The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Yes, it answers most questions that have been raised, mostly from ACB's story. The Desmond sections help give us what Desmond's life was life before Abstergo got involved. Very interesting.

There were maybe 4 or 5 assassinations in 8 sequences (the last sequence is where the title "Revelations" kicks in, so I don't count sequence 9). I enjoyed them for the most part. You're given more freedom and never pressured to upgrade anything at all, which I love. They all end with amazing slow-motion assassinations with the hidden blade, except for the final boss. They should've let you classically assassinate him like all the others, but whatever. That part reminded me of God of War. It didn't have buttons to press during a cinematic, but it just reminded me of it for some reason.

Because of the hook blade and ziplines (and fast travel is available immediately) it's not as intimidating as it might seem. You really do travel faster after you get used to it. And it does need some getting used to. Trust me.

The mini game they included for this hasn't been so great. I did the first mandatory one, which was fun. The second random one was just plain tedious. I haven't done any since. Not that I haven't tried, it's just that they aren't coming up anymore. Capturing the dens are the same as Brotherhood's, but tougher. The enemies are bastards. Like Calvar has said, I'm scared to fight them.

You don't just fight for recruits. They have different missions. One might be the same fighting type as Brotherhood's, but another may be a foot race or a bet on a fight between you and the potential recruit.

It's one of the stealthiest ACs since AC1. If you meet up with guards, run the f*ck away, you fool.

I didn't think I'd be a bomb user, but I am. Not usually during missions, but when I'm out and about, I may chuck a few at gunmen who are chasing me for blocks.

I craft my own bombs more than I buy them. I use smoke screens or impact explosives if I HAVE to.

Not much has changed other than the difficulty. Spearmen require side-stepping to take them down and gunshots do a crapload of damage (I really should've bought armor...)

The weapon wheels are easy to understand. Once you do it for the first time, it's a piece of cake.

Hell yes. A welcome improvement. Even gunmen are frustrating enough to scare me away from their rooftops.

I haven't seen them. You'd think they'd be back. I don't think they are. I liked them a lot, too. :/

Desmond sections are good if you really want to know his background. Also, they're a great change of pace. You only need about 30 Animus fragments (this game's flags) to get all of his gameplay.

Altair's sections are extremely scripted, but what do you expect? They're mostly informative over exciting, but there are cool moments a die-hard AC fan won't want to miss, particularly the final Altair memory.

Yes.

hmm sounds good ...

my question

is revelations more cinematic than previous games ?

Yes, quite a bit. Not scripted, but more cinematic. There is still a great chunk of free-roam gameplay in there.
Now, to answer your questions, FLAE:

1. To be honest, I found the ending to be a little underwhelming. It was pretty much exactly as I had already figured out. During the game, however, you will learn some more.
2. There are a few assassinations. Only 2 of them are build up well, 1 of which is scripted. It remains, however, that the other assassinations give you a lot of freedom and are fun. It's a shame you don't get any information beforehand.
3. Navigating is alright. There are fast travel stations available pretty much right from the start, which can be used easily if you have to travel a long distance. Other than that, freerunning has really sped up as well, with the hookblade.
4. Reclaiming a Den is certainly a lot of fun. I enjoy it immensely, being all sneaky-sneaky (because otherwise you have a big fight on your hands). I have a strong distaste for Den Defense. If I want to play tower defense, I'll visit some flash-game site on the internet, thank you very much.
5. It's a lot more fun and some of the assassins have more personality now, which I like. The recruiting is varied, although the majority seems to be fights. You can always skip those, though.
6. I think it's a more stealthy game. At least, I consider myself a stealthy player and I've run into one occasion where I couldn't be and was forced in the open. The bombs are pretty good. You can use distraction bombs, which allow you to set a timed bomb, which I consider to be pretty stealthy.
7. It hasn't changed much. The enemies are harder to kill, though.
8. Yes. Enemies are more difficult to kill, which makes combat quite the hassle if you don't have a few bombs handy.
9. Nope. The Desmond Missions are kind of boring. I can't say I enjoy them a whole lot. They're good for the story, though.
10. Yes, they are gone.

They're not random, actually. If you had one more -other than the obligatory one- then you triggered it. If one den isn't permanently locked by a lv 15 Assassin, it can be attacked by Templars everytime your notoriety meter is completely red. So it is possible to avoid them during the entire game if you bribe heralds/kill corrupt officials to keep it low.
If on the other hand you enjoy the den defense mini game, increase your notoriety to the max (they are more ways to do that now : it goes up everytime you recruit a potential Assassin, and at every shop/landmark you buy), then Templars will start trying reclaiming the dens.

