Assassin's Creed III Remastered (PS4) Review

 Assassin's Creed III Remastered (PS4) 6/10

"In the name of liberty, I will fight the enemy regardless of their allegiance. While men of courage write history of this day, the future of our land depends on those who are truly free."

Hello everybody. I just got done with this mess of a game and I can't wait to tell you about it. Assassin's Creed 3 is the fifth entry in the series and was originally released on October 30, 2012 and then was remastered for PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One on March 29, 2019. The game is developed and published by Ubisoft. I played the remastered version of the game, so I'll be judging it from this version. This game has a lot of problems and sadly the remaster does not fix a lot of these issues. In fact, this version of the game created new problems. Let's begin.

This is the final game to star our hero Desmond Miles. After waking up from his coma, he enters the First Civilization temple in New England, United States and discovers that there's a massive door he needs to open. Problem is, he needs a key. Juno, the First Civilization ghost that's been following Desmond, tells him to look into the Kenway bloodline, a family line that's part of Desmond's ancestry. Back into the Animus, we meet Haytham Kenway, a Templar during the mid 1700's. He is given a mission to locate a First Civilization site and unlock its secrets. He then sails to the Americas and forms the Templar order in the American Colonies. While he's doing this, he meets a Native woman named Kaniehtí:io (Ziio for short). She and Haytham make love and thus our main character is conceived. Enter our main protagonist Ratonhnhaké:ton. One day he's out playing with friends and he gets attacked by one of Haytham's men named Charles Lee. After the encounter, Ratonhnaké:ton vows to kill him. Ratonhnaké:ton returns to his village being burned down and sees his mother killed. Many years later, Ratonhnaké:ton has a spirit journey with Juno saying that he needs to look for the Assassins and undergo training in order to save his people from the impending British colonization and Templar plots. Ratonhnaké:ton does this and finds Achilles, a retired Assassin. He undergoes training from him and adopts the name Connor so that people will be able to address him easier. Connor then begins his hunt for the Templars and in doing so helps ignite the flames of the American Revolution.

This story is ass. I'm sorry but how can you make the American Revolution annoying, infuriating, and uninteresting. This is such an interesting and pivotal point in world history and the writers fucked it up. The main issue here is Connor. He's an angry, uncharismatic, and inconsistent character. Compared to Altair, Ezio, and Desmond, Connor sucks. Had they at least made Connor a Patriot and actually part of the Revolution, the game would've been much more interesting. I can easily rewrite this entire script, but that's a discussion for another time. Anyway, how are the other characters? I love Haytham. I love how forward, focused, and driven he is. He sees a problem and he instantly knows how to deal with it. He's a smart, intellectual person and he doesn't take shit from anyone. Haytham is such an underrated character and I honestly wish the game focused on him a little bit more. The main villain Charles Lee was also a disappointment. Like I get why Connor wanted him dead, but I was hoping the game would develop him more instead of being bad guy #563. Back in modern day, they fucked over Desmond. Killing him off was one of the worst mistakes in any game. Shaun and Rebecca return for this and they're just as lovable as before. William, Desmond's father, is a decent addition. Although he's only in the series for this one game. William helps develop Desmond more, which is very nice. Too bad it doesn't mean shit because of the ending.

Okay so back to the main story. As you play through Connor's story, you'll be participating in key parts of the Revolution. The Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, Lexington and Concord, Battle of Bunker Hill, George Washington's assassination attempt, and Battle of Monmouth. Despite Connor being part of these historical events, Connor was only for the Revolution to save his people. Understandable considering why Connor is doing this, but I feel like he was shoved in at the last second. Again had they made Connor an actual Patriot, I feel like the story would be much better.

The ending for the game is one of the worst endings ever next to Far Cry 5 and Last of Us Part 2. So in Connor's story, he kills Charles Lee (very unceremoniously). Connor chases him to some inn in the Frontier. Both are wounded from their fight. They share a drink, no conversation, and then Connor kills him. Idk what the writers were trying to do here, but it didn't work. After this, Connor buries the amulet at the homestead and then his story closes. There's some epilogue stuff, but whatever. With the modern story, Desmond discovers Juno's plot for resurrection. If he were to sacrifice himself and save the world, Juno will be unleashed onto the world. Obviously Desmond sacrifices himself to save the planet, but dies in the process. This whole thing with Juno is dumb as fuck and should not have been a thing. Also killing Desmond was an awful mistake. They should've kept him around and have him become a Master Assassin and do a couple of games revolving around him defeating the Templars in modern day. 

