I should preface by saying I am a big Ubisoft fan. I have played the death out of every Assassins Creed game, loved Fenyx Rising, love the Ghost Recon series, play the hell out of Riders Republic, Watch Dogs Legion, etc etc. So, as far as "Ubisoft games" go I am their target market.
On the flip side, I am perhaps holding the game to a high standard because for nigh on a decade we have been told it will be the spiritual successor to Black Flag, and after platinuming that for the second time in October, its pretty fresh in my mind.
So.. cue 6 hours of gameplay in the December Beta
Underwhelming, and honestly, by the final hour I was pretty bored and looking for a reason to stop playing. Should be noted its a Beta and "as such does not represent the finished version", but four crashes in 6 hours (all when fast travelling) did not help.
GRAPHICS: If you have played recent Assassin Creed games (Especially Odyssey which has a lot of naval stuff) its not really a huge step up from them, and honestly, the ocean physics aren't a huge step up from Black Flag. Certainly 60fps (I presume) on performance mode makes things look great, but its not a huge leap forward. Landscapes look pretty good and are on a par with something like Fenyx Rising. Character models however are pretty bad.
STORY/GAMEPLAY: I only played for the 6 hours allowed by the beta, but the story is non-existant outside of a very basic narrative that is just there to string the story together. The missions/gameplay (and i did about 15-20 missions) was exclusively "Fetch" missions. Go somewhere, and either pick something up, or if you are really lucky sink a ship and pick something up, and then return it. And after a few hours it got really repetitive.
COMBAT: The combat is kinda fun, but those expecting Black Flag II will be hugely disapointed. It is much more arcade like, both in control/movement, and the guns. And rather than the model of targetting used in Black Flag, Rogue and Origins/Odyssey, they have gone with a cross hair model, which frankly is really really strange and just feels off. Its like they took the combat from a space shooter and tried to apply it to ships. Its bizarre.
WHAT IT GOT RIGHT:
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I mean, it does look pretty good
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The combat is fun if you are into a more arcade style
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Sea Shanties, although the beta seems to have a very limited range (about ten songs) so they repeated a lot
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There are tons (literally an insane amount) of upgrades, ships, weapons, and the like, like insane amounts (See also what it got wrong)
WHAT IT GOT WRONG
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Instead of having 1-2 canon characters, they have gone the route of "design a character" which I get, they want to allow you to personalise the game, but the downside is, your character does not have any voice acting. This means that for every single cut scene and interaction (of which there are a lot), your character just stands there looking totally blank and utterly mute while whoever he is talking to has a one sided conversation. With the quality of story driven games out there, it makes it feel very substandard.
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You can't physically leave your ship. You can go to land but its a teleport action. You cannot just jump off your ship and swim to shore. Equally, when your ship is docked 2 foot from the shoreline, you have to take a darned boat or go to the embarkmant point. It snaps the immersion
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You cannot board ships. There is a boarding element to the game but you simply sail up next to the target, press triangle, and you get a cut scene simulating the boarding.
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Equally, there are loads of wrecks, but you don't explore any of them. You just sail next to them and do a bizarre QTE / Minigame and get your rewards
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The same weird QTE / Minigame is used for resources, you see trees on an island, and rather than leaving the ship you do a wood sawing QTE and on you go.
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The on land experience generally is really really bad. You go to a location, you disembark, you wander round a really big area with very little going on. Talk to a merchant, maybe talk to a captain, light a bonfire, and you leave.
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Pretty bad facial models and poor voice acting
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Tedious missions, it really is just fetch / return or sink / fetch / return
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Theres a LOT of crafting, so many different weapons, ship items etc, and all of it requires, yes, fetch missions...
Honestly, after about 4 hours I was pretty bored with it. It is simply not a great game. There's no real story, there's no lead character, even the character you create is so non-descript you don't really feel any affinity to him or her. Tne missions are uninspired fetch missions, and the combat while fun initially didn't really hold my attention.
It certainly is not worth the AAA price of £70 they are asking for it.
Will I buy it in a years time when they are invariably selling the Gold Edition for £15? Probably not, its simply not very good.
One thing I should add. The game may benefit from launch having a larger playerbase. For instance, there was a world event with a huge, richly laden, merchant fleet crossing the map and the idea is the players work together to take it down. I was the only one that showed up.
Post full launch with a strong player base, those events should be pretty fun. Of course the downside to that is, if the player base is not there, the whole game is going to struggle.
Its really hard to even get excited about the prospect of a Ferrari front row, because you just know they will somehow contrive to get in each others way, let Max through on lap one, and then make a pigs ear of their strategy and finish 5th and 6th