Assassin's Creed Unity in 2023 (PS5)

[poetic_justice_]

You might have already decided you are going to play Unity on your PS5 regardless of what anyone says. You might be a die-hard AC fan whose passion is earning the platinum for every Assassin’s Creed game in existence. You might be a casual AC fan who is on the fence about Unity. In all three cases, this ten-minute read might prevent you from investing fifty-five to seventy hours into a gaming experience I think most people will remember as fondly as a painful hemorrhoid during a cross-country horseback ride. Playing Unity is like being sandblasted when you already have a second-degree sunburn. I say that as a Assassin’s Creed fan. 

 

After an eight-year break (2014-2022) from Assassin’s Creed, I returned in September 2022 to play the AC IV: Black Flag expansion Freedom Cry. Freedom Cry has one of the two most interesting protagonists in the series: Adewale, a freed slave turned Assassin who joins the Brotherhood. Though he fights Templars, his driving motivation is to eradicating slavery in the Caribbean. 

 

Many issues in Adewale’s story are relevant today: institutionalized greed, slave labor, and racial prejudice. At one point, Adewale’s convictions on these issues lead him to confront his pirate friend and fellow Assassin, Edward Kenway. As a pirate, Edward is preoccupied with plunder. However, he also does the work of an Assassin, at least when it’s convenient or financially beneficial for him. Kenway’s actions reveal he is more pirate than assassin, which causes Adewale to confront him. During the confrontation (permit the paraphrase) Adewale states, “We are Assassins. Assassins have never been concerned with accumulating wealth; the Brotherhood is about freedom. If you are going to use your Assassin skills only for your own benefit, I will leave. The Creed requires more than that. We have to free others, whether their masters are Templars or slavers. You are better than this. If you aren’t going to help free slaves, I will do it myself. I hated being a slave. It isn’t enough for me to be free and think only of myself. I have to do something more for others still in captivity.” Kenway doesn’t change his greedy ways and continues to associate with Bartholomew Adams, a man Adewale distrusts. In the end, Adewale, Kenway’s former quartermaster, leaves Kenway to captain the brig Victoire, and later, steal and captain the Experto Crede.

 

This confrontation is one of the most powerful moments in the series. For me, the emotional weight of Adewale’s convictions reverberated into the real world. At that time, I was abusing gaming like alcohol: too much and too late at night, trying to escape difficulties at work. Edward Kenway’s character lent itself to my escapism. He was a self-centered character whose life revolved around gaining plunder. He lived in a tropical paradise and solved all his problems with a sword. Sailing around the virtual Caribbean, I could hunt whales and plunder ships to increase my in-game coffers. What’s not to love? There was no internal conflict or embedded moral code to trouble Kenway’s conscience: he’s a pirate! At least, there was no moral conflict until Adewale voiced his convictions. Adewale’s challenge was a watershed moment where gaming and reality converged. It felt like a two-dimensional NPC came to life and stuck his finger in my chest, asking, “Why aren’t you helping other people? Isn’t that the purpose of your existence?”

 

The moment challenged me. During this period of time, I took a necessary risk at work. A veteran employee was bullying and harassing others, especially women, but people were too scared or too discouraged to bring the matter up. One woman did speak up, and when this man learned what she had done, he targeted her and made her life difficult. Management did little to protect her and little to stop him. I transferred to this location in 2021, but employees here stated this man has been acting this way for years. If he discovered I filed a grievance against him, he would retaliate. Given management’s history of inaction, they would not protect me. I filed the grievance anyway. With the help of a former manager, I escalated the issue over my assistant general managers and general manager to notify our regional manager. The act didn’t do me any favors with local management, but I slept better afterwards.

 

Playing as Adewale inspired me to return to Assassin’s Creed. I (mistakenly) thought the next chronological game was Unity. [Technically, Rogue is next, but I forgot about Rogue. Also, with Unity’s co-op trophies and the possibility of server shutdown, I wanted to finish Unity while the platinum was still possible]. 

 

At launch, Unity was mired in controversy due to numerous bugs and technical problems. Many people disliked aspects of previous AC games, but the reaction to Unity went beyond dislike; many people outright hated it. However, these events occurred primarily in 2014-2015. In 2021 and 2022, posts on PSNProfiles said, “It’s better now. The bugs are largely fixed, the game has been stabilized, and you can play Unity on the PS5 without crashes.” I believed these posts. They are true, sort of. The game can be played on PS5, though it’s not 100% stable. While many bugs have been fixed, many remain. However, after Freedom Cry with Adewale, Unity with Arno is a crushing disappointment.

 

Generally speaking, there are four design questions that need to guide game development, particularly sequels:

 

1. Does this activity/mechanic/skill/story add to the gaming experience?

2. Does this activity/mechanic/skill/story contribute something relevant to existing lore?

3. Is this addition interesting?

4. Is this addition fun?

 

The overwhelming answer to those questions in AC Unity is no. AC Unity is a 70+ hour experience that adds nothing to the Assassin’s Creed series (while otther people have completed it in fewer hours, I play slowly). Unity’s parkour feels like two technological steps backward from the smooth flow of Black Flag, and the narrative adds nothing substantial to Creed lore. The end result is boring, not fun, and irrelevant. I don’t say that as a hater, but as a disappointed fan. I wanted Unity to succeed, and after seven years, I hoped Ubisoft could fix it. However, Unity falls flat on its face in the first act and remains on its hands and knees for the remainder of its trope-filled existence. No amount of patches can polish over the fact that Unity is a turd. 

 

Months ago, I played Firewatch, a small indie game whose story requires three and one-half hours. Despite not touching Firewatch since completion, I remember Firewatch’s narrative. There was a slow but organic transformation from mistrust to trust for the main characters Henry and Delilah. In contrast, it has only been ten days since finishing Unity, which required literally twenty times the amount of hours to complete as Firewatch, and my memory is already hazy. My subconscious decided Unity wasn’t worth remembering and ejected it. The leadership in charge of Unity’s creative development needs to be licking stamps in a mailroom. Repetitive, mind-numbing tasks are their forte, not creating engaging, exciting gameplay.

 

Example: Assassin’s Creed Revelations added the hookblade to Ezio’s gauntlet. The hookblade increased traversal speed, made parkour more interesting, and added a combat option against heavy, armored enemies. Lore wise, the hookblade showed the Assassins were evolving their warfare against the Templars. I am baffled why Ubisoft didn’t keep the hookblade in the series, as it is a great weapon/tool. Incidentally, Ubisoft considered re-introducing the hookblade in Black Flag, but decided against it.

