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

oni-link said:
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?
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Take Rogue, remove all the polish, cut back the naval elements, and turn the story into disconnected Revolutionary War missions (You're on the battlefield -- charge the British! Here's Paul Revere -- control his horse as he provides navigation!) and you've got AC3.

I do feel that AC3 is really bad, but Unity is possibly worse and Syndicate is only somewhat better. Wasn't a huge fan of IV's story and characters, either, though.

On a positive note, AC3 does have a lot of links with Rogue, so you might enjoy it from that perspective (on the other hand, you'll lose out on the early twist, as you already know Haytham).
 
It wasn't bad. Having played several of the AC games now the only thing I can come to as for why some didn't like it is because the subject matter likely made some uncomfortable given who the lead hero was, what happens around him compared to what happens to the other lead characters before and after him. Tone wise it's pretty somber and depressing in moments and it should be considering what is happening around you and to you. That's not a bad thing. I can understand some of the issues with pacing so might have early on.

Gameplay wise the game is no worse then the others. Same with glitches, etc. If you enjoyed the other games then gameplay should not have been a problem with this game. Some are actually worse. The game actually takes the time to develop it's characters more so then some of the other games given how often you interact with them and the passage of time that is used in the game. The homestead as well adds to this as well. The characters control just fine as well. There is nothing technical that makes this game stand out negatively compared to the other games. I've seen people use this as a reason and I'm always baffled by it being used, even more so after playing some of the other games.

I don't understand the issue with the modern stuff either. I want a AC game in the modern era and it was nice to see what could have been with the change in locations/time. Though I have to say I didn't start with AC1 or AC2. I worked my way back to mess with some of those games.
 
The exposition as the character who is not the main character was way too long, and when you finally got to be the main character, he was a whiney jackass. He had none of the charm or swagger of Ezio. And I really didn't like the more open world-y feel where there were these big expanses of nothing with difficult-to-traverse terrain in-between locations of actual significance.

Also, the naval battles did nothing for me.
 
The story is shit, the gameplay had so much of the fun elements sucked out of it, to be fair IV was even worse in that aspect, the setting just isn't interesting due to not having any huge cities yet but the ship sections were great, Connor's executions are ruthless and I really enjoyed the prologue even though I saw the twist coming.

I liked Revelation much less. By far the worst AC game that for some reason gets bundled in with 2 and Brotherhood as great.
 
BarringGaffner said:
It wasn't a BAD game but it was incredibly disappointing after the previous 2. And it really disappointed in the dream of eventually being able to go open world assassin in present day.
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I think that was a big part of the problem, the level of promise versus what ended up being the actual game. AC3 promised to be the full realization of everything that AC2 and the sub-games worked on to deliver on the unfulfilled potential of the first Assassin's Creed, and despite its qualities in certain areas, it ended up instead having so many problems of its own that it hurt the franchise more than it advanced it.
 
I loved the game. The revolutionary war setting was great and being from Massachusetts it was interesting running around Boston.
 
I personally couldn't stand AC3. It was the first AC game where I didn't want to do any side missions and instead just get through the main game.

Admittedly, don't find any interest anymore in Ubi style open world games with a mini-map full of icons to go attend to. Far Cry, AC etc just don't do it for me anymore and AC wast the start of my boredom with the format.
 
Hmm, it's an awkward one.

I do genuinely hate AC3 but mostly for the fact that it ruined the modern day plot.

The gameplay did become very tired at that point, and it drew much ire for that.
But strangely all was forgiven with ACIV, and tbh, they're not that different :/
 
Ascenion said:
It wasn't. Assassin's Creed 3 is probably the best game in the series. It's improvements were just undermined by Brotherhood and Revelations and people couldn't get over Ezio enough to respect Connor for the character her was. If you play the game Connor is a great protagonist, sympathetic, strong and naïve to a fault. I guarantee if it had come out after AC2 with no side games it would've been GOTY 2012.
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This
I also think it has the best Theme Music too
The tomahawk and Rope Dart are amazing.
Every game since feels like a step back.
 
All i remember of it was Connor. And i was mostly due to the boringness of his character. Such a missed opportunity.
 
It's one of the worst AAA games I've ever played.

First, the pacing. I actually quite enjoyed the Haytham prologue but did we need to then go play hide and seek with Connor's childhood friends? When it takes the player 7+ hours to actually play as the guy on the front of the box you have a real problem. And yet somehow in the 7 hours of tutorials it's never clearly mentioned that there's a crafting system and mercantile aspect to this game. When you do stumble upon it you're greeted with some of the worst UI known to man.

