OVERALL REVIEW - RECOMMENDED BUT GET IT ON SALE

This game was getting absolutely panned in the early days by some reviews for its host of technical problems and glitches. I actually avoided it for several years because of this. When I saw that it was on sale and heard the bugs had been worked out, I decided to check it out and was glad that I did. There's a significant break from earlier AC games in regards to hiding, taking cover, and luring enemies to your position. I would say that pretty much all of these changes were for the worse, despite them all being generally playable and fine. The exclusion of the series' classic whistle mechanic to lure guards and its replacement by revealing your position and then hiding again is somewhat baffling to me. Did anybody actually enjoy this change?

Other than these issues, the game is fun, pretty, and introduces quite a few interesting changes to the AC formula. I really liked the more open ended assassination missions that often had a secret, more elaborate and challenging assassination method for players willing to explore and find it for themselves. I also enjoyed the crime solving missions despite the tedious backtracking they would often require. The City of Paris is of course beautiful to explore as well, making hunting for collectibles a generally enjoyable time. Overall, it's a decent game. It's definitely not the best of the first era of AC games, but its not nearly the worst either. It also has some of the most interesting and unusual gameplay mechanics of any game in the series (they really tried to change up a lot of stuff and then kind of reversed these changes with Syndicate). I'd overall recommend playing if you're a fan of AC or want to check out what I would probably call the most unusual and idiosyncratic of the AC games. 

This game takes pretty much all of the previous Assassin's Creed gameplay, and turns it on it's head, for better, or for worse. Control schemes are wildly different than previous incarnations, multiplayer is now an essential part of the game if you want to progress fully, character customization. The list goes on and on. For all it does good, it does a lot wrong unfortunately. There were two specific things that I really was turned off by. The first, is that the last several entries in the series (III, Black Flag, Rogue), you had a very interesting environment to explore, and huge at that. This game was a huge regression in that to me. You basically have a city to run around and do things in again and that is it. It gets very boring quickly for me. The other thing is that the story just kind of.... sucked. Which is very unusual for a Creed game. Other than the beginning, there was little to no ties to the previous games, and no real progression of the main storyline in the series. Also the whole Animus TV stuff SUCKED, and it was weird and not done correctly. That's the real problem throughout the game, is it is not explained well enough, I felt lost in the story the entire game through. The DLC was a real treat, introduced a lot of awesome features we have never before seen in a Creed game, but even then, the story was just not implemented correctly. Okay, that's the bad. The good, is surprisingly enough, the multiplayer. I was very skeptical of this at first but the more I played it, the more I enjoyed it. Something about coordinating with team-members to plan an assassination just gives you a serious badass feeling. The combat is super fun and varied. The new items are great too. Basically, all of the gameplay elements are great. Everything else is just kind of meh. I would recommend this game for people who are fans of the series, but only hardcore fans.