 

Another example: Assassin’s Creed III added the Aquila. Connor navigated parts of the map in the Aquila and engaged in cannon-based ship-to-ship combat. Was the in-game operation of the Aquila perfect? No, but captaining the Aquila was fun, interesting, relevant to the story and time period, as well as contributing to AC lore, a contribution which became almost a character in itself with the Jackdaw in AC IV: Black Flag and later, the Experto Crede in Freedom Cry.

 

In contrast to these two additions, Unity introduces a 3-tier lockpicking skill and non-scaling co-op PVE missions (more on co-op missions later). For single-player, Unity had no hookblade, no Aquila or Jackdaw, no disarming enemies and using their weapons against them, no new fun combat moves. The only new mechanic was tiered lockpicking.

 

The mechanics of lockpicking could have been programmed to be an interesting, varied mini-game. Instead, lockpicking feels like something ported from a low-budget mobile app. Up, down, up, down - try to stop the sliding white bar in the slightly bigger blue bar. It is lame, needlessly time consuming, and ultimately, pointless. 

 

Despite hundreds of Ubisoft Entertainment and Ubisoft Montpelier employees coding five millions lines for Unity, no one in the creative development team heard a voice saying, “Hey, this game sucks. These mechanics suck. The story sucks. Arno is boring. We are taking out good ideas and replacing them with bad ideas or no ideas at all. Other than new co-op PVE modes, Unity has little going for it. Let’s look at our eight previous AC games and reincorporate mechanics that worked. Maybe we can add an idea we cut from an earlier game.” No? Why did no one leading the project think that approach was a better way to go? The final product developed by Ubisoft Montpellier or Ubisoft Montreal makes no sense.

 

These are other reasons why I cannot recommend Unity on PS5 in 2023.

 

STILL (MODERATELY) UNSTABLE

Unity crashed on me three times. The worst crash was mid-mission on Memory 12, Sequence 3, the final mission. This irritating restart cost me time, but fortunately did not corrupt my save. This third crash occurred on December 15, 2022. No other PS4 games have crashed on my PS5 like Unity. Unity is perhaps 98% or 99% stable on PS5, but not 100%. Granted, not all PS5’s components are identical or manufactured identically, and your PS5 may process the application with more stability than mine. 

 

STICKY HANDS = UNWANTED, AWKWARD PARKOUR

Arno attaches himself to literally everything that is nailed down. He frequently stops moving, ascends the wrong environmental asset, or moves in the wrong direction while on an environmental asset. I frequently felt I was not 100% in control of Arno while freerunning. This “sticky hands” problem is so bad that I abandoned rooftop parkour and began freerunning only at street level. Even on street level, Arno would bump into crowds, veer to one side, then try to vault over tables or run up walls. All I wanted to do was to move in a straight line down the street, not parkour through the environment, yet the game kept bouncing Arno into parkour. In AC III and AC IV, holding R2 to freerun was fun. In Unity, holding R2 is a liability. I wish the “sticky hands” sensitivity was adjustable, because I would drop it to 50%. I don’t understand why people praise the parkour in Unity; Arno’s grabbiness while R2 freerunning is too much. 

 

OPEN WINDOW? NOPE!

Arno had problems entering windows. Even while holding L2, Arno would not enter a window. He would move across the window or around the window. At one point, he even climbed in thin air over the window. Getting Arno to actually enter a window was like herding cats, especially when approaching the window from underneath.

 

INFERIOR COMBAT COMPARED TO PREVIOUS AC TITLES

Previous AC games had a red flash for enemy attacks that could not be parried, and a yellow flash for attacks that could be parried. In Unity, some attacks cannot be parried, even though they display a yellow  “parry” flash. If the game engine decides an enemy is going to hit you, there is almost nothing you can do to avoid it. Your parry will fail, your smoke bomb will be ineffective, or an enemy who you were comboing will suddenly stand bolt upright and interrupt your attack mid-stroke. 

 

The disarm mechanic has been removed. I miss wresting a long gun from a sniper and bayoneting or shooting him with his own musket. Disarming a brute and and chopping him with his own axe was satisfying.

 

Arno starts the game with a Dull Cavalry Saber. He cannot pick up enemy weapons, even though they are all superior to his dull sword. Likewise, he cannot pick up dropped enemy muskets and fire them.

 

OVERPOWERED SNIPERS

Even at fully maximized health, a single sniper shot will remove over 50% of Arno’s health. Two sniper shots will kill Arno. During multi-enemy combat - and 90% of the combat is multiple enemies - it is easy to lose awareness of snipers with all the swordsmen and officers in your face, then Arno suddenly drops dead. This mechanic makes no sense, as Arno can be hacked on four or five times with swords before dying. What makes muskets so deadly? Later memories have snipers everywhere, and they spot Arno instantly from 40-50m away. Approaching one sniper for a melee kill will place Arno in the line of sight for 1-5 additional snipers. As soon as stealth is lost, outdoor combat frequently becomes an unenjoyable experience due to the presence of overpowered snipers.

 

BUGGY COMBAT

At times. Arno. Stops.

 

Attacking.

 

can’t

Parry.

 

Or throw

Smoke Bombs.

 

Stuck.

 

Then you suddenly regain control and Arno can attack again. This bug is more common in later memories with high-level enemies.

 

INEFFECTIVE SMOKE BOMBS

Smoke bombs don’t always work; at times, enemies rushing into smoke still attack the player as if there is no smoke at all. Snipers or pistol-wielding swordsmen will still fire a round directly into Arno, even though a smoke bomb was deployed one second earlier. The smoke’s effect is inconsistent. 

 

In the end, though, smoke bombs were the most effective tool Arno had in open combat. I found myself spamming Smoke Bombs like a teenage stoner hot-boxing in a VW van in the high school parking lot. In fact, that might have been what the creative development team was doing in while designing Unity: hot-boxing in the Ubisoft Montreal parking lot. Canada is known for potent smoke, just not in its Assassin’s Creed games.

 

INEFFECTIVE CHERRY BOMBS

Cherry bombs are supposed to lure enemies to the location where the cherry bomb was thrown. In practice, cherry bombs work 50% of the time or less. Enemies are completely oblivious to cherry bombs thrown beside them, or they walk halfway to the cherry bomb detonation area, stop, and walk back to their original location. I stopped using cherry bombs because they are a bad joke with no punchline. Enemies don’t respond or loose interest so fast. In rare cases, repeated throwing of cherry bombs instantly alerts the enemy to your location, even if you are hidden from their line of sight. It makes no sense.

 

INEFFECTIVE POISON GAS, SMALL SUPPLY

Killing higher level enemies requires two poison gas bombs. However, most belts only carry a maximum of two poison gas bombs. Weak. Arno needs to be able to cause chaos and clear out Parisian cafes. There might be Templars in there, drinking coffee and plotting political intrigue.

