Assassin's Creed Revelation

Games
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I actually won a couple of den defenses now. I had not realised that barricades can be repeatedly upgraded and also repaired and staffed with defenders. The constant repairs and replacements are pretty laborious when a flamethrower or machine gun ram comes along, though.

But now I have a brigade of level 10 assassins to defend my dens! Except… how do I find out which of my dens have no leader assigned to them? Do I have to take note on the assassin list and compare names with the map screen or what?

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Pretty much. Or you can enter one and see if there’s an assassin waiting inside.

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I had already started writing a list of my dens when I noticed something: if you have dens without leaders and unattached level 10 assassins, all such dens are highlighted with a distinctive quest icon on the map. That’s exactly what I wanted so no need for handwritten notes. :)

I also played the first two Desmond missions. Holy cow, those are terrible. And they don’t seem to tell anything worth knowing either.

204

Finished two more dungeons. I had hoped that maybe the first dungeon was a training dungeon but those were actually even worse. Scripted linear jumping sequences, what the hell? Sofia’s book quest never seems to evolve beyond the simplest item gathering job either.

This game is terrible. They were not content to just remove some of the good parts from the previous two games, they actively made them worse. Is there some amazingly good ending that might make it worth to keep playing?

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I’m in the middle part of the game probably and mostly enjoying it but I agree with those of you who hate the tower defense and first person sections. Man, those are just no good. I feel like Brotherhood was probably the high water mark for me so far, because I really did like developing Rome back up as well as my cadre of assassins, but the new stuff they added this time around were a really bad call.

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I take back what I said about the Den Defense being a cakewalk. Apparently in my first five den defenses, the Templars never attacked with the Greek Fire ram. That thing is nearly unstoppable. I can the problem stopping that if it was on your first defense or two.

Also even if you have a assassin guarding your den, it won’t do anything till you get them to level 15 and they become master of the den. Templars will still attack till your den master is level 15 which is really annoying since I was getting attacked and trying to figure out which den still didn’t have a guard but they all did, just not level 15.

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Yeah, I got that thing on my first three missions… when I only had basic barricades! Not a chance, really. Later I got missions where the Templars didn’t have any ram and I had already a full suite of defenses, and those were indeed a cakewalk. That’s some really bad randomization of the attack waves.

Also even if you have a assassin guarding your den, it won’t do anything till you get them to level 15 and they become master of the den. Templars will still attack till your den master is level 15 which is really annoying since I was getting attacked and trying to figure out which den still didn’t have a guard but they all did, just not level 15.

Yep, only level 15 is a “Master Assassin” who protects a den. And you first have to pump up their XP with strategic missions, and then do the second part of their personal mission in order to actually make them level 15.

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Huh. I thought you got the fire breathing ram thing as the last wave on every tower defense. I did like three of them, lost all three, and then decided to never play that minigame again.

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No there isn’t. It’s mediocrity or worse till the end. And when you get there it fucks up the story even more. Ubisoft is expecting you to remember every detail from AC2 and Brotherhood. I was sitting there thinking Who the F is he and What the F is that?

The biggest disappointment for me is the Altair missions. They made such a hype out of bringing him back. I expected to at least be able to play as him in Istanbul. Instead he just shows up during a few random missions. One of the missions can be completed with full sync by pressing the analog stick forward and tapping B till the end.

There’s zero reason to play it. Just let them take over the den and then kill the captain and the den will be yours again.

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Or better yet, toss 100 gold to every town crier you pass and you won’t have to do either. Avoiding the punishment of the tower defense is so easy I don’t know why it’s on there at all, except to satisfy a requirement to have some new system since it’s a new game.

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Just finished the game (since the new Skyrim patch still isn’t out). Much to my own surprise, it was actually worth it! I do remember the meta-story and characters from the previous games, so I found the epic Metal Gear Solid cutscene at the end quite entertaining. Also, the fourth key dungeon turned out to be the only good one, and gathering all ten memoir pages unlocked the game’s one and only church level (the inside of the Hagia Sofia). And I got 30 Uplay points for finishing… okay, that’s probably not the best reason.

On the downside, the game ends with another terrible scripted wagon chase, just so you won’t form an undeservedly good opinion of it.

Curious about the sequel. Anyone who hasn’t seen this ending won’t understand a word of the story in the next installment, unless they just reproduce the cutscene wholesale. And I got the strong impression that we’ll play present-day Desmond all the time which is going to turn off a lot of fans.

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I think it’s a much better game if you grind enough to get your assassins to level 15 so you don’t have to play the tower game.

Also, I seriously doubt AC3 will only be about Desmond. There will be another ancestor to visit. Not doing so wouldn’t make any sense. As to how they get there - well, we’ll see. But no way AC3 is only about Desmond.

Also - hope I get a chance to make that Juno projection suffer.

