Repetitive!

Starting with the good, this game has a pretty good story, especially at the end. It crescendos to something really awesome.

As far as the gameplay, its garbage. Like everyone said above, the missions are ridiculously repetitive. There's about 4-5 types of "sidequest" missions. You have to do about half of them to progress in the story, but if you did them all, you do each one about 60-80 times before the game is through. The same, exact, unchanging, thing. So boring.

Another HUGE gameplay problem is the stealth, or should I say lack of. In the tutorial, the game makes a HUGE deal out of needing to be stealthy, and there's all sorts of strange things in the game for you to use to do so. In actual practice, trying to be stealthy can cause you to take at least 2-3x longer to do what you're trying to do, and there's zero reward from the game for doing so.

There's also zero punishment for not being stealthy. All that happens is the guards attack you. When spotted, you're supposed to run away, break line of sight, and hide. In practice, this never works too well. Even though you're a legendary acrobatic assassin, so is every single guard in the game it seems. They run almost as fast as you do, can leap across buildings, etc. That means its very difficult to actually break line of sight with them because they're always right on your ass (not to mention difficulties with bumping into people, randomly grabbing ledges, etc) . Even if you do break line of sight, its difficult to tell where the hiding spots are. They're marked on the minimap, but it doesn't differentiate between high and low spots. And finally, a lot of the spots are a little higher than you, requiring you to climb up into them. The big problem here is that your character is the slowest climber I've ever seen in a video game. By the time you finally haul your ass into the hiding spot, the guards have probably already entered line of sight again. The slow climb thing also artificially extends the game time, by a LOT. You have to do an insane amount of climbing in this game, and watching your character slowly meander up a tower is an exercise in frustration.

I also need to have a special rant for the NPC's. This game has the most annoying NPC's I think I've ever encountered in a video game. If you're trying to actually be stealthy, these guys will definitely make you rethink your choice. First is the beggar women, who continually stand directly in front of you, making it difficult to walk. Then the pot holders; the deal with these guys is if you run into them, they drop their pots and sometimes it will cause guards to attack. The problem here is these guys TRY to run into you. They will home straight in on you. Even if you stand completely still and they walk into you, they still drop their pots and the guards attack; horrible game design. Lastly, and certainly not least in annoyance, are the "crazy" people. These guys are bar none the worst. If you get near them, they give you a shove. This freezes you in place for a few seconds (already annoying), but the worst is that this breaks your "blend" move. If you were using it at that time to hide from a guard, it will cause the guard to be able to see and attack you. Horrible for assassinate missions. And these little jerks are EVERYWHERE. You can't walk 2 feet it seems without a beggar or a crazy guy on your ass. And pot holders are everywhere. Like 1 in 3 people will be holding a pot. Basically, stealth is a non option in this game unless you're into cutting yourself.

So since trying to actually play stealthy is just masochism, you'll find yourself just beating the hell out of the guards whenever you get spotted. If you kill enough of them, 4-8, you automatically stop the alert, making this a far faster option than hiding to get the alert off yourself most of the time. They're also very easy to kill, making this option a no brainer. All of the "marks" you have to assassinate can be done by just bursting through the doors, slaughtering all in your path. Its often much easier to kill them this way than actually stealthing your way to their backs. Trust me, you'll be killing a LOT of guards before the game is through. I'm pretty sure I killed at least 300-400+ before it was over (did all missions). I felt pretty sad at this fact, considering the stealth portion was so hyped up and had so much thought put into it. They should have given you a bigger punishment for not being stealthy (as in, the guards are actually a threat).

So in the end, you'll find your gameplay experience is much more enjoyable when you just barrel through the crowds at top speed, shoving the annoying ass npc's out of the way. When you finally get to your sidequest destination, stop and kill any guards chasing you. Rinse and repeat. Really makes you feel like a stealth assassin.

The controls are also pretty bad. They are extremely "clunky". As in, your guy will never do exactly what you want. In a lot of cases, you'll be running away and suddenly get stuck either grabbing onto something endlessly or slaving over trying to get him to just fall down a ledge. The true hell is when you have to hop across posts on the water (btw, this legendary assassin can't swim). This is where the controls are at its absolute worst.

Anyway, rant over. Storys good, gameplay is atrocious. Play at your own risk.

Run around people or tackle them out of the way. You will never grab ledges if you don't move into them.

Tackling them requires you to slow from your fastest run speed, which is already barely enough to outrun the Usain Bolt guards. If you never accidentally had him grab something you didn't want while running, then I guess you're just better than me. It was a constant problem for me.

The hiding spots should be easy to spot and if you can't find one just move to another you can see. All I can say is find more effective ways to climb buildings. Altair does climb slowly but you can rebound from building to building or gradually make your way up buildings and you can run circles around them without ever re-entering line of sight.

Sorry, I meant to say they are hard to see in context of just using the minimap. I was trying to highlight the problem of elevation not being specified (which they fixed in the 2nd I noticed). As far as visually on the screen, no they aren't that hard to find.

Also how exactly can I find a more "effective" way of climbing the building when all you can do is just hold up? The towers sometimes only have one path, and when they have multiple, they're all exactly the same. My beef with the guards and climbing into hiding spots is that a lot of times he slowly crawls up into it instead of leaping, giving them plenty of time to come back into line of sight. This is the worst with the hay, but happens sometimes too with the cloth covered structure on the roofs.

You can't run circles around them. You barely run faster than them. I also noticed that as soon as you seem to be making pretty good distance away, almost enough to break LOS, you run into even more guards, starting the cycle over. This happened way too much and made me wonder what the point of running was when I always seemed to just run into more guards around the corner.

As I said above, you will never grab something unless you are moving towards it and using high profile actions. Those posts near the water were a problem because they lacked the lock-on most others had.

If I'm running away from the guards, then I obviously have to use the high profile action button because there is no other way to run. You also run more often than you walk in general because the regular walk speed is extremely slow in comparison, and there's a lot more "safe" running space than not. So in a game where you run more often than you walk, I'm not sure how your previous comment excuses the rigid grab mechanics.

The only true flaw with the gameplay is that you have to be decently far in the game before you get the assassin's gloves. Otherwise it plays just as smoothly, abet with less options, than the later games.

I just started the second game and all of my previous problems are for the most part cleared up. The climb is 2-3x faster. The jumping is more intelligent on where it throws you. You can actually leap into the hay and cloth structures most of the time, not to mention there are MANY more hiding spots now thanks to the blend in the crowd feature, so you can hide as soon as you LOS. The only thing still remaining is that he still sometimes grab things I didn't intend to grab, but even that's been cleaned up a lot. There's no way you can say with a straight face that the first game is anywhere near the first in technical quality.

Meant to say first to the second (why is there no edit button yet?)