 

ONLY TWO BERSERK DARTS

Making enemies berserk so they attack each other and civilians is the best comedic activity in Assassin’s Creed. Previous AC titles allowed players to carry five berserk darts. Unity limits the player to two berserk darts. Very few belts and gloves allow players to carry more. Berserk darts are rare when looting corpses, so the actual usage is few and far between. Come on, Ubisoft, party poopers! I want crazy brutes swinging great axes at fishmongers! 

 

RANDOM LOOT ALGORITHM

Why is it that snipers have unlimited ammunition to shoot Arno, yet when Arno loots snipers, he  almost never finds bullets? Previous AC titles had clearly defined loot patterns, such as looting dead enemies with firearms frequently produced bullets, or looting heavy enemies frequently produced medicine or darts. Unity has no rhyme or reason to its loot pool, forcing players to waste time searching every type of corpse in a boring loot lottery. Wouldn’t a better loot algorithm help players, I don’t know, actually play the game they paid for?

 

BUGGY ENVIRONMENTS

Cool! Arno is sliding across that table - oh wait, he hit a book and stopped. Yeah! Arno is vaulting a bench - oh wait, he hit a plate of fruit and stopped. Finally, Arno is climbing a wall and - he refuses to grab a handhold directly above him, even though that handhold is identical to the ten other handholds he grabbed to get here.

 

Arno assassinates enemies without touching them.

 

Why is that NPC half-buried in the street? Where did that woman’s legs go? Why is that Parisian hovering down the street without walking? Unity is still buggy.

 

This is a playlist containing many bugs I encountered during my playthrough: 

 

INCONSISTENT, BROKEN COVER SYSTEM

The screen frequently displays an “X: COVER” pop-up message when Arno is beside walls or doorways. However, much of the time, pressing X does nothing. Or worse, it glues Arno’s butt to a wall OPPOSITE the wall where you were crouched, putting Arno in full view of the enemies he was supposed to be stealthily avoiding. Whoops. This can be an issue in missions where the challenge for 100% synch requires cover kills. Through trial and error, players have to find which environmental objects support the cover system and which don’t. Doorways are the worst.

 

NO SINGLE PLAYER SCALING (CO-OP MISSIONS AND HEISTS)

Heists an co-op missions are designed for two or four players, not solo players. This issue can be mitigated in most heists and missions at the cost of time, making the heist or mission last four times as long as intended. However, some missions are in absolute need of single-player difficulty adjustment, and unbelievably, Ubisoft decided coding this adjustment was not worth their time. 

 

The parkour section of The Tournament is the centerpiece for Unity’s Co-op Hall of Shame. This confusing, poorly designed parkour time trial was designed for four players and ONLY four players. The mechanical execution is crap and the time trial should have been eliminated from the mission during the beta trial phase. As it is, The Tournament is a timed nightmare for single-players, a faux pas which highlights everything wrong with Unity’s parkour system.  Arno’s grabby hands constantly attach him to the wrong objects, wasting valuable seconds. There are no instructions. Through trial-and-error, players discover Ubisoft’s parkour philosophy: “Gather 34 flags but wait! Most of the flags don’t unroll until you touch another flag first. We don’t use color coding or any other method to differentiate the order in which you should grab flags to activate other flags. Good luck!!” Any and all criticism for Ubisoft’s decision to include the time trial in its current form as part of The Tournament mission is warranted. This work is pure garbage.

 

For single-players attempting to complete The Tournament, this video by Granite Gaming is helpful. 

 

 

 

BORING ACTIVITY: LOCKPICKING

Ubisoft Montpellier took away naval warfare and replaced it with skill-tiered lockpicking. Wheeeee. Dozens and dozens of locks to pick. Oops, can’t pick that one because it’s level 3. Or that one. Or the hidden one I spent three minutes locating. Or the one behind the level 3 locked door. Oh, I can’t get that Synch Point skill in a co-op mission because it is behind a locked level 3 door. Hey, every co-op mission has a Synch Point hidden behind a locked level 3 door. 

 

Ubisoft, how is lockpicking an improvement? Does it add anything to the game? No. Is it interesting? No. Is it fun? No. Then why is it here?

 

BORING ACTIVITY: NOSTRADAMUS ENIGMAS (18)

Nostradamus Enigmas are a colossal fail. There are eighteen enigmas, one for each zodiac symbol. However, these vague, poorly written poems and random accompanying symbols have nothing to do with the zodiac, Nostradamus, or astrology. The real enigma is why are they in Unity at all?

 

I tried doing one or two enigmas by myself. Both were a convoluted, tedious, indecipherable mess. Finding a weird symbol hidden on the back of a tower hundreds of meters from an identical weird symbol scrawled near a campfire does nothing for me. For the love of the fans, don’t make us do 18 puzzles with three-to-five riddles each. And please, don’t attach armor we need at the beginning of the game (not the end) to those 18 enigmas and 60+ poems. Too late. By the time I completed the 18th enigma, I didn’t care about the armor, the enigmas, or Nostradamus. It was a chore, nothing more.

 

I think the Unity team added Nostradamus enigmas in an attempt to make the game appear intelligent and more cerebral, but the core AC fanbase never asked for a cerebral game. We were happy with a stabby-jumpy-sneaky game. What does vague, poorly worded poetry have to do with being a stabby-jumpy-sneaky assassin? Nothing. Get rid of it. Also, who wrote the quatrains with five lines? Quatro/cuatro means four.

 

The most interesting tie-in to Nostradamus occurs during a murder mystery. A monk becomes obsessed with Nostradamus prophecy and attempts to make one specific prophecy happen. During the investigation, he asks, “Is [this action] a crime if the end was already prophesied?” Arno doesn’t go down that philosophical rabbit hole, but murder and mental illness coupled with Nostradamus was one of the most engaging narratives in Unity.

 

BORING ACTIVITY: COLLECTIBLES (422, BASE GAME)

• 128 Cockades (base game). All 128 Cockades must be picked up for the Tricolore trophy.
• 294 Chests (base game). All 294 chests must be opened for the Curiosity trophy. Many chests are locked and/or located behind a locked door. Some chests are in the sewers, and not all sewer entrances are marked on the map. 

 

Here is one example: https://youtu.be/70E7OjlNfws

 

One chest is locked behind four quests, but the game does not explain this. This video by Rogue4 shows how to complete the four quests:

 

https://youtu.be/WeWXH5vlbds

 

BORING ACTIVITY: COLLECTIBLES (98, DEAD KINGS)

As if retrieving 422 collectibles in the base game wasn’t enough, Dead Kings adds 98 more (total may be inaccurate; feel free to count on the map below).

 

https://www.ign.com/wikis/assassins-creed-5-unity/Map_Collectibles

 

• 60 Chests (approximate). 
• 15 Artifacts (approximate). Whereas retrieving artifacts was optional in Unity, in Dead Kings they are a requirement for synchronization.
• 23 Napolean Bicorns. Does replacing cockades with bicorns increase the fun factor? No.

