" -The Hat Mann
Assassin's Creed Unity Review · 8:30pm Jun 25th, 2018
A totally relavent review of a four year old laughing stock of a game after two years of no reviews from me. This'll go great.
Well, I'm about halfway through Unity's main questline, completed the DLC, and have reached the maximum level, so I think it's fair to give a review.
First, what works. Though an adjustment period was needed going from Syndicate's Batman-esqu combat to one more like AC Origins, the combat feels good and responsive overall, aside from occasionally wonky models and completely silent gunshots and impalements. A French dub is infinitely superior to the English audio that gives everyone cockney accents IN FUCKING PARIS, as while I do not speak French it's easy to tell the French VAs actually gave a shit. The characters are likeable enough, if a touch generic.
Next, the bad. The sidequests are so poorly written that it is downright hilarious at times, especially the murder investigations. They often have promising set ups, but are ruined by being filled with bloody Scooby Doo villains. Accuse them with the flimsiest evidence and they will loudly and dramatically announce that yes, they are the killer, even though they couls easily go "No, go away" and there would be exactly fuck all good ol' Arno could do about it. The worst example in my opinion is easily "Equal Justice" from the Dead Kings expansion. Basically, two women are murdered just before they were to be deployed in the French revolution, and your suspects are:
1. A friend of one of the victims found at the scene covered in blood but balling his eyes out and cradling the body
2. Their commanding officer that dodges questions and is aggressive towards you
3. Random ass soldier that mentions offhandedly that he thinks women are bad in war
Did you guess 3? If so, congratulations, Ubisoft will probably hire you. Literally the only thing that Arno presents as proof is a pamflet the guy wrote complaining about female soldiers and someone saying they saw a uninformed man flee the scene and he goes full "and I would have gotten away for it too, if it weren't for you meddling Assassins!" and just suicides by cop. Literally the only motivation is that he kills women because he is somewhat mysogonistyic. Because that's more compelling than, say, their commanding officer actually being a traitor that got found out by his victims and framed the mysogonyst as an easy target? I dunno. That's how I would have done it. Writing aside, the balance in this game is dogshit. I became nearly godlike, 4/5 of the game's displayed power level, before even completing the 3rd sequence of 13. Much like Syndicate, it is way too easy and encouraged to become a godly killing machine right at the start of the game because it refuses to stop you.
Lastly, the ugly. As is well known, this game is absolutely and famously rife with bugs. Even after several patches to eliminate the worst of them, I still encountered a number of glitches, some frustrating, some amusing, and some just bizarre. For example, Uplay randomly booted me out of a difficult multiplayer mission at random for no given reason, but I wasn't banned or kicked because I was playing solo so no reports and it let me restart it so I wasn't banned from Uplay or something. Some mission-critical enemies would sometimes disappear and force me to restart, things like that. More amusingly, Arno's sword arm has an anyerism if you start looting before he sheeths it and just gets progressively faster and faster until he nearly becomes a helicopter.
Overall, Unity is certainly an infinitely more worthwhile game now than it was at launch, but is still rather unpolished. I should point out that I spent a mere five dollars on this at a bargain bin, so I am being much more generous than I would be if I had paid $30 digitally or the full $60 back during launch. In conclusion, Assassin's Creed Unity is a very fun game when it works, and unbelievably frustrating when it doesn't. However, you might be better off going with Syndicate or Origins. 7.5/10
well said I think. I never encountered glitches like that though