Casual achievement hunter’s progress log #67

Another 12 Labours game. It's fine overall. The real issue is that they're the same games each time. We can pretend like there's a huge difference because there's a lion in the game or some ghost added, but that's not some game changer. There's a lot of repetition and not too much substance. While I can't complain about it too much due to its cheap price, I think this game would be better served to take time developing itself and making sure that it actually is a quality product.

I tried buying it once but the game didn't work. I was guessing that it was because I already had a license obtained on UPlay and it caused a conflict, resulting in an error when launching it. Well, I contacted UPlay Support, told them of my issue and… they said they have no fix, they don't know why it exists and that they have a workaround to get it to work by messing with the executable and running it essentially by bypassing the DRM. Well, I personally wasn't fine with that because I want to track my statistics on games, especially on Steam. That's why I bought the game essentially for a second time (the first time I got it on a bundle). So I told the UPlay support guy of my hypothesis. He said that it's possible, but it's hard to really know. I recommended that they remove my original Assassin's Creed 2 key and let me run the game. He said he couldn't help me, but that he'd forward this idea to the Assassin's Creed 2 support team. What a joke. The best I can imagine is that the support team for it is one old guy in the annex just sitting in his damp office while watching some cooking video on how to cook ramen for one, when all of a sudden the CEO comes in and hands him a report. He says "We need you to get back to work" with a dramatic panning shot to the support guy where he just nods and takes the mission.
In reality though, the UPlay support guy thought that I was probably a know-it-all jackass that could be silenced by saying that my idea was forwarded to a team that had been dead for probably 7 years.

Well, I didn't give up. I was desperate to play it for a while by then and being denied made me more desperate to play it. So I waited. Like hell I was going to pay 10€ for a game that I could get for less than treefiddy. So the Halloween sale rolls in and… it's not discounted. "Did I just manage to catch the moment when Ubisoft stopped giving shits and just stopped making sales?". Well, I had to wait more. Black Friday comes in and thankfully the game's on sale. To mitigate my risk, I buy everything up until (and including) Assassin's Creed Liberation HD. Just in case I can't get them again. I even got the deluxe editions for the ones that had them.
Well, previously I already had removed all the licenses that I was going to buy on Steam from UPlay to test out my theory. I was right. It worked. Years of confusion from users. Dozens of forum posts with confused and angry users fixed by some dumbass who had a theory. Thanks for listening to my idea, UPlay…

Oh, the game's good btw. I liked it.

Probably my favourite one in the franchise so far. It's more polished than the second game while still being experimental enough and interesting enough to be new. The story's pretty meh, but it still is more compelling than the story of the first game.

What a main theme. It's so amazingly good.

Too bad there's not much more to note with this one. The graphics are an improvement, but everything else is the same or worse. The story's disjointed without any central idea. The romance subplot actually did get me invested, but there was nowhere near enough to make it notable. The locations are dull. Constantinople just isn't an interesting city. The walls make it feel claustrophobic (but it's not a horror game, so it's just annoying), the river separating the city is a massive nuisance since all it does is waste your time. The hookblade is genuinely great, but it just doesn't carry the game enough to make it much more fun.
The plot about Suleiman has nothing interesting happen and it doesn't grip you in any way. Though, playing as Altair was a pleasant surprise and it made me like him much more as a character, most of the time you were in walking cutscenes rather than actual gameplay moments. There's only so much frail walking that you can do before it gets tedious. Missions that'd be completed in around 5 minutes in normal speed take 20 when playing as Altair. Most of the time he's an old man and it just doesn't make the gameplay interesting. I was having fun looking at his story though, so overall it's positive.

The movement would be the worst one in AC's Ezio Trilogy if it weren't for the hookblade. Like with everything else, it has been slowed down. I get that Ezio is supposed to be old now, but I won't have more fun because I can think "Oh cool, it's slower because of Ezio's muscles slowing withering". It's a game that's worse in almost every way compared to Brotherhood.

No innovations, no focus and nothing really of note.