 

All 100 Dead King collectibles must be retrieved to achieve 100% synchronization for the bronze trophy Hydrogen Bonded. I want to give Lead game designer Benjamin Plich* a bronze trophy too.

 

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin's_Creed_Unity

 

OVERPRICED MEDICINE + (THREE-SECOND LOOTING X 400 CORPSES) = BOREDOM

While most of Arno’s deployable items only cost 50-250 livres each to replenish, the price of medicine is insane: 2500 livres for one medicine.

 

This singular price gouge kneecaps the game’s economy. New players can save livres for better gear/weapons or replenish medicine; they cannot afford to do both. Low-level heists and low-level co-op missions only pay 5000-10,000 livres. Given their meager health bar plus the numerous enemies in these heists, new players must constantly use medicine to heal. However, a player going into a low-level heist who uses five medicine is actually LOSING money. A heist payout of 5000-10,000 livres is only enough to purchase two-to-four medicine, leaving the player 2500 livres poorer than when he/she started. Why didn’t Ubisoft replenish all player medicine at the end of each heist? More people would have played them.

 

The solution to avoid paying 2500 livres for each medicine is looting. Many players will end up looting corpses, not for money, but for medicine. Unfortunately, Unity’s looting algorithm doesn’t adjust to player need. The algorithm provides random items, most of which the player already has. Consequently, players end up looting dozens of corpses only to receive a few medicine. Wow. Fun! While doing nothing, I get to hold a button down for three seconds. Hundreds of times, holding a button, doing nothing. Doing nothing, holding a button, hundreds of times. Whee. Let’s watch Arno pat a dead guy’s chest, pockets and - Arno, stop! He’s dead. Don’t touch him there.

 

Given how bad Unity is, I don’t know if the developers didn’t recognize the tedious medicine-loot cycle they created, or if one of them secretly did realize it and has a necrophilia fetish. Arno is very touchy with corpses and makes a lot of contact in three seconds. I didn’t notice it the first three hundred times he did it, but once he passed four hundred, I questioned why Arno needed three seconds to pull 18 livre out of a dead man’s pocket - and the pocket in question wasn’t between the corpse’s legs or butt. Maybe the corpse was smuggling contraband into or out of prison.

 

Anyway, players will spend considerable time searching corpses for medicine. It’s something gamers have been screaming for in an Assassin’s Creed game: the chance to stand still, doing nothing, holding a button, dozens of times.

 

BLAND, BORING PROTAGONIST

Arno is a whiny, spoiled, rebellious, immature man-child. Like an 80’s action hero among explosions and violence, the quippy protagonist is never truly in danger. In 2023, this cliched narrative is not interesting. The one event that has the power to transform Arno happens at the end of the story, and then the game ends. What a wasted opportunity. If that specific event had occurred in the middle of the story instead of at the finale, its impact would have removed Arno from his protected, privileged world and forced him to grow. Instead of a its boring young adult novel conclusion, players would have found out who Arno really is when all the people anchoring his life were removed. The life he took for granted would no longer exist, and he would have to choose a new path. That narrative could have been interesting. Instead, we got lockpicking and Titanic without the iceberg or Jack.

 

CONFUSING, UNENGAGING STORY

I played through some memory sequences twice. I still don’t understand who killed who, or who ordered who to kill who, or which who killed the first who after the first who killed the second who. I do not know why or how many whos were killed, nor do I care. Arno loves Elise, but their star-crossed lovers’ tale is a snooze fest. Plus, when it matters most, she’s dumb. Well, so is he, so their conclusion is dumb too. 

 

LITTLE NEW LORE

Apart from introducing the concept of sages - humans who have high numbers of Precursor DNA in their bodies - there is nothing new, and even with the introduction of sages, the plot does nothing with the concept.

 

Arno's handler: "Hey, we think we found a sage. Initiate, play as Arno and confirm this person is a sage."

Initiate (Gamer playing as Arno): [confirms sage existence]

Arno's handler: "Wow, that's great. Yep, he is a sage. Nice work."

THE END

 

BAD LIGHTING

Dead Kings in particular is very, very dark. I cranked up the brightness on my monitor and still had issues playing in the catacombs and sewers. What fun is a game where you can’t see where you’re going? Without Eagle Vision, I would have been totally blind in several sections. Perhaps Ubisoft was going for realism, but this poor visual experience was not enjoyable.

 

BEAUTIFUL ENVIRONMENTS

The art team is the shining diamond in this pile of Parisian poop. Recreating iconic architecture, slums, gilded mansions, libraries, political halls, cathedrals, catacombs, swamps, and residential buildings is so well done. It is a shame that the parkour and story are not as good as the environmental aesthetic of 1789 Paris. Kudos to the environment team creating the environments, because they clearly did their research and brought their A-game.

 

These are my thoughts on Unity. Even many die-hard Assassin’s Creed fans dislike it. Perhaps you can see why. Unity is bad. It is not just technically bad, but bad overall, which is sad. You are under no obligation to play such a terrible game. Trophies be damned; seventy hours of your life is too valuable to trade for a few seconds of joy in a failed game. 

 

If you feel you are missing out, you can watch all Unity’s cut scenes on Youtube. They can be a great help if you want to fall asleep and dream about better Assassin’s Creed games.

 

https://youtu.be/HNh4DmwghaE

 

Edited December 24, 2022 by poetic_justice_

[DaivRules]

So is the TLDR: AC Unity PS4 version is still a buggy mess (aka an AC game) on PS5 and you don’t recommend it?

 

 

[SpaceIsDandy]

Also he is already in 2023

[Rias Gremory]

Oh shit and here I thought this would be an official announcement remaster for Assassin's Creed: Unity PS5 but I guess not. ?

[Silver-I-Chariot]

Nice rant but I don't remember any of these issues except boring story and too many collectibles. Other than that, it's your typical AC game.

