ASSASINS CREED III REMASTERED [2012] STEAM PC REVIEW

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Assassin's Creed III was released in 2012 and took the formula to the next level introducing the naval battles. This review is based on the Remastered version released in 2019 that offers some good graphical upgrades, with smoother visuals and some UI fixes. Despite these welcome upgrades, Ubisoft did very little to improve everything else. 

I love ACIII. As a junior historian, the AC games were always something more powerful for me than for the average gamer. A chance to dive into a fictional story set in a fixed history period. I loved every AC title. Played the original ACIII on PC back in 2012 and really enjoyed the end of the trilogy, the Desmond story coming to an end, and the new gameplay features introduced were a blast. 

The colonial American setting is brilliant. The game starts in 1754 during the French Indian War that led to the 7 years war. But the majority of the game events take place during the revolutionary war, starting in 1775. You get to see the main character Connor / Ratonnagethon take part and even influence the most historic events of that time, he gets blamed for the Boston Massacre in 1770 which takes place in the Tea Party 1773 when the king's tea gets tossed into the sea by angry citizens. I really enjoyed comparing the game events and battles to the actual historical records and seeing how they implemented fiction upon a solid historic framework. After completing the game, I compared my notes taken during gameplay with events during the John Adams miniseries and the movies The crossing and The patriot, both released in the year 2000. Felt like a cross-platform experience.

There is still a problem with the new gameplay mechanics, The headquarters/homestead evolution system is nice compared with previous entries but still feels incomplete. I can't tell how some of these mechanics were improved upon in the remastered. The convoy trading system is something I ignored completely in the original, and with the remastered, I wanted to give it a try, but it is just dumb and serves no purpose like before. The main problem is the progression system. I had redeemed some weapons packs from Ubisoft club, but the game would not let me use them "you need to complete sequence 6" but after doing that you are almost in the final part of the game. Weapons are way too expensive you need to complete the game 1st and then do some forts and side activities to get the money to buy good swords, but then as the game is over there is not much to do with the items. The same with the naval missions. Tried to take them head-on at the start and quickly realized that I needed to upgrade the ship 1st to withstand those battles, but that requires a LOT of money. After I completed the game, took on some side activities to gather money and resources and finally upgraded the ship and then only then I was able to complete the SHIP missions, but they all take place during 1773 as they are prequels to the events of the main story... There is something wrong here. But I was happy that my expensive officer sword would at least be used in the DLC that I intended to engage in after completing all the main game activities, so I was equipped with good tools for the job... Sadly you can't carry progression from the main game into the DLC, and you cannot use newly unlocked items while replaying previous missions... making the whole progression incentives for replay value broken. 

The Washington Tyranny DLC

The Washington Tyranny DLC was a blast, love the take on an alternate reality where Washington got corrupted by the apple. The new gameplay features were amazing, but here is the shock: you can't carry those special abilities back into the main game. And you can't carry progression from the main game into the DLC, I know there is an alternate universe and all. But still, there is a clear progression design that was not solved during the remastered process. So everything I did during the main game as far as progression, the fancy sword, the upgraded expensive ship... oh my :/

Despite its shortcomings, I really enjoyed the ACIII remastered version as the best way to re-experience one of the best AC of all time. There are clear design flaws in the progression system, but it's only natural since these are the early entries of this franchise and many of these flaws were corrected and improved in new releases.