The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

It's huge. And gorgeous. You could play for dozens of hours and not see entire neighborhoods. There is a ton of variety between the different districts. With a city this size, I want for nothing.

It takes forever to get anywhere on foot. But this is a con I'm happy to live with.

I wouldn't. It's just right.

In my opinion, the cities of future AC games do not need to get any bigger than Paris. It's huge without being too big. It's the perfect size.

These missions are now sandbox-style and provide multiple methods of success. You're not told how to do it or even how you can do it. It's completely up to you to choose your path.

Each main assassination mission has sub-missions within it. Steal the keys to enter a stronghold through a locked side door, find a hidden entrance to the sewer and come up from below, eavesdrop and tail a guy with a map which reveals the main target's path through the sandbox (even shows up in eagle vision), et cetera. You can do the one(s) you like, do them all, or you can skip them and go straight for the kill.

I love the change to the post-assassination scenes. I won't get into spoilers, but I will say that I really like the new direction. It inches the story forward in an interesting and non-linear way while still retaining the ethereal feel of frozen time.

These missions don't have checkpoints. They're so big and there is so much to do. You can get close to finally killing your mark and then die, only to have to redo the whole thing from scratch. This is especially frustrating when 15 minutes of hard work is undone by a bug or a glitch or a single moment of you being dumb.

Other than adding checkpoints, there aren't any other areas that need improvement.

I was hoping that every main assassination had a special cinematic kill if you figured out how to do it, like the first one (if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about). Unfortunately, as best I can tell, that was the only one in the entire game.

While I haven't finished it yet (80% complete), I'm liking the story so far. I find the mystery aspect to be interesting and I like how it doles out bits and pieces in a non-linear fashion. It keeps you guessing.

I realize that some people find the story simple and boring, but to each their own. I like mysteries and Unity has kept me interested the whole time.

It's very short. Possibly the shortest story in any AC game so far. If you just focused on the story missions and didn't doddle, I wouldn't be surprised if this game could be finished in under four hours.

Remember how long AC2 was? Nobody ever complained that it was too long. And they even extended it with a couple of DLC packs. Unity would need a lot of DLC to compete with that.

I like the characters in Unity and I love the setting, so I hope we will see more of Arno and Paris. But I would rather it be via episodic story-based DLC that was released every other month for a full year.

Combat has finally been amped up in difficulty. You die quickly and easily, especially if you're up against more than a couple of enemies at a time. When you get swarmed, your best option is to run. That's how it should be.

Unfortunately, a number of things.

The indicators for incoming attacks are vague and the reaction window is short. The indicator doesn't even appear until the attack animation has begun, and then it's red for the first second. By the time you can see whether it turns orange or yellow, you have a very tiny window of time to react accordingly. Those of us without good twitch skills do poorly here.

What makes it even tougher is that the camera zooms in very close during combat. You can't see who's around you and the incoming attack indicators don't appear when the attacker is off-screen. This results in a lot of unfair hits.

I find the combat to feel a little 'laggy'. It reminds me of playing an online game and having to deal with ping. Often you press a button and nothing happens right away, and sometimes not at all. If you jam on a button until something happens, it'll usually repeat said action. I can't even count how many times I've been jamming on / to drop a smoke bomb, and then after a delay Arno throws two in a row.

While the combat difficulty has gone up, the shoulder charge skill tears it right back down. A shoulder charge followed by a combo works on every enemy I've encountered, even boss types. It's like when you unlock the counterattack skill in AC1, the combat instantly becomes 10x easier. And what's worse is that you can unlock the shoulder charge skill very early in the game.

Combat in Unity is like a bar brawl with swords and axes. The only skill involved is twitch skill, if you even consider