Spoilerish.
- The Green Dragon a nod to The Hobbit?
- Sometimes lockpicking is misaligned, to get a weird visual glitch.
- The safe running is welcome, for sure, but it introduces the (less annoying) problem of running up every goddamn lightpost or market stand when I just wanted to run past it.
- The story is suitably ludicrous; this *is* Assassin’s Creed, after all. Throughout the Ezio stories and now with Conner, I kept wondering what would happen if the Assassins and Templars actually sat down with a beer and talked things over. There’s some nice gray areas, but too bad the protagonist and enemies are all so stabby happy rather than, “well shit; let’s just talk about it first.” As usual the most lucid moments are right after you’ve stabbed someone. “Well, damn, sorry I stabbed you; why didn’t you say earlier?”
- The Desmond story bits are also kind of crazy. I assume they ran out of money to CGify the massive solar flare and world seismic activity, etc., and maybe they thought to themselves, “well, let’s just make another game and render those scenes in its intro instead.” Also, the Cross story just sort of fizzled.
- Not enough stealth; too much running, and it wasn’t even good pakour running since the rooftops felt slower and jolty, not to mention attracting the guards.
- I liked the naval battles and wish there were random encounters instead of just the set ones.
- I feel like I learned a lot about colonial America and got some good background on the Seven Years War and the Revolutionary War. No idea how accurate it is, but I could easily see this game as supplemental material for an American history class, especially if there’s other resources that help students critique the game. (or use the game to critique the textbooks)
- The dual pistols never seemed to work for me.
- Jarring to see the standard Assassin’s outfit in cutscenes when I had chosen a different dye to run around in.
- There’s no point in crafting anything except the items Conner can use. The easiest way to make money is to just buy and sell bear and beaver pelts. And there’s no point in getting naval convoys going since, by the time you can reliably do so, you’re rolling in cash.
- I did like the side missions, especially the homesteader ones.
- The recruitment of Assassins was great. The leveling up by assigning them to missions was pointless. I didn’t get a sense that higher level minions actually did anything.
- Really long epilogue. Surprisingly nice and meaningful.
- Very pretty looking game. The Caribbean waters were great.