Report #33

Release Date: 2012

Assassin's Creed III is … well, an Assassin's Creed game. It very much takes up the usual formula of climbing, sneaking, collecting stuff, lockpicking and of course assassinating enemies. The game is set in the beginning American Revolution. You play as a young half-native assassin, trying to minimize the influence of the templars in the new world.

I don't regret spending 60 hours on the game, as I had fun most of the time, but I understand why people have a negative opinion on the game. For an AAA title, there is an inexcusable amount of bugs in it. Thankfully I never encountered a gamebreaking one, but a ton of minor bugs still appeard. Be it, that your character changes his appearance mid-cutscene (all the time), a NPC (or horse) walks through the cutscene when they shouldn't (sometimes) or you clip through the world, falling to death (rare). This shouldn't happen in a newly released game, but even less so in a game which is several years old, with enough time to patch these things…

There is really a lot to say to this game. For every enjoyable aspect, there is truly awful one. While I think the graphics improved compared to earlier titles, they still aren't great compared to other games from 2012. Hunting for treasures on the map is fun as always, but lockpicking them is totally random bs. Personally I felt the controls are better than in AC2, but sometimes it is still impossible to get you character to do what you want. It is great fun to build up your own little settlement in the frontier, but managing the economic part is a nightmare. There is a whole part of the game which involves sailing a whole damn warship yourself, which I found probably the most fun in the whole game … but it's almost of no consequence overall. There are several little scenes which really make you (or at least me) care for the members of your small community, but the overarching mainstory did not manage to reel me in.

And that's maybe my main complaint. The important moments of the game felt really badly orchestrated. Especially in the music compartment. The music always seems to set in late and is never as epic as the cutscenes needs it to be. Combine that with one of aforementioned graphical glitches and the whole cutscene is a prime example of how NOT to do cutscenes in a game. The game tries to do everything at once and ends up doing nothing really well.

That is a lot of negatives, isn't it? So why do I still award a 3 star rating (i.e. the game is average)? Despite all that, there is a ton of fun stuff to do in the game. I think the underlying gameplay of the whole AC franchise is just really fun. Climbing around in the cities, learning a bit about historical stuff, fighting guards and trying to escape afterwards… I like it. And I had a lot of fun with the game. Especially building up your frontier settlement and steering your own ship is very rewarding. Trying to reach the last feather in an area or saving for the next weapon upgrade always gives you something to do besides the rather underwhelming main-story. I liked Ezio (a lot!) more than Connor, though, so after all, I think this is one of the worse ACs I've played so far. But as long as you can look past some of the flaws, I still think it's okay.

Achievements: None

Verdict: Recommended. As long as you do not expect too much.