Assassin's Creed fans, exactly how bad was Assassin's Creed 3?

I played it before the patch, so my only strong memory of it is still the chase sequence where the guy you are chasing runs faster than you.
 
I went out and bought it at the midnight launch, I was so hyped for it.

The setting is great, even if the actual cities are pretty dull. The modern story is terrible, and Connor's story is decent. The new mechanics like free running on trees and being able to crouch in grass felt like good editions to the franchise's stealth gameplay. The combat was more fast paced and gave you more options, even if the easiest way to fight was still just mashing the attack button. Haytham Kenway is probably my favorite character in the series. The final boss chase is pretty bad.

Overall, I still enjoy the game, not my favorite AC but certainly not the worst.
 
Not at all. I liked it a lot, especially because of Connor and the... erm, what was it called? "The Frontier," I think. The big region outside of the city where your Homestead was. Naval gameplay was great, and it was so cool finally being able to climb trees, and the bow and arrow and sheng biao were cool new weapons, especially the latter. The city setting was probably the least exciting from all the settings in the main games, but The Frontier was the main attraction for me, and more than made up for it.

And hey, Connor's got one of the coolest Assassin robes ever.
 
The intro twist with Haytham was awesome and genuinely got me. Haytham is an interesting character but the dynamic between him and Connor doesn't come into focus well until towards the end of the game. Not coincidentally this is when the story starts becoming interesting. Before then it's Connor chasing people and following the orders of people who don't give a shit about him and backstab him only for him to continue following their orders because he still wants to chase the same people. At some point in the game I forgot what Connor's mid-term goals were and why I was doing this set of missions. It was a missed opportunity for an Assassin and Templar to really converse about their philosophies considering Haytham's position as Assassin-turned-Templar.

Gameplay-wise the traversal is a huge step up from previous games, but missions do a poor job with level design in allowing you to stealth through them and/or giving you interesting choices of how to do so. Most missions end with me being seen and then running the guy down with a hatchet. On the other hand if they wanted to establish Connor as a terrible assassin they succeeded. Unlocking checkpoints through the city by underground travel sucked.

Ship battles were fun.

Upgrades and earning money are super tedious, usually done through a clunky, over-complicated economic trade system that feels more like a grind than role-playing. It fails where Brotherhood's real estate money-making succeeded. On the plus side, Homestead missions were a good idea to establish side characters and promote the idea of Connor establishing a new haven for pioneers, but I remember the missions themselves feeling tedious and including a shitload of running from point A to point B needlessly.

I actually didn't mind the ending at all and it piqued my curiosity considering how much plot movement there was. Sad it hasn't been developed since.
 
The last assassin's creed game I bought never again. I was playing for like 5 hours to be done with the prologue.
 
I liked it a lot, but I played it late and had my expectations tempered after reading about how much people disliked it. I thought Connor was fine and the frontier was pretty great. I even enjoyed the story quite a bit as it felt a bit more grounded after the last few games (not including the modern day story which just goes off the rails).
 
It's just really dull. They wasted a great time period and setting on something that should be anything but boring. It's almost incomprehensible how they fucked it up.

And Connor is fucking awful. Worse than Altair. By default that makes the first part of the game better than the rest.

And the less said about the modern stuff the better.
 
I got it and played about 2/3 of the way through. I've been spacing the series at one game (more or less) every 2 years, and I rather liked it. I know about the ending, which is disappointing, but I like that you finally get to play some real missions with Desmond.

My biggest problem is all the time skips in the plot seem really unnatural. It throws you into famous situations in Revolutionary War history, but it doesn't really give a good reason for Connor to be there, and the overall pacing of Connor's story is not good. It also throws a huge number of gameplay systems at you, and yet they really aren't interesting enough to spend hours and hours on them. You have tons of optional missions, but few are even close to the excellent optional levels in AC2 and Brotherhood. It feels like an attempt to make an enormous game that you could sink a hundred hours into, but most of that extra content isn't compelling.


