I would actually argue Oddysey is their peak. A couple decades of gameplay improvements and interwoven ideas like the ship, the recruitable crew, RPG like skill trees, experience points, leveling, loot drops . . . it’s their finest game and I hope they continue with that direction. They are giving RPG makers a run for their money.
I mean, there was an article when they started down this path that this was exactly their business plan. It should be no big surprise that it’s worn thin for some people now.
I don’t know about any peaks but I’d say the first Division is probably my favorite Ubisoft game. Running around a wiped-out Manhattan plinking gas tanks on dudes’ backs was huge fun to me. I put a crazy amount of hours into that game.
Odyssey is my fave Ubi game also.
But I heard Breakpoint really rattled them, and they think it tanked because the RPG/loot stuff alienated a large proportion of the existing Wildlands player base.
So they are reconsidering the use of RPG mechanics in future games. Specifically Watch Dogs Legion (and possibly Rainbow Six) was delayed so they could reassess/remove some of that stuff.
How comprehensible/enjoyable are the two recent AC games (Egypt and Greece) if you’ve never Creeded and Assassin before?
Also if you have the hand-eye coordination of a dead, blind cat. And possibly routinely lose runs of Slay the Spire, a turn-based card game because you misclick stuff.
Pretty enjoyable if you believe this guy. :)
As for hand-eye, you can use a controller. :) It does not require any super major reflexes. It’s more timing/rhythm based I guess.
I don’t know the answer, but I was amused by this post I found on Gamefaqs when I googled what the difficulty levels in Odyssey were:
I’ve barely touched any of the Creeds. Then I got to try Odyssey and really liked it, so I picked up Origins because it was cheaper, and absolutely love it. It’ll be one of the few games I ever finish because I love the protagonist, Bayek of Siwa, that much. I’d totally recommend either, to be honest.
That’s not actually a comforting thought! I had to get a friend to play Magna Carta for me, cuz the attacks in its TB combat system used a rhythm meter to increase damage/effect, and I just could not do it, lol.
How about the storyline? I watched a friend (actually, the same one who did MC for me) play the first few hours of the origin AC game and thought the future timeline frame story had some really tantalizing elements. Will I feel lost with that stuff if I’ve skipped, uh, 47 intervening volumes? Or does that stuff even matter anymore?
Personally I felt lost with the future stuff in every AC game I’ve played and it never really mattered. Eyes glaze over, skip through. ;)
The modern games have significantly reduced that aspect of the narrative though.
I’m 30 hours into Origins and maybe a tiny fraction of that has been the silly future stuff.
I haven’t played Odyssey, but I’m kind of skeptical, for the reasons that started this thread… The first AC was really cool. The story was neat.
Later ones were much less so. The alien story was never as interesting as it started out in the first AC. And ultimately the games ended up being pretty much the same game every time. The gameplay was cool at first, but after a while it became somewhat stale. After you’ve parried your millionth dude and then stabbed him the face, you’ve seen what you’re gonna see.
By comparison, Gamecube PoP:SoT was one of the greatest games ever… everything about that game was just so well put together. The rewind mechanic was such a brilliant addition that worked so well.
The future stuff is my favorite part of the Assassin’s Creed framing, but I believe it ends with Assassin’s Creed 3. So after that point, I don’t think it matters except as a framing device.
Did you play Origins? That and Odyssey are pretty much reboots into RPG territory.
That’s useful to know. I might just Wikipedia/Youtube how it turned out, then. I remember really jiving with it at the time of the first game.
Thanks y’all, I think I actually already own all the modern games on Steam cuz I am an idiot with my money, but never made time to play them out of fear of misisng out on previous games’ content. . .
Its relevance as a major plot point ends with AC3, I think it’s fair to say. The future is still a part of the following games but it’s much more part of the background. Though I guess that could change in Odyssey as I haven’t played that yet.
“Creeding the Assassin” is now part of my gaming lexicon.
“I’m going to creed that assassin so hard (notgay) he won’t be able to climb any towers for a month!”
TBH I prefer to Creed them on the towers, but YMMV
Specifically, whatshisface the modern day dude in the first game, his story ends in 3. There’s still future stuff after that, it’s still the best part of the story, and it definitely has continuity with previous games including the 1-3 arc. This is why I stopped playing Origins and went back to trying to get through the intervening games (I am still half way through Black Flag though I may give up on it if I can’t do this terrible mandatory chase sequence). It is definitely downplayed, though. Which makes me sad because personally I have never found the historical stories compelling.
And the stuff designed to keep people coming back to one title was presumably part of the Uplay subscription strategy too, so it’s a strategy problem as well as just some games that didn’t do too well now.