The WORST Thing About Every Assassin's Creed Game
Transcript
00:00 Welcome to Mojo Plays. Today we're looking at the worst thing about every
00:08 Assassin's Creed game. Even the best games have flaws.
00:11 For this list, we'll be looking at the worst part of each individual Assassin's
00:23 Creed game. We'll only be talking about each issue once, even if they're present
00:29 in more than one game. Before we begin, we publish new content all week long, so be
00:34 sure to subscribe and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
00:39 The controls. Assassin's Creed.
00:41 At the time, Assassin's Creed was groundbreaking. Its huge maps, historical realism, and the plot
00:55 twist at the end have created many fond memories. But it wasn't perfect, and it's
01:01 certainly now showing its age, specifically where the controls are
01:06 concerned. It's not easy, especially for a beginner, to know when to switch
01:11 between weapons, particularly when it's necessary to swap from the sword to the
01:16 hidden blade to actually perform assassinations. The platforming controls
01:20 aren't great either, and Altair is very slow while climbing. Ultimately though,
01:26 most of these issues were immediately fixed in the sequel, so we can't hold the
01:31 first game's issues against Ubisoft too much. Though it's still bizarre that it
01:36 didn't have any subtitles.
01:38 Missing content. Assassin's Creed 2.
01:49 Many people consider Assassin's Creed 2 to be a perfect game, but perhaps it would have been even more
01:55 perfect had Ubisoft not cut out story content and locked it behind a paywall.
02:01 Ezio! Thank God you're back with us.
02:04 In fairness, the reason this was done is because the content hadn't been finished yet. But in hindsight, it definitely would have been preferable to delay the game and make sure it was finished.
02:16 Instead, we got the Bonfire of the Vanities and Battle of Forlì DLCs, which added back in the missing memory sequences that the base game clunkily skipped over.
02:26 The DLC is now all included in the Ezio collection, but it should have never been DLC at all.
02:33 I'm afraid to say his retreat has come to an end.
02:36 Animus Walls. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.
02:40 [Grunts]
02:41 Like Assassin's Creed 2, it's a struggle to come up with many faults for Brotherhood.
02:51 Sure, its multiplayer was absurd, but that all added to the charm.
02:56 However, it did have one major annoyance. The Animus Walls.
03:01 These giant walls of white light locked off huge sections of the map until later in the game.
03:07 We understand that it was done for pacing, to make sure you didn't complete all the side content right away, and to keep opening up new areas of the map.
03:16 But it was very frustrating and immersion-breaking to want to go to that last Borgia Tower, only to find it was still, again and again, stuck behind a wall Ezio can't get through.
03:28 Tower Defense. Assassin's Creed Revelations.
03:36 [Gunshots]
03:41 Ubisoft had successfully innovated in the previous three games, adding side missions, fast travel, and then the Assassin's Recruit system.
03:50 But innovation didn't pay off this time, when they incorporated a Tower Defense minigame into Revelations.
03:57 You only have to do Den Defense once in the main story, but if you gain too much Templar attention by doing side missions and buying vendors, you'll inevitably trigger Templar Assault on one of your dens.
04:10 Playing the Den Defense missions makes the game less fun, but so does avoiding it, since you're constantly paying off Harold to lower your notoriety so that you don't trigger one.
04:21 "Secure to that point."
04:26 User Interface. Assassin's Creed III.
04:29 Years on, and Assassin's Creed III is still regarded as the black sheep of the franchise.
04:39 Though it eventually got a remaster that fixed most of the issues people had with it, those issues still stick in our minds.
04:46 Most notably, the user interface.
04:49 The previously simple UI was made messy and convoluted, especially the menus and, most infamously, the weapon and tool select screen.
04:59 The map was frustrating too, since even synchronizing all the viewpoints didn't defog it fully.
05:05 It's true there were other issues, like the fact that AC3 introduced the infamous paper chasing challenges that still haven't entirely gone away.
05:14 But you can't avoid chasing the pieces of paper if you're not a completionist.
05:18 You can't avoid using the awkward menus.
05:21 Collectibles. Assassin's Creed III Liberation.
05:28 Maybe the real worst thing about Liberation is that it took so long to get a home console release, since it really was one of the best games available on the PS Vita.
05:46 But as for the game itself, Liberation tries to pad its length by adding in more collectibles than you know what to do with.
05:54 Some collectibles are fine, of course, but Liberation has too many.
05:59 There's unlocking all the dressing chambers, getting all the Mayan statuettes, finding all the alligator eggs, the mushrooms and fever victims, the diary pages, and the chests.
06:10 Then, each of Aveline's personas, the Assassin, Lady, and Slave, have their own collectibles, coins, jewels, and voodoo dolls respectively.
06:21 Did you get them all?
06:23 Tailing Missions. Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag.
06:38 It says a lot about the quality of Black Flag that even with its obsession with tailing missions, it's still beloved by players.
06:45 But you can't get around the fact that there are too many tailing missions, and they don't get any less annoying the more you do.
06:52 They do encourage you to make use of all the stealth strategies at Edward's disposal, but was there no other way to give you stealth opportunities than by throwing dozens upon dozens of tailing missions at you?