Before I get into gameplay, let's talk about the technical side of the game. The game looks decent, I guess. Even with the upgraded graphics with the remaster, the game still looks like late-PS3. The game is also riddled with bugs and glitches. Enemy pop ins, clothes not rendering, me phasing through walls, unresponsive controls, Connor looking like he has a stick up his ass for like 2 cutscenes, lip syncing is off for certain cutscenes. It's a mess. Thankfully gameplay is somewhat tight with character movement and naval movement. So it's not AS bad as AC 1. A lot of these were fixed with a 19 GB update, but that didn't fix everything. 

Graphically, the game looks okay. Nothing to write home about. If I remember correctly, the PS3 version looked better, especially during rain and snow. This is me being biased, but I've always liked this time period in American history. The brick and mortar, the clothes, the way people talk. It's all so interesting. Honestly I'm a sucker for this whole time period. 1600's - early 1800's.

Sound design is top notch. Easily one of the best parts of the game. The music is great. Lorne Balf is a great substitute for Jesper Kyd. I love the theme that plays when you're chasing Charles Lee through Boston.

Okay onto the gameplay. This is the game that "streamlined" the controls all the way to Rogue. Running, free running, and shoving have been mapped to one button. Combat has also been streamlined to be "easier". Doing this though made the game have some unresponsive controls. When you're just trying to sprint and accidentally hit a wall, Connor will start to climb. Or maybe there's a bump and Connor will jump in a direction you don't want him to. All these changes for "quality of life improvement" makes the game much more finicky than it needs to be and it's hella annoying. Also with the level design for Boston and New York, the game doesn't want you free running on rooftops like in all of the previous games. It's much more difficult and tedious. The game is basically forcing you to stay on ground level, which takes away a lot of freedom in your exploration of the cities. I get it. It's wartime colony, but it's still annoying.

As with every Ubisoft game, there's collectables! Oh yay. What did I grab this time? Benjamin Franklin's almanac pages, feathers, treasure chests, and trinkets for Peg Leg. If you find all the pages for a set, then you'll gain the ability to craft one of Franklin's inventions for the homestead (I'll get to this in a little bit). Collect all feathers and you get a new costume for Connor. With every treasure chest, you'll find money and recipes for you to craft (either more equipment for Connor or supplies for the homestead). Get enough trinkets and Peg Leg will give you a map to a location to uncover the secret of where Captain Kidd's treasure is at. This treasure is very useful and totally worth going for.

So a new mechanic with the game (and only used with AC III) is Davenport Homestead. By finding specific individuals through the game's world, you'll invite them to live on the homestead and in return they'll provide business for you to trade (lumber, iron, food, clothing, etc). With these resources and artisans, you can craft stuff for Connor to use/trade (arrows, bullets, snares, glass bottles, etc.) You can upgrade these people by participating in their missions. These missions also develop these characters and this is honestly one of the best parts of the game. Maintaining and upgrading the homestead was a very nice change of pace compared to the main story. With the homestead comes the ledger. This is SUPPOSED to be your main source of income, but I barely touched this. It's way too tedious to keep track of. Literally looting chests and using your assassins for income is much more viable than this stupid thing.

The game also introduces hunting. With the inclusion of animals, Ratonhnaké:ton can hunt wolves, deer, elk, bunnies, etc and skin them. You can then sell those skins to earn money. Because of the Assassin's Guild, I never needed to sell my skins, so I was just stacking on them. The hunting in this game is actually not bad, but can use some improvements.

So like with the last 2 entries, the Assassin Guild returns. In this, you'll be using them to free the colonies from Templar rule. This time though, in order to unlock them, you have to free each district of Boston and New York. Kind of combining Brotherhood and Revelations. One thing I do like about the Assassins in this is that you get to know them. You can have conversations with them. My favorite being Duncan the Irish guy. Apparently he saw Haytham kill that guy back in the London opera house. He was the little kid that Haytham tells to keep quiet. Hearing Duncan's side of the story was very fascinating. Anyway, you can command your Assassins to do a specific action for you instead of killing a guard. This was completely useless outside of their specific missions. Their income from freeing up the colonies was great though. 