[MrRys28]

I agree with most of these... I really don't understand why some people praise this game's parkour and combat for being good and realistic

the parkour is so bad, yes if this was a tech demo the animations are complex and nice, but they are bad for the gameplay. sometimes Arno jumps 20 meters up or forward (very realistic) sometimes he can't jump a meter, sometimes you hold R2 and he goes up sometimes he goes down, sometimes even if you hold R2 + X he goes down and when holding R2 + O he goes up, sometimes you have to hold L2 to enter a window, sometimes he doesn't enter a window even when you hold L2, sometimes he enters a window even if you aren't holding L2 and don't want to enter it, sometimes he can scale a flat wall sometimes he can't scale a wall with decorations

and all the animations are so slow and prolonged

 

and the combat, again slow and prolonged animations, there is no defense against guns except rolling, which takes you out of the fight, or smoke bombs, which isn't precisely a direct counter to guns and they are limited and there is even more gunmen than before... why can't you grab an enemy as a shield, like in the previous games?

the XP system is completely broken, 90% of the actions you will (have to) perform don't grant you any XP, only finishers grant you XP in open combat, but that means you have to wait about 2 seconds after you defeat an enemy to finish him

stealth kills from cover do reward you with XP, but good luck finding a good hiding spot where the enemies walk around, because there is no whistling and if you try moving from one hiding spot to the other there is a high chance someone will spot you, hidden blade kills also only grant you XP when it's a jump kill

the only saving grace for the XP system is that it's almost pointless, but I wouldn't say that's a good thing

[Vault-TecPhantom]

On 24/12/2022 at 8:48 AM, DaivRules said:

So is the TLDR: AC Unity PS4 version is still a buggy mess (aka an AC game) on PS5 and you don’t recommend it?

 

 

 

I think a huge part of the (excellent) OP was to highlight that Unity's problems go beyond bugs which is all too often scapegoated for what is essentially a terrible game by itself.

[ReverzEffect]

On 24-12-2022 at 9:48 AM, DaivRules said:

So is the TLDR: AC Unity PS4 version is still a buggy mess (aka an AC game) on PS5 and you don’t recommend it?

Which is massively exaggerated... I bought a used copy of this game yéars ago but I never started it, mostly due to all those bad critics. I just now played it start to finish over the last 5-6 weeks, it's ok... it's by far not anywhere near as bad as people make it out to be. It's your standard AC games with too much collectables & at times annoying/ilogical free running but doesn't that sum up every other AC game as well?

 

I mean: yes, there's way too many of those locked chests to lockpick, sometimes lock behind doors which you have to lockpick first, in addition most seem to be guarded. But compared to Origins for example where you had to complete every... single... location... on the map I ask: was this really soo much worse? (It wasn't). Coming directly of from Odyssey I admit the controls took a bit to get used to but once you dig into the game you set into it.

Sure, there is sóme bugs left & right: the game crashed about 2-3 times during my playthrough, which is no different from most other games you spend 50hours in. I also fell through the map 2 or 3 times and then experienced some other quirkiness but it's not like it one massive bug fest, far from it.

 

The only thing that kinda bugged me was the story and more specifically some charachters. Most of em were just forgettable and the guy playing your mentor must've been the biggest douche I've every encountered in an AC game... that includes all antagonists from other games. Arno himself was okish, kind of one-dimensional but the relationship between Arno & Elise works imo. Although in 2023 it would be my understanding that this is all a bit too heterohomogeneous for some people...

 

Honestly just from reading the first few alinea's of OP it seems to me like this is much more about personal/work/RL issues then it is about the game on it's own.

It's not a perfect game, far from it, but if you've already got it stashed in your backlog, by all means: give it go.

Edited May 24, 2023 by ReverzEffect
Gramatical correction

[RedDevil757]

I played this on PS5 and had zero issues. I also thought the combat was great once you got used to it.

[poetic_justice_]

On 12/24/2022 at 1:26 AM, Silver-I-Chariot said:

Nice rant but I don't remember any of these issues except boring story and too many collectibles. Other than that, it's your typical AC game.

"I don't remember these difficulties, so I'll disregard their existence" is a common reaction to AC Unity and other substandard gaming experiences. I get that. I understand seeing no value in trying to remember an unpleasant experience, and instead moving on to something more enjoyable. However, it is important to recognize this reaction is a subjective recollection, not an objective assessment. The inability to fully remember an event does not invalidate the existence of that event. For example, how many of us remember the day of our birth? Just because we don't remember the difficulties of that day doesn't mean they did not occur. Subjective recollection does not alter facts, only our perception (or inability to perceive and recall) facts. I am not criticizing the post, only clarifying that it is a subjective recollection. The gameplay deficits of AC Unity are facts. 

 

The other takeaway is you didn't seem to enjoy the game and have a neutral opinion of AC Unity.

On 5/24/2023 at 1:20 AM, RedDevil757 said:

I played this on PS5 and had zero issues. I also thought the combat was great once you got used to it.

 

[Sorry for the bold font. I'm copying and pasting from an app that is mildly incompatible with PSNP formatting.]

 

https://psnprofiles.com/RedDevil757?search=Assassin%27s 

 

RedDevil757, you made two statements worth addressing.

 

1. ZERO ISSUES ON PS5: In regards to the claim that you experienced zero issues playing Unity on the PS5, you neglected to mention you played a large percentage of the game on PS4. From July 2019 through September 2020, you played approximately 70% of the campaign (Sequences 1-9) on the PS4. The PS5 was not released until November 2020. If you only played 30% of the campaign on the PS5, mathematically it makes sense you would experience fewer to no PS5 issues. You were playing the campaign on a PS5 for 70% less time than someone playing 100% of the campaign on a PS5. This 70% figure is an estimate, as it is unclear what percentage of the 521 collectibles, 18 Nostradamus Enigmas, 8 co-op missions, and other side activities you completed by September 2020. However, if you finished 40%, 50%, or 60% of Unity on the PS4, you played 40%, 50%, or 60% less time on your PS5. Not only were you were extremely fortunate, but the implications of this “zero issue” claim are misleading. A person who spends 100% of their time playing Unity on a PS5 should not expect similar results. 

 

2. “GREAT COMBAT”: Unity has no ability to disarm, loss of parry visuals, ineffective smoke bombs, ineffective cherry bombs, weak poison gas, only two berserk darts, unable to pick up enemy weapons, broken/ineffective cover system, OP snipers, and buggy combat that causes players to lose control of Arno. Unity removed foundational combat mechanics introduced in previous AC titles, broke or nerfed other mechanics, and your response is “Great combat!” What specifically is so great about it?

Edited June 14, 2023 by poetic_justice_

[Silver-I-Chariot]

I think it's sort of funny how you never replied in your own thread and then, half a year later you got up one day and thought to yourself "Yep, today is the day".