Despite all that, the setting is good, the wilderness adds and interesting new dimension, the core missions have fun glimpses of historical events, the gameplay is smoother (mostly), and it's pretty decent overall. Unfortunately, you have to play a lot of extra content to get most of Connor's characterization. I really need to go back and finish it.
 
In the OT, someone once posted that they worked on cutscenes for Ubisoft on AC3 and that a shocking amount was missing from the story when they finally played it.

They gave examples of scenes that were way more fleshed out in the game he saw compared to what we actually got.

I have no idea if he was telling the truth, but it's hard to imagine anyone looked at the game as-is and decided it was good.
 
oni-link said:
If you generally don't enjoy the Assassin's Creed games at all, or you wouldn't consider yourself a fan of the series, then this isn't really a question for you. I'm more interested in hearing from people who don't have a negative perception of the series

I enjoy the series but I decided to skip 3 after the GAF reaction around its release, so now it's 4 years later, is it really that bad?

I really enjoyed the Ezio trilogy, and IV and Rogue, but have yet to play the two current gen games. Is it the worst game in the series? Is it notably worse than the other games in the series? If so, what went wrong, and if not, why is it so maligned?
Click to expand...

Please don't take NeoGAF's opinion that seriously. This board tends to hyperbolize just about everything.

It's a fine game with a flawed story.
 
I really like AC3, but it had some big problems.

+ a fantastic opening with a great twist. Haytham Kenway was a fantastic introduction to the time and place and politics
- the 'opening' went on for several hours and you didn't have even basic tools until the end of this huge period

+ Connor's story starts great, with a similar 'leaving home on an adventure' vibe to the opening half hour of Princess Mononoke. The introduction of a huge forest area was amazing and refreshing
- his story quickly becomes generic Assassin's Creed rubbish, once you reach your first city

+ the new gameplay systems like long-range weapons, streamlined stealth killing, 'cover' at corners, sailing combat, are all great
- most of the time they are overused or underused in all the wrong places; and the game is buggy and pretty janky as a result

+ the overworld of the Frontier is fantastic and both the cities are excellent and immersive
- they still went too far overboard - one of the cities has a huge underground tunnel system which forces you to walk (IIRC) and is just so unnecessary and dull

+ the set pieces when they work are amazing and meld around the independence context perfectly
- they don't always work and there are other historic moments which fall flat

+ a lot of the side content is great - some cool missions, really immersive optional experiences that tie into the management and upgrade system well
- the side content is really badly explained and there's way too much of it - it's easy to play the entire game without touching the crafting system, the trading system, the Homestead base building missions, etc. These also have too many badly signposted management systems

It's just a weird, flawed, insanely ambitious, sort-of-great game

Edit: oh, shit, forgot:

one big fat minus point: the ending of Desmond's arc completely shit the bed. It was just awful. The whole thing hadn't even been good since AC2
 
So bad I stopped caring about the series after it, and only played Black Flag because a friend sold it to me for dirt cheap.
Still wondering why Haytham Kenway never got his own game, he was the only likable character from AC III, his banter was great and his voice actor did an amazing job.
 
ShockingAlberto said:
In the OT, someone once posted that they worked on cutscenes for Ubisoft on AC3 and that a shocking amount was missing from the story when they finally played it.

They gave examples of scenes that were way more fleshed out in the game he saw compared to what we actually got.

I have no idea if he was telling the truth, but it's hard to imagine anyone looked at the game as-is and decided it was good.
Click to expand...

There was definitely stuff that was recorded voice acting wise cut.

Why they cut this from the AC3 ending, I have no idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6d79JHh3cU

If other stuff was cut along the same lines, which would not surprise me, then someone must have been crazy.
 
I'll just re-post my impressions from four years ago

jett said:
My final impressions:

Well, moderately disappointed with this game. That's two AC in a row games that I haven't liked all that much. Revelations was fucking terrible and though AC3 doesn't quite sink to those depths it is still extremely uneven, with some sections being truly breathtaking and others a chore. I loved everything about the Frontier, first time I reached it I just messed around it for 4 hours straight, it is quite simply gorgeous. I had my doubts that another AC game might be able to reach the beauty of Venice but AC3 really does get close. It's just beautiful. However I don't think the game exploits that scenery properly. If you don't take the time to do the side stuff you won't really see much of it.

