Assassin's Creed Revelations (PS4) Review

 Assassin's Creed Revelations (PS4) 7/10

"I heard your name once before, Desmond, a long time ago. And now it lingers in my mind like an image from an old dream. I do not know where you are, or by what means you can hear me. But I know you are listening."

Hello everyone and welcome to another game review. Today I'll be reviewing the fourth entry in the Assassin's Creed series, Revelations. This game was originally released on November 15, 2011 for PS3 and Xbox 360. I played the PS4 remaster on the Ezio Collection, so I'll be judging the game from here. Back when I first played this game, I didn't enjoy it as much as 2 and Brotherhood. I'm guessing the main reason for this is the different setting. Replaying this now, I learned to love this game and found that it is very underrated among the AC series. Let's begin.

A couple of years after the events of Brotherhood, Ezio sets off for Masyaf to tie up some loose ends that his father had. In Masyaf, Ezio is looking for Altair's library which houses secrets for the Assassin order to discover. On his way here, Ezio gets ambushed by Templars. After fighting against them and killing their leader, Ezio discovers that he'll need five keys in order to open the library. With a book he discovered from Leondros, the Templar leader, he heads for Constantinople in his search for the keys. Here, we'll meet Yusuf, Master Assassin and the leader of the Constantinople brotherhood. Ezio will be aiding the Brotherhood against the Templar threat as he searches for the Masyaf keys.

The story here is okay at best, but it nicely ties up Ezio and Altair's stories. The game also gives us some much needed background for Desmond. The whole point of this game is to reveal everything necessary for Desmond's journey and to finish up Altair and Ezio's journey. We get to see what happened to Altair after he killed Al Mualim and how he “set the brotherhood free.” We get to see Ezio, an experienced and full fledged Master Assassin connect everything to Altair and Desmond. We also get to see how Desmond grew up, how he escaped to New York, and how he ended up in Abstergo in the first game. This game ties up EVERYTHING, it's great. Even the DLC "The Lost Archive" goes over Subject 16.

I like all the new characters for the game. Yusuf was cool and a bit crazy, but he was focused and got shit done when needed. Sofia is a sweet and very intelligent person and I'm glad Ezio basically hooked up with her at the end. Prince Suleiman is a very charismatic and nice person, but is willing to deal out justice when needed. Prince Ahmet was a decent villain and honestly I found him more compelling than Rodrigo Borgia.

I like the feel of Constantinople. It's very different from Rome and Northern Italy, but it felt somewhat nostalgic. It was like a mixture of Rome and Jerusalem from Brotherhood and 1. Graphically, the game looks good too. I will say though that switching to actual mocap on Ezio's last game was a weird decision. Ezio looks different from how he does in 2 and Brotherhood, it's kinda off putting. Desmond and Altair on the other hand look great. I also love the way Constantinople looks. Lots of Islamic influences as well as old Roman ruins for you to explore.

The game’s sound design is great too. I love all the voices. Also, I never really noticed just how great Desmond's voice is. Nolan North voices him and he can easily do audio books using Desmond's voice. As you're doing Desmond's side of the story, he starts monologuing about his life and I just love this voice. He truly brought his words to life. Great voice work here. Also shoutout to Haaz Sleiman, who voiced Suleiman I.

The music here is as great as the last games. Not as good as Brotherhood, but it's still very atmospheric. Jesper Kyd returns for this as well as new composer Lorne Balfe.

Gameplay is exactly like Brotherhood. Full Synchronization, armor and weapon sets, shops and landmarks to buy, and collectables. Sadly, there are no assassination contracts, thief, mercenary, or Romanie quest lines. The game did add some stuff to the gameplay. First are the bombs. You can craft bombs to use against your enemies. Deadly, distraction, or stealth. I only really used these for specific missions. Outside of these, I found them to be pretty useless. The second addition are the Assassin recruits. Returning from the previous game, Revelations builds upon this concept. You still need to free districts under Templar rule. After you do this, you can recruit new assassins. You can then send them to do missions all across the Mediterranean Sea for training. You can also conquer other cities and have them be under Assassin control. The whole Mediterranean Defense game is nothing but maintenance and gets very annoying after a while. If you level up an Assassin to lv10, then you can assign them to a den (district) to look after. Doing this will unlock a two part special mission for that district. There's seven of these, one for each district. Sadly I didn't finish these quests because I couldn't bother myself to rank up my Assassin's enough to get the second part of these missions.

As for Desmond's side of the story, the game plays differently. With him, you're inside the heart of the Animus. With no body and playing in first person, the goal for these missions is to reach the end goal of each level, while you listen to Desmond’s story. I enjoyed these more than I thought I would, but I wouldn’t have minded something that was more like the main gameplay. Regardless, the highlight of these missions is learning about Desmond’s story. As I said earlier, Nolan North really immerses you into these sections, making them far more enjoyable than they should be. Some of these missions, especially the later ones, did give me some trouble, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

So with the Ezio Collection version of the game, we get access to the DLC The Lost Archive. In this, we go through Subject 16's story aka Clay Kaczmarek. You get to see Clay's story on how he became an Assassin, infiltrated Abstergo, and became the maniacal madman that he is. You’ll feel really bad for him because of what Abstergo put him through. Being stuck inside that machine for weeks on end, slowly losing his mind, being unable to discern reality from Animus. Truly a terrible fate. This DLC plays exactly like Desmond's sections in the main game. I'm not complaining though.

Overall, the game was decent. Nothing to really rave about except for the story, which was even lackluster in certain spots. The gameplay though is very underwhelming compared to Brotherhood, mainly because there isn't as much to do in this as opposed to Brotherhood. It's a great conclusion for Ezio and Altair's stories, but I just wish there was a bit more to do here. Honestly, I can't wait to jump into 3 and finish Desmond's tale.

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

This is Zorgak, signing off.