Assassin's Creed 3

I finally finished AC: Revelations so I could start this.

It’s really, really good. I’m 8 hours in and the game still hasn’t even opened up. That’s pretty amazing for a game released in 2012.

But damn if the optional objectives aren’t hard as hell. When rescuing the guy on the log, “don’t step in the water.” I literally stepped in the water one second after the event started. And that last mission with Haytham, to shoot the wagons? What a pita. Shooting just seems to be plain old broken. Sometimes you aim, and sometimes you don’t. Someone should tell those minutemen to go back to Constantinople in the 16th century because guns were a lot more useful back then.

And finally, the very first event with Haytham to teach me how to parry was clearly broken or something. I was clearly parrying but I wasn’t getting credit. I had to google it. WTF.

I didn’t liberate anywhere, because it didn’t seem like a necessary or interesting part of the game, even when I went and looked for it after reading about it here. Burn 3 blankets?

Almost none of the liberation missions themselves are interesting (a handful are) but liberating areas does unlock more assassins and assassin special abilities.

I’m a bit further, but in the same boat - got caught up on all the previous AC games to play the new one. Despite some apparent negative sentiment in this thread I absolutely love this game. The colonial setting is incredibly detailed, so much so that I was thinking if something like this could be used as a history-teaching tool some day (minus the AC story of course). I like that there are many options at any given time. I can spend hours doing naval missions, working on the homestead, doing the main plot, hunting, or just running around listening to conversations.

I fear that this will all fall apart later in the campaign, but it seems that a lot of the complaints about the game are the lack of cohesion between elements. Maybe my brain ties these together in sort of an RPG way, but I have no problem switching from hunting to doing missions, etc.

It’s definitely quite fascinating, especially the American Indian stuff. Although the detail in the Animus Database became a bit too much. I also like reading the British slant on on the Revolution.

Finished it. The entire last act was shit. I think they were competing with Far Cry 3 to see who could make the worst boss fights. Sad. It’s like it was never playtested. No one ever told them, “this is a great game, but this part here? It’s shit.”

Not sure whether I want to go back and clean up the remaining missions and collectables or not.

Also, maybe I’m dumb, but I missed a whole section of the game. I used the Assassin Tomahawk for 75% of the game. Then I picked up a sword from a dead guy and used that. Then about 90% of the way through I noticed one of notifications saying a new such and such was available in stores and I thought, “oh shit! Stores!” So, I walked into a store for the first time since the prologue. There were guns and swords! Though, oddly, none were better than what I was using. And somehow I lost my Assassin Tomahawk. I don’t know where it went. You’d figure it be on my oddly spartan weapon rack(s), but, no, it’s not there.

And what’s with the uniform racks? I have Ezio’s and the prisoner outfit of all things, but that’s it. All the other racks are empty. I bought all the outfits in the store, but they’re not on the racks. WTF.

My house, despite finishing the game, is oddly barren. There’s a painting here or there, but it’s mostly empty. Just like the basement.

And crafting. WTF. I understand I need to unlock better stuff by doing Homestead missions. But I did do Homestead missions. I jumped at the fucking chance to do Homestead missions. And yet I can’t craft anything except barrels or some shit. What’s the point? Someone up-thread talked about better double-barrel guns and swords that you can (apparently?) craft. But what’s the point of I’ve finished the game and yet was unable to unlock the ability to craft that stuff?

And where’s my “quest log” ? I too remember getting the quest to listen in on interesting people on the Homestead (along with many other mini-quests), but I have no idea how to track my progress. Apparently some guy in Lexington wants beaver teeth. Ok. I only know that because I sold them and it told me I was now missing them for the quest. That’s just… fucked.

Quest log is part of the map interface. Steer the radial wheel down on the map screen, you’ll find it.

Crafting is largely pointless, but you can get better weapons and fufill the delivery quests through crafting. All optional. If crafting is still locked, you’re either missing materials or haven’t finished the homestead.

Outfits are mostly unlocked through getting collectibles and finish chains of sidequests. There’s one for finishing the homestead, for example. The different colors for the assassin’s outfit can be changed at the store. Just rebuy it. It won’t cost anything.

There are homestead missions in all sorts of places, not just on the homestead map. You’ll find them in Boston, in the Frontier, etc. Some of them have multiple steps too. For example, you may recruit some people to your homestead, and then have to help them with something later before they start producing for you.

I’m actually enjoying the Homestead missions - nice little activities to do. Crafting can make you a ton of money, also.

