Assassin's Creed 3 coming October 30, 2012

He is completely correct about the later chase sequence. Really soured me on the whole game with how it's positioned.

Another thing I really wish I had learned before now: you can counterkill with your tool slot items. I.e., even more awesome for the rope dart, some Legolas point-blank archery, etc.

Haha wow really? I rarely used the bow since it was so slow and often wouldn't kill in one hit.

Yeah I loved the rope-dart for counters and combat. The pistol's not bad either. Never tried the bow though.

Snare counterkilling is amusing. Sadly, you cannot kill by shoving handfuls of coins into someone's mouth so they choke to death, or by throwing handfuls of bait at them so wild bears run up and maul them. Perhaps in DLC.

So I'm trying to download the PC version.

Ubisoft are reaching for new heights in incompetence.

FYI, just loaded up the game on X360 and it downloaded a (smallish) patch.

It fixed my glitch about having miscounted scanned settlers for the Encyclopedia but didn't unlock the cheevo for me. Sad panda.

Just finished this, did most all the game.

I didn't like Connor, the end was too abrupt, and there were sloppy little bugs all throughout the game with the general lack of cohesion between the various parts.

The level design and graphics were great, some of the missions were great, some were shitty. Nothing was especially challenging, even the ghetto "NO YOU CAN'T CHASE THE GUY TO CHASE THE GUY" mission.

So.... I had fun with it, but I think my like of Ezio's character and plot lines actually pushes AC:R over AC3.

Other sloppy stuff:

Outfits not sticking during cutscenes.
The "bring me items" quests not activating properly
The "find Myriam" mission leaving Myriam on the map... But that's not the right Myriam.
The sloppy sequencing. I don't understand the chronology of the epilogue at all.
I got killed in a cutscene once. It fired with a guy still active and during dialog, he killed me.
Every single time I enter a new zone now, it tells me that I've acquired a weapon, the Shard of Eden, and a Citizen Mission Item. EVERY TIME.

More spoilery stuff:

Heh I thought I was the only one with that bug. It was fun seeing the list of stuff I acquired get bigger the further I got in the game.

Someone told at least one of the mission designers that their implementation of horse riding was good enough to have a horse-based chase scene. That someone is a liar, and I think somehow they're using one of the Eden pieces to be believed.

My twin pistol holster was broken late in the game, which was incredibly disappointing. I thought the bug was related to that, as in "Look you have a second gun you cannot use!"

This was weird all throughout the game. I'd frequently zip back and forth through time when doing Peg Leg quests and the like.

Also, I never got more than one Pokesassin. I tried to do the bits where you freed zones by doing little side objectives, but after I beat up all the thugs in one area nothing ever happened and the apparent quest giver would only shake his head and say "It's bad out there. See what you can do."

I had twin guns fine with that bug. *shrug*

I don't think the sequencing was sloppy, necessarily. I'm thinking that certain side missions are intended to be taken on when they open up, but of course that's not enforced, so you can see weird things. I kind of forgot about the naval and privateer missions toward the end and did them all in a go, and the date given was several years prior.

Well they have no main plot spoilers so it's fine to have them be last chronologically.

Yeah, it wasn't a problem, I just happened to notice that I was jumping around in time when I did those missions.

Finally took a deep bracing breath and finished the last couple chapters the other day. I suppose I'll spoiler-box it, though I can't see it mattering to any sane person.

Overall, a disappointment. I don't mind having played and finished it, but I do wish I could shoot a quick message back to the recent past and tell slightly younger me to wait till it hit some bargain sale or other.

Just got a copy of this as a Christmas gift, so I will play through and read all of these tempting spoilers soon!

EDIT: Started reading animus database entries. Oh Shaun, never ever change.

I'm about 11 hours in now and thankfully, I haven't felt like putting it down and walking away.

Although overall I quite like the experience, what I didn't like came up early on and in quick succession, so it was magnified. I didn't like spending ages replaying sequences for seemingly easy optional objectives. I didn't like the QTEs (why, why did you implement those. I didn't mind a couple of optional ones in cutscenes during AC2, they added to the experience. These are just painful). I didn't like seeing spelling errors and glitching objects. I spotted a cane floating in mid-air when I was swimming once. And goddamnit, why did you change Shaun's appearance?

But as these things are more spread out (or I found ways to avoid the QTEs), I found things I like. The AC3 team continues to deliver with fantastic maps and backgrounds (I stopped several times to admire their Manhattan, especially). I like the tree climbing, I guess, mostly. I kind of like hunting. I like that Connor isn't a clone of Desmond, even if I don't like anything else about Connor. And I really, really like the Animus Database. They added in more snark and I love it, it's both informative for history dunces like myself and funny enough to keep my attention.

Like Umazes I got it for Christmas and started playing the other day. Thankfully, forwarned is forearmed so playing six fucking chapters of the game before I got to finally be the main character of the game as a real Assassin wasn't as frustrating as it would have been otherwise, but still. Jesus. Haytham was cool, though.

It's weird how the game decides to get in its own way, though. The very moment I'd been playing for hours to reach - when Connor finally gets his For Real Assassin gear - is instantly and unavoidably wrecked by the game yanking the player away and throwing them into present-day, boring-Desmond mode. These mandatory sequences of boring, tutorial-level Platforming With Desmond have always been my least favorite parts of the AC games, and it's somehow fitting (and incredibly maddening) that the game forced me into one right at the time when I most wanted to play the game's real protagonist.

