Yeah, I'm sure you knew this review was coming. I've been playing a lot of AC3 over the past week, maybe week and a half since I bought it and didn't want to leave it unplayed... like the other 100 games in my Steam library, but nonetheless I wanted to play it since I liked the setting of AC3. At least, how it sounded.
Anyway, AC4 is a much better game than AC3 all around in every aspect whatsoever!
"Ubisoft made a decent game?"
"OH GOD THE WORLD IS ENDING"
Yep.
So the crafting is better, the story is better, the naval gunplay is better, general gunplay is better, everything is better. Combat too, an important part of Assassin's Creed games.
The game is about an Edward Kenway, who goes off from his life with his pretty good looking wife for a guy like Kenway, to go be a pirate. He talks about his father wanting to be a privateer in the King's Navy or some shit and apparently he never did so he wants to be better than his dad I guess, I dunno.
Anyway, so he gets wrapped up in the conflict between Templars and Assassins by accident, since he wasn't looking for a particular person or anything, just floating from island to island. I believe this takes place in the caribbean too but I'm not really sure to be honest. However it gets to the point where you can really just tell that Edward was meant to assist the assassins.
I just have one problem with the beginning of the game, as Edward has had no prior assassin training, yet he runs like an assassin. This baffled me at the beginning of the game as it was really weird to see.
Anyway, so the story is about Edward getting wrapped up in Assassin and Templar affairs to the point he becomes an Assassin himself. He doesn't like doing it however as he's more of one of those 'free spirits' or whatnot but he always gets tangled in stuff anyway. Also I believe this is set somewhere in the 1800's as it's definitely not the 1900's, possibly the same time that AC3 is set in, maybe a little bit afterwards, I am not sure. Anyhoo, I'm not sure how to go about describing the story other than everyone pretty much dies besides a woman on Edward's crew and himself, along with a decent amount of the Assassin population. That pretty much entails the story, to be honest, if you play it, you'll just see what I mean by "everyone dies".
However, I found the real world in the game more intriguing and better than AC1, 2, and 3. You play as a nameless, faceless person who works at Abstergo, testing the Animus and testing the memories of Edward Kenway. One can only assume that by doing this, the person playing it (I.E. the anonymous person you're playing as) has a relation to the Kenways, but I'm not sure as there's no I.D. card or anything that tells you who you are, so eh. It's just a theory.
That being said, in the real world there's a guy named John who happens to work slightly for the Assassins... in a Templar building. But he's head of IT, so no one can eavesdrop on him. However he has you deliver various recordings to, I think her name is Rebecca? Who grabs them from the tablet you carry around with you and leaves. Also the techie guy from the last game, AC3 is also in the building and is sort of like, "reception" even though he's not, it's never really defined who he is. I didn't know who these people were because it's been awhile since I've played AC1 and AC2, but I knew who they were from AC3 because they worked with Desmond... and were significantly less whiny, I'll say that, jesus christ.
Anyway so John has you sneak into a bunch of crap and you're also able to hack other Animuses (Animusi? Animus? Plural?) and get information about what happened to Desmond and such, A lot of it was interesting because I hadn't played AC3 yet, so I read everything I could get my hands on about it. Hours worth of reading in there, I have to say, Ubisoft did an awesome job with the lore of these games. They may be copy+pasted, but goddamn the lore is off the chain!
Anyway, at the end of the game, some stuff happens to John and you keep your job. You're also still alive, yay! So you still get to explore the offices and hack the computers for information, etc. There's 33 computers to hack but I can't find where the other like, 22 are, it's weird. Ah well I'll look at a youtube guide later probably. Anyway, there's a decent amount of stuff to do in this game, for sure.
There's buried treasure, collecting items (chests and other things), doing assassination contracts (which are a lot more formal than AC3, running to the guy and smacking them with your axe and doing 5 of them and getting 2000 reales. (The fuck is this) and collecting animal pelts for crafting. Oh and sailing, they really nailed the sailing. Though it honestly feels less... satisfying taking ships down in this game, but I'm not complaining about the aiming mechanics because it was really frustrating in AC3 for sure, but it was satisfying when you took a man 'o war down or another boat, etc. I'm not saying it's not satisfying doing it in AC4, 'cause once you build your ship up, she's goddamn impenetrable unless you're really careless with things and inventory, I.E. Heavy shot and mortars. They did implement other weapons for the boats into this game which I'm glad to see, makes things a lot more interesting for sure, in ship-fighting.
Nonetheless, the crafting system is very well done in this one. None of that "homestead" shit, you're a goddamn pirate and you know how to make stuff! YEAH! ARRRR! You can expand your inventory to very large portions and go for awhile without needing to restock (15 unit dart pouches are AWESOME). They did a good job with the crafting in this, and I hope they don't change it for future Assassin's Creed games.
Ah... I think that's it? Oh, community events! So if you have a bunch of people on your UPlay friends list, they can come across special events on the map, such as chests with large amounts of money in them (about 1000 reales), white whales to get white whale skin for crafting (buying a skin will run you 20,000 reales, but sometimes you need it so... yep), and Royal Convoys. Royal convoys usually have anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 reales in them, so it makes for good money. However, friends on your friends list have to sail across these/find these in towns to show up on your map and vice versa, so just be aware. And make sure to fill up your Uplay friends list!