In my opinion, ACR makes you feel more like a Master leading his Brotherhood than ACB was supposed to. In Revelations, you actually interact with your recruits, and have more missions with them.

The ending of this game is one of those things where it really shocks and surprises you, answers a few things that we had already suspected of being true anyway, and leaves SOME questions unanswered for ACIII. It answers some of the questions you're wondering about, and a major character explains a lot of things about the entire series, like what the Assassin's Creed (Nothing is true, everything is permitted.) truly means. It also wraps up Altair and Ezio's stories so closure is nice. As I said though, some of the questions are still unanswered and we're just gonna have to wait until ACIII next year.

There are.. very few actual story/main assassinations with characters that are huge and important. However, they're decently fun to do and the final boss, while not being a standard assassination, he and the entire mission leading up to him was one of my favorite moments in gaming so far. Although there are 9 Memory Blocks, the main assassinations don't appear in every single one. I've always considered "main" assassination to mean that Memory Corridor dialogue Ezio/Altair have with the dying Templar they just killed. In that case, "main" assassinations are actually mostly found in the Master Assassin side missions, which you use to promote Assassin Recruits to a higher rank. THOSE are really fun, although somewhat scripted and most require a chase or tail of some kind.

Navigating the city is incredibly fun, but takes a little bit of getting used to. It's still freaking awesome though. So much faster than previous games. Although Constantinople may look like a big city because of how dense and tightly packed everything is, it's actually smaller. It's pretty much around the size of, say, Florence or maybe Jerusalem, it just has SO MUCH that's tightly packed that it FEELS big. Ziplines are amazing, the Hookblade's increased climbing speed is amazing. One of the best additions to an AC game in my opinion.

The new Templar Dens are an amazing and fun challenge to do. They sometimes infuriated me because I have a tendency to get spotted by a RANDOM enemy and a Coward Captain runs away from me and I have to wait until tomorrow. Notoriety has been changed to Templar Awareness, although its function is relatively the same. How this ties into Assassin Dens and Templar Dens however, is the fact that once you're at full Awareness, Templars can attack and take back one of your Assassin-controlled dens. If you let this happen without defending, the area will turn back into Templar-controlled and you'll have to Assassinate the Captain again. You CAN defend it, which launches a little Real Time Strategy/Tower Defense style mini-game. Ezio uses Morale (Resource) to spawn different Assassin units that do different things on rooftops and they either shoot at enemies or Air Assassinate them. It's kinda fun the first few times, but later becomes a hassle. Me coming from an RTS background myself (StarCraft 1 and 2) I didn't really like it too much. I prefer just letting them take it over and assassinating the captain again. Note that taking over a Den instantly maxes out your Notoriety/Templar Awareness.

For the most part, it's the same but there have been an added variety of missions. Sometimes you'll have to race a potential recruit, pickpocket more money than them in a certain amount of time, win in a fight against them, and of course, save them from harassers. There are some more but I've forgotten. I think there was one where you have to save a dying guy's wife and daughter from some bad, bad creepy-man. When you come back the dying guy isn't dying anymore and joins the Assassins. Rather than just leveling guys up by sending them to missions, those missions actually benefit you and give you stuff like Bomb ingredients, XP per 20 minutes, Money per 20 minutes and so on. You take control of cities in the missions you send your Assassins to, and the Templars can attack those cities as well. If this happens, a "Defend the City" contract will show up with 5 Death Stars every time (an Assassin that fails this mission will die.) Once your Assassins get to a certain level, you need to do a mission like following them around, killing a target with them or defending them from Templars to allow them to progress further.

I hate Janissaries. I hates 'em. Kicking them does nothing, they take three Counter Kills to kill, three Killstreak hits to kill, three Hidden Gun bullets to kill. Slashing them with your sword, they dodge. Kicking them, they dodge. Grabs, they break away. To make matters worse, they pull out their guns on you and you have to hit them once to make them put it away before they shoot you (takes off like a third of your HP). The only thing Ubi could have done to make these guys harder is to allow them to Counter Kill YOU. Which would suck. The stealth is a bit harder, and more important because I've actually DIED in combat. Last time I ever died in combat was AC1. Bombs help the stealth mechanics by allowing you to draw guards to certain positions, repel certain NPCs while keeping some in place, plant traps and use luring tactics etc. One kind of bomb you can even use to turn all Civilians in an area into temporary Vigilantes (they will grab enemies) I find myself Crafting Bombs rather than buying them a lot more often. In the beginning of the game, I didn't use bombs, but they weren't an inconvenience either. You don't want them? Don't craft/buy them. You don't HAVE to use them. Every area in the game can be gotten through without bombs. They just make certain aspects of gameplay easier. Near the end of the game, I used them a bit more, but I felt like Ubisoft could have given a bigger focus/necessity on bombs.

Using two weapon wheels is real easy. You hold the shoulder button as always to bring up your Weapon Wheels, the left wheel is the left stick, the right wheel is the right stick. Easy. The right wheel's weapon is always mapped to Y/Triangle. The left wheel's weapon is always mapped to X/Square. Eagle Sense is mapped to clicking the Left Stick. You can see soldiers' patrol paths, where someone has gone and so on. Now, instead of just displaying a target in gold, it displays groups in gold. Hovering over individuals in the group will make your crosshair cycle for a bit, then stop. If it's the target, they will glow gold whereas the others' glows will die down. If not, that glow is just eliminated and you proceed onto the next suspect. Other than that, the combat system hasn't changed much at all. You can use bombs in battle to stun your opponents for a few seconds, much shorter time than in ACII and Brotherhood though. Killstreaks are back, but harder to pull off. Before, you could Counter a guard while you were in a killstreak/counter animation already. You can't do that anymore. If you're in the middle of an animation, and a guard is about to slice you, he's definitely hitting you, no way around it. You can call in Assassins to fight for you, same number of Assassin Signals from Brotherhood. Arrow Storm is back, same mechanics.

By improved, I take it as increased. Yes, it's a tiny bit harder. There were rumors that a difficulty bar/slider was going to be in the final game but I was disappointed that they were just rumors. However, if you're the kind of person that likes Full Synching everything, you should find a decent challenge.

Unfortunately, no VR Training is gone. (WHY!?) Desmond's Animus missions, gave me a particular feeling that I haven't really felt before. You learn about his past and stuff, they're pretty engaging and give of a certain kind of atmosphere that I haven't felt before. If you like Portal or first person puzzle games, you will like Desmond's sections. They're nothing like the rest of Assassin's Creed though. Keeping in mind the ending of Brotherhood and his mind being shattered, I can't really expect them to be.

Shop Quests are gone. Random items are still in there, but they have functions that you can use for Crafting now.

VR missions are gone, but you can play tutorials. They pop up during the loading screen and during freeroam and missions, and I think you accept by pressing select. They were actually quite useful, they helped me understand the mechanics of some of the tougher enemies. And you can cycle through all the tutorials while you're in one. A shame they don't just have a straight up unlimited combat one, though.

Hey, I've also got some Desmond sequence gameplay up on YouTube (unlisted), if you want to see what's that like. There are spoilers for his past, though, although nothing very major.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCHMbKF5E_U

are there any points where they force stealth on you where you will be desynched if spotted?

are the 100% requirements still around?

have the guards gotten smarter, does being spotted feel more natural?
cause if i ever hear a guard say stuff like "where did he go?" when i'm right infront of him i don't know what i will do

There are still missions where getting Detected will Desynch you.

Full Synch Requirements are back.

Guards have gotten smarter and will actually kinda kill you from time to time. And no, they don't say goofy stuff like that anymore haha.

They generally just say "I'm losing him" when you run way in front of them. Sometimes they may say "Where did he go", but you can't expect the system that chooses what lines they shout to work perfectly every time.

The guards are still dumb as bricks. I've got a recording of me standing in a forbidden area, near a Templar captain, right in front of two guards. I was able to walk up to the Templar Captain and kill him with my hands.
Fighting's more difficult, though.

i consider myself a pro at ACs combat system and its even giving me a hard time although today i kinda found a way to beat the Janissary high guards in 2 moves today.... so easy now XD (im uploading vids lil later anyway with said trick)

Is it the countersteal to execution combo? That lets you bypass their health, I found.

That's exactly it ^_^

while this is not a game i would buy, it is a game i would borrow, just for the sake of copletion and to be able to join whatever discussion there is.
(currently have 133 unread posts in the ACR section)

and as luck would have it, my library has a copy
so when i'm not doing anything else, if i get bored with Skyrim before ME3 is here, i might pick it up eventually