While I picked up the original Assassin’s Creed at release, I must admit that I wasn’t sold on picking up the planned sequels.  Despite its namesake, Assassin’s Creed 3 is actually the fifth game in the series.

The repetitive combat and mission structure from the first game really didn’t sell me on the upcoming titles.  Those of you that have played the first game know that as it progressed, the enemies really didn’t get any tougher to fight, they just turned up in greater numbers with higher health.  Every fight ended up having Altair stuck in the middle of a swarm of enemies that would take turns swinging at you one at a time.  The only attack you could do in return that wouldn’t leave you open to taking hits would be Altair’s counter attack, so all combat devolved to that rather quickly.  That, coupled with the fact that each city you ventured to offered basically the same three trivial missions, didn’t really add much to the story.  It became tedious to go through the missions just to reach the next cutscene and advance the plot.

I will say, the story telling of the game had me interested and wondering what would happen next, so naturally, when I was stuck without internet for a few weeks near the end of this past summer, I picked up a used copy of each one released so far to catch up on the story.  I was pleased to see that they resolved a lot of the major issues with the repetitiveness in the first title by overhauling the combat system to provide more effective attacks, and including better story development in more of the missions.  The buffs in combat eventually made it a bit too easy to kill, but that was fixed for Assassin’s Creed 3.  They made the combat more difficult, and you can’t simply sit there and rely solely on counter-attacks to survive.  Different attack techniques were more effective on different enemies, and several of the higher level enemies are immune to basic counters.  This was a great improvement over the previous combat systems.

A simple explanation of the entire story so far is that you are a modern day Assassin that relives the memories of your ancestors through stored DNA memories by use of a device called an Animus.  It’s a bit of sci-fi stretch, but it makes for some damn good story telling.  Throughout the games, your character is named Desmond, and you most often play as one of his ancestors in a retelling of historic events.  In the first game, a lot is left unsaid, with a very slow character development for Desmond.  This serves to give you a backstory of the Assassin’s Order and the development of the plot to it’s current state.  Desmond’s story really starts to pick up in Assassin’s Creed 2, and in Assassin’s Creed 3, it kicks into high gear.  The team at Ubisoft are nothing if they aren’t great story tellers.

With all of that said, I do feel there are some pitfalls of Assassin’s Creed 3.  Where there were a seemingly over abundance of tutorials and specific instructions for each task in the previous titles, there is a distinct lack of them for Assassin’s Creed 3.  An example would be during one mission, the objective said to chase a particular person, when in fact, you were meant to simply tackle them.  So I ran after the guy expecting him to lead me somewhere, only to realize after 10 minutes and my 3rd circuit of the same part of a city that I was going nowhere.  The parkour system in the game could use a little refinement as well.  Often times I found myself trying to sneak around, and would accidentally start climbing a ladder or jump into a tree, calling a bunch of attention to myself.  It can be like a magnet sometimes, you can be several feet away from a ladder, and accidentally get hooked onto it.  The last issue of note was with Air Assassinations.  I would be on a roof staring at a particular enemy that is right under me for the kill, and then my attempt would be a big “NOPE!” and I would end up assassinating someone twenty feet away.  It isn’t a huge deal, but it’s annoying when you cannot complete a secondary objective because of a flaw in the game mechanics.

Overall, the game was great – I’d definitely recommend it.  Who doesn’t love fighting with a tomahawk in one hand, and a knife in the other?  The gameplay scenery and environment, as with all previous AC titles, is beautifully crafted.  It is obvious that great pains were taken with the artistic development in the previous titles, and AC3 is no exception.  Even the combat animations, which were developed from motion capture of MMA fighters (it’s brutal, and awesome).  The story telling, as always, is engrossing.  You should definitely pick up this title if you haven’t already.