Assassin's Creed Revelations

[Trubinator]

I really like it so far but have only tried an hour or so. Will see if it holds up!

 

[Evil Twin]

I had been planning to wait for Christmas to get this, but I'm already 95% done with Skyrim so I went ahead and got this on Saturday and played it all weekend. Gameplay-wise it's pretty similar to Brotherhood. As for the new stuff, I love the hook blade. Super useful for climbing and the ziplines are great. Den defense is rather boring, but thankfully you can avoid it by keeping notoriety down, although it's a pain to be constantly bribing heralds as each property you buy nets you 25% notoriety. Lame. Wasn't real keen on bombs until I was pretty much forced to use them to get 100% sync on the cistern mission (clear room by attracting all the guards with a cherry bomb so they all clump up, blow them all away in one shot with a shrapnel bomb.) Funny thing is, I was really wowed by all the new scenery upon arriving in Constantinople, but by late Saturday night I was already feeling a little homesick for Italy. Maybe it's because none of previous two games' supporting characters are here (at least not that I've seen yet anyway.) I miss you, Leonardo!

 

[Mr Light]

I started playing this the other night. It's always an enjoyable series, but my brief taste of "den defense" was very annoying, and I also find it annoying that anytime I buy a store it raises my awareness, so I have to keep running to a herald to pay him off to prevent getting another stupid den defense mini-game.

Is there any other way to reduce awareness than giving 100 bucks to a herald?

Also I played the first Desmond memory and found it extremely boring and annoying. It was like a half-assed unimaginative Portal game. I'm tempted to not play those, but I really love the story of AC and want to know more...

 

[ATimson]

Is there any other way to reduce awareness than giving 100 bucks to a herald?

If you get it high enough you can assassinate an official, as in earlier games. But those are the only two ways - no signs to take down this time.

 

[6079SmithW]

You can also reduce Templar Awareness by counter assassinating a Templar Stalker. It pretty much nullifies your awareness but you have to wait for one of them to randomly attack you instead of finding them.

Also if you keep your awareness down by immediately bribing heralds as soon as it gets to 25% the den defense game can be entirely avoided. Outside of the tutorial I only had to do it once because I couldn't find a herald in time.

 

[Evil Twin]

You can also "lock" an assassin den by finishing the 2-part master assassin mission for it, at which point it can no longer be the target of a templar attack, and once you've done that for all of them, there's nothing the templars can do to you at full awareness. I think the availability of those missions is dependent on how far along in the story you are though.

I think that may be the case with Mediterranean defense also. I've got every city fully staffed and upgraded and haven't seen any of them dip under 100% control.

I can't believe they still haven't fixed the bug where bank deposits are only getting made once per game day rather than every 20 minutes real time. I'm swimming in cash in AC2 and ACB but it took me forever to get every single upgrade in ACR (especially the last few Cappadocia books) since I was constantly short on cash.

 

[6079SmithW]

The monetary system in AC has always been kind of broken. You always get to a point where you have more money than you know what to do with. This problem is exacerbated by my play style. About halfway through Sequence 3 I had renovated constantinople to 100% and had locked down all my dens with all my recruits at level 10 or higher. I had the best weapon (Yusuf's Sword) and the best armor (Master Assassin Armor) before Sequence 3 was done. Spending money on lesser gear that became available later was pointless.

 

[ATimson]

The monetary system in AC has always been kind of broken. You always get to a point where you have more money than you know what to do with. This problem is exacerbated by my play style. About halfway through Sequence 3 I had renovated constantinople to 100% and had locked down all my dens with all my recruits at level 10 or higher.

Really? I know it was broken in II and Brotherhood, but while I didn't change my playstyle any in Revelations I had only hit about 80% renovations by the end of the single-player campaign.

 

[Mr Light]

Ugh, I let my awareness get too high and triggered a Den Defense, then I lost it. Those things are so annoying! I'm still in the middle of Sequence Three but I'm just running around doing the viewpoints, buying stores, gaining assassins. I love having underlings doing my work for me I've already got a ton of money, but I'm not trying to buy the landmarks those're expensive.

 

[Mr Light]

Hmm, I got an assassin killed. I panicked and shut off the Xbox right away, lol. What happens if one dies? Does a new recruit mission respawn? Or are you permanently short?

 

[6079SmithW]

I'm pretty sure "recruit assassin" missions pop up again.

 

[ATimson]

I'm pretty sure "recruit assassin" missions pop up again.

Yes, they do. Both in the game world, and as part of the Mediterranean Missions mode.

 

[Evil Twin]

The best way to go about recruiting and training assassins is to assign them to cities once you control them. Assassins assigned to cities will then level up on their own, and it will free up slots to allow you to recruit more. Just make sure you build new assassin dens in each city to increase how many you can assign there. Might be a good idea though to go about it capturing and fully upgrading each city one at a time, otherwise it can get a little hectic.

 

[Mr Light]

I don't want to send my dudes away on assignments because I want to have them with me to use. I was forced to send one guy on a mission (The Little Prince) as a story requirement and that guy has been gone for HOURS Does he EVER come back???? It doesn't even say how long the assignment is!

 

[ATimson]

I was forced to send one guy on a mission (The Little Prince) as a story requirement and that guy has been gone for HOURS Does he EVER come back???? It doesn't even say how long the assignment is!

That one guy comes back at a certain story point, same as how he was sent out. (I think at the end of the sequence where you send him.)

Eventually you get more guys than you can have with you, so there's no reason to not send some on missions - go capture more dens!

 

[Mr Light]

I just finished Sequence Three, and I have the entire roster of assassins, and I've learned to start sending out the ones I can't use (I only have three calls) on far away missions. I basically ran around and unlocked/bought everything before continuing the story!

I fucking hate the den defense sequences. I'm not even going to bother with them anymore. I lose every single goddamn time when the Greek Fire Machine arrives. Screw it.

 

[ATimson]

I fucking hate the den defense sequences. I'm not even going to bother with them anymore. I lose every single goddamn time when the Greek Fire Machine arrives. Screw it.

Level your assassins to 10, and you won't have to worry about it.

 

[BigFoot]

I just finished Sequence Three, and I have the entire roster of assassins, and I've learned to start sending out the ones I can't use (I only have three calls) on far away missions. I basically ran around and unlocked/bought everything before continuing the story!

I fucking hate the den defense sequences. I'm not even going to bother with them anymore. I lose every single goddamn time when the Greek Fire Machine arrives. Screw it.

Don't forget to use the cannon. I believe it's mapped to one of the trigger buttons.

And I though the Den Defense missions were quite easy... I didn't lose a single one.

 

[Mr Light]

Clearly I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but it's so frustrating I don't want to bother to learn how I don't like how quickly it moves, I don't have time to place the people like I'd like to, and I'm not clear which rooftops I can put them on, I don't like how the view/cursor moves...

As for the cannon, the first time I played (after the tutorial), I didn't have the damn cannon for some reason, so I could do nothing to stop the Greek Fire. The second time, I DID have the cannon. I hit it the second it appeared and it took about half it's life away, but then I couldn't use the cannon again! And it went right past all my guys, so then I couldn't even do anything to hurt it. I belatedly started putting more people in the back but he burned down the building before I could do anything. I have like 90 morale but I couldn't do anything to hurt it!

 

[ATimson]

The second time, I DID have the cannon. I hit it the second it appeared and it took about half it's life away, but then I couldn't use the cannon again!

It's not an instant-reload weapon - there should be an indicator in, IIRC, the upper-left indicating that it's ready to fire. It takes a few seconds to reload.