07:03 You even find yourself tailing ships, including the notorious mission where you tail a ship through a swamp, then tail people on land, and then have to do a chase.
07:13 It's too short. Assassin's Creed Rogue.
07:27 Lots of people skipped Rogue in favor of playing Unity, such is the issue with releasing two games on the same day.
07:34 And it's clear that even within Ubisoft, the focus was mostly on Unity, with Rogue being treated as an afterthought.
07:41 That's really the game's biggest issue. It's too short, though much of what's there is great.
07:47 You can extend the length by doing the side content, but the story suffers most of all, coming in at a measly ten hours.
07:55 This means it also doesn't spend as much time setting up Shay's targets, which makes it less rewarding when you take them down, since you'll only have talked to them briefly during your tutorials.
08:06 Performance issues. Assassin's Creed Unity.
08:17 This is why I joined the Brotherhood.
08:19 Yes, not because you shared our ideas or felt called to the service. For revenge.
08:24 For redemption.
08:26 It could never be anything else for Unity, still notorious for its bugs and glitches even a decade on.
08:32 Upon release, only the most high-end PCs had a chance of running Unity with any kind of stability, with constant framerate drops on PS4 and Xbox One.
08:43 Considering the consoles were, at the time, only a year old, this didn't reflect well on Ubisoft.
08:50 As well as the FPS, there was the now-legendary face-disappearing glitch that's been giving us nightmares for years.
08:58 Although, it's worth mentioning that Ubisoft has finally ironed out the framerate issues on the 9th gen hardware, but they haven't fixed Arno's inability to whistle, which makes stealth needlessly tedious.
09:10 No higher power sits in judgment of us. No supreme being watches to punish us for our sins.
09:17 Bounty Hunts. Assassin's Creed Syndicate.
09:20 Like Unity, Syndicate also had a lot of performance issues, and bafflingly still only runs at 30 frames per second on PS5 and Xbox Series X.
09:35 But the Templar Bounty Hunts might be the most frustrating part of the game.
09:40 There are a few bounty hunts in each section of the map, where the Fries are tasked with kidnapping a criminal or Templar agent alive for Inspector Abberline.
09:48 Some of the higher-level bounty hunts can be very annoying, and might require you to slowly take out all the surrounding enemies just for a chance at kidnapping the target alive.
09:58 And then you'll usually have to deal with a carriage chase on the way to Abberline regardless, so, so much for stealth.
10:05 Grinding. Assassin's Creed Origins.
10:19 After adding levels and gear upgrades in previous games, Origins went further into RPG territory than ever before with a much deeper leveling and skill upgrade system.
10:30 But with that came a lot of grinding, since you had to do lots of side content if you didn't want to be underleveled for the story.
10:38 This is all well and good, but not all of the side content is that fun, and it was jarring to go from games where you can beat the whole story without doing side content if you don't want to, to this.
10:50 The crafting system in Origins was also grindy, requiring you to go out of your way to hunt crocodiles and lions over and over again.
10:59 Forts. Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
11:05 A big criticism of Odyssey was that many of the optional objectives were, essentially, copy and pasted.
11:16 The forts are the worst example of this, since they're huge, take a while, and offer diminishing returns.
11:24 If you're trying to tick every objective on the map, you'll be tired of forts before you even leave the first few areas.
11:31 Aside from completing the location, the rewards aren't that great either.
11:35 You'll get plenty of loot, sure, and some resources, but you level up so frequently in Odyssey that going out of your way to find loot is rarely worthwhile.
11:45 And getting into open combat in the fort is only going to get you into trouble with mercenaries, which is even more annoying.
11:59 It's too long. Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
12:02 Yes, we know complaining about a game having too much content sounds a little backward,
12:12 but Valhalla's map is simply too large, with much of its side content not being meaningful,
12:19 making getting from start to finish a slog even for the most dedicated players.
12:24 On their own, all the side missions are fine, and it can be rewarding to clear the map of those glowing orbs.
12:31 But there are so many instances of each mission type that you'll get tired of it about halfway through.
12:37 There are too many cursed objects, too many Roman artifacts, and too many cairns.
12:42 The ending. Assassin's Creed Mirage.
12:52 It, uh... it is gone now.
12:56 We're not going to spoil the ending of Mirage here,
12:59 but if you're one of the players who stopped enjoying the series as the games got longer,
13:04 you may have found yourself at a disadvantage when you played it.
13:08 Though much of the game follows a simple and familiar story about the street thief Basim,
13:13 the entire game is a prequel to Valhalla, intended to be originally DLC.
13:19 If you loved Valhalla and finished the story,
13:22 you'll have also loved the way Basim's journey and his relationship with Nahal unfolds.
13:27 But if you didn't finish Valhalla and don't know its complete story,
13:32 you'll be left scratching your head and wondering what the last hour of gameplay was all about.
13:38 Rest while you can. Our work is not done yet.
13:42 Do you agree with our picks? Don't forget to stick around and check out our other videos on Mojo Plays.
13:47 [music]