So, you pretty much said how I have felt about the series. I've played them all, I really enjoyed 2, and Brotherhood was the height of the series for me...Never played revelations because that's when it started to just feel like they were milking that timeline a bit much. I put in over 12 hours into AC3, and I couldn't finish it. I hated the game so much at that point, that I just could not bring myself to play anymore of it.
I know I might be in the minority in this, but until AC revelations, and AC3, I enjoyed the Desmond story parts. I wanted to know more about what was happening, but...they just got so fucking lazy with it by the time AC3 was made, and it was so terribly written and obvious that it was badly thought out that I just lost interest completely.
Seeing as how you were also disappointed with 3, how come you're liking this game so much?
I'll start with the character:
-The "pirate" theme fits perfectly. What I mean is that I don't "feel bad" doing bad things. Best way to explain is what I call the Niko Bellic effect. "Wants a better life, but murders hundreds. Playing as a pirate I can justify whatever I want to do.
For anyone who's playing the game, how is the melee combat shaping up? I found the stuff in 3 to be very dull and frustrating compared to the earlier games.
Combat has DRASTICALLY improved. AC3 somehow managed to completely fuck up a great combat system.
AC4's combat system is the best to date. Personally I feel that AC:BroHood had the best combat. AC3 is by far the worst in terms of combat.
+Lots of counter variations.
+Brutal finishing moves. Very satisfying.
+Unarmed and Hidden blade combat is better than ever.
+Have yet to run into any "cheese" enemy archetypes yet. AC3 was plagued with certain enemies that could only be defeated a specific way which made the combat boring.
-Still some janky animations. Nothing too bad.
This is tough to answer so early. That might sound odd but Ubi has altered the controls in this series with every game. Often I felt it was downgraded. I remember in Brotherhood you had the option to "jump and grab" while climbing. Seems like this has been left out since Revelations, no idea why they did that... Streamline controls?
Something I haven't quite figured out is the jumping off walls during while free running. It seems this has been toned down. Before you panic you still can jump and changed directions while free running. There are just certain walls that don't "allow" you to perform this move. Still trying to figure out whats going on. My guess is the game prevents you from making this jump when there's chance it could kill you?
The big thing that matters is that I haven't felt like I'm "fighting" with the controls. Getting used to a few new traversing mechanics can take hours for me. There's sort of a flow I need to get into which each game. New environments, structures, shortcuts etc. AC4 has a blend of old tricks and quite a few new additions.
Sailing
Let me first state that I HATED the sailing portions in AC3. I cringed at the fact that AC4 would have such a huge focus on sailing.....
MY GOD....its easily the best part of AC4 for me. Whaling, hunting sharks, all out naval wars...and the ship boarding....bliss. Lots of fun ways to board disabled ships.
The ship controls take some getting used but once it clicks you'll be in pirate heaven. Sailing has enough depth to be its own game.
Keep in my mind these might sound like typical AC early impressions(lol) But Black Flag is doing a lot of good things right early on. Can't say the same for AC3. I kept playing that game just hoping for the game to get better and just got worse