Gameplay. Moving tools from the d-pad to a bumper menu that takes 3+ seconds to load EVERY SINGLE TIME is not only baffling but game breaking, especially when the game has such a focus on hunting. It's a niggling thing that ruins the flow and thus any fun you might have had with the game. The parkour is somehow rougher and more inconsistent than 2's. The indoor transition things were neat but don't end up working smoothly half of the time. While I'm not an AC purist who needs to parkour on large buildings having a good portion of one of your main cities burned down is incredibly stupid. Ship stuff is alright but 4/Rogue do it so much better.

I don't hate Connor like some do but I do dislike I NEED TO FIND CHARLES LEE. Haytham is also a drastically better character so the entire game I wished I was playing as him.

Oh yeah, there's some present day stuff. It kinda sucks.

Apologies for the stream of consciousness.
 
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
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So very, very true. I'd also like to add my seemingly rare opinion that it introduced the awful ship mechanic. This combined with everything in my quote leads me to my answer for the thread's question:

I haven't played an Assassin's Creed game since 3.

I wanted Haytham to win in 3, because he was much more interesting. I would have bought Rogue, but again it had the awful ship mechanic in it.

I rebought 1 through Revelations on PC because they're all good, but I have no interest in new ones until one turns out to be good.
 
Of the games I have completed I think it is the worst.

I don't think it is terrible, but it might be the reason why I haven't finished an Assassin's Creed since then.
 
I skipped Revelations after the first 3 games so when AC III came out I was ready for another and I enjoyed it. It wasn't the awe inspiring conclusion we were promised but the setting I thought was interesting and I liked Connor enough. It doesn't deserve the negativity I think but none of them have came close to AC II and Brotherhood for me. AC IV was the last one I finished - just not been able to get into Rogue, Unity or Syndicate.
 
I completely lost interest in the whole series after a couple of hours of this one.

Just horrible.

Was a big fan before it.
 
This game very nearly put me off the whole series, and I'd been following since the first one.

The entire series had been built on the promise that Desmond was learning assassin skills and would eventually become a kick-ass assassin himself. Well, that completely went out of the window at the end of the game.

He got 3 missions in which to actually kick some ass, and the final one was so awful as to be cringe-worthy, consisting of a completely stupid sequence of fights and the worst enemy AI I've ever seen. What makes this worse is that it was the single most important story moment of the entire series.

I tolerate this game and the gameplay is actually very enjoyable, but the story makes it easily the worst of the series.

Also, the PS3 version included stereoscopic 3D, which was horrible in this game compared to its excellent use in Revelations. Using it caused graphical deterioration, with polygons literally disappearing out of the game.
 
Thr game is still broken after all the patches. Cutscenes frequently glitch out, some missions are impossible to complete and the game is clearly hacked together/incomplete. It has the worst story and character in the series. Connor isn't a bad character because he's not constantly cracking jokes. He's a bad character because he makes bad decisions in the story. He could have been cool AND quiet/serious like Altair but he wasn't.

The setting is also the worst in the series. A game set in colonial North America for a game about cities was a bad idea. Surprisingly, the funnest places to traverse were not the garbage cities but the forest in the Frontier. The snos tech was also impressive. Other than that, it's a bad game and Black Flag is better in every way imaginable.
 
I like Ac games but AC3 had a great setting but they wasted it with the most boring side quest i could imagine and the main characters were dull as heck. i'd rather play as the antagonists.

Too many sub system that didn't add anything to the naarrative and made the gameplay tedious

Lastly the cities were a let down .. The cities lost all their charm ( there is no reason to climb buildings ) that should have been fine had the frontier been an intresting playground but even if you ignore the bumerous bugs and the bad tree climbing mecanics there is just not that much to do. It's a big place , not filled enough and when you have something to do , it's for davenport and that place was in no way shape or form properly designed.
 
As someone from New England, it was awesome seeing Boston
(even at 15 fps)

Connor sucked though. My fav AC games are Black Flag and Syndicate.
 
If your a fan then play it. This was the first AC that actually felt like a slog for me, Black Flag and Unity I actually loved doing the collectables and side missions but in 3 even the collectibles feel half assed and some of the side quests feel broken like yiu'll complete it by talking to an NPC itll zoom in as if he is supposed to have dialogue then zoom out and mark it as complete. This is a side quest you've probabyl spent a few hours on and you kinda expect the guy to say something not just stare blankly and its over.

Otherwise the missions are still the AC true to form I would say if you play it just absolutely avoid doing the side quests/collectables. If you just fire through the story you'll probably enjoy it more although I have some real issues with the plot and its stupid flip flopping twists that are pretty much bullshit.
 
KeyBladerXIII said:
I actually quite liked it. I was a big fan of the setting and it had some good characters. I also really liked how they used the actual language by the native americans.
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This. I played the game again and the did a superb job of integrating many things about that time period into the game. The slow start turn a lot of people off but the game is great to me.

That being said, it was a piece of shit performance-wise on PC. I think the game literally ran on one core and was severely CPU-limited.
 
Is it really that hard for Ubisoft to understand that people will stop hating the present day sections if they would actually make it interesting, and not half-ass it every time?
 
AC's biggest problem is that the series has become more and more "designed by commitee", with characters and settings being shaved of interesting quirks and personalities. AC3, AC Unity, Rogue, and Syndicate all have protagonists who are pretty boring and generic, and villains who are copy cats of each other. I've played them all and the final boss fights have become ludicrously similar, to the point it feels like Ubisoft has one guy whose only job is to design the final boss fights in AC games and he just tweaks last years code and assets.

AC4 was a quirk it almost feels like and had a main character who had some personality and style. They desperately need to return to flawed main characters who have oversized personalities and big plans. Syndicate sort of tried, but again it felt a bit neutered by the end.

AC3 was one of the worst, with a main character who never really had an opinion on much, he just accepted orders from whoever he was following at the moment and then was completely shocked when he gets inevitably betrayed. Over and over and over. Thats a shitty character for a player to play as, we want to be the ones who betray or see through the deception, not be the patsy every time. Maybe it was some meta commentary on how players are all automatons or something, went over my head if so.
 
I thought setting it in the American Revolution was an interesting setting but after playing the game realized it just doesn't have the architecture to be as fun to run across as it is when running through Rome.

Also I thought Haytham, Connor's dad, was a more a interesting character than Connor and I would have rather played as him throughout the rest of the game. It was also kind of funny how Connor was shoe-horned into every big event of the American Revolution, like really Connor was there when they signed the Declaration of Independence.
 
Not sure it is that much worse than Revelations, but it is the game where the the systems cruft reached the point of intolerable for me. They also failed to make the environments anywhere near as interesting as in the Ezio games.
 
It's better than any game that's come since. Probably my third favorite in the series behind AC2 and Bhood.

I loved Connor, compared to Ezio and Altair he might be weak but he was still a great character and much better than any others we've seen.

The setting was fantastic, it was so nice to have a massive wilderness, a bunch of small towns and a two cities.

The game does have a slow start, which makes it a little more linear than what you might expect from AC games, but that's not a bad thing.

Changing seasons, this was one of my favorite bits about the game and something you hardly ever see in games period.

Multiplayer was awesome, PvP was nearly as strong as it was in Brotherhood, certainly better than Revelations and also introduced wolfpack mode, co-op based mode which is really fun. Great maps.

The soundtrack was amazing, sadly though, there was no ambient music when in freeroam which was the games biggest weakness in my opinion, and a big one.

Story was pretty decent, with some decent characters along the way. Modern day stuff was crap though, such a unsatisfying and horrible conclusion to that story.
 
I played it long after its release and liked it a lot more than I expected. Haytham was an interesting character, and I didn´t find Connor to be as bad a protagonist as popular opinion seemed to reflect. Original setting, nice new mechanics. It isn´t the best Assassin´s Creed, but it probably is the most underrated (at least by the public, as now I see that it stands at between 80 and 85 in Metacritic).

That said, it was the last AC game I played for a long time, because I got the saga cheap for Xbox 360 and almost virtually played AC1, AC2, Brotherhood, Revelations and AC3 one after another. I got a severe case of franchise fatigue and couldn´t almost stand Desmond anymore.
 
The best part of the game is the first 2 hours. It's not terrible, but it's an uninteresting boring slog to get through. More fun than the likes of AC1 and Unity though
 
Obliterator said:
It and Unity are the 2 worst games in the franchise imo. Syndicate is a huge step up from both. For plot purposes though 3 is pretty important so you may want to play it or at least watch the important parts on YouTube.

Unity is entirely skippable
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Unity gets way to much hate...

So yeah... The game released buggy which seemed to fuel the hatred from the start and basically made the game dead on arrival... The characters and story was extremely lackluster and the co-op felt unnecessary and rushed however the game play (you know that important piece of the puzzle regarding video games) felt like a return to AC2 eschewing a lot of the bloated mechanics from Brotherhood, Revelations and 3 and the new detective side missions were fantastic.

I guess it goes to show how much story and setting play into a game like this when Syndicate is viewed as the superior game when all it does better is basically characters and setting. The gameplay was practically identical (they added a grapple hook so traversal wasn't so horrible and driveable carriages... such great innovations) All i know is future AC Games need only continue AC2 level mechanics and introduce more Detective missions and i'll keep buying these games.
 
It's pretty bad, and it's the reason I stopped playing AC games. The "historical" story was a waste of potential and the present-day story is just... nonsense. Connor is a bad protagonist with no character development past the chapter where he starts training to become an assassin. Haythem is the best part of the game from that aspect.

Gameplay-wise, they ruined freerunning and climbing by making it all on one button (RT/R2), meaning I was CONSTANTLY getting stuck on walls and accidentally climbing things, especially when in a chase sequence. The frontier was an interesting idea, but it felt a bit Towns, with the buildings being so spread out, lost a lot of reason for traversing them like in the other AC games. Their "improvement" of the combat system didn't make it any better, rather worse, and more annoying.

Also, the game ran like shit (on 360).

Every AC game before it was better. And as a side note, I don't see how someone can hate Revelations and like 2 or Brotherhood. There isn't much deviation between the 3 games, unless that was your issue with Rev.
 
Ascenion said:
It wasn't. Assassin's Creed 3 is probably the best game in the series. It's improvements were just undermined by Brotherhood and Revelations and people couldn't get over Ezio enough to respect Connor for the character her was. If you play the game Connor is a great protagonist, sympathetic, strong and naïve to a fault. I guarantee if it had come out after AC2 with no side games it would've been GOTY 2012.
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I couldn't (respectfully) disagree more. It was his naïvity that killed me. I always felt strong willed people made good assassins. Altair may have been an egomaniac but it was what the brotherhood needed at the time. Ezio quickly grew into a strong willed character. Connor, I didnt feel ever did. He spent the vast majority of the game sulking and being lead around by the nose, especially by Kenway. It was like one vast escort mission except they were escorting you.

Altair, Ezio, Kenway (both), even Shay Cormac all had strong wills. I just never felt Connor stopped being a puppet.
 
I enjoyed it. The main issue with it in my opinion is that plotwise it's really slow to start up. The "introduction" phase takes way too long. I do like Connor, I don't think he's a bad protagonist all. He definitely had his moments.
 
The "main" game was fine, but they really screwed the "present day" story bad.

Like, you invested five games, and after the ending of Assassin's Creed II (and the connected "Truth" video), that's what they did to end it, just trash.
 
Ahasverus said:
Just play Rogue tbh, it's AC3 done well. It has some same cities and all.
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I finally played Rogue a few weeks ago after finally giving up hope on there ever being a current gen version. I was surprised at how good it was, much better than AC3 and AC4 (which I was never a fan of either.)
 
It wasn't bad at all, but when you're coming from the Ezio trilogy I could see how it put a damper on the party. It was my favorite in the series for a long time, but that's mostly because I'm a sucker for American history. I didn't mind Connor, but again, when you're coming from the Italian Stallion, he's boring.

Heck, what further cemented Connor's dull personality was that we got Edward Kenway in the next game.

While it was my favorite, I'd say it was one of the weaker stories in the series. Revelations comes close, to be honest.
 
Luckydog said:
I couldn't (respectfully) disagree more. It was his naïvity that killed me. I always felt strong willed people made good assassins. Altair may have been an egomaniac but it was what the brotherhood needed at the time. Ezio quickly grew into a strong willed character. Connor, I didnt feel ever did. He spent the vast majority of the game sulking and being lead around by the nose, especially by Kenway. It was like one vast escort mission except they were escorting you.

Altair, Ezio, Kenway (both), even Shay Cormac all had strong wills. I just never felt Connor stopped being a puppet.
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Yes I feel the same. Unity and AC3 were the weakest because the player protagonist had really little to do in the larger story. I feel like it had something to do with the fact that your character didn't amount to much. It's a shame cause the settings were fantastic.

Connor felt like he just took marching orders the whole time even though a game with basically a lone assassin in a world that had the order purged was interesting.

And Unity was boring because you were basically just a regular grunt for most of the game taking marching orders from the council and maybe going against them occasionally and they just shrug it off cause aww shucks you at least killed some Templars.

It's so weird when you consider Connor and Arno (I had to google Arno's name, so forgettable somehow) had similar setups, Assassins with a strong emotional tie to a Templar and those kinda just fell flat when the game went to explore those relationships. And even more weird considering Shay was vastly interesting and had more nuance and he arguably had the shortest amount of story missions in a mainline AC game and he sorta did the things 3 and Unity failed to do.
 
Obliterator said:
Unity is entirely skippable
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The ending of Unity made the entire game feel like one gigantic troll

You must find the sage! We mustn't let the templars get to him first!!!

Oh, Arno buried him I'm the catacombs, making it completely impossible for the templars to find him. I guess this entire thing was entirely pointless, but at least you found out for us that it was pointless! Great job!!

Who the hell thought this would be a satisfying conclusion?
 
It was just a boring experience. The story, main protagonist, and hunting mechanics... big snoozefest.

the sailing was the best part about the game
 
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