A whole lot of lost potential - First Impressions
Plot - spoilers ahead, probably you want to skip. I'll put a TL;DR
The story of AC:U revolves around Arno, a child born into a family of Assassins. Early in the game, his father was killed by a mysterious person and suddenly, Arno was orphaned. He was taken in by his father's acquaintance, a Templar, and raised as their own son. Years went by, until one fateful night, Arno's stepfather was murdered. Arno was wrongly accused of murdering his stepfather and imprisoned. In the prison, Arno met another one of his father's friend, an Assassin, who taught him the ways of the Brotherhood. And... that was as far as I have played.
As a character, Arno is likeable. Unlike, Connor, Arno is not overly-zealous with his cause. He has his own goals, in that he wants to bring his step-father's killer to justice and live happily with his Templar -to put it crudely- girlfriend, Elise. If any, Arno is much more Ezio than Connor in terms of personality. Witty, brash, and is yet kind and compassionate to those in need.
TL;DR The plot is good. In my opinion, it is at least on par with ACII.
Performance and graphics
This is where the game breaks down. I am running the game on a i5-4670 and a GTX760. To put things into perspective, my rig can run Tomb Raider with maxed settings (except Tress-FX) at almost constant 60 fps. It's no GTX980, bit it's no slouch for sure. With AC:U, I cannot even get constant 30 fps, at high settings.
It would be fine if the game looks out of this world, but it's not. I must admit that the character models, especially the named characters looks fantastic. The detail in the clothings, skin, eyes, and expression looks amazing. Animation quality is also top notch, especially in cutscenes. However, for the rest of the non-named NPCs, they look horrible. Environment textures too look horrible, even at Ultra setting. Doors and pillars look horrible in this game, and is especially emphasized when the high-res character models interact with the objects. This mismatch in texture quality really detracts from the experience as they are really jarring.
One thing that I should commend about the game is that the lighting looks absolutely fantastic. Most of the reviews that I read online don't really touch on lighting, but I think it's so awesome that it deserves its own paragraph. If you are using an NVidia card, please do yourself a favour and turn on the HBAO+ lighting effect. Although it does tank the fps quite a bit, the really good lighting masks much of the murky environmental texture and improves the overall look of the game.
In game screenshot that I think really emphasizes the beauty of the lighting in the game. Just look at that light pillar.
Gameplay
The biggest change in gameplay compared to the previous AC games is the addition of downward parkour. You will not know how much does downward parkour helps until you've tried it. It really is a godsend, especially when you want to descend from a ledge without jumping off and alerting every guard within a 20 meter radius. One drawback that I have with it is that every time you parkour downwards, the camera turns to face the ground for some reason. It wouldn't matter if the camera can quickly swivel back towards the horizontal, but it doesn't. So every time you parkour downwards, you need to readjust your camera to know where you are going.
Combat
Another big change in gameplay is the combat. In previous AC games, I have 2 main problems with the game: disarm and chain killing. Disarming allows you to kill anything in the game, including those that you cannot counter with the hidden blade; and Chain Kill is simply over-powered. The removal both of these aspects in AC:U makes me glad they. AC:U feels less like the power fantasy that recent AC games started to be and places more focus on stealth, rather than combat.
Another big omission to me was the inability to equip the hidden blade in combat. What this entails is the you can no longer counter-kill enemies in AC:U. In AC1, you cannot block when equipping the hidden blade, making the hidden blade a high-risk, high-return weapon as a successful counter on-shots almost any enemy, whereas failing would mean taking damage. In AC2, they allow you to block with the hidden blade, removing the risk, but is still very difficult to counter with, providing incentive to master the timing. In AC:U, you cannot equip the hidden blade in combat at all and I find that as a rather odd design decision. I hope that Ubisoft brings hidden blades back into combat in subsequent AC games, but return it to how it works in AC1.
All-in-all, the changes in AC:U combat has really made it better in my opinion. It is now much more difficult to kill a group of guards, and, combined with the improved parkour mechanics, this makes running when outnumbered a more viable and enjoyable option. Unfortunately, smoke bombs are still as over-powered as ever, allowing you to kill 5-6 guards without difficulty and are ridiculously cheap. Ubisoft, nerf them will you...?
Conclusion
So far, Assassin's Creed: Unity has captured me with its story. I will be playing more of it, only to see the story unfold as it is, in all honesty, quite interesting. However, I can only barely stomach the performance issues that the game has. If you can wait, do wait for a patch that fixes the game before purchasing. I will bring a full review once I have completed the game, or stopped playing due to frustration. Ubisoft, get it together, please. Patch it.
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