So in this game, a brand new combat system is brought to the table: naval combat. You'll command of your own ship and you'll be doing naval missions to secure trade routes, Kidd missions to find his treasure, and hunt down the Templar Nicholas Biddle. While this is all fine and dandy, this won't be improved upon until Black Flag. The naval missions are very bare bones compared to what's to come later, but it's still enjoyable.

Okay so I have to address the optional objectives. Like with the previous two entries, full synchronization is still a thing. In this though, the devs will crank that difficulty all the way up to 11. There's three optional objective missions that forced me to not do the 100%. First is the Battle of Bunker Hill. In the second part of this mission, you had to blow up 2 ships that's bombarding Charleston. The optional objective for this is 1. Be undetected and 2. Air assassinate a Grenadier. Why do I need to be undetected when the ships will be blowing up anyway? Why do I need to air assassinate a grenadier when I'll be blowing up the ship anyway? This whole thing is fucking stupid. I did it though after restarting several times. The second one is the assassination attempt on Washington. After you free yourself from the gallows, you have to stop Hickey before he kills Washington. The crowd is in a panic and everything is in slow motion. Optional objective for this is 1. Prevent Hickey from killing both of his bodyguards and 2. Kill two mercenaries. First one I understand but why do I need to kill two additional soldiers? I'm trying to stop someone from killing the commander-in-chief. Why the fuck would Connor waste his time on two other soldiers? Doing this was SO MUCH MORE difficult than Bunker Hill because it's straight up retarded. I had to tackle Hickey and keep breaking his defense (which throws him in a direction I need him to go) and make sure he doesn't kill the other bodyguard and make sure to kill the two other soldiers. There's so much going on and mind you that this is all still in slow motion. I was barely able to do this. You also have to get good RNG with the crowd. One trip and you'll have to restart again. The third one, and this is the one that broke me, is a naval mission. Optional objective: destroy three frigates by hitting their weak point. Seems simple enough, but it's not. High winds, large waves that act like walls, rogue waves that can damage you, and you have to hit a very specific spot on these ships in order to open up the weak point. All of this and if you've been upgrading the Aquila, then you'll be having a much harder time because you're too powerful for precise shots. You're literally fighting against the game because you were progressing yourself normally. This entire battle is pure RNG and you just have to get lucky. At least with Bunker Hill and Washington's assassination attempt you're able to manipulate how to do things. With this, it's pure RNG and I was not having it. Whoever designed these optional objectives needs to be slapped because these were nigh impossible to do.

Outside of the main story, there's side quests for you to do. Like I said earlier, there's the liberation missions in which you unlock Assassins. There's also hunting challenges, Frontiersmen challenges, brawler challenges, and the free DLC Benedict Arnold quest line. These are cool and a decent replacement for the thief/mercenary/courtesan quest lines from Brotherhood. These are actually quite fun, albeit a bit tedious with the hunting challenges. I do appreciate all the extra content in this game as opposed to Revelations.

So with the Remaster comes the DLC "The Tyranny of King Washington". This is a three part what-if alternate reality story if Washington came in contact with an Apple of Eden and got consumed by absolute power. This whole thing is dumb as fuck and I was already done with the main game. I couldn't bother myself to finish the first episode because of just how stupid this whole thing is. Since this is an alternate reality, everything that happens here is completely useless and unnecessary. Why waste your DLC on this when you can tell the story of what happens after Connor's tale. Tell us how he would handle the Patriot colonization of his people's land. Like fuck, this DLC pissed me off. Another thing is that all the natives are speaking English. In the main game, they were speaking their native tongue, so why are they suddenly speaking English? So stupid.

Overall, this game is a fucking mess. The only reason why I'm rating it higher than Assassin's Creed 1 is because of all the content in the game. The story is ass, characters suck, Desmond got hoed, lots of technical issues, and gameplay needed tweaking. I can only recommend this game because it finishes Desmond's story and it connects Black Flag, Rogue, and Liberation. I'm done with this game and I'm probably never going to touch it in the future.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.