Assassin's Creed III is the third major installment of the Assassin's Creed series, and the fifth flagship title. The game features a new character as the assassin, Connor, a Native American. Assassin's Creed III story is boring, at least early on, although in my opinion, this was easily the worse Assassin's Creed story at the time it was released (and for that matter, one of the worst plots I've ever played). In the beginning, it features a different character than the one shown in the box art and promotional materials. It was bold of them to spend the first few chapters before we can actually control the titular assassin. To increase your care factor, you get to control Connor and watch him grow up. Fact is, the childhood sections does not do much to help players bond with the character since they are too brief and too boring, there's nothing for us to care about. The whole game builds up to the final killing blow of the antagonist yet the final mission and the scenes which this happens are severely lacking in anything. In the end, you don't side with Connor.
While the Templars are said to be evil, the Assassins have performed a lot of evil deeds as well. In actuality, we see more of the Assassins killing supposedly evil persons (without us seeing the true extent of their evilness in action) and we only have the Assassin's word that they fight for freedom. The story takes place during the events of the American Revolution and how Connor was entangled into it. Unfortunately, by shoehorning him into every significant event and giving him a crucial role in each one, it feels contrived. Connor's motivations for his actions are vague and weak, he lacks any charisma so you don't care what happens to him either way. To put salt into the wound, the present day ending was a bit abrupt and disappointing, it seems each Assassin's Creed game is the same in that it promises revelations but just ends up leaving another cliffhanger. The plot can become unbelievable with side characters' motivations and seemingly blind trust for Connor, to the point of allowing him to command troops at crucial moments, especially when said characters meet Connor for the first time.
Like previous Assassin's Creed games, the game is mission based, and these missions are absolutely annoying and frustrating at the unfairness, blandness or plain rubbishness of them. This is more evident in the earlier missions which require stealth or tailing/eavesdropping. You can get detected way too easily requiring a mission restart, even though these missions are short, the checkpoints aren't always friendly. I am not sure whether enemies have higher detection rates than expected but Connor seems to be discovered way too easily. So while it keeps the same types of missions as in previous Assassin's Creed games, somehow they manage to feel more annoying, more frustrating and less fun to play. The seems to restrict your freedom to the point where you're forced to trial and error to find out the exact path the developers wanted you to take. Areas are cordoned off during missions such that you can't stray far without failing. The other problem with the missions is the repetitveness and emptiness; you will watch a lot of cutscenes, then walk for two seconds to watch another cutscene. There isn't nearly enough meaningful or meaty gameplay to make it less bland.
This sort of mission structure makes you wonder why the developers bothered to give you those two seconds to control Connor when it would have been much more effective to go straight to the next cutscene. This makes it so boring when the gameplay boils down to Point A to Point B for a mission, cutscene, then go back to Point A for another cutscene before going to Point C to repeat the whole process. The trekking between mission points take more time than the actual mission gameplay itself. This recipe makes Assassin's Creed III sickening and feels like it has taken the franchise several steps back. What's more annoying is that missions often force you to travel across one of the four unique maps, which means loading screens and wasting more time, especially when you just came from that map in the previous mission. Even after patches, some glitches remain such as during missions and your side character speaks, once you arrive at the predesignated spot, the character's dialogue suddenly cuts off. This is really poor timing considering that the developers had timed the event (you're forced to walk alongside those side characters at their pace so they knew how much time they had for the dialogue).
The developers should consider a button for stealth because you can't control when Connor crouches or not, while this is not a problem in previous games, it's glaring here with the amount of frustrating stealth missions. That, or we need a cover system because the inconsistent handling of cover is frustrating. The game does a horrible job of introducing the player to all the new stuff Assassin's Creed III has to offer. A lot of things aren't explained within the main game. While sidequests are available early on, the game doesn't do much to point it out. Assassin's Creed III introduces hunting, you can set snares, baits, use a bow and arrow to kill. It feels a lot different to previous Assassin's Creed games. Combat remains clunky, being aggressive sucks and countering is still the way to go but somehow, it feels a step back for Brotherhood and Revelations. It's annoying how once a large group gangs up on you, you're screwed in terms of trying to fight your way out, you have to patiently wait for a perfect moment to counter which can take a while.
A core part of the gameplay is the freerunning, it is now more simplified requiring the press of only one button. However, this doesn't feel like an improvement, what this change means is if you wanted to run, you have to freeruning which also means climbing objects which you may not have wanted. The lack of buildings in maps also means you can't freely run on the rooftops which makes traversing the maps quite boring. One area that Assassin's Creed III excels at are the graphics and environments. The game looks amazing. The setting of the American Revolution is unique and provides heaps of potential but the relatively recentness of the setting doesn't lend well to the more traditional look and methods of the Assassin's. Furthermore, there are four maps: Boston; New York; Homestead; and Frontier. None of them provide enough high rise buildings for climbing and rooftop running. In the Frontier and Homestead, since it's out in the wilderness, climbing trees is limited to preset paths and there aren't many hiding spots.
In contrary to the story missions, the sidequests aren't nearly as annoying. There is a HUGE amount of things to do, as you'd expect of an Assassin's Creed game. There are Homestead missions which are recruiting villagers to live in your area, liberation missions to free Boston and New York and many collectibles ranging from feathers, pages and trinkets scattered around the map. The biggest thing added are naval missions in which you control a ship on the high seas, firing your cannons at other ships. It was highly praised during its release but I didn't find it too amazing. It is fun but it wasn't the hyped up experience I was expecting. There are minigames too, including two board games and lawn bowling but they're slow paced and can be difficult to win against the AI. Overall, Assassin's Creed III contains a horrible story and frustrating gameplay. If you can look past the story missions, it contains a huge world filled with heaps of other stuff to do (all of which are better than the story missions). It's worth playing but it's hardly a great game.
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