Assassin's Creed Revelations

I'm in the fourth chapter of the game, having majored on bringing on my trainee assassin's, taking dens and earning gold, and my conclusion is that the game is a easily as much fun as the games that proceeded it, if you avoid the Den Defense mini game. It's a bit like having a meal at a classy restaurant in which everything on the plate is beautifully cooked and seasoned except for the cauliflower which is under cooked. Eat around that one vegetable and it's a top class meal (then go in the kitchen and glower at the cook.)

I now have assassin's installed in all the dens and I think that means the dens can't be attacked. I'm still being ultra careful to keep my notoriety down though so I don't know for sure (I wish the game would tell me clearly one way or the other.) I must admit that the Den Defense game does succeed in making me feel like I'm in a dirty street war even if that war is with the developers of the game. Your notoriety doesn't go up too much in random street fights with guards and it only goes up in quarters when buying shops so you can intersperse a bit of bribery with your shop buying quite easily ( if you can only find one herald hang around him and he seems to reset or run between two) but it does max out after taking a den and it can be a pain to get it back down. There are a few shameless attempts to drag you into another mission straight after taking a den and Heralds in certain districts are extremely rare (i.e. one or none) which is pretty despicable. They do offer wandering targets, for you to kill to bring down notoriety, but these spawn very slowly.

The mini itself is the diametric opposite of the rest of the game in spirit and implementation. To me the Assassin's Creed games are impressive for their unique mechanics and for the elegance with which those mechanics are delivered. The den defence game is derivative and it is about as inelegant a piece of game play design as you could hope to see. The mode needed someone like Patrice Desilet to peer over the shoulder of those creating it and say, "This isn't working. Let's find another way." I actually think the mode could have been fun if they'd had a birds eye view and given you better controls although, that said, tower defence games are enjoyable because you can take a loss, think about where you went wrong and lay out your 'towers' in a way that gives you victory next time. Here you are yanked out of a completely different style of game, given a few seconds to remember what button did what, and the given one go at a scenario before being deposited back where you came from.

There are some genuinely brilliant refinements to the game. The hook blade is fantastic. The zip lines are useful (when they are orientated in your direction of travel :P.) The bombs fun and they give you a use for all the crap you collect from guards (rather than just collecting crap for the sake of it as in Brotherhood) I also use them in combat a lot. The kill new animations are also welcome. Eagle vision has been fleshed out and now feels like a real game mechanic. Installing your trainees in a den gives you missions to go with them which makes them feel like part of the story and the Mediterranean defence game is distracting/great. They did add a restriction where some missions require a certain weapon skill which I find an irritant (and it was confusing for a while before I realised what was happening.) Captured cities slowly start to fall back into enemy hands meaning there are lots of plates to keep spinning. It looks like there may be a way to capture territories permanently but I'm not there yet.

I don't think there is a way to capture a city for good. I've filled one up with five level 10 assassins and it still decreases every interval.

And for the assassin dens to be locked, you have to finish both missions associated with the respective den. First at level 10, second at 15.

I haven't played revelations yet (as if I could, it's not out yet on PC), but it does sound like the notoriety thing is being stretched a little too far than what it's actually useful for. The way you have to manage it to avoid the TD section feels like a transparent time and cash sink, and when you're trying to avoid a section of gameplay because it's not fun should be a sign it needed to be cut.

I could go further and say that kind of the impression I got from Brotherhood, that they were trying to stretch out what they had from AC2, and I guess ACR is where they are in danger of going too far. This would seem to be the problem with annual instalments of a franchise when new interesting gameplay is too thin on the ground, and getting the balance wrong between familiarity and change. The other often cited annual series, CoD has two alternating teams on it.

Hyetal wrote:

I don't think there is a way to capture a city for good. I've filled one up with five level 10 assassins and it still decreases every interval.

Ugh. I may let the Templars have a few cities and build up the rest.

Hyetal wrote:

And for the assassin dens to be locked, you have to finish both missions associated with the respective den. First at level 10, second at 15.

Ah, ok thanks. I had a feeling I wasn't there yet. Most of my assassin's are closing on 15 now anyway. I'll soon have my dens locked down :twisted:.

Higgledy wrote:

Ugh. I may let the Templars have a few cities and build up the rest.

I should note that it decreases more slowly, and the 4 repeatable missions you get to restore control are always easy enough for your in-city Assassins to do. I haven'd had much trouble managing it, though I've crept through the cities slow enough so I always have five assassins in every city before I start on the next.

Thanks Higgledy and Hyetal. You guys made my mind up. I will definitely buy the game now. But I'll still wait for the inevitable steam sale.

