I can't believe the same people who were trashing AC3 are praising AC4 now. This is nothing more than AC3 tropical edition, as a matter of fact, it even holds less value than AC3 with many features being stripped off.
Nope!
AC3 = torturous gamer hell game! It's a game that's made to hate the player and make you feel like shit all the time.
AC4 = OCD game made by OCDers, everything is fun and efficient and made to make the player feel badass and awesome.
I know some people will take that as AC3 = challenging game, AC4 = baby game like AC2 series. But AC3 wasn't challenging, it was just fucking broken and unfun.
Simple things that make AC4 WAY BETTER:
-Viewpoints actually unlock the fog of war on the map. Forts unlock the ocean fog of war, so you do all the forts and get all the viewpoints and all the fog in the game is gone and you're left with nice clean maps. If you aren't an OCDer, you might not understanding how HORRIBLY FRUSTRATING it was in AC3 to spend 30 hours in a city running all over 100% it and STILL HAVE FOG ON YOUR MAP because the viewpoints didn't do anything really and when you run on foot you unlock this narrowest fog of war clearing ever.
-NO UNDERGROUND, FAST TRAVEL IS GOOD - AC3's underground mazes were incredibly fucking boring and required no skill. Run around through the dark that all looks the same and solving easy door puzzles just to get some actual freaking fast travel points to make things a little less tedious. AC4 you can fast travel to any location instantly, they're all pretty small and the big ones have tons of viewpoints that are all fast travel points.
-ECONOMY - AC3's hunting and trading was all pointless because the crafting system sucked and there was nothing to buy. In AC4 the game actually rewards hunting with character upgrades (both visual and gameplay increases!), and the sailing and ship fighting is actually important because the economy works and ship upgrading and gun purchasing is worthwhile.
-ASSASSINATIONS - AC3 had like on assassinations anymore even though it's called Assassin's Creed. Even the Assassin Guild Contracts in AC3 were just like "let's put a red marker over a farmer and you go stab him" which had no gameplay in it at all. Here there are SO MANY assassination contract that are each mini-scenarios that give you player freedom to assassinate the target in any way that you want sort of like AC1. The return of this adds so much fun. Also it's nice to have some freedom because AC3's missions if you want 100% were basically walking down a scripted mission where you have no freedom to play as you'd like at all. Whereas AC4's assassination contracts are like real sandbox "do what you want" gameplay, which is extremely satisfying.
-Ship Battles are actually fun. I know people praised the ship battles as the only good part of AC3, but even in AC3 it was tedious. It took forever to reload shots, sailing was slow, and well, it just was kind of boring. Here you can shoot non-stop and sail super fast. Sailing and battles are now fun!
-STEALTH IS LESS BROKEN AND GIVES MORE PLAYER CHANCES - one of the most ANNOYING things about AC3 is how, not only is the stealth broken, but how the second anyone sees you in a mission or just running around you have no choice but to stand still and fight a bunch of guys in boring combat until they all die and then you win the mission. In AC4 it's so easy to run away from people if you get caught and try again. Or kill the 2 guys you alerted and then you're back to being able to attempt stealth for the rest of the mission. In AC3 if 2 guys spot you, EVERY ENEMY IN THE ENTIRE MAP COMES TO FIGHT YOU. You ruined the chance to get play stealth any further after the first alert. This is stupid. Especially when stealth is a bit broken and janky you want to give players the chance to keep trying stealth even if they mess up here and there and set off an alert. AC4 lets you set off an alert without punishing you much.
-CITIES YOU CAN ACTUALLY ROOFTOP RUN - Havana is >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> any of the AC3 cities. You can get anywhere on the rooftops and there aren't guards every 5 feet on the roof getting alerted. You also don't have noteriety in AC4 which means you can just murder any guards you do encounter on the roof because, why not?
And then there's all the stuff like better main mission design with clearer mission objectives, especially sub-objectives, a better story with better characters, lack of boring desmond talking and playing, COLOR instead of drab, awesome shanty songs (much more rewarding than boring text scrolls), neat 1st person stuff, and probably a dozen other things I'm not thinking of off the top of my head.
So yeah, ACIV is better than AC3. MUCH BETTER. If the lead designers and director of AC3 direct another AC game I've going to be very hesitant to pick it up. Almost every aspect of the gameplay was poorly designed. Whereas after Rev and ACIV, I'm on board for anything from this director.