In contrast to the Frontier you have New York and Boston, which might as well be one city called New Boston because the two of them are virtually interchangeable with nary a thing to make either stand out from the other. What a goddamn waste of a setting for an AC game. Boring ass cities with ZERO personality, crappy parkour possibilities and just shitty, flat, dull, all-around poor design. It's what everyone feared a game set in this era would be like. The shittiness of these two places is only compounded by how awful the game runs in them. Not just content with having a terrible and unstable mess of a framerate, the game is ripe with stuttering when you are in New York or in Boston.

To expand on the crappyness of these two places, the side missions inside them are also pretty poor. Take the assassination contracts for instance. In AC2 and ACB the side-assasinations you could engage in were fairly elaborate and even came with a little story to them. The ones in AC3 are just nothing. You find a guy walking around the street and shank him. That's it. Lazy as all fuck.

The main missions are mostly okay, except for the stupid war ones. Again, devs simply not getting what the series is about. Frankly, I don't understand the idea behind sticking so relatively close to the chain of historical events. In previous AC games it was just backdrop, you were in a particular era but the stuff that went on was mostly an original story. In AC3 you're virtually the Forrest Gump of the American Revolution. Why? To better sell the game to American audiences? As a non-American I felt little from doing the whole Boston Tea Party thing and riding with Paul Revere(doesn't help those missions were shitty). Nevermind that Connor being such a staunch supporter of the patriots makes no sense at all, and it makes even less sense that he still helps the douches after their true, knwon by all intentions are revealed regarding the indian population. Wat? There are some good sections to Connor's story and I almost kind of felt for his plight, and he is pretty badass at times, but overall it's uneven plotting. The devs were more concerned with throwing you into events in the American Revolution than crafting a plot that made complete sense. And the Desmond stuff is just garbage, from top to bottom.

You know, I can't write at length about this game without pointing out how horrible the first several hours of the game are. Forced to play as another character, feels like an ultraextended tutorial with shitcakes missions and taking exclusively in a shitcakes city. I was just wanted to leave Kenway behind ASAP as I knew Connor was the real main character. I really couldn't stand it. For five hours it felt like the game hadn't even began. What the fuck? Seems to me the entire point of this idea was to "shock" the player with the twist at the end of Sequence 3. Seriously messed up priorities. The 30 minutes you spend playing as child Connor are better than all the hours you waste playing as Kenway.

Frontier aside, I also liked the Naval missions, which seems that have gotten universal praise. The graphics and productions values are really impressive as well, it's almost a generational leap over AC2 and ACB, it leaves them completely in the dust. Undoubtedly one of the best looking games on the PS360, even with its framerate issues. I was also glad to see a return to the more realistic character proportions of AC1, the cartoonish characters of AC2 and ACB have always bothered me.

Anyway, Ubisoft needs to think long and hard about what to do with the future of this franchise. Despite all the crap they've added and changed in AC3 it still felt extremely repetitive and way too familiar to the previous games. It's not the change-up AC2 was, it is merely an extension of it, almost a side-step. I still consider ACB to be the ultimate realization of the AC experience. AC3 is filled to the brim with cut-scenes, non-interactive sequences and lots and lots of dumb, dull, shitty set pieces. They might as well ditch the open world nature of the franchise if this is what they want to do, a linear game. Might be better off, even. Some of my favorite parts in AC2/ACB/AC3 are the linear dungeon-like levels, they remind me so much of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, I always thoroughly enjoy them. I was going to write something like "whenever we get AC4..." but I'm not sure if I'm going to give a shit anymore by that point.

Oh I didn't even touch on the noobified controls, I'll just say this is the easiest AC game out there, and it barely feels like you're even playing it.

Ubisoft has really ill-treated this series.
Click to expand...

Anyway, tldr: it was bad. The worst thing is that the easymode controls and mechanics were transplanted wholesale into AC4, which made me unable to enjoy that game's super cool setting. Fighting and countering in AC3/4 is absolutely brainless.

AC3 is the game that killed the franchise for me.
 
