Pretty disappointed...
Just played through this game for the first time. I thought it was about time I gave the AC series a try, but so far I am disappointed...
1a. Missions and gameplay are very repetitive. Even the assassinations themselves don't really change, as the player has no way to actually plan how he hits his targets! You always have to enter via the main entrance, watch a god darned 5-minute-unskippable cutscene and then fight off anything from 5 to 30 guards.
1b. Btw. what is going on with an assassin who is not even once able to kill his mark and get away without raising the guard of the ENTIRE BLOODY CITY?! Wasn't stealth like something of a specialty of assassins? Ever heard of a night mission perhaps?
1c. If I had a penny for every time Altair tried to climb a wall instead of walking past it, holding onto a ledge instead of jumping off it, etc., I would be a filthy rich man.
1d. These damn hay wagons have a tendency to suck Altair in like god damn magnets do an iron nail. You can't even jump over an alley where one of the darned hay wagons is parked, it will magically pull you from the air.
2a. Killing guards sucks. At times it is super easy and 10 guards who surrounded me die in a manner of seconds. Other times even 4 guards surrounding me could beat the everliving *beep* out of me. How comes? At any rate, I basically always just climbed up the nearest 3 story building and waited at the top to kill the guards as they climb up after me one-by-one - or just simply kick them over the edge. Any player who is not a total nitwit will figure this out 10 minutes into the game (or make that 40 minutes, as he'll spend 30 in the tutorials :P) - after that there is basically never any new kind of challenge.
2b. What is it with those guards anyway? One dude spots me three alleys away and in 2 seconds the 4-story building is stormed by guards like they were ants on an ant hill. And how the f_u.c,k are these knights in full mail armor jumping and climbing around like an assassin anyway?
3. The final boss fights are horrible. Basically just killing 15 guards/knights/assassins/al'mualims at once like 6 times in a row. Don't know if people found this challenging, for me it was just annoying... Hit them a couple of times, maybe kill one or two, then run around like a mad man and wait for your health to regen... Rinse and repeat. Not difficult, it just takes a long time.
4. The story is ok, although a bit convoluted. But the ending is horrible. No reward, no explanations, no nothing - neither for the medieval times nor the present day story.
5. Why all the useless scenes where we can walk around in the present day lab? There is really not much going on there...
6. Jesus H Christ the beggar ladies and drunken fools are annoying. All the challenges just get 100% more frustrating.
7. Unskippable cutscenes we are forced to watch? What is this, Clockwork Orange?
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who watches the watchmen?