[olliebear66t]

I enjoyed the gameplay, open world and progression system quite a lot and got the platinum trophy and DLC trophies on PS4. Has no more bugs than the average open world game. It's a good game. More interesting than the RPG ones of recent years and improves on the parkour from the previous game being black flag which is a bit more clunky. This is a bit more fluid as you can climb down buildings more easily and it just feels more responsive. They also added the crouch button so stealth is better and the addition of the black box missions which are very enjoyable as well as large crowds and very cool animations and a bit better combat system. The weakest part is the protagonist and insignificant story and the number of chests you have to open to get the platinum. It did also add those rift missions which took place in different time periods which was new and a really nice addition. It also has a fantastic soundtrack 

Edited June 15, 2023 by olliebear66t

[giinha]

19 hours ago, poetic_justice_ said:

1. ZERO ISSUES ON PS5: In regards to the claim that you experienced zero issues playing Unity on the PS5, you neglected to mention you played a large percentage of the game on PS4. From July 2019 through September 2020, you played approximately 70% of the campaign (Sequences 1-9) on the PS4. The PS5 was not released until November 2020. If you only played 30% of the campaign on the PS5, mathematically it makes sense you would experience fewer to no PS5 issues. You were playing the campaign on a PS5 for 70% less time than someone playing 100% of the campaign on a PS5. This 70% figure is an estimate, as it is unclear what percentage of the 521 collectibles, 18 Nostradamus Enigmas, 8 co-op missions, and other side activities you completed by September 2020. However, if you finished 40%, 50%, or 60% of Unity on the PS4, you played 40%, 50%, or 60% less time on your PS5. Not only were you were extremely fortunate, but the implications of this “zero issue” claim are misleading. A person who spends 100% of their time playing Unity on a PS5 should not expect similar results. 

 

2. “GREAT COMBAT”: Unity has no ability to disarm, loss of parry visuals, ineffective smoke bombs, ineffective cherry bombs, weak poison gas, only two berserk darts, unable to pick up enemy weapons, broken/ineffective cover system, OP snipers, and buggy combat that causes players to lose control of Arno. Unity removed foundational combat mechanics introduced in previous AC titles, broke or nerfed other mechanics, and your response is “Great combat!” What specifically is so great about it?

You must be really mad at this game..

 

So I never owned a PS4, I played 100% on PS5 in 2021 and I can tell you, I had 0 issues and my bombs worked fine all the time. I used the poison gas a lot, I found it very useful.

I never minded the amount of upgrades, I find combat to be considerably easier even without a lot of them.

 

It's not the best game in the series and it's a little clumsy at times but, it's a good game.

 

Hope you can find peace.

Edited June 15, 2023 by giinha

[WiktorM101]

I played Assassin's Creed games back to back and I have to say Unity was different enough to be enjoyable in this mess of a game series. 

 

It was cool to have new movement animations. Cool new ways to parkour.

Takes a bit getting used to but I liked it.

 

Combat wasn't braindead easy from the start. I don't know what anyone likes about combat in old AC's. Just becouse there were many options in previous ones don't change fastest and BEST way to fight through every encounter was R2 Square when enemy attacked. Dissarming (with same prompts lol) and 1 hit kill afterwards is same thing for me.

Playing any other way is just inefficient and that is biggest design flaw in all games.

Try just standing in Brotherhood in combat doing nothing. It takes them 1 minute to kill you if you have 3/4 upgrades. Literal minutes if you use one of your 25(?) heals. Just standing doing nothing, it's so funny. Jumping to death is only way to die/lose health in these games.

 

Stealth is now a thing. Play again AC brotherhood stealth missions and let's have a talk about Unity again.

 

Street crowd is huge. Haven't seen crowds on this scale since. Game looks better then previous ones and next ones. That's a fact

 

Story was bad (like in any AC game, sorry not sorry) just slightly worse then other games.

AC is fast and furious of video games. Series just too good at making money to tell a story. Even main character dying is not going to stopping franchise to be milked.

 

Any AC has massive ammounts of collectibles. Number of them means nothing (in any game). Only important stat is how many per hour of gameplay can you pick up. I don't care if it has 400 or 1000 when it is still faster then getting all of them in black flag. 

 

Co-op was fun. For sure better then old games multiplayer grind.

 

DLC was free making this one of cheapest AC to 100%

 

Im sure now games plays better then it used to. Many of issues have been fixed.

Not my favourite one but not least favourite either

 

 

 

Edited June 15, 2023 by WiktorM101

[MRR---OFFICIAL]

The REAL tl;dr if you really want to play AC Unity in 2023 play it on Xbox Series X with FPS Boost, it's still AC Unity though so your enjoyment may very ? all the issues listed were not issues imo they just wanted to make a different game with different elements (not saying it worked or not, but don't go in expecting PS3 Era AC, even AC 4 Black Flag was technically PS3 Era, more so Cross Gen but you get what I mean ?‍♂️)

[ReverzEffect]

Coming back to this, I now just finished AC Liberation Remastered... if you think AC Unity is the worst game in the series, you have never played Liberation, that's for sure. Liberation is my worst experience with the series, that includes the tech demo that was ACI...

 

I have played most of the AC games except for: Rogue, Syndicate & Valhalla... Unity isn't the worst game in the series, that's for sure. It's unpolished yes, but not bad.

[Vault-TecPhantom]

Liberation is definitely the worst in the series  (if you don't count any of the side scrollers) but putting it in the conversation is a bit unfair since it originally started as a PS vita game and is, when all is said and done, an expansion for Assassin's Creed III. 

I would say Unity is, objectively speaking, the worst AC game because it's clearly unfinished... but Valhalla is my personal least favourite because it just doesn't feel like an AC game.

I absolutely adore Assassin's Creed 1 because of its tech demo feel. It's perhaps the only AC game made with a degree of innocence since the higher-ups hadn't had the marketing feedback to follow a bunch of current trends - which seems to be all Ubisoft does now.

[Startyde]

I just have to say this is one of the most epic posts I've seen on PSNP. I haven't played Unity but plan to. I wanted to do the one two punch of Unity and Syndicate. 

 

I'm glad to hear ppl hate liberation more than Unity, because I platinumed Liberation, and while totally forgettable, I don't remember being in hell while playing, so Unity will probably be just fine. 

[Vault-TecPhantom]

9 hours ago, Startyde said:

I just have to say this is one of the most epic posts I've seen on PSNP. I haven't played Unity but plan to. I wanted to do the one two punch of Unity and Syndicate. 

 

I'm glad to hear ppl hate liberation more than Unity, because I platinumed Liberation, and while totally forgettable, I don't remember being in hell while playing, so Unity will probably be just fine. 

 

hmmm not to be negative but I wouldn't say you're out of the woods yet.

Liberation is short and easy which is a small mercy for an otherwise bad game so it probably didn't last long enough to truly irritate you. Unity is bad, bloated and considerably more challenging than Liberation. It has a really great opening but drops in quality shortly after credits, especially the story.

 

Funnily enough, Unity was my first ever platinum (yuck) and I got it completely by accident as a non trophy hunter back then. This was back in the days when I was a massive, almost die-hard AC fan who would 100% every game in the series regardless of its quality because even a bad AC game was still an AC game, right? I got it by accident because, looking back on the trophies, they're either story related or just require you to 100% literally everything or they require you to do things that you are highly likely to do by just playing the game efficiently anyway.  That's how unimaginative its trophy list is and, unless you are a die-hard fan who just lives to 100% every AC game, then prepare for a very unpleasant grind.

