15 feet below me is a group of enemies. I prepare to drop on them but I see something out of the corner of my eye. I jump onto a nearby branch and as I run across it the leaves remain still. I jump down onto the ground and as I land I hear a growl. An Arctic wolf emerges from some bushes and leaps at me.
Set in the 1700s You play as Shay, an assassin who goes rogue. After you defect from the Assassins you must stop them before they kill more innocents. You travel a big map and explore land and sea. You are the captain of The Morrigan, a ship. As you sail the seas you come across enemy ships and have devastating battles.
While fighting at sea you have cannons that you control. I really liked the controls of the cannons and how easy it was to fire. However, Your crew don’t really do much until you have hit the enemy ship enough until you can board their ship. This makes the fights really difficult because you have to steer and shoot the cannons.
The map is quite big as it comes in three regions but you are very restricted to coastal towns. The towns are a good size and have collectables within them. I actually enjoyed collecting them because the size of the towns wasn’t too big so you didn’t feel like you was running round in circles and wasting time.
One part of the game that I really enjoyed was hunting. You was able to run across tree branches and drop down onto unsuspecting animals. I really liked this because it made the hunting fun as you could be stealthy but up close with your prey. Each city also has a certain type of animal and you use the materials you gather from them for crafting.
The crafting system really opened up your opportunities. Each piece of equipment can be upgraded multiple times to really enhance Shay. This makes hunting even more rewarding because you are working towards something and you start feeling a sense of accomplishment for upgrading the gear.
There are many things that you can upgrade one being Shay’s gear mentioned previously. You can also upgrade his ship ‘The Morrigan’. These upgrades range from reinforced body to make it withstand more hits, a ram on the front so you can drive into enemy boats and damage them and harpooning equipment so you can hunt animals at sea.
One thing I would have changed would be a liberation system so that as you go to each village and take out all the enemies you liberate that town. I feel like that would have made it more enjoyable to explore all the towns then much like in Just Cause 3.
Overall, I really enjoyed playing this installment of the series and it was most probably in my top 3 Assassin’s Creed games. The hunting was fun and the assassinations were more interesting and enjoyable than the previous installments.
GameCritUK 