I'm sure this will be a rather controversial review as most people either absolutely love the Assassin's Creed Franchise, hate it, hate Ubisoft, love Ubisoft, or any one of a number of other combinations of love/hate relationships with this game and company. I, for one, love the AC Franchise. I've enjoyed every single one of the games except for AC Liberty (which was a port to PC). Even ACIII had its positives for being the weakest of the mainstream titles. So lets get to it. I write this with the caveat that I have not yet finished the game, but am definitely getting a good feel for it.
The Good:
Paris: Paris is Beautiful... and giant. The breadth and depth of the City is truly astounding. There is a true feel for the size of the city and how long it takes to travel between areas. When you synchronize a viewpoint you get a very good idea of just how small you are, and how little you can see of the city from any one place. You can also enter almost any building in Paris to one extent or another. It definitely lends itself to the immersion of the game.
Stuff: The side quests, objects, collectibles, etc. are plentiful and available, almost to the point of being distracting. You'll be headed one place and decide to detour to get a chest, or detour to get a collectible. It'll definitely add to the play time in the game.
Navigation: There are definite pros to the new additions to navigation. The controlled descent that now exists in the game is fun and the animations for it are great. Its far better than just hopping off buildings (or falling to your death if you mis-judge, which can still happen, but it is more rare now).
Stealth: The stealth in this game is familiar, and unfortunately that is just about all I can say about it. The one true addition to this aspect is that entering a building and traversing through it can help throw off your pursuers.
Story: Probably one of the bigger positives to the game. The acting is quite good, and actually, unlike COD:AW, the facial expressions match up far better to the expressiveness of the situation and the spoken word than I had expected.
Quests: There are lots. I mean lots. As with the stealth aspect, the quests feel familiar, none so far have been terribly difficult.
Combat: The combat is decent, if not terribly challenging. More in the negatives.
Unlocks: There are tons. This is the only positive.
Companion App: Really, all I can say about this right now is that it is very pretty.
Currencies: This has no positives.
Polish: Almost no positives here, and thus the reason for my review title.
The Bad:
Paris: Is Huge. I marked that as a positive, for sure, but to be honest, its also a negative, having come from playing Assassin's Creed: Black Flag before this one. One of the beauties of Black Flag is that it was truly *fun* to travel between areas because of the ship. Naval Battles were fun and challenging, as was building up your ship. Unfortunately with ACU we're back to running between sync points at the top of one building or another at full speed and not even paying much attention to the immense amount of detail.
Stuff: As mentioned before, there is almost so much in the game that it becomes a distraction, and I'm getting a feeling that the actual story line for the game is much shorter than I would have hoped. Having only done far too few main-line quests, I'm progressing through percentage complete in the game far faster than I'd hoped, almost at the rate it took me to complete Shadow Of Mordor which was supposed to be a much smaller game, both in story and scope.
Navigation: You'll find yourself missing some of the things that became second-nature in earlier Assassin's Creed games, like zip lines. Also, as with many previous AC games, sometimes your character just does not go where you want him to, without many, and repeated, efforts. This becomes a problem with the number of open windows and navigable buildings, sometimes its just a pain to actually enter the building, where it should be far more fluid.
Stealth: This is probably an area of my biggest annoyance with the game. Some definite AC 'bread and butter' abilities are missing, such as being able to whistle from around a corner or in a haystack. It makes luring targets to a secluded location a near impossibility. Not being able to have even the slightest control over where a target is pathing without risking being spotted is an extreme drawback to this game.
Story: One of the better parts to the game. So far its a little thin, but I imagine it will flesh out. It still does not reach the level of ACII, the best in the franchise.
Quests: As I mentioned, the difficulty is not something where you have to try over-and-over again. Really the biggest annoyances with the quests come with navigation, as previously discussed, or the missing bread-and-butter abilities like luring a guard to cover with a whistle.
Combat: To be honest, the combat system is over-simplified. There are multiple factions in the game that are going to pester you, including the loyalists and the 'police force'. They again moved around the default controls, which was not really needed, and chose sometimes odd button combinations in order to achieve certain things (this goes for navigation as well). The combat is far too simple when compared to a game like Shadow of Mordor. The consumables, such as the phantom blade darts, are absurdly expensive, especially early-on in the game. And again, I find myself missing certain things that existed in previous games (sleep darts, etc).
Unlocks: As I mentioned, there are a huge amount. Unfortunately, again with the stealth, many things that were native in previous games require you to unlock them in order to use them in this game (abilities, weapons, clothes, etc), or simply dont exist. On top of that, Ubisoft has been extremely heavy-handed with the DLC type content. Many portions of the game are simply not available, or at least, not readily available, if you did not purchase a certain edition of the game or did not unlock it through some other roundabout way (companion app, pre-order code, etc). Those that are will require a significant amount of grinding to acquire. This has not yet been game-breaking, but I just wish some of them felt more attainable.
Companion App: It is buggy to the point of being unusable if you buy the premium app. It prevents you from initiating new assassins and thus you cannot complete the quests. What's amusing is that the free version works better than the premium one. You're actually able to do the quests.
Currencies: Part of what adds to this feel of needing to grind is that there are 4 different currency types in the game. Livres, which I expected as it is the time period money. Sync Points, which are used to purchase skills and are obtained through quest completion. Creed Points which can be spent to upgrade weapons and armor, and are obtained through quests and world events, like catching a thief. Finally, Helix Credits, which is the real-world conversion to digital currency. Helix Credits can be bought with real money to upgrade in-game items faster than grinding out Livres. The only up-side to this is that you dont *have* to purchase Helix Credits in order to obtain items in the game by any means, it just accelerates the process. In all honesty, having 4 different currencies adds a level of complexity to an already extremely complex game that is just not needed. On top of that, I am completely against any sort purchased in-game currency, especially in a banner title such as this where there are already DLCs that need to be purchased or obtained in some way.
Polish: In a word, the game feels... Unfinished. It feels as though it should have been released 'tomorrow', as it were. It is buggy beyond belief, whether it be render problems with AMD graphics cards, sluggish performance even with high end systems, poor console performance, getting stuck in walls, falling through the world, odd physics animations, etc. The companion app just doesnt work. The immense amount of unlocks, making it a relative impossibility to get every unlock in the game is unfortunate, on top of those restrictive unlocks that only certain editions can get (and this is not even including the pre-order only unlocks and such). I dont understand why this is becoming the norm from Ubisoft. Watch Dogs was just as horrendously buggy as ACU, with many of the same issues around performance. On top of that, I would have thought that Ubisoft would have learned that more editions is not better. Watch Dogs again had a similar situation where there were many many different editions of the game (premium, limited, collectors, digital, etc) each with differing items and unlocks given to the purchaser. Assassin's Creed Unity takes it even a step further, with just as many discontiguous editions, and on top of that, the four different currencies add a level of confusion to the game that is just not needed. I imagine much of the polish will be addressed as time moves on, but it just feels like it should have been released at a later date.
Coop:
Because of certain bugs, I have not yet been able to try out this portion of the game. I hope to be able to try it soon as it is a large part of why I purchased two copies of this game, one for myself and one for my wife.
Summary:
As if all of that wasnt enough, here's the TLDR version.
The game, by and large, is relatively fun to play. With a somewhat thin story, missing signature abilities, and if you can deal with the bugs until Ubisoft gets around to fixing them on their timetable, then you will likely enjoy this game, it just leaves a lot to be desired out of a top-tier game franchise.