 

Again, don't mean to be negative just trying to set your expectations. Who knows? You may even end up enjoying it. It has seen a resurgence within the AC community of late (undoubtedly from those looking back with rose-tinted glasses). Good luck!

[DrBloodmoney]

10 hours ago, Startyde said:

I just have to say this is one of the most epic posts I've seen on PSNP. I haven't played Unity but plan to. I wanted to do the one two punch of Unity and Syndicate. 

 

I'm glad to hear ppl hate liberation more than Unity, because I platinumed Liberation, and while totally forgettable, I don't remember being in hell while playing, so Unity will probably be just fine. 

 

Just to ensure it's known that Unity isn't universally disliked....

 

...I've played every AC game except for Valhalla, and Unity is probably my favourite of the lot. ?

 

 

Granted, I played it long after all the bugs were fixed, and I played in French, with English subtitles, so some of the ham-fistedness of the dialogue that some folks complained about were largely lost on me...

 

...but I think it's one of the best cities they ever did, and I thought the parkour changes were fun. 

 

For me, the best ones are Unity, Odyssey, Brotherhood and Revelations. 

[Vault-TecPhantom]

2 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

 

Just to ensure it's known that Unity isn't universally disliked....

 

...I've played every AC game except for Valhalla, and Unity is probably my favourite of the lot. 

 

 

Granted, I played it long after all the bugs were fixed, and I played in French, with English subtitles, so some of the ham-fistedness of the dialogue that some folks complained about were largely lost on me...

 

...but I think it's one of the best cities they ever did, and I thought the parkour changes were fun. 

 

For me, the best ones are Unity, Odyssey, Brotherhood and Revelations. 

 

I played Unity at launch and didn’t experience any bugs in single player outside of the usual NPC oddities (multiplayer was a different story). The performance was definitely bad. It rarely held at 30fps but I wasn't as fussed about frame rate then so could tolerate it.  In fact, I really wish that it had launched without the bugs many experienced as the technical issues all too often overshadow the main problems. The dialogue wasn't too bad IMO (outside of the accents which I'll get to later) but the story had so much missed potential.

 

On paper, a love story about an assassin boy and a templar girl writes itself but it was never really the central conflict, despite Ubisoft marketing it as such. Rather, the campaign is just a generic revenge tale where the assassin's relationship with this templar is never in doubt because he just goes wherever she goes no matter what. Arno essentially just uses the Brotherhood as vehicle to get his revenge and doesn't really believe in the creed. It's just convenient that the main villain just so happens to be a templar as well. The story also has the same problem that Origins has where you're clearly playing as the wrong character (but given Ubisoft's behind-the-scenes attitudes towards women it's easy to see why).

 

You mentioned Paris, itself, which I think we can agree is still a graphical powerhouse for a game that was released in 2014.... which makes it even worse that the city is so poorly utilised. I feel like the story Ubisoft decided to tell could have taken place in any time period whereas the older games did a masterful job of weaving history, story and lore together. Paris just feels like a beautiful backdrop. The game has other issues that I won’t go into because my rant would probably be even longer than the OP’s lol.

I feel like everything Unity tried to do Syndicate did better which renders it obsolete, and it’s the only AC game I haven’t beaten more than once. I have attempted to replay it twice, including a third time on the PS5 just to see if that fixed the frame rate (it does. It’s now a locked 30) and, like you, also in French (with English subtitles) because the occasional French word said in West Country accents was even cringier on a repeat playthrough...and I still couldn’t get through it. 

 

It’s worth noting that it was the first Assassin’s Creed game to truly disappoint me so replaying it just brought back unpleasant memories. At the time it was marketed as a “return to the roots” that took inspiration from Assassin’s Creed 1 (sound familiar?) after the pirate simulator that was Black Flag. Its trailers were also amazing and seemed to reflect that promise. In reality, all it showed is that you can “return to the roots” of anything and still completely miss the point. (Black Flag was actually a far better game despite being a testing ground for Ubisoft to see if they could get away with making an Assassin’s Creed game without having you play as an assassin.)

 

I have Ubisoft + so I plan on attempting Unity again on my series X. At least then I’d get the 60fps boost and a chance to consciously go for achievements…but it will likely be my last attempt to replay it. I didn’t like Revelations at the time either but came around when I replayed on Playstation. I think it was the nostalgia factor because I loved Ezio. I also avoided the den defence missions where possible...

 

Agreed about Brotherhood and Odyssey though. Brotherhood is tied with AC II as my favourite and I love Odyssey (which gets me a lot of crap from the old school fans haha).

Edited June 20, 2023 by Vault-TecPhantom

[DrBloodmoney]

2 minutes ago, Vault-TecPhantom said:

in on my series X. At least then I’d get the 60fps boost and a chance to consciously go for achievements…but it will likely be my last attempt to replay it. I didn’t like Revelations at the time either but came around when I replayed on Playstation. I think it was the nostalgia factor because I loved Ezio. I also avoided the den defence missions where possible...

 

haha - we agree on those den defence missions - those were rubbish! 

I loved Constantinople as a location though - I tend to pretty much think the location is the most important factor for an AC game - even more so than the actual story, since I'll be spending so much time in a place!

 

I did like the older Ezio though - the narrative having him as the sort of "playboy" who grew up, and is still a charmer, but also world-weary was a character I dug a lot more than when he was younger, and kind of just Italian Nathan Drake of his day ?

 

2 minutes ago, Vault-TecPhantom said:

Agreed about Brotherhood and Odyssey though. Brotherhood is tied with AC II as my favourite and I love Odyssey (which gets me a lot of crap from the old school fans haha).

 

Odyssey is a great game - I like Origins fine, but much preferred exploring Greece to exploring Egypt, and I thought Kassandra was one of the best characters the series has had since Ezio (and Avaline, though her character was trapped in a less good game.) 

 

I do prefer the old AC styler to the new stuff, but if I'm gonna play that new stuff, Odyssey is a pretty damned good way to play it!

[Vault-TecPhantom]

1 hour ago, DrBloodmoney said:

 

haha - we agree on those den defence missions - those were rubbish! 

I loved Constantinople as a location though - I tend to pretty much think the location is the most important factor for an AC game - even more so than the actual story, since I'll be spending so much time in a place!

 

I did like the older Ezio though - the narrative having him as the sort of "playboy" who grew up, and is still a charmer, but also world-weary was a character I dug a lot more than when he was younger, and kind of just Italian Nathan Drake of his day 

 

 

Odyssey is a great game - I like Origins fine, but much preferred exploring Greece to exploring Egypt, and I thought Kassandra was one of the best characters the series has had since Ezio (and Avaline, though her character was trapped in a less good game.) 