I'm not terribly far into Revelations yet, but I have to say, this game does not start well and I fear that is keeping me from being terribly engaged. It just felt very sloppy and poorly motivated, and confusing in a bad way. Now that I'm in Constantinople, I feel much better, but I'm still being held at a bit of a remove. The city is great, but the circumstance doesn't feel as rich as Brotherhood.

BlackSabre wrote:

Thanks Higgledy and Hyetal. You guys made my mind up. I will definitely buy the game now. But I'll still wait for the inevitable steam sale.

Np :). I thought it was worth laying out my honest impressions of the game so far.

Edit: All of my assassin dens are now locked down. Let the mayhem, and the rest of the game, commence :D.

I enjoyed the beginning, but I guess I can see why some might not. In any case, I do believe it will get better. I just finished the story and I really loved the end. A good deal of that is because it actually was an end.

Spoiler:

For Ezio and Altaïr, at least.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I'm not terribly far into Revelations yet, but I have to say, this game does not start well and I fear that is keeping me from being terribly engaged. It just felt very sloppy and poorly motivated, and confusing in a bad way. Now that I'm in Constantinople, I feel much better, but I'm still being held at a bit of a remove. The city is great, but the circumstance doesn't feel as rich as Brotherhood.

Yeah, the opening sequence has had the 'harshest' criticisms among the hardcore fanbase by far. My take was that it wasn't so much 'bad' per se, but it was very uneven and I felt off-balance the entire time. I had the same reaction as you - once I got off the boat at Constantinople I was like "Ohhhkaayyy...let's kill some Templars!"

I agree wholeheartedly with Higgledy's review. It's a great game and you can totally avoid the Den Defense. I only played it twice in the game - one of which was the required tutorial - and failed miserably the 2nd time.

You had to manage your notoriety in all the games so far, but before you could rip down 2 posters that were basically right across the street from each other and then you were good. You could also unlock those capes that would remove your notoriety altogether, which could be argued broke the system since you could murder with no penalty whatsoever.

nel e nel wrote:

You had to manage your notoriety in all the games so far, but before you could rip down 2 posters that were basically right across the street from each other and then you were good. You could also unlock those capes that would remove your notoriety altogether, which could be argued broke the system since you could murder with no penalty whatsoever.

By the time you got the capes, you were pretty much over with the game, so it was part of the free run after the story.
At least, that's how I go my capes in the previous titles.

I never had any problems with notoriety in brotherhood or any of the others. Bribing dudes and assassinating the other ones was always an option after you'd wiped out a bunch of guards... but honestly, the only time I'd go after the guards was when I was trying to complete those challenges for escaping, or leaping from a horse to kill a guard or so forth.

Do they still have those challenges in Rev?

BlackSabre wrote:

Do they still have those challenges in Rev?

Good-bye horses.
But yeah, everything else is a challenge.
Including shooting rooftop guards with your cross bow, something I still do every 40 seconds.

What?!?!? No horses?!?!?!

Wait, that might not be a bad thing. I wasn't really a fan of them.

Hobbes2099 wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

You had to manage your notoriety in all the games so far, but before you could rip down 2 posters that were basically right across the street from each other and then you were good. You could also unlock those capes that would remove your notoriety altogether, which could be argued broke the system since you could murder with no penalty whatsoever.

By the time you got the capes, you were pretty much over with the game, so it was part of the free run after the story.
At least, that's how I go my capes in the previous titles.

I unlocked a bunch from the Facebook game before I even started playing, so I pretty much had no notoriety by the time I made it to Venice in 2, even earlier in Brotherhood.

Interestingly enough, they reference a character/organization from the Facebook game in the MP of Revelations. It's one of the Abstergo files you unlock as you level up.

BlackSabre wrote:

What?!?!? No horses?!?!?!

Wait, that might not be a bad thing. I wasn't really a fan of them.

Yeah, they basically replaced the horse challenges with bomb challenges.

Rome + Domes + Burqas = Constantinople

It feels exactly the same. The music sounds virtually identical and I'm pretty sure people in the street speak Italian.

I must admit I like the new weapons. They do go with Eastern-style weapons like the kilij, and they're not afraid to make them look distinct from the usual scimitars and falchions. It seems like they give you the best gear really easily, though. By the time it started selling me the second suit of armor in the blacksmith's shop, I already had one of the two "ultimate" sets, earned simply for promoting my assassins. One of the quests involved in that gave me a sword with a max rating in everything. Another gave me a dagger with the same. I still buy stuff as it becomes available but that's mostly because I like to collect crap; I always immediately head back to my HQ to switch my gear back.

