, I would ride the purple unicorn too!
That's a bit too much for me I think. A free glowing winged Unicorn???
Winged mount is awesome though. Never dies after jumping from cliffs. I lost count how many Phobos's I...umm..."sent to a farm" because I misjudged some steep corner If I didn't have my winged Sphinx, I would ride the purple unicorn too!
I didn't know they could (non-terminally) jump off cliffs... learned something new today!
I finished all the Dreadful Crimes memories in Syndicate yesterday. I am really glad I got this DLC. I thought solving those murders were the most fun things to do in the game so far. I already liked them in Unity and they were just as nice here. Granted,in terms of gameplay, they are not exactly challenging (just running around and finding stuff) but they told cool little stories and the conclusion was very nicely done as well. Playing these actually got me to start re-watching Sherlock (the modern day Sherlock Holmes TV series) again, great series btw.
I also collected the last of the music boxes and unlocked the
Gotta say, it looks really out of place, so I am not going to use it. Also, nothing for poor Jacob? I was a little disappointed after all this effort, though finding the boxes was kinda fun. I always like these treasure-map or image recognition puzzles, where you get a picture and then have to find that spot in the open world. So no hard feelings.
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After finishing all the side activities, collecting all collectables and freeing almost all of London (except one area in Wesminster where you need a voltaic bomb to complete the optional objective and I don't have those yet), well, in short after over 30 hours of game time, I was just about ready to finally continue with the main story, which is still in the beginning of sequence 4. The only other stuff left were the "last maharajah" memories, so I decided to wrap those up first as well.
On one ocasion, you have to defend a boat on the Thames from snipers and the optional objective is to defeat those in close combat. Since I always try to complete the optionals whenever possible, I tried to get ahead of the boat but Evie jumped into the water and clipped into the boat itself. So I reloaded form last checkpoint and got stuck in a situation, where the game loaded, then I got a black screen for a long time , then I saw her on the boat for about a millisecond, desynchronizing and then it was back to a load screen. You couldn't even hit Esc to get to the menue in that infinite loading loop. Restarting the game didn't help, deleting the save didn't help, verifying the game files didn't help. Looking through the Ubisoft forums revealed that quite a few people had issues with infinite loading loops in Syndicate and all the proposed workarounds didn't work. I was sure that my savegame and progress were all gone and I was furious. Then, I found a very obscure little forum post of someone, who wrote that if you minimize the game just as the loading screen goes black, you can trick the game into restarting the mission and breaking the loop. I had to try about 20 times until I got the timing right but thank gosd finally it worked.
And the moral of this story: Having just one single save for game progress is NEVER a good idea! If you don't want to allow manual save control for the player for whatever reason, at least keep the least three or something! Especially if your game is buggy!
And the maharajah missions are buggy as hell, this was not the only issue I encountered. I had quite a few other triggers that didn't work properly and stuff like that but most could be solved by a simple reload/restart. This one almost messed up my save though and that was not cool.
From now on, I will regularly make a manual backup of my local save file in Windows Explorer if that's what it takes but really it should be Ubi's job to provide redundancies for things like this.
Anyway, sorry for the rant. Onward!
Last Edit: Oct 18, 2019 15:38:23 GMT by AnDromedary
And the maharajah mission are buggy as hell, this was not the only issue I encountered. I had quite a few other triggers that didn't work properly and stuff like that but most could be solved by a simple reload/restart. This one almost messed up my save though and that was not cool.
From now on, I will regularly make a manual backup of my local save file in Windows Explorer if that's what it takes but really it should be Ubi's job to provide redundancies for things like this.
Anyway, sorry for the rant. Onward!
The maharajah stuff is definitely glitched far too much. I recall an especially funny one (still requiring a checkpoint restart) where just approaching the Queen's carriage sent the whole thing flying as if hit by a nuke. And there was no carriage and the cutscene couldn't continue The second time I approached veeeeery slowly to trigger and see the cutscene and right after the conversation in it ended - carriage was bombed away again. But it didn't matter since it wasn't needed anymore apparently, lol. It was funny talking to the maharaja while in the background the Queen's wheels were being trashed in high speeds.
