Assassins Creed IV

[Mr. Adventure]

So I like third-person action adventure games and I've never played any of these games nor know much about the backstory or anything. What would you recommend for playing order? Should I start from the beginning, jump in at say III, or skip some or ??? Any platform better than the other?

 

[Mr Light]

IV is pretty standalone so far.

You could easily skip the first game, but you absolutely have to play II - Brotherhood - Revelations as they tell one continuing and excellent story. The present day half of that story climaxes in III, but the main past section of III is a new unrelated character.

I would highly recommend skipping the first game. It's visually gorgeous but you literally perform the same five tasks over and over for the entire game, and the story isn't nearly as interesting as the later games. You could read the wikipedia synopsis of the story and miss very little if you start with II.

I: Desmond (present), Altair (past)
II: Desmond (present), Ezio (past)
Brotherhood: : Desmond (present), Ezio (past)
Revelations: : Desmond (present), Ezio (past), Altair (past)
III: : Desmond (present), Connor (past)
IV: new guy (present), Edward (past)

 

[RoJoHen]

IV is pretty standalone so far.

You could easily skip the first game, but you absolutely have to play II - Brotherhood - Revelations as they tell one continuing and excellent story. The present day half of that story climaxes in III, but the main past section of III is a new unrelated character.

I would highly recommend skipping the first game. It's visually gorgeous but you literally perform the same five tasks over and over for the entire game, and the story isn't nearly as interesting as the later games. You could read the wikipedia synopsis of the story and miss very little if you start with II.

I: Desmond (present), Altair (past)
II: Desmond (present), Ezio (past)
Brotherhood: : Desmond (present), Ezio (past)
Revelations: : Desmond (present), Ezio (past), Altair (past)
III: : Desmond (present), Connor (past)
IV: new guy (present), Edward (past)

Yeah. I played about an hour of the first game was bored to tears. I heard that the second game was a vast improvement, so I skipped ahead to that one and absolutely loved it. The Ezio Trilogy (AC2, Brotherhood, and Revelations) is a lot of fun, and so far nothing else has quite lived up to it. AC3 was okay, and it advanced/concluded part of the story, so I wouldn't skip it, but don't be prepared to be wowed by it either.

So far AC4 is pretty fun, but I'm sure I'm nowhere near completing the story. Definitely enjoying it more than AC3.

 

[Mr Light]

AC3 was a vast disappointment. The present day story was okay, but I did not give a fig about the entire Connor story and I found running around in a forest and tiny Colonial America towns to be horrifically tedious after the ancient towering grandeur of the Middle East.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

hmmm, sounds like I need that Ezio Trilogy PS3 disc

EDIT: yeesh, looked online and sounds like PS3 port ain't so hot, thought it was exclusive but I see it's on 360 at Gamestop, so either that or PC

 

[Mr Light]

I finally went back to finished that sneak past the Assassins mission! Turns out I was literally one takedown away from the end of that sequence. Ugh! So nice to finally be able to advance the story again! I've basically been doing naval missions for the past week. Which means I'm now doing main mission tutorials for things I've been doing forever like conquering forts

 

[6079SmithW]

I love the underwater shipwreck locations! So much fun! Also, stealthing through the plantations is a blast, especially with the blow pipe.

 

[RoJoHen]

I'm at a really annoying part of the story now. My ship doesn't have enough upgrades, so I keep getting blown up. I'm stuck doing a bunch of side missions in order to raise money so I can upgrade it in order to progress.

WHY DOES HULL ARMOR REQUIRE SUGAR?!

 

[Mr Light]

You sell the sugar for money you don't use it to make armor

I don't have that problem because I wasted a week going around blowing ships up rather than advancing the story so my boat is pretty much maxed out and I'm only at 35% completion

 

[RoJoHen]

You sell the sugar for money you don't use it to make armor

Nope. The third Armor Upgrade requires money AND 200 bags of sugar!

I can make money all sorts of ways. Sugar seems to be hard to find.

 

[Mr Light]

I forgot that one, then.... I did most of the ship upgrades a week ago. I've just been selling the sugar and rum since then.

 

[RoJoHen]

Still pluggin' away. Unlike most open-world games like this, I actually find myself exploring and doing side missions. I usually save all that extra stuff for the end, but I'm having too much fun.

 

[RoJoHen]

Finished the story today. I was ultimately pretty satisfied with how Edward's tale ended, and while I actually wouldn't mind seeing more of him, I'm not really sure how his character would fit into a sequel.

I was disappointed in the real world Abstergo part of the story. There's obviously more coming, but I'm wondering if at this point they're just dicking us around because they don't know how many more games they're going to make. I still have a lot of computers to hack, though, which may shed some light on this part of the game.

 

[Mr Light]

I think I'm about 2/3 through the story... and the Abstergo storyline has been utterly uninteresting thus far.

 

[RoJoHen]

and the Abstergo storyline has been utterly uninteresting thus far.

It remains so.

When you get to the end, there's definitely something that happens, but it's so...meh.

After so many games with the characters, I was really hoping Sean and Rebecca would have a bigger role. I'm not really sure what the point of them being in the game was unless there's something bigger planned for future games.

I almost feel like this game tried to be a total reboot of the series, but it still wanted to cling to a few of the old story threads without actually doing anything with them (Juno, Abstergo Industries, etc).

Honestly, even though I absolutely loved the Edward Kenway parts of this game, I think killing off Desmond in the last game was a huge mistake. The real world portion just seems kinda pointless without him.