I realize a lot of my reviews have been very jump-around lately but whatever, I'm just trying to get points across:
A: Good Game!
B: "Eh" game.
C: Bad Game.
So yeah. I may also add things down the line for both my AC3 and AC4 reviews as I haven't played AC4 in awhile and I'm still working on AC3's collectables.
However, AC4 is a great game. If anyone from Ubisoft reads this, or whatnot, keep this style of game up and just copy+paste into other AC games, damn it!
I'd highly recommend it at full price, or on sale, either or.
Purchase it here:
Anyway, so the story is about Edward getting wrapped up in Assassin and Templar affairs to the point he becomes an Assassin himself. He doesn't like doing it however as he's more of one of those 'free spirits' or whatnot but he always gets tangled in stuff anyway. Also I believe this is set somewhere in the 1800's as it's definitely not the 1900's, possibly the same time that AC3 is set in, maybe a little bit afterwards, I am not sure. Anyhoo, I'm not sure how to go about describing the story other than everyone pretty much dies besides a woman on Edward's crew and himself, along with a decent amount of the Assassin population. That pretty much entails the story, to be honest, if you play it, you'll just see what I mean by "everyone dies".
However, I found the real world in the game more intriguing and better than AC1, 2, and 3. You play as a nameless, faceless person who works at Abstergo, testing the Animus and testing the memories of Edward Kenway. One can only assume that by doing this, the person playing it (I.E. the anonymous person you're playing as) has a relation to the Kenways, but I'm not sure as there's no I.D. card or anything that tells you who you are, so eh. It's just a theory.
That being said, in the real world there's a guy named John who happens to work slightly for the Assassins... in a Templar building. But he's head of IT, so no one can eavesdrop on him. However he has you deliver various recordings to, I think her name is Rebecca? Who grabs them from the tablet you carry around with you and leaves. Also the techie guy from the last game, AC3 is also in the building and is sort of like, "reception" even though he's not, it's never really defined who he is. I didn't know who these people were because it's been awhile since I've played AC1 and AC2, but I knew who they were from AC3 because they worked with Desmond... and were significantly less whiny, I'll say that, jesus christ.
Anyway so John has you sneak into a bunch of crap and you're also able to hack other Animuses (Animusi? Animus? Plural?) and get information about what happened to Desmond and such, A lot of it was interesting because I hadn't played AC3 yet, so I read everything I could get my hands on about it. Hours worth of reading in there, I have to say, Ubisoft did an awesome job with the lore of these games. They may be copy+pasted, but goddamn the lore is off the chain!
Anyway, at the end of the game, some stuff happens to John and you keep your job. You're also still alive, yay! So you still get to explore the offices and hack the computers for information, etc. There's 33 computers to hack but I can't find where the other like, 22 are, it's weird. Ah well I'll look at a youtube guide later probably. Anyway, there's a decent amount of stuff to do in this game, for sure.
There's buried treasure, collecting items (chests and other things), doing assassination contracts (which are a lot more formal than AC3, running to the guy and smacking them with your axe and doing 5 of them and getting 2000 reales. (The fuck is this) and collecting animal pelts for crafting. Oh and sailing, they really nailed the sailing. Though it honestly feels less... satisfying taking ships down in this game, but I'm not complaining about the aiming mechanics because it was really frustrating in AC3 for sure, but it was satisfying when you took a man 'o war down or another boat, etc. I'm not saying it's not satisfying doing it in AC4, 'cause once you build your ship up, she's goddamn impenetrable unless you're really careless with things and inventory, I.E. Heavy shot and mortars. They did implement other weapons for the boats into this game which I'm glad to see, makes things a lot more interesting for sure, in ship-fighting.
Nonetheless, the crafting system is very well done in this one. None of that "homestead" shit, you're a goddamn pirate and you know how to make stuff! YEAH! ARRRR! You can expand your inventory to very large portions and go for awhile without needing to restock (15 unit dart pouches are AWESOME). They did a good job with the crafting in this, and I hope they don't change it for future Assassin's Creed games.
Ah... I think that's it? Oh, community events! So if you have a bunch of people on your UPlay friends list, they can come across special events on the map, such as chests with large amounts of money in them (about 1000 reales), white whales to get white whale skin for crafting (buying a skin will run you 20,000 reales, but sometimes you need it so... yep), and Royal Convoys. Royal convoys usually have anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 reales in them, so it makes for good money. However, friends on your friends list have to sail across these/find these in towns to show up on your map and vice versa, so just be aware. And make sure to fill up your Uplay friends list!
I realize a lot of my reviews have been very jump-around lately but whatever, I'm just trying to get points across:
A: Good Game!
B: "Eh" game.
C: Bad Game.
So yeah. I may also add things down the line for both my AC3 and AC4 reviews as I haven't played AC4 in awhile and I'm still working on AC3's collectables.
However, AC4 is a great game. If anyone from Ubisoft reads this, or whatnot, keep this style of game up and just copy+paste into other AC games, damn it!
I'd highly recommend it at full price, or on sale, either or.
Purchase it here:
And don't forget to sign up for Amazon Prime!
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