I played quite a bit more of the game yesterday.
I've really started to enjoy the ambiance, and I'm time and time again impressed by the way the game looks. Resolution and dodgy framerate on PS4 aside, this is probably the most impressive looking game I've seen this gen. All of it makes me wonder about whatever comes out the next year, with the teams (or PR) claiming that this is the most they can do. It's definitely a lot at display here, but I don't think I want to the next year's game if they have to make further compromises in the scale and fidelity to get a stable framerate or bump the game to native 1920x1080 on the consoles.
All praise for the general aesthetics aside, I really can't say I'm a big fan of the game. To use mild terms, the P2P co-op play is absolutely awful. Animations, especially in combat never keep up with actions (which is a problem to a lesser extent in SP), and the AI which is inconsitently horrible to begin with doesn't keep up with the action either. Even in the singleplayer, the AI awful. Guards posted on rooftops will notice and leave your last known position on screen if they see you from a block away, but will never investigate the source of gunshots, even if person shot was standing right next to them. Pathing is also problematic, especially during set missions like heists. Guards will sometimes return on their routine paths, other times they'll get stuck on a ladder, with two NPCs on each end of the ladder standing there like idiots with the one in the middle is stuck in ladder purgatory. While all this takes place, paths of every other guard in the building remain the same and there are zero remaining safe routes left. Cherry bomb lures too, only work so often.
Combat then? I've been playing the game for maybe 7 hours, and I haven't found a weapon wheel, stumbled upon a prompt to pick up enemy weapons from the ground, disarm enemies or have succesfully been able to take my sword and stab someone unaware in the back. All of these features had been in the game since AC2. Either I'm blind by medical definition, or the combat is really pared back from what it once was. The only good contribution from ACIII to the series, the charging and moving-on-to-the-next assassionations seem to be absent, too. Having to enter combat when they ready their weapon a second before you reach the stab-your-throat range is annoying, and only serves to slow down the game. Getting spotted when you're above your target sucks even more, where performing an air-assasination actually knocks the target down, but you can't stick a knife in him while he's on the ground for that brief amount of time - instead, enter duel.
If these features do exist in the game, please do correct me, because I really want to like this game.
Finally, a quick touch on the acrobatics. It's great when it works; when it doesn't, it's not good. I never really got used to the changes that ACIII made to the parkour, and further automization of climbing really rubs me the wrong way. Wall ejects never seem to work, and the game's insistence on stopping you from taking a manual leap into what the game thinks is a fall to your death takes away too much control. I'd like a manual jump and grab buttons from AC through AC:B again.