Assassin's Creed® Revelations

Assassin's Creed Revelations further refines the original Assassin's Creed formula, arguably to its best form. It improves several of Brotherhood's systems. Parkour feels even better due to improvements to downward mobility. In AC2 & ACB, you often had to jump to get down as Ezio wouldn't want to simply drop off the ledge to something below. This frustration has been largely dealt with by allowing this dropping down to occur when there's something not too far below. However, it does seem like it's easier to slide of roofs/objects, so there is a downside. The hookblade likewise speeds up climbing a bit and unlocks ziplines, which integrates wonderfully with the elevation in Constantinople. Speaking of Constantinople, it might be my favorite setting in terms of traversal. It has the building density of Firenze & Venice but the scale of Rome, which featured a lot more empty space which is far less interesting from a traversal point of view. Combined with the aforementioned improvements to parkour, it is simply the best game for traversal in the entire franchise, which is personally the standout and most important feature of Assassin's Creed from a gameplay perspective. The city is also a joy to look at, with its mix of Ottoman & Byzantine styles. The biggest downside is that the game could have had more content to enjoy in this setting. The recruit system also sees significant improvements. In ACB, there was a fairly lineair progression with an end point. Revelations expands upon the concept by having two a liberation and a defense phase for the cities. Recruits that reach max rank can also be assigned to the dens in Constantinople, which unlocks actual missions for Ezio. At the same time, this means you have a need to keep recruiting and leveling up recruits for much longer during the game, and the defensive contracts make you choose between recruit availability in Constantinople and assigning them to contracts. Similarly, the Den system works like the Borgia towers, except you can now get attacked when certain conditions are met. Not that the twer defense minigame is fantastic, but it does make the city feel less static. The story is shorter, unfortunately. Just like Brotherhood, Revelations had limited development time. But it does manage to finish the sagas of Ezio & Altaïr in a satisfactory way. A couple of more negative points. Firstly, assassinations feel worse. The animations often don't match, making it look goofy, and the iconic assassination sound is absent. Music is too quiet as well. Another is that for whatever reason Ezio often 'stumbles' when landing, despite feeling like he could make that jump in the previous two games. Was this intentional to show him ageing or an oversight? Whatever the case, it takes the wind out of your sales sometimes in parkour. But even with this it is still the best it's ever been, just could've been a bit better. More importantly however, an update by Ubisoft in 2024 cut off access to the DLC Lost Archives as well as the Desmond sequences which are base game content. This is very anti-consumer, and another reason why the Stop Killing Games initiative should lead to legislative change. I'm still giving the thumbs up, because I'm reviewing the game itself and frankly the DLC both can't be bought anymore and isn't very good, just like those Desmond sequences.