SomTervo said:
Rogue is really good.
The open world/sea is infinitely worse than Black Flag's (there's no straight-up open ocean, it's all closed somehow) but every town/village/location is way more intricate and a lot of the gameplay mechanics seem streamlined.
The story and characters are broadly pretty crappy, too, but it feels like a pretty good adventure.
Disagree with the open world/sea being worse than Black Flag. There's three different maps. Two sea and one land. Black Flag's Caribbean open world sea was awesome but Rogue's is just as good if not better. It's basically the "ice cold" version of it but it's damn good.
Story and characters are easily better than Black Flag and Unity in my opinion. It's not even close. Mission objective wise, it's easily better as Black Flag had way too many eavesdropping missions while Rogue has none whatsoever which is a huge positive over Black Flag.
For me, Black Flag is a 9/10 while Rogue is a 9.5/10 and was my 2014 game of the year. An excellent game with no online stuff whatsoever, no co-op, no multi-player, etc. You can even play the Naval Campaign (mini ship battles) completely off the disc without any internet connection whatsoever. Rogue takes everything good about Black Flag and makes it even better.
If I had to list my negatives for Rogue, it would be that the story is short (but very good) and needed one more sequence in my opinion. With that said, I would rather play Rogue's story again over Black Flag's especially since the mission objectives are better in Rogue and again, no eavesdropping missions which I fucking hated in Black Flag. Only other negative is also in Black Flag and that revolves around being able to purchase animal skins. I know it was possible but I would have had more hunting side quests that allow you to acquire animal skins. In other words, I would have had quests that revolve around each individual animal in the game for you to kill and skin. Don't like having the option to purchase animal skins because after a while, it's like, okay, im tired of looking for this or that animal, let me just purchase the skin. Regardless, Rogue is easily the better game in my honest opinion and Black Flag is what made me an AC fan to begin with so saying Rogue is better definitely means something.
SomTervo said:
This is music to my ears. I hope the game has a long sales-tail.
From what I've seen - I would definitely agree that Evie can carry the whole game. They used Jacob literally just as a marketing tool - to say "here, men, you still play a man, it's all manly man in this game, Jacob is a badass" then they tacked on Evie just to see how a female playable character works out. Check out any bumf/blurbs about the game - all the ones I've read have no mention of Evie and just talk about Jacob.
Then separately, due to their mismanagement of the IP, sales drop, and they will undoubtedly correlate that with the inclusion of a female protag. Classic.
If they give it a one-year break and come back with a total beast of a game in 2017 - perhaps reboot-level - that would be great.
Evie is by far, the superior character and while Jacob isn't bad or horrible, he's just not as good as Evie is and he's annoying. The two character setup though fits in the game throughout the story and makes sense once you finish the game.
Personally enjoyed the story, characters and all the side stuff (I completed everything 100%) way more than Unity which isn't saying much but still. Syndicate also had a good ending and boss fight in my opinion. The main villain is also damn good.
I don't see Ubisoft giving AC a year off. Franchise still sells and since Syndicate rebounded the franchise after Unity, it's definitely not going to happen. Besides, im already looking forward to next year's AC game because it's supposed to be developed by the team that developed Black Flag so im definitely pumped looking ahead compared to how I was after Unity. A lot more confidence and excitement going into AC 2016 than I was going into AC 2015.
If Ubisoft was to ever reboot AC, one things is for sure, the present day stuff, abstergo and animus garbage should be eliminated 100% in my opinion.
I was tempted to get it if it looked like a good port from the stream. 