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This is such a horribly true observation of the series’ finales.

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I really hope AC3 isn’t just Desmond. Most of the magic of AC, for me, is getting to wander around cities of antiquity. Sure, it’s not super-accurate or anything but it’s enough for me.

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I just can’t see them ever really dropping the historical war between assassins and templars completely. It’s too much a part of what the game is. But that’s just speculation on my part.

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I wouldn’t mind seeing Desmond himself transported to antiquity. I’ve found his character generally much more appealing than Ezio, who’s gotten increasingly humorless, bitter, and hot-headed.

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Just finished it tonight, and overall I’m kind of disappointed even though I had fun.

At first, calling this “Assassin’s Creed 2.6” struck me as really jaded and stupid, but I’ll be damned if there’s not a measure of truth to it now that I’ve played the whole thing. In essence, the game introduces or completely rebuilds a few small game systems (e.g., more training assassins, new weapon wheel, Medeterranian defense, hookblade) and introduces three major ones (tower defense minigame, Desmond sequences, and bombs).

The small stuff is mostly welcome. I abandoned the Medeteranian defense once I got enough high level pokesassins, but using the hookblade to fly down ziplines, trip up random citizens, or pull down scaffolding. So the small iterations were welcome.

The three major systems, though, ranged from “Meh” to “godawful.” Bombs were kind of fun, but of limited usefulness and the crafting system was made way more elaborate and intrusive than it needed to be. The Desmond sequences were so unfun that I’ve yet to do them all and probably won’t. It almost seems like a punishment for finding the hidden collectables. Similarly, the tower defense stuff seemed like a punishment for buying property and was so terribly implemented and unfun that I avoided it completely as well (fortunately, doing so is trivially easy).

It’s unfortunate that two thirds of the new features in the game are flat out terrible. It does not make for a particularly compelling selling point. In general, the game smacks of a rushed project that wasn’t allowed to develop beyond much more than what was already there in its predecessor. The annual nature of this franchise is showing through all this game’s loose seams. This also applies to how the meta-story goes NOWHERE and is advanced not at all by the multi-Macguffin hunt in this game --so disappointing.

All that said, though, I STILL liked the game. Everything that made AC2 and AC:B fun are still there. The traversal is better than almost any other game I’ve played. It’s still fun to stalk dudes and assassinate them. Ubi seems to have gotten the hang of designing decent missions in these games with frequent checkpoints. Buying property up and increasing your wealth is still fun. Hunting for collectables is still fun because traversal is so good. And I still love Ezio as a character. It’s enjoyable to just listen to him and watch him do his thing. The core gameplay is as refined --or more refined-- as it was in AC:B. So, yo, if you enjoyed it there and want to do more of that stuff, you’ll enjoy it here.

Still, too bad that the game doesn’t do much to move things along or take us anywhere really new and interesting (though I did like the Altair flashbacks and the tone of Ezio’s last moments before the credits ran). I’ve got my fingers crossed that the developers are planning on doing something truly different with the next game. I hope they keep the historical angle --that’s part of the game’s appeal IMO-- but there’s so many other places and times they could take it. Victorian England would get my vote. If I had one.

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Also, that last wagon chase sequence wasn’t as bad as I had expected. I finished it on the first try, quite unlike the wagon chase sequence at the beginning of the game.

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I never thought I’d see “Desmond” and “much more appealing character” in the same sentence…

Right, I had collected enough fragments to do them all but just didn’t bother past the first two ones since they had been so utterly terrible and pointless.

In general, the game smacks of a rushed project that wasn’t allowed to develop beyond much more than what was already there in its predecessor. The annual nature of this franchise is showing through all this game’s loose seams.

The enormous end game credits show that Ubisoft studios from all over the world contributed bits and pieces, and I think that’s a major factor as well. Den defense and the Desmond sequences reminded me of the outsourced boss battles in Deus Ex HR – obviously made by someone else without any unified vision, direction, or quality control.

The annual iterations certainly didn’t help, either. The Games, Dammit podcast mentioned that Ubisoft will probably return two 2-year development cycles which can only improve future games.

All that said, though, I STILL liked the game. Everything that made AC2 and AC:B fun are still there. The traversal is better than almost any other game I’ve played. It’s still fun to stalk dudes and assassinate them.

Yes, the basics are as good as ever and I did like how the stories of Ezio and Altair played out. I’m disappointed that they still don’t bother to provide any half-decent economy, though. As usual most of the weapons you can buy are worthless, the books do nothing but give you an achievement, and for some weird reason I got repair-free Assassin’s Armor so early in the game (chapter 4?) that I never bought the higher-grade armor either.

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Funny, I got that badass Assassin armor really early too. Guess they weren’t banking on people working on getting their assassin crew up to speed that quickly.