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I flirted with starting a new PT of AC Origins, today. I loaded my NG+ in Alexandria and took a job from Redda. That job took me south of the Qattara Depression. I traveled via chariot. After finishing that job, which thankfully required no return-trip, I rode my favorite dromedary to Siwa. My (real-life) dog then urgently needed to hang out with me, because he's pretty awesome that way, so I turned it off; but I just might start a new adventure with Bayek soon. (That is if my dog will allow it. He's needy. )
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I ended up deciding to finish Odyssey's Atlantis DLC, rather than starting something else. I'd logged 720+ hours in Odyssey and just couldn't even look at Kassandra when I last played. That was months ago. I stopped nearly immediately upon arriving in Hades. The break did me good, and I'm glad I've resumed. I'll post my feelings on Hades in the Odyssey thread, but I'm glad I decided to finish the story.
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I completed the Odyssey, today. This was my fourth PT, with each being 100% completionist in its time. This, though, was the first I've completed since the Atlantis arc was released.
LotFB sucked, but most of the rest of this game impressed me. The modern day stuff is meh, but they've done well in intertwining past and present, making them interdependent.
A lot of dangling threads from a decade of games were beautifully tied off in Judgment of Atlantis. I look forward to seeing what the next game holds. I wish we could be rid of Layla, but Danes should be cool. I do hope we don't get excessive Norse mythology. I'm more than full up on that type of stuff. I'm ready for a return to less fantastical stories. Maybe the next game will finally be the one that let's us choose between the Order and the Brotherhood?
Last Edit: Nov 1, 2019 2:43:01 GMT by Element Zero
I completed the Odyssey, today. This was my fourth PT, with each being 100% completionist in its time. This, though, was the first I've completed since the Atlantis arc was released.
LotFB sucked, but most of the rest of this game impressed me. The modern day stuff is meh, but they've done well in intertwining past and present, making them interdependent.
A lot of dangling threads from a decade of games were beautifully tied off in Judgment of Atlantis. I look forward to seeing what the next game holds. I wish we could be rid of Layla, but Danes should be cool. I do hope we don't get excessive Norse mythology. I'm more than full up on that type of stuff. I'm ready for a return to less fantastical stories. Maybe the next game will finally be the one that let's us choose between the Order and the Brotherhood?
You shut your mouth now! Don't listen to him, Ubi! I don't care if we will be wielding Thor's or Grabthar's hammer, but there better be a Kraken (we already had it mentioned in ACOD's awesome quest with the Spartan ingrates...umm, I mean children), Loki, Fenrir, Valkyries, magic, thunder...too far? I don't think so Been wanting AC to move to the myths and magic for far too long (since around Revelations). Keep your Assassins and Templars. It's all about the Isu magic!
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I completed the Odyssey, today. This was my fourth PT, with each being 100% completionist in its time. This, though, was the first I've completed since the Atlantis arc was released.
LotFB sucked, but most of the rest of this game impressed me. The modern day stuff is meh, but they've done well in intertwining past and present, making them interdependent.
A lot of dangling threads from a decade of games were beautifully tied off in Judgment of Atlantis. I look forward to seeing what the next game holds. I wish we could be rid of Layla, but Danes should be cool. I do hope we don't get excessive Norse mythology. I'm more than full up on that type of stuff. I'm ready for a return to less fantastical stories. Maybe the next game will finally be the one that let's us choose between the Order and the Brotherhood?
You shut your mouth now! Don't listen to him, Ubi! I don't care if we will be wielding Thor's or Grabthar's hammer, but there better be a Kraken (we already had it mentioned in ACOD's awesome quest with the Spartan ingrates...umm, I mean children), Loki, Fenrir, Valkyries, magic, thunder...too far? I don't think so Been wanting AC to move to the myths and magic for far too long (since around Revelations). Keep your Assassins and Templars. It's all about the Isu magic!
I think your wishes will win out in this case. The fantasy stuff has been selling very well, and it's definitely easier to monetize in the Store.
I'm sure I'll have fun with whatever is launched. I'd just love a gritty, Assassins vs Order game with maille armor, longships, etc... I'll get some of that, no doubt; but I'll also be swimming in oversized weapons and fantasy armor.
As I was playing through Atlantis, I again wondered, "How do they go back to how things were?" If our next protagonist can't leap off of cliffs and walk away, someone's going to complain. If we don't have technomagic, someone's going to complain." I don't know that they can go back to the earlier style that I'd prefer, as it might alienate the resurgent fanbase.
I'm curious to see how they do the protagonists. I assume we'll have both genders. They can't keep doing the sibling thing every game, so I wonder what will tie the two together this time.
"Kneel before the Lord Dragon, or you will be knelt." 21 Feb 2019 at 6:59am - It has not been forgotten. It will not be forgiven. We've now met seven times... Revenge is ice cream - Serza, April 2020 Also known as Mike, David, Scott or Bruce
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