Assassin's Creed: Unity
Awful. Though Black Flag's naval warfare might have served as a useful sleight-of-hand in distracting players from the outdated core mechanics of the series, no amount of fancy AAA production values can conceal just how sloppily Unity meshes broken, antiquated movement and combat systems with Parisian environments. Every irritation of previous titles has been exaggerated by a barrage of obstructive props. Oddly-sloped surfaces, window frames, chimneys, mini-stalls, and pretty much any other object you can imagine will cause no end of frustration as you try to navigate the areas, and I'm certain few players haven't died or failed a mission at least once due to these irritations (my personal favourite was hopping back and forth over a window for twelve seconds and finally being killed by a sniper).
Combat frequently bugs out, with the protagonist freezing in place for several seconds and twirling his sword as enemies line up attacks, stairways consistently breaking animations, parries failing to execute for no good reason, and more. Firearms are an egregious slip-up - Black Flag made enemies with firearms a dangerous but clearly defined threat with useful counters that didn't break the flow of combat. Unity, however, meekly suggests "rolling" to avoid being struck by attacks that can take off a third of your health bar even at maximum upgrade level, and frequently fails to give the player any chance to defend against them at all - I've personally died four times to instances of multiple regular enemies (not even snipers) simultaneously going from melee engagement to shooting me, within the space of two seconds flat. Combat animations in general also feel sluggish and somewhat unresponsive even when they do actually work.
The game has always used a pseudo-RPG progression system for building up your character's abilities, but it's implemented rather unpleasantly here. Whilst most gear is linked to money or side-quests, these are upgraded with Creed points, which are very slowly gained via in-game activities, or...
Yeah. Furthermore, many of the abilities you're used to from previous titles have been stripped from you, and require special currency to regain - currency that is earned solely through single-player story missions (which will only give you enough to unlock about 60%) and Co-op missions. Yep, they really tried to push the "social" aspect in Unity. Good luck actually finding other players, though at least some of the co-op missions are possible to do solo.
The sole redeeming aspect of the game is the setting and its presentation. Revolutionary Paris really is beautifully realised, and I frequently took advantage of the in-game database prompts when coming across landmarks. Music is passable though not particularly memorable, and facial animations were particularly impressive, but I was disappointed at the lack of enemy variety even just from a visual standpoint, as the artists seem to have made little effort to mine the wealth of regimental uniforms of the period - you'll have seen pretty much every single enemy soldier within the first hour of gameplay. Character motivations were sometimes weak (why the hell does Arno even join the Assassins and immediately start murdering Templars considering the events of the tutorial setting?) and the politics usually infantile representations of the real source material, but it was less offensively stupid than Assassin's Creed 3. The DLC doesn't really help, saddling Arno with a unneeded redemptive epilogue triggered by an irritating child sidekick.
There are some interesting side-missions, often of comparable length to the main story entries, though they (almost) exclusively lack voice acting for the protagonist. One of them actually made me laugh out of loud because the quest-giver simply tells you that the aristocrats you've been saving are Templars and thus...we need to murder them all now, I guess? Quite a few of the optional content and collectible rewards are actually quite cool, such as gorgeous ornate weapons (though I was pretty pissed to find out that the "Legendary" armour I received for doing all the hidden landmark riddles - at least 5 hours and a lot of poking around both the in-game database and wikipedia in some cases - was just some shitty skin that replaced the appearance of your regular armour, and offered no actual stat bonuses).
Overall I would definitely recommend avoiding this one, unless it's your first Assassin's Creed and you're not instantly turned off by the repetition of dealing with the same shit the rest of us have for the past ten years. On the upside, it renewed my interest in 18th-century Europe, so there is that!
Warning: Mild Spoilers. Also pls no bully my Uplay username.
Dead Kings DLC