Yeah - I went ahead and played the First Blade DLC as they probably intended. With the whole ‘family’ angle. I think everything just works better that way. The dialogue doesn’t come off as bad that way.
That’s not to say I don’t understand the controversy. I do. But I just think the story plays better if you give in to the whole hetero-normal thing for this DLC if not the entire game. I mean, my Kassandra slept with just about anything that moved, and fell in love with what, five or six people, so adding one more to the list didn’t seem to be that big a stretch. Whether that NPC warranted that is a different issue, of course.
Guap
1624
Kassandra on a statue of Athena. Kassandra has her helmet down, Athena has her helmet up. Paint that, Bacciarelli!
Since I built a new PC I finally get to play this! Late to the party I guess, no worries about quality of DLC for awhile. What a fantastic game. This is the first Ubisoft game in awhile that I feel has just the right depth.
I’m building Kassandra as a hunter/assasin and de-emphasizing warrior perks. Is that a good strategy for the mid to long game? So far it was working out but then I had my first war / battle and it took a few too many tries to get through. Overall the game is not too hard though (playing on normal).
Also, I was too mad at her father for throwing her off the cliff (I feel I can spoil the early game at this point? If not stop reading!) So I stabbed his heart out, and his “son’s”. Without spoiling it for me further is it A) fine for the plot, or B) should have let him live? I’m mostly playing the good guy role.
Guap
1626
I would at least get the Spartan Kick and Healing one from the Warrior Class. I also like overcharge, it’s good to break through shields.
You should have enough points to throw around soon to not worry so much about specialization of a tree.
Guap
1627
This game has it’s hooks in me good. I’m not sure how to figure out hours played on Xbox, but it’s going to approach Witcher levels in a week or so.
As mentioned upthread, you can unlock female crew members along with their songs.
I didn’t read that before it happened to me. To me, that was a Red Dead Redemption crossing into Mexico moment with emergent gameplay. I had just forcibly recruited by knocking out (Shanghaied?) an all female strike force. We had some fun raiding enemy ships for the pirates. But then as a mission reward I got the female pirate crew skin. Holy cow, pulling out of that female pirate island with an all female pirate crew and then hearing them break out in song was awesome.
I like to get them singing and then go ashore or underwater. Sometimes when I get back they are still signing and it’s like these mythcal Greek reverse-Sirens calling me back to the boat.
Depends on what you want out of the story I guess. Your decisions will come back to haunt you in terms of how the main quest plays out, though.
a) It doesn’t FUNDAMENTALLY alter the course of the game, but it certainly changes some things down the road.
b) If you’re trying to min/max as a good character? Yes, you should have. Games like these always consider forgiveness in just about any circumstance to be the “good” thing to do.
Well, I don’t think you can get the “best” ending for one of the story paths if you kill them.
Finally finished the game and all the DLC. Not going to get too deep into it, as I can be rather wordy, and don’t feel like using spoiler tags (I’ll wait until it seems like I can at least reference some stuff w/o it being too spoilery). 447 total hours according to Steam, although not sure if that’s totally accurate. Still, no complain about it being worth the money.
One thing I will mention is Layla. I don’t hate her like a lot of people seem to, but she’s definitely no Desmond. She seems very entitled - some of which is probably justified, but it’s not a good look when compared to Desmond. I’m still interested to see where they go with her character in future games. And I hope they do continue her story, and don’t just decide to end it in some other media form - like comic books - as they apparently did with the whole Juno thing. Terrible idea.
Guap
1632
Spoiler Alert for main story, when you come back to Athens…
Nooooooooo! Phoebe! And there goes the last of my humanity. Now I’m a killing machine, both Sparta and Athens will die. Man, I hate seeing little kids die in fiction.
If you have it, make sure to play the second episode of the Atlantis DLC.
Guap
1634
So unless I missed it, no one has talked about the combat in super detail. I personally love it. I love the variety of weapons, I mean almost everything is there. Daggers, short swords, long swords, spears, long axes, staves, sledgehammers. . .
One thing I really like is that the DPS stats are a rough estimate. If you can’t connect with the enemy then the DPS doesn’t matter. This means there are some weapons that I find much easier than others, and get into a rhythm with. For instance, I thought I liked the spear, and it’s great for poking, but I don’t like it’s mega attack (rb+rt on Xbox). It twirls around too much. Now the long axe! That’s a spicy meatball mega attack, it smashes straight down and you can chain it super well. I’m also starting to love staves, their normal attack animations really do it for me, they are way quicker than say, a sledgehammer or axe. The daggers are hit or miss, I feel like they are great for close up interruptions but terrible when your enemy has a lot of orange charging/shoulder drop attacks. The swords seem all around balanced, great for fighting men, not so much beasts. I never use them for the big hunts, that’s a spear/axe job.
As for abilities, I’m still respeccing occasionally to mess around with them. I have decided I more or less don’t like the bow abilities besides predator shot. Triple shot and the raining arrows one don’t seem to come in too handy very often. I like crafting the various arrows but that’s about it on that path. Would like to hear from a master archer on a good archery build. Heal thyself is required. Charge attack is required. I keep break shield on the back burner melee slot, I don’t use it much but it comes in handy when I remember. I always forget the Harrass with Lieutenant ability, I might drop that one altogether in a future respec.
I guess I more or less follow the “assassinate until you can, then tear shit up mano e mano” style of play. By the way, the Spartan kick is the second best kick ever implemented in a videogame. We all know what the best kick ever in gaming was…
Guap
1635
Fate of Atlantis DLC is free on most (all) platforms until Sept 1. Get it while it’s hot!
As for me, I’m still loving the all-female choir on my boat. This game is more or less a sailing/ship combat simulator for me now, with the occasional foray inland, where those landlubbers lie.
It’ll probably be free facto free when they start the uplay+ trial in a few days.
Grifman
1637
No, Episode 1 of the Atlantis DLC is free. There are 3 episodes, so you’ll need to buy the entire DLC to experience everything. This is just a teaser.
Guap
1638
Oh, ok, my bad. First ep only.
Guap
1640
I met the Sphinx last night and solved it’s riddles. Wow! That thing is cool looking. If you get them wrong, do you have to fight it? It was huge, I can’t imagine they coded a fight. I kinda wanted to though, to see what happened.
Looking forward to some more stuff like that. I have The Minotaur on my list, though the quest is level 40 and I’m not there yet.
Guap
1642
One of my favorite parts in the game was speaking with Socrates. It’s impossible to tell how he really was, of course, but he fit the character in my mind’s eye very well. I wonder if Plato might make a cameo as that’s how we know most of Socrates actual discourses and philosophies, from his student’s writings.