I played 1, 2, 3, and 4 only.

imo 3 is by far my favorite. Best setting, and Connor is the best protagonist. Sure there were issues, but the other 3 were all a chore to slog through while 3 was not, for me.
 
It wasn't a bad game, but the hype killed it. The story was lackluster, (both present and past) and while Connor was the most complex character in the series, it suffered from having a boring story revolving around politics that he wasn't really a part of.

The game also suffered from "6 hours of tutorial" phase. You kept learning new things you won't ever really apply after that one use.

It was an overall disappointing game, but it's all on Ubisoft Montreal for screwing it up. Instead of giving us a definitive ending, they decided to milk the living hell out of the series now. This in itself wouldn't have been an issue if they didn't bother with such a story and just stuck with making assassin based games in other time periods like they eventually ended up doing anyway.

In terms of wanting to provide a good time, AC4 and AC2 were the only one's that spoke to me. Brotherhood felt like an expansion to 2 with a lot of busy work and Unity was a case of fighting the game to have fun. Haven't played Syndicate and to be honest, I have no desire to as of yet after Unity.

Best wishes.
 
Toni said:
It has a very slow start. Connor wasnt at all what he was cracked up to be, stealth mechanics were clunky as hell, and literally no memorable characters.

The only redeeming Pro's were the American Revolution setting (that couldnt live up to its full potential due to ancient, last-gen hardware and well, bad story telling)...And the combat animations are the best to date in an AC game.

There was an early footage build that ultimately was what the developers wanted AC3 to be, but allegedly they couldnt make it there because of last gen hardware restrictions and shipped a completely different game.

It looked SO good. That was what I thought AC3 was going to be. Its a such a shame.
Click to expand...

damn, you weren't lying
 
I'm not sure if my type of opinion is the one you're looking for, but that's ok, because I'm posting it anyway.

I really enjoyed the series before Assassin's Creed III. I ended up disliking that game so much that I haven't touched an entry since. I've considered giving Syndicate a go, because I've heard good things, but I haven't been able to bring myself to pull the trigger. That's how much AC3 negatively affected my opinion of the franchise. The game is devoid of anything interesting beyond the first few hours, in my opinion.
 
The game was slow, boring, glitchy and lifeless. Which is a shame, since II was so full of life.

You deserved better, General Washington. And Connor.

I left after III but returned to the series with Syndicate and I'm all-in again.
 
It was the first AC game I disliked. I think they all had their flaws though, with AC2 being the closest to brilliant.

The traversal and character control simply wasn't fun. That would maybe be forgivable if the story was interesting, but unfortunately it had clunky controls, bad story, badly designed cities and horrid modern parts.

At least it introduced sailing which became an integral part of the much better Black Flag (except those damn tail missions).
 
It starts ok for a while and then it kind of falls off a cliff.

And this might be a uniquely American problem, maybe Italian people felt the same way about two, but you start to notice that Connor is involved in every single major American event during the revolution and you begin to think, 'this is a bit silly' but the cities aren't fun to traverse, the nature exploration they added to compensate for it didn't because the movement felt rough in that series and kind of always had, I would argue it didn't start feeling good until Unity.

Unity, now that's a game I might defend as an AC fan. But not 3. Even though it was a disappointment they didn't make better use of the absolute most perfect setting for an AC game in the French Revolution.






edit: also i dont like the fucking boats
 
It was the first game in the series to introduce the same terrible control automation that all subsequent entries have had (where you basically just need to hold the free-run button and press the stick in the desired direction and the game will do everything else for you), it has a shit story, boring mission design, the towns are not designed with free-running in mind at all (the streets are too wide to jump over so you constantly have to get back down to street level, cross the street, then climb back up on the other side) and they're also incredibly small and unspectacular compared to the towns in previous entries, it also has boring characters (except for Haytham) and on my playthrough back at launch I stumbled across a few annoying bugs on PS3. So yeah, it's a shit game, not worth playing as far as I'm concerned.
 
Loved the setting, couldn't stand Connor. Rest of the characters were just okay. Didn't like present day either, but not a big fan in other games.