Got to agree that the Den Defense is downright terrible. I intentionally coaxed the Templars into attacking my final unlocked den so I could win two of those for the challenges, but they're terribly balanced. It's incredibly easy to get to the final wave, which is nearly impossible no matter how well you've built your defenses. If you lose, recovering from that is a huge pain in the ass. I'm not looking to 100% this one so I'm thinking I'll promote my assassins and stop worrying about it. Same with Mediterranean Defense. At this point all it gets me is some money and bomb components. I have a ton of money and I can buy bomb components.

So a friend at work is playing the original and I'm really tempted to jump straight into this as soon as it launches on PC... I mean $49.99. That's not too bad.

Gah, I can't decide if I wait, or just jump in... I know for certain it definitely has to be on Steam though. Decisions, decisions...

I'm waiting to see what Ubisoft do with their copy protection, they've been back and forth with it so much. Also, opinions on the console version have been that it's not "best of breed", I think prices will probably come down reasonably quickly like they did for Brotherhood, and another steam sale beckons within a month, I think I'm going to wait a bit.

Yeah, you're probably right. It's just that I even enjoyed the original when everyone else was saying it was samey and boring.

Maybe I should wait... I'm pretty much in the air about it. I could quite easily cave and buy it day 1 and also wait and see until the first sale...

If there were no other games out, and without sales on the horizon (plus christmas shopping), and nothing else to play, I'd probably buy ACR and be quite happy with it, but it's bad timing. Ubisoft didn't help themselves with the delay and their attitude towards the PC though.

I've loved all the ACs, even the first one, and I strongly recommend waiting for a sale.

Anyone not using the TF2 items?? Love the medic outfit...... *hint*

BlackSabre wrote:

Yeah, you're probably right. It's just that I even enjoyed the original when everyone else was saying it was samey and boring.

Maybe I should wait... I'm pretty much in the air about it. I could quite easily cave and buy it day 1 and also wait and see until the first sale...

Knowing how much you loved the previous games (I did, too. Yes, even the first one.), I strongly recommend not waiting for a sale. Unless it'd be pragmatic to clear away your pile, first. I strongly advocate pile-clearing.

But seriously, I love AssRev just as much as I loved AssBro.

I think this is going to come down to when it gets released. Currently Steam says "December". Anyone know any further specifics? I guess if it comes out on the same day as the Back to Karkand expansion for Battlefield 3, then I'll wait...

Says December 1st for me.

Oh! Yeah me too. I'm sure I checked earlier and it just said December.

So that's 20 hours... oh man... I've got some thinking to do. Might be a good time to take a break from BF3 and play this for a few days. Still, I have to find a gwjer willing to do a paypal steam gift too since it's $79.99 for me in Aus and I'm pretty sure it's $49.99 for America.

What to do.. what to do... I really could go either way on this one.

Two AC: Rev bombs everyone should try:

You can craft an explosive bomb in a sticky pouch. If you need to take out a target surrounded by guards you can lob a bomb onto the back of the target (or onto one of the guards) then watch as they walk on oblivious for a few seconds before being wiped out in a controlled explosion.

On one mission my trainee assassin and I finished a mission and at the same time alerted what seemed like thirty pike men to our presence. Surrounded, I was hesitant to call more assassin's incase they were killed so I dropped a couple of new bombs. Suddenly I was drawn into a fight with one or two guards and lost sight of the rest of the scrum. When I'd finished my mini battle I looked up to see my trainee standing in a sea of dead pikemen. The bombs I'd dropped were poison bombs and had wiped out a small army chemical warfare style.

To get the poison bombs you need to go into lethal bombs and choose Dur.... Dar.... It begins with D, Powder as the active ingredient.

Sparhawk wrote:

Anyone not using the TF2 items?? Love the medic outfit...... *hint*

I believe the medic outfit is actually a multiplayer character for Revelations. All you get for TF2 are two spy items (because the spy had one or two fewer items than everyone else...)

Spoiler:

...combined.

Higgledy wrote:

To get the poison bombs you need to go into lethal bombs and choose Dur.... Dar.... It begins with D, Powder as the active ingredient.

Datura. Personally I prefer impact shells with British gunpowder and a fragment load. One good throw and an entire patrol disappears.

LobsterMobster wrote:
Higgledy wrote:

To get the poison bombs you need to go into lethal bombs and choose Dur.... Dar.... It begins with D, Powder as the active ingredient.

Datura.

That's the one. Ta.