(Especialy now that Desmond's become a slouchy, frumpy, horse-faced douche. WTF seriously, Ubi.)

Desmond segments are the renegade interrupt of AC plot sequences. "Interesting, interesting, plot revea... *DESMOND!*" At this point it's just Ubi trolling the shit out of fans.

Literally the only two Desmond-RELATED things I enjoy in this game are the maps he gets to run, and Shaun.

In.. Revelations? I think. He gets to be a little tolerable and less of a dick. In 3 he alternates wildly from whiny dick to WHAT THE SHIT DESMOND?!

Yes, but keep in mind that he basically lived out these ancestors' lives, so acting like them from time to time doesn't seem too out of character to me.

I would have accepted it more if it was a slow progression, or something. Instead it was way past "I learned to fight" and right into "fuck that, mass murder time."

Oh, and like everyone else has said, I fucking LOVE THE NAVAL MISSIONS. The ships themselves are fantastic and excellently detailed, and the navigation / ship-handling / combat strikes a great balance between the necessary simplification and realism. (Hey, at least there's wind, and it has a direction, and it changes. That's pretty huge when sailing is usually rendered as pointing ship in a direction and pressing forward so the sails magically fill and you move as if by motor.) I loved roaming around the masts and rigging and seeing all the cool little details, like the studdingsail booms and the futtock-shrouds (no lubber's holes in the tops, though). I love that you can buy upgrades to fire grape and chain too.

I did kind of laugh when I upgraded Aquila's compliment of cannon, though. A modest but effective 24-gun brigantine becomes a bizarre 60-gun hybrid - still smaller than a frigate, but carrying the armament of a ship-of-the-line, which would probably require a crew of hundreds to sail and fight the ship. Besides, no shipwright with any vestige of sanity would stuff that much weight and firepower into a smaller vessel - the combined stress of a single broadside would likely break her ribs - but it's forgivable seeing as (A) yeah it's a video game and (B) they got so much right that this is minor nitpicking.

Like Adree said, if this game had a random naval mission generator it would be amazing. I only wish I could wear my captain's uniform outside of the sailing missions.

It's an unlock later.

No it is not. The Kidd pirate outfit doesn't look anything like it. You have to have DLC or the collectors edition to unlock it: http://www.ign.com/wikis/assassins-creed-3/Captain_of_the_Aquila_Uniform
Even that one is not the same as the one you actually wear during the missions.

Ugh yeah, he's wearing stockings and buckled pumps with that outfit rather than the leather boots he has on while sailing the Aquila. How gauche!

Quick random question: Is there a quick, nigh-game-breaking way to make money in this installment? I'm still pretty poor since I'm just at the beginning, and farming beaver hides is kind of heartbreaking. They make such a cute, sad little sound when you stab them. :(

Also, yesterday I got a stupid message saying "Defend Convoy: Time Remaining 5:27" out of the blue yesterday. Buh? There were no map indicators anywhere that I could find, and no information on what one does to defend one's convoy. So, predictably, I lost a convoy for no clear reason. While that wasn't quite pants-on-head stupid by itself, taken in aggregate it was another eye-rolling moment for AC3.

That's the one I have just from the steam version of the game, and it looks nearly identical as far as I could tell.

You have to find them in the frontier map, there should be an icon. And it's basically a lost cause to actually try and run to them. I believe clearing forts either lowers tax rate or danger rates for the runs, and due to the annoyance factor it's best to just use low danger convoys. Just sell beaver pelts to the nearby cities.

Oh. I've barely revealed any of the Frontier map, so I guess it doesn't show me an icon if I don't have the map cleared. I scoured every area for some notification and found nothing. Brilliant!

You can fast travel directly to those convey points, FYI.

Selling pelts by convoys was how I got enough money to fully upgrade the Aquila. Never did defend one, for similar missing icon reasons. Plus once I'm positive I never got a notification one needed defending, only when it was lost.

There's probably higher-profit margin selling to be done with some of the crafted stuff, but the opportunity cost of all the tedious extra clicking in the horribad homestead-economy UI was never worth it to me. So I just stuck with pelts. It was bad enough just assembling a convoy without getting fancy.

As you explore the Frontier and homestead, you'll find some spots where wolves and bears attack with ridiculous frequency. Those are good spots to farm. And once you get the ship decked out you can stop ever caring about money.

Thanks Drastic - I did discover one of those hot-spots of insane bear respawns last night when I took on a Hunting Society sidequest to go kill a man-eating bear. The whole area was just saturated with them to begin with, and they spawn faster than you can kill them. Which was pretty gamey and ridiculous - you turn your back for a minute and new bears appear behind you in an area you just cleared five minutes previous. Hard to suspend disbelief at that point. And that's after we've accepted AC3's idea that bears are herd animals. :)

What about weapons and armor and such? I've seen a couple of shops that sold different melee weapons, but do you ever upgrade or replace your bow? It seems really crappy so far - very short range and lousy damage.

Weapons are mostly cosmetic. The alleged different damage numbers and such don't really make a practical difference in the assassins genetic world of counter kill murder sprees. I think the only practical upgrades are getting pistols with two shots each, and crafting the dual holster so you can have three or four shots, depending on when the game lets you equip two pistols in them and when it inexplicably refuses. (The game's glitches are actually the Animus trying to parse Connor being scatterbrained, I just decided.)

The bow I mostly just used for counter kills legolas-style. Certainly not for hunting--that's what the hidden blade's for!