To start, the game is incredibly poorly optimized, to the point that random missions would just bug out, or crash the game. I was playing it alongside my friend and he also had odd problems, one of which was that both of us was on controller, and for some odd reason his controller would just start drifting downwards (not controller drift, it was happening on multiple controllers, same bug on all of them after watching a cutscene usually, he used a gamesir and a ps5 controller), my controller (standard ps5 controller) at the start of the game, its binds where completely messed up for some odd reason and unable to be fixed, forcing me to use a broken xbox controller I had, it did this (as I kept testing my ps5 controller) for the first few hours, until finally for some odd reason without me doing anything, it got fixed and I could use the ps5 controller.
A few bugs off the top of my head is: some assassinations wouldn't allow you to do the 'unique kill' and would simply have them get scared and run even after setting it up, enemies directly seeing you through walls, one mission about tackling a spy completely bugged out for me with each time I tackled the spy it wouldn't trigger the cutscene. And the game crashed a lot for me. Though, I feel the game crashes are partially on windows 11 and the Ubisoft app, as I feel some crashes might have been windows 11 related, I think I should have played this on Linux, or tried to anyway.
The graphics are just fine, I suppose. Even for 2015 standards I feel like this is lacking. Certain areas look to bright and dull, and while I get it is meant to be a worn down city, it feels like everything is the same to me.
The gameplay is the best part of this game, but that isn't saying a lot. It was getting very repetitive by sequence 6/7. Think the arkham games, but more bogged down. Sometimes when dodging back, Jacob/Evie wouldn't fully commit and/or something was blocking them in the back (like another enemy or a wall) and that would result in them getting hit. I feel it just needed more time in the oven as it definitely has potential here.
I also think the story is dull, more bordering bad than good. It felt like a 'nothing burger' as some would call it. You just knew what was going to happen when it does. The main characters are also pretty bland all things considered, there isn't much to know about them other than 'Jacob likes mischief, Evie is annoyed by it. Jacob is reluctant to help others, Evie loves doing that' etc, it just doesn't get expanded on. And the main villain just sits in his office for most of the game reacting to what we done instead of doing anything than getting mad that we killed the people around him.
Spoilers for the end, at the end you fight the main villain, and the fight I feel doesn't properly test your skill. All it was is grapple up, jump down, fight the villain, then swapped to the other protagonist. I feel it would have been great seeing a section of stealth, then fight, then stealth again. And at the end when we found the piece of eden in modern day, I was utterly confused as to what was going on, maybe I missed something? What I mean is I know they where looking for it, and I partially know the reason, but other than a quick cutscene showing I think that it fell into the other peoples hands, I was confused by most of it.
In the later half of the game, you are required to go and clear out a area and make it safe to progress the story. This felt ridiculous to me as it seemed like unnecessary padding for the game time since it is required in order to go to sequence 8.
For some positives: when you do assassinate a target and get to speak with them, I thought that was interesting, some quips from the characters are sometimes funny,
Maybe I'm being harsh on this game as this game was gifted to me by my friend and is the first assassins creed I have played, but it just wasn't all that great, from the bugs to the general game. If you like it, that is great, but personally it wasn't for me.