So overall. I liked it as long as I wasn't in a cutscene or the 21st century..
 
AC 3 was pretty bad in terms of story but I thought the combat was the best in the series. There where a lot of different ways to execute and enemy in both high and low profile with every weapon.
 
i played all main assassins creed games start to finish (except syndicate)

3 is the worst, I dont want to play ever again that shitty game, do yourself a favor and only read a resume of the story
 
I loved it, sure Conner was pretty bad but he was savage with his attacks. The combat was great and I just loved the world setting in this one.
 
AC3 was so bad, I went from buying the games from day 1, to not buying the games at all.

It made me lose complete interest in the franchise.
Which is a shame because I heard AC4 was great.


I've been kinda wanting to get back into the series, Rogue sounds neat to me, but I'd probably start with 4 first.
 
If you are a fan of the series OP, check out AC3.

It does have pacing issues.

Not the best protag in the series.

The modern day plot left some people really sour.

It was the first game with the new combat system (same system as in Black Flag)

Has some really bad pacing issues. Slow start. There is a homestead you build in the game that can get very tedious.

Assassination missions are very handholding. They don't give the player that many opportunities to experiment. These were expanded upon in later games like Unity and Syndicate with the "black box structure".


silva1991 said:
It's the one that made me hate the series and think less of it. It was that bad and I haven't even played Unity lol.
Click to expand...

Unity will put you off even more IMO. Another game with half-baked ideas. I would just check out Syndicate if you are ever interested in the series again.
 
It has a painful start and all the collect-a-thons felt much more tedious to me than usual. The loads were also a bit much too, iirc. This is also the game where the stealth theme and lack of stealth mechanics really butted heads, and on top of that, your ability to ace people en masse is too extreme, though you do have neat tools and weapons. I am a lifelong hatchet fan, for example.

I was a really big fan of the setting though, and Connor in the first half of the game. The snow trudging animation is really fantastic also.
 
To me it was better than Unity or Syndicate, but Black Flag is IMHO still better than III.

I found Unity and Syndicate to be let down with bad environment detection, poor combat, interesting but very limited in scope locales (one city for the most part), when III has 2 main cities plus the frontier.

III has the issue of ramping up very slowly at he beginning, whereas Black Flag drops you almost immediately into the action.
 
Extremely unlikable.. everything, jankier controls than usual, unexplained features-mechanics, overly complicated design, no real closure to story threads, very Forrest Gumpy, the real game doesn't start like until 5 hours in.
 
It's ok. One of the weaker entries in terms of characters and story. The first part of the game where you play as Haytham is pretty decent. Can't really explain why, but I never really connected with Connor.
 
I haven't played them all (I usually skip a year) but I did play 3. It was an asscreed game and I enjoyed it.

Wasn't innovative or anything and had some annoying parts but I don't feel it was actually a bad game.
 
xRaizen said:
WHERE IS CHARLES LEE

Edit: It was just boring. The story was very lackluster, Connor is a bad protagonist. It had the "Forrest Gump Effect" going, where Connor was conveniently there at most of the important parts of the revolution.

The frontier was a good idea. The cities were badly designed, you could almost never run on rooftops due to the excessive amount of guards with rifles on rooftops. Don't even get me started on the useless side missions.

Oh and the modern day story was trash. What a stupid ending to the modern story they built from AC1-R
Click to expand...

That about covers it for me.
 
amdb00mer said:
It's ok. One of the weaker entries in terms of characters and story. The first part of the game where you play as Haytham is pretty decent. Can really explain why, but I never really connected with Connor.
Click to expand...

This is pretty much my take as well. It's not a bad game... it's just that the other Asscreed games before and after are simply better.
 
Has history really treated the game that poorly? It wasn't exceptional, but I wouldn't call it bad either, at least it mixed things up a bit. Certainly better than Revelations (snore), and Rogue, imo.

Edit: Huh, I didn't realize Rogue was so well-liked around here. I never finished Rogue so maybe I shouldn't rate that one.
 
Currently replaying all the Assassins Creed games AGAIN but this time going for 100% synchronization and I also replayed ACIII last year so this are my thoughts of the game after going trough the old games really fresh and most of the new ones some time ago (have not played Unity or Syndicate... yet.)

THE HORRIBLE

- All the buildup for Desmond and the Present story plot overall was for fucking nothing and they also managed to botch his Templar counterpart, Daniel Cross, in the process.

THE BAD

- The cities are not great for the parkour since the streets are too wide in between buildings and this one is baffling since they managed to "fix" New York by the time Rogue happened.

- The menus are very clunky and almost unfinished with a little loading time when you load the quick menu and the maps control where changed way too much from the ones in the previous games, like WTF!?

- Viewpoints don't show the full map when you reach them all. Now you can say that it is done so you do not rely on the towers and instead explore the full map BUT since a lot of the parts that remain obscured are the parts that you mostly explore on horse and foot because not buildings... yeah.

- The costumes bug. There is a bug that they never ever fixed in which if you dye your Assassins robes that change is not reflected during the cutscenes... wait, it is reflected but in the lower half of the costume and the superior part is the default white.

It is incredible bizarre to say the least.

THE GOOD

- The overall setting is fascinating with the main missions being legit great and full of interesting setpieces and they are also very varied so it's very likely that you are not doing the same thing twice which keeps things fresh and interesting.

- The assassins recruit are not generic but fleshed out characters with a proper place in the world. Granted, the missions you can send them are generic but I cared more about my band of Assassins in this game than in Brotherhood or Revelations.

- Some of the present day sections are kind of neat like the one where you go to Brazil or the other one where you confront
Warren Vidic and Daniel Cross in Abstergo and you go HAM using a Piece of Eden.

THE INCREDIBLE GOOD

- Connor personal story and journey to discover his place in the world is excellent and in my humble opinion he is basically the best protagonist of the games that feature Desmond.

- I liked how the characters this time where not good or evil but real characters who had different ideologies and problems and that pushed them into their conflict with each other and how this is not only done to the Templars vs Assassins conflict but to the Revolutionary conflict as well.

One of my favorite moments was when Connor discovered that it was
Washington the one that caused the death of his mother
and you can see how that revelation cracks his world.

- The Frontier is incredible and feels very much alive with the animals and little settlements here and there. I also enjoyed very much the Homestead because unlike Monteriggioni all the inhabitants where give a spotlight and their personal stories tied neatly to the times they were living... I legit cried once when
Achilles died and all of them were present during the funeral service
... fuck, such a powerfull moment.

- Naval Combat was so simple yet perfect and it's no wonder they decided to focus on it for Black Flag since every outlet, fans and even the detractors found the Naval parts incredible satisfying.

- Connor animations are top notch which makes combat and overall mobility around the world incredible. I cannot stress enough how amazing it feels when you are traversing the snowy frontier in one moment and seconds latter you enter in conflict with some of the soldiers patrolling the wilderness and THEN you are on your way again.

- THE DLC is really great and I expected that Ubisoft continued to make DLC based on alternate history like that one. It is also hysterical how the power to transform into an eagle managed to "fix" the level design of the cities, LOL

- THAT MUSIC jaJDA;LSKJD;LSAKJF;SLDFKJA;LDSKFJA;LDSFKSAJD.

Beer and Friends and Main Theme >>>>>>>

---

Right now I am well on my way to finish Brotherhood 100% and I am incredible eager to replay Assassins Creed III (and 4 since it's my favorite game in the series) again.

My personal ranking would be:

1) Black Flag
2) Brotherhood
3) III
4) II
5) I
6) Revelations
7) Liberation
 
It ends with Desmond
being given a choice analogous to the assassin/templar creeds, and he chooses templar. And then dies.
Writing it out like that actually makes it sound like it might have thematic significance. It doesn't. I doubt the writers even realized the choice represented
freedom at any cost versus security in subservience
. It's that hamhanded.
 
I actually liked it quite a lot. Connor is slowly progressing his character and never really comes out of his shell, doesn't trust anyone because of what happened im his youth.

The only thing I didn't like was the wilderniss environment too much. Not so much to climb on except the same trees.
 
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