Just Finished Assassin Creed Revelations (Spoilers)

[David]

First of all, let me just say I was disappointed. I had read a lot of semi-negative things on the game and actually expected this, so I waited for the price to drop around $20. For $20, I do not regret buying it as Assassins Creed will always have a standard for quality that is above most games even when below that of the series' average. If you haven't played it yet and are following the series, Revelations doesn't add much to the main story but does provide a good deal of background on Altair, and a bit on Ezio.

Things I Hated

1. The Hook Blade. This thing is just... awful. It seemed so forced, like the Devs just couldn't think of anything practical to add otherwise. I didn't do a hook and run ONCE on purpose. Not even once. Besides that, the blade is completely rounded on the end and makes no sense as a stabbing weapon. When you factor in the fact it's like 8 inches longer than the hidden blade... It just looks terrible. Please, please bring back the dual hidden blades for AC3. They look badass and would be exponentially more useful in reality.

2. The story was short. There was very, very little story or plot at all. I'm not even talking about the whole over-arching Desmond thing - Ezio's Constantinople story was just downright unsubstantial. I beat the game in 2 days (though in all fairness I did it over a rainy weekend and did little else), and although I didn't try to get 100% synch in most of the memories I did purchase most of the city.

3. The templar influence is horribly broken. Templar's take notice when you buy property now? What? The only way to lower it is to bribe Heralds (which doesn't even make a dent) or to kill Officers (and if you don't do it stealthily you regain all the influence fighting off the responding city guard). Every time I purchased 3-4 buildings my Den would get attacked, which leads me to...

4. Den Defense, the mini-game within AC: Revelations, is horribly forced and less fun than the hundreds of internet flash game of the same concept. If I had a nickel for every time I spent 10+ mins effortlessly defending the tower only to have the Greek fire tank steam-roll every fortification in under 20 seconds at the end, rendering it all pointless. And then... After this 10 minute struggle in the mini-game, I'm forced to recapture the entire thing.... Which takes about 20 seconds max.

5. Design. There are so many simple design problems in this game I'll just make a general category. HOLY SHIT INSTANT FAILS. Many missions give you piss-poor directions and then instant fail you for not following some obscure direction that wasn't given to you. Oh, and the "Dress Up as a Janissary" mission... My god. I failed that a good 30 times for no discernable reason.

Oh, and although you'd expect the Night/Day thing to be sweet... It's not. All it does is break immersion when you start a mission during the night and then see it awkwardly become day during the cinematic that follows.

There are various other small bugs that just bugged the hell out of me although they didn't affect gameplay. Case in point, on the PS3 version Ezio's eye are always this glow-in-the-dark neon gold color and occasionalyl separate from his skull during cutscenes.

6. Pacing. I made a real effort to level up all of my Assassin underlings before the final few missions. While actively trying (i.e. sending them off on missions every 5mins regularly) I still didn't get over 4 in charge of the Dens (AND YOU HAVE TO PHYSICALLY GO THERE TO PUT THEM IN CHARGE?!) and the others were like level 9.

7. The weapons. It does not matter what "statistics" they have, they are all literally the same thing besides appearance. There is no advantage in something that has 5 stars in every category to your first sword. The game is 100% counter-attacking, and unlike in previous games different weapons don't allow you to counter-attack things like spears or heavy weapons.

Speaking of counter-attacking, one of the issues that makes this problem more obvious is the fact that the new counter-attack animations take... FOREVER. Seriously, some of them last all of 5 seconds. This might not sound like much now, but just wait until you're fighting a crowd of 20+ NPC's. Every time you get a counter-kill Ezio will stay in the animation until the next enemy attacks him in the back, making successive kills more more frusturating to achieve.

8. Characterization. Ezio is much lamer than in previous games. Of course, he's 52, but he's not really witty or funny at all. Besides him, there's only TWO other characters of note, and they're just secondary and don't get much development at all. Yes, you read that correctly. Three characters total. I wasn't emotionally attached to any of them. Yusuf is dead, you say? I saw that coming the minute I saw a cheery character in the first sequence. Wait, Suliaman's menacing looking uncle is actually the bad guy? Damn, I actually expected it to be Yusuf because that would have been slightly emotionally unexpected.

Seriously, the frowning uncle being the bad guy was so hilariously cliche it wasn't and I expected it to be an ally. Maybe this is a positive?

9. This is the dagger to the heart: There is only one assassination in the entire story. Fucking ONE. In a game called Assassin's Creed. Oh, and spoiler alert, the one guy you assassinate turns out to be a good guy that any actual investigation would have revealed BEFORE you killed him.

They really hit the time-limited ruin exploration, redundant roof platforming, and tailing hard, though, if that's your thing.

10. This is more of a series complaint, but I don't like the rifles and advancing technology. It's jumping the shark. I'll play Splinter Cell for modern sneaking.

11. The soundtrack was very weak for an Assassins Creed game.

Things I Liked

1. The Altair missions were good. Provided tons of more background and emotion to the character that was much maligned in AC1.

2. Going off Altair, his death/ending was absolutely remarkably well done. Everything from the torches went into it perfectly.

3. Constantinople was less impressive than the AC:2 cities, but it was still exceptionally well done. This will always be a strength of the Assassin Creed series.

4. The cinematics/graphics were much better than in previous games. Frame rate was good.

5. Cross bow isn't hilariously over-powered.

This came out being really bitchy and mostly full of things I didn't like, but I must say that the game wasn't that bad. I would recommend it before playing AC3, though I'm glad I didn't buy it for $60.

Edit: Am I the only person that played this?

[Blake]

Please don't double post. HAR HAR HAR.Yeah I can agree with most of these things, though I'll still like the hookblade. And I'm guessing it will make an apperance in AC3 as tree climbing seems to be a thing.I really didn't have a problem with any missions being confusing or anything, rather if you fail you have to go back all the way before some cutscene. I have a good script of dialogue memorzied after trying to get 100% synch on a mission and failing horribly.I guess all I have to say is I was expecting Ezio to go out with a bigger bang than just finding an Apple of Eden, but just letting it stay there. At least he found some hot Italian ass to get him through his golden years. Also, how did you like the Desmond origin missions?

[David]

I actually haven't done them yet, though I have most unlocked. I read somewhere that "they were pointless platformer missions" so I skipped. Are they worth doing?

[Blake]

I actually haven't done them yet, though I have most unlocked. I read somewhere that "they were pointless platformer missions" so I skipped. Are they worth doing?

Yeah they are pointless platforming "missions". Basically, it's a first person experience where you walk through some pretty cool levels that sometimes correspond with what Desmond is talking about. All the while, you'll be creating either cubes or ramps to platform through obstacles. I loved the actual level design but...

The platforming sucks.

If you want a basic idea of what you'll be hearing, you'll hear about Desmond's childhood growing up in a "cult", escaping said cult, his life in the city, and finally being abducted by Astergo.

[Anarchy]

I'm actually going to buy this game...just waiting for money and price

[Phantom]

I just sold my copy. Which I got rather conveniently from Blockbuster. They had this 'Game Pass' thing, and I had a monthlong trial, but the cashier was an idiot and signed me up for it, but didn't ask for a credit card. So when Blockbuster tanked a few months later, they called me once about the game, and I truly forgot I had it. I forgot to go back. By the time I remember all the stores had closed and I had a copy of Revelations.I liked the game, don't get me wrong, but when I beat Assassin's Creed games I rarely replay them.But at least this one wasn't so much as a SHITTHEFUCK ending as Brotherhood.I wanted things very dead at the end of Brotherhood.