I know, I’ve been doing them whenever I see them, and I look for them everywhere. But I still didn’t do enough.

Has anyone tried out the King Washington DLC? I’m saving it for after I finish the game, but I like the idea of it in theory.

I’m playing it now. I can do a little write-up later.

But, really, there’s very little to spend the money on. I kept expecting there to be more, but once you’ve outfitted your boat, that’s about it. And you can get a ton of money for that from elk hides, no crafting required.

In fact, I never found a crafted item that was worth more than an elk hide or a beaver skin, and you can get those with no skill at all. That’s not to say there aren’t any such craftable items, just that I gave up on the stupid minigame after a while.

Yeah that was my take on crafting as well… since I could make thousands in one hunting trip and never had a need for more money I largely ignored it.

So how many more bad games does this franchise have left in it? One?

It’s ridiculous that this game is worse than AC2 in every single way (except that it’s a cool new setting). They literally haven’t even tried to improve with this one. I don’t know who is running Ubisoft, but I imagine it’s some dude who likes to play eXtreme PaintBrawl while sitting on a dwindling pile of money.

The fact that free running, which you will be doing for 95% of the game, requires only one button to be held down instead of two is all AC3 needs to make it the best of the Assassin’s Creed games.

Your lack of a post means it’s meh?

I’m just working through it slowly.

I haven’t finished it, but here’s what I know:

The strangest things is how they handle the story. I imagined that it would kind of organically grow from the endpoint of the game. Not so! Conner from the game wakes up in an alternate reality where many things are different, the key one being that Washington has proclaimed himself king. So Connor spends the first hour of the DLC going: “What? This is so different! I don’t understand.”

The missions are pretty similar to the main game. Eavesdrop, sneak around, fight. Conner learns how to be invisible, which is fun (you lose health while invisible). It all takes place in the frontier during winter.

There are tiny side-missions that pop up: save the civilian from wolves, bring food to the starving, etc. What’s interesting is that it’s only by doing these missions (and looting chests/corpses) that you get supplies (arrows, etc.). There’s no economy. I actually really like it. AC3’s crafting would have been so much more interesting if instead of converting all your good to cash, you could trade specific items for specific supplies, and that was the ONLY way to get them. Give it some purpose.

Anyway, It’s more AC3 mission content, basically. I’m enjoying it as an excuse to get back into the frontier; not sure I would recommend it as a $10 stand-alone (it was included with my preorder), especially since it will be $30 to experience the whole arc. If something amazing happens by the end (I’d love a pegleg-style platformer mission) I’ll pop back and post.

I still haven’t finished the base game. I just lost interest.

I still think the art direction is wonderful, the ship gameplay is fine (though I’d prefer another order of magnitude of realism, realistically I will never find that in a game), and some of the history and faux-history is interesting. But the bulk of the designed gameplay – the land-based missions – are just no good at all, and the story is as stupid as anything you’ll ever see in a “serious” video game.

Also, not a big deal really, but while the wilderness looks beautiful, those infinite hordes of animals standing around waiting to be slaughtered does not impress me at all. Look at me, the skilled hunter with my mystical native american wilderness acumen and seventeen ways to kill things; but the easiest is to walk up to them and stab stab stab. Or QTE-QTE-QTE as the case may be. I realize beavers are not exactly going to put up a fight, but should they really just be sort of lolling around on the riverbank while I slaughter them? And after the dozenth wolf is killed in a row, to the point that I’m standing thigh-deep in kentucky-fried wolf parts, maybe they’ll start thinking twice about randomly attacking me? But no. I was under the impression that wolves don’t actually attack people that much, and certainly not in that magical AC style considerate one-at-a-time mode that also characterizes street combat. What does it matter how many foes I’m fighting if they only ever attack one at a time and I can parry 100% of the time?

The second part of the Washington DLC is available today.

I played the first two games in the series but always burnt out on them. Never did play Brotherhood or Revelations. Got AC3 during a gamefly sale and loved it. Just completed the main story tonight with 23 hours played. I still have a ton to do in the game. This time around the gameplay was varied enough to keep me going unlike the first two games. Really dug the story and the setting was top notch. Combat was a joke, I was a god the moment I started playing. I went for full sync and some of those optional objectives are total bullshit. Can’t believe how frustrating and buggy some of them were. I really wished the game was better at recapping the previous games events, they really needed Yakuza style recap videos. Thankfully I found one that Gamespot did and sort of know the gist of it all. Still need to watch the recaps for Brotherhood and Revelations, but I’m wondering if they are worth playing instead.

How are the Washington DLC’s?