Assassin's Creed: Unity is one of the weaker entries into the series. As a whole, it doesn't have a lot to add to the series lore or evolve the game play in any meaningful fashion for the series as a whole. If you are a die hard fan of the Assassin's Creed universe, this game is worth a playthrough, but if you are new to the series or looking for the best of, you can probably skip this one.
StoryIn this Assassin's Creed, you follow Arno Dorian during the French Revolution. The story starts off pretty slowly, but towards the end has some pretty interesting things happen and really ramps up. The game wraps up the whole Arno story nicely, and there are two major events that I thought were shocks to the story and really moving.
In terms of the overarching Assassin's Creed story, not much really happens. This game pretty much just focuses on Arno, with very few brief interludes to the modern day story, though the intrusions that you have to deal are pretty cool. I've always enjoyed how things were tied to the modern day, so it was a little disappointing to see these had been mostly removed.
Game PlayUnity plays like many of the other Assassin's Creed titles out there. The mechanics feel very similar, though the combat system got a slight update from Black Flag, it's not so ground breaking that it stood out. The one thing that has been added has been the ability to run through buildings and interact with your environment more, however there are many times that you can't quite get Arno to do what you want. Many times I would want Arno to go into a building, I would climb around the window as the game couldn't quite figure out what I was trying to get it to do.
The big change to this Assassin's Creed were the actual Assassination missions (and these were a really cool change). These missions give you options to make the assassination easier, do a special assassination, or go in swords out and fight your way through. It felt like a throw back to the original Assassin's Creed where you could learn information that could make assassinating your target very easy, or incredibly difficult. This change to the mission style was a really nice inclusion and I hope to see it in future titles.
The multiplayer in this game was also a unique change. Unlike in the previous Assassin's Creed titles, this was a Co-op only multiplayer. You could work with other players to carry out missions, just like the ones in the game, and try to work together to get to the objective. However, just like other online experiences, I ran into two types of players. The ones who wanted to sneak around, play as the hidden assassin's and complete all of the bonus objectives to the best of their abilities, or the ones who just wanted to run through it as fast as possible, and would hack and slash their way to victory. If you have a group of friends to go through them together, this could be a ton of fun cause you could play the way you want to, but with random players, you may be pushed to play a way you don't necessarily want to.
The only other game play issue that I noticed with the game was the side quests/map clutter that happens in the game. When you are finally able to start exploring Paris, you open up your map and it is just full of things, Side missions, Treasure Chests, Online Missions, etc. and it's a little overwhelming at first. On top of that, they give you access to all of this prior to you being a full fledged Assassin. This means that you can do side missions without a good way to complete them because you lack the items to do so. If you stumble into these missions without knowing this, it could be confusing/difficult to deal with. Though some of the side missions can be quite fun (I enjoyed the murder investigation side missions).
Last ThoughtsAssassin's Creed: Unity is an OK game, but there are other games in the Assassin's Creed Series that stand above this in terms of quality. If you're a die hard fan of the series, this game would be for you, but if you aren't a super big fan of the series, there are other titles in the series that you would probably enjoy much more. If you decide to skip this one, you are just missing an interesting time period to be running around in.
This review is my own opinion of the game and mine alone, and doesn't reflect the opinions of my employer.
3.0