JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
I got Assassins Creed 3 Remastered as part of the Odyssey Season Pass and finally got around to playing it.
Before I get into the Remaster, I'll share how I felt about the original game back in 2012. Prior to AC3, I had loved the Ezio trilogy and was looking forward to a new character set in colonial America around the revolutionary war.
Despite being mega excited when I saw the demo for it at E3 that year, the final result was a significant disappointment. They changed up quite a few things in AC3 and most of what they added was not very good.
My main issue, was that the game just simply wasn't all that fun and didn't really excel at any one thing and I felt like the game had too much crap in it that was mostly pointless. The game was decent enough for players who stuck mostly to the main story and didn't go out of their way to do side content. Assassins Creed games live and die by their side content. The best kind of side content is the kind that rewards the player for doing it. Whether it's in game currency, armor, and/or a weapon. In this game doing the side content got you nothing and most of it wasn't all that fun. It was just pointless and often tedious tasks that resulted in a checkmark. While most Ubisoft games are developed by multiple teams, this game very much felt like several different games thrown into one. One part traditional Assassins Creed, one part The Sims, and another part Pirates of the Caribbean.
The main character Connor doesn't make an appearance until several hours in and isn't given free reign until another hour or so after that. At that point you get your base of operations where you have to recruit other settlers to stay and do tasks for them to build your base. This felt like the Sims and many of the tasks were not too difficult, but didn't offer a compelling reason to do them, other than doing them and allowing them to craft items that really didn't do much. The stealth in this game was pretty terrible and you will scream at Connor for moments like the usual old school Assassins Creed jank, like randomly getting stuck on something invisible during parkour at a time when you're trying to escape. The worst parts of the game was the Optional Objectives and the boat missions. The boat missions were praised as one of the best parts of the game at the time of release, but the boat was a chore at times and very difficult and frustrating to manuever. This was drastically fixed in AC4 and AC:Rogue. The optional objectives didn't really add anything to missions in the game, but felt tacked on and some of them were extremely tedious and felt like they were getting in the way. Combined with the boat missions they were outright painful.
The DLC, on the otherhand, Tyranny of King Washington was fantastic. They eliminated a lot of the bloat and kept to the fun stuff. I had a blast playing that.
So now that I have gotten that out of the way? Did the remaster make AC3 better?
In minor ways yes, but mostly, no. I enjoyed playing the remaster far more than I did the original game since I knew how to approach the game and knew all the ins and outs, but it's hugely disappointing in that they didn't take an opportunity to clean up some of the junk. They could have gutted the entire crafting system and replaced it with the one in AC4. I would have liked for them to have replaced the boat controls with the controls from AC4, although that would have been difficult and probably not worth the effort. They also could have fixed some of the optional objectives, particularly those with the boat that involved lighting the gunpowder keg of an opposing boat on fire. If you played the game, you will know what I mean. Fuck that crap.
AC3 is still the game it was in 2012, a game that never felt truly finished or properly playtested, because I cannot for the life of me believe any human with a functioning brain found much of what was in the game to be fun. TO this day, I do feel that it has the best villain in the series and the main story is actually pretty good so if you stick to just that, the game can be fun.
Thankfully Ubisoft was aware of these issues and largely fixed them in AC4. To this AC4:Black Flag is one of my favorites. It's light and day better than AC3.
If you got it as part of the AC: Odyssey Season Pass, then by all means check it out. Should you purchase it separately? I'd say no.
Feel free to add your thoughts.
Before I get into the Remaster, I'll share how I felt about the original game back in 2012. Prior to AC3, I had loved the Ezio trilogy and was looking forward to a new character set in colonial America around the revolutionary war.
Despite being mega excited when I saw the demo for it at E3 that year, the final result was a significant disappointment. They changed up quite a few things in AC3 and most of what they added was not very good.
My main issue, was that the game just simply wasn't all that fun and didn't really excel at any one thing and I felt like the game had too much crap in it that was mostly pointless. The game was decent enough for players who stuck mostly to the main story and didn't go out of their way to do side content. Assassins Creed games live and die by their side content. The best kind of side content is the kind that rewards the player for doing it. Whether it's in game currency, armor, and/or a weapon. In this game doing the side content got you nothing and most of it wasn't all that fun. It was just pointless and often tedious tasks that resulted in a checkmark. While most Ubisoft games are developed by multiple teams, this game very much felt like several different games thrown into one. One part traditional Assassins Creed, one part The Sims, and another part Pirates of the Caribbean.
The main character Connor doesn't make an appearance until several hours in and isn't given free reign until another hour or so after that. At that point you get your base of operations where you have to recruit other settlers to stay and do tasks for them to build your base. This felt like the Sims and many of the tasks were not too difficult, but didn't offer a compelling reason to do them, other than doing them and allowing them to craft items that really didn't do much. The stealth in this game was pretty terrible and you will scream at Connor for moments like the usual old school Assassins Creed jank, like randomly getting stuck on something invisible during parkour at a time when you're trying to escape. The worst parts of the game was the Optional Objectives and the boat missions. The boat missions were praised as one of the best parts of the game at the time of release, but the boat was a chore at times and very difficult and frustrating to manuever. This was drastically fixed in AC4 and AC:Rogue. The optional objectives didn't really add anything to missions in the game, but felt tacked on and some of them were extremely tedious and felt like they were getting in the way. Combined with the boat missions they were outright painful.
The DLC, on the otherhand, Tyranny of King Washington was fantastic. They eliminated a lot of the bloat and kept to the fun stuff. I had a blast playing that.
So now that I have gotten that out of the way? Did the remaster make AC3 better?
In minor ways yes, but mostly, no. I enjoyed playing the remaster far more than I did the original game since I knew how to approach the game and knew all the ins and outs, but it's hugely disappointing in that they didn't take an opportunity to clean up some of the junk. They could have gutted the entire crafting system and replaced it with the one in AC4. I would have liked for them to have replaced the boat controls with the controls from AC4, although that would have been difficult and probably not worth the effort. They also could have fixed some of the optional objectives, particularly those with the boat that involved lighting the gunpowder keg of an opposing boat on fire. If you played the game, you will know what I mean. Fuck that crap.
AC3 is still the game it was in 2012, a game that never felt truly finished or properly playtested, because I cannot for the life of me believe any human with a functioning brain found much of what was in the game to be fun. TO this day, I do feel that it has the best villain in the series and the main story is actually pretty good so if you stick to just that, the game can be fun.
Thankfully Ubisoft was aware of these issues and largely fixed them in AC4. To this AC4:Black Flag is one of my favorites. It's light and day better than AC3.
If you got it as part of the AC: Odyssey Season Pass, then by all means check it out. Should you purchase it separately? I'd say no.
Feel free to add your thoughts.