 

I do prefer the old AC styler to the new stuff, but if I'm gonna play that new stuff, Odyssey is a pretty damned good way to play it!

 

What made me laugh about the den defence missions is that if you fail them it makes you do an activity that's way more fun than the den defence, i.e. you get to just go in and assassinate the leader. They turned the Borgia liberation activities from Brotherhood into a fail state in Revelations lol 

Old man Ezio is also my favourite version of him for the very reason that you stated. (I also like the way the NPCs react when he's climbing because they comment on him being too old to do such silliness ?)  One of the greatest video game character arcs. Have you watched the short film, 'Embers'? It's canon to the series and brings Ezio's story to a close in a beautiful way.

Kassandra is my second favourite after Ezio. I like Origins (and it looks great in 60fps) but love and prefer Odyssey as well. In fact, it was through Odyssey that I discovered that I can tolerate deviation from the series roots if the game produced is ultimately fantastic, and I'd put Odyssey right up there with Brotherhood and AC II, maybe even slightly above AC 1 (which I'm in the vocal minority of liking). 

[poetic_justice_]

The purpose of the original post was a warning. Whether a person is a die-hard AC fan, a casual AC fan, or a rugged individualist who is going to play Unity regardless of anyone else’s opinion, taking ten minutes to read the original post might prevent someone from making a significant mistake. Investing fifty-five to seventy hours into Unity has no real payoff. The longer Unity is played, the more apparent its deficits become. For myself and every gamer I personally know, our gaming time is limited and too precious to waste on a game that has as many deficits as Unity. Playing on a PS5 does not fix these underlying issues. 

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Other people regard Unity favorably. The responses from giinha (“I never minded the amount of upgrades, I find combat to be considerably easier even without a lot of them”) and WiktorM101  (“It was cool to have new movement animations. Cool new ways to parkour. Takes a bit getting used to but I liked it”) explained why they enjoyed Unity’s combat and new parkour. Thank you both for sharing that. I am happy you found enjoyment in Unity.

 

One thing I appreciate in both of your responses is an acknowledgment of facts. Giinha acknowledged the combat options are stripped down. WiktorM101 recognized that parkour is different than other AC games and “takes a bit getting used to it”. 

 

As DrBloodMoney pointed out, Unity is not universally hated. Metacritic scores for the game have more positives than negatives. However, people in favor of the game often highlight 1-3 aspects of the game that create a positive impression and little else. 

 

https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/assassins-creed-unity 

 

Reading these reviews, I get the impression that most of the positive reviews are written by casual gamers, not people who completed the platinum. Most of the positive reviews also contain no mention of glaring negatives that, for me, ruined the game as a whole: 

 

• The horribly designed Tournament. 
• The failure of any four-player co-op missions to scale for single player. 
• The confusing 18 Nostradamus Enigmas. 
• The utter tedium of lockpicking and the hundreds of times it must be done. 
• 521 collectables. 
• Nerfed combat options. 
• Awkward parkour that has a learning curve. 
• Arno’s “sticky hands.” 
• Numerous bugs. 

 

The combination of these factors will be experienced for dozens of hours if one chooses to pursue Unity’s platinum. Unless players can find enjoyment in them (or in spite of them), as was the case for giinha, WiktorM101, and DrBloodMoney, Unity’s platinum will be a tedious slog.

 

Unity’s last update, Patch 1.5.0, was released on February 18, 2015, leaving the game in its current state. People claiming “It’s better now” are providing misinformation. For Playstation gamers, Unity has not improved in 8 years. This is a fact. Xbox X/S got a 60fps update, not Playstation. Microsoft created the update, not Ubisoft. Neither Ubisoft nor Sony have plans to create a similar update or Playstation. Even if either company did a graphical update, it would not change numerous deficits that are part of Unity’s core mechanics. 

 

 

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2015/02/assassins_creed_unitys_newest_patch_means_no_more_using_apps_and_sites_to_unlock_contentn 

 

Syndicate, not Unity, received an update (Update 1.5.3) on February 23, 2023. This update resolved screen flickering for the PS5. Perhaps people confused Syndicate with Unity and assumed Unity received a Playstation 5 update, but this is not the case.

 

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2023/02/assassins-creed-syndicate-patch-finally-fixes-ps5-flickering-issue-out-now 

I want to help the community. Providing facts that an undecided gamer could research and consider is one way to do that. The OP is a warning. Is my opinion included? Absolutely. However, you can check my claims against the facts and sources provided. I am more interested in gamers having the resources necessary to make an informed decision than in people sharing my opinion. People can argue opinions all day, but in the end, only you can decide if Unity is worth 55-75 hours of your life. For most people, I don’t believe it is. If possible, I would like to warn people away from an experience they will regret

[Swotam]

It's been more than 8 years since I played the game so I don't really remember much about it aside from the setting, but I don't remember disliking it as much as you seem to have. Much of what you describe negatively could be attributed to any of the pre-Origins AC games, with wonky parkour mechanics and ridiculous amounts of collectibles being a pretty much universal thing in the series. You raise many good points, and your original post was very detailed and well written, so no criticism there.

 

As far as Unity not including certain mechanics from Black Flag or Freedom Cry, keep in mind that it was released at a time when AC games were an annual thing, so a game like Unity which was released in 2014 would have been in development for 2-3 years prior, and would have had it's story and core mechanics locked in before the release of Black Flag or the other games that included significant amounts of naval travel and combat. This is likely why Syndicate didn't include this either, since all of the games released in the 2013-2015 window (and they were really cranking them out during that time period) would have been developed in parallel by teams at different Ubisoft studios, as opposed to being developed sequentially and inheriting the best parts of their predecessors. If I recall correctly, after Rogue the next game in the series to include ships and ship combat was Origins, which released in 2017. It's been a regular feature of new AC games since then.

 

I've got Platinum in all the main AC games except for Valhalla and Rogue Remastered (which I am currently playing), and playing Rogue in 2023 reminds me of the bad old days in many ways. Wonky parkour, Shay going the wrong way or climbing the wrong thing or jumping off a tower to his death instead of just dropping down to the next handhold, the modern-day Abstergo stuff which I always found to be an annoying interruption to the gameplay loop, stupid amounts of post-story cleanup where the amount of time I spend removing icons from the map will probably exceed the amount of time I spent on the rather short story, etc. While I enjoy the series as a whole, there's a lot about it I don't miss in the newer games, and playing Rogue is reminding me of the things I disliked about the older games in many ways.

 

That said, if you liked Black Flag and Freedom Cry you might like Rogue since it includes a ton of naval combat and sailing around doing "not a pirate" things, as well as having the same general gameplay mechanics as the other games released around that time.

 

I'm hoping that Ubisoft will find some sort of balance between the old games and the new ones with AC Mirage.