The Games That Got Away

[Jassassino]

AC3 was fucking fire. Peak of the franchise. The modern day has always been a tacked on framing device and nothing more - I don't particularly care to play a knock off Splinter Cell.

Bro don't go acting like AC3's modern day storyline didn't suck ass. Historical element to it may have been the absolute dogs bollocks but Desmond's part and the end of the world was an absolute slop fest. 😪

Also cannot believe they dropped the online arena modes after Black Flag, that shit slapped. Travesty.

[BigBrother]

AC3 was fucking fire. Peak of the franchise. The modern day has always been a tacked on framing device and nothing more - I don't particularly care to play a knock off Splinter Cell.

I really liked the framing device and was excited to see where it went; then it Ubisoft went "eh, we don't know. Aliens?" Also, America was a fucking terrible choice of location. Swapping The Holy Land and Europe in the renaissance for *checks notes* wooden huts was a disaster.

[Jassassino]

I think the location was really great in allowing new free running methods and letting us find new routes, like through window jumping, hallway run throughs and tree climbing - all genuinely some of the best fucking additions of all time to the series. But they really needed to take just a few creative liberties with the cityscapes IMO, given us some taller buildings, exaggerate the tower height of parishes and churches, we would've had a winner.

Also sorry I know this isn't the unpopular opinion thread but: Revelations was actually a banging game and Istanbul/Constantinople was a fucking sick locale. Maybe one of the best.

[Departed]

I really liked Revelations. It had a genuinely beautiful environment with an incredible soundtrack and while the story's pacing wasn't great, I had fun with it from start to finish. It was the RPG games that I just dropped altogether. I never bothered finishing Origins and even though I own Odyssey and Valhalla, I've never so much as opened their cases and probably never will. The combat had potential to be fun, but I hated the gear leveling system and hated that parkour was such an afterthought. The mechanics of combat, simple as they are, can be fun, but not when there's an arbitrary level I have to be at for my sword to behave like a sword.

Shadows is the most fun I've had with an AC game since Unity because of the return of stealth and having guaranteed assassinations, but the gear system is why I haven't finished it. Honestly, give me an AC game with an environment like Istanbul, Shadows stealth and combat mechanics, sans the stats and levels, Mirage's post-brand new DLC parkour with a few more tweaks to make it more like Unity, Jesper Kyd's music and a story that has characters I actually care about, and I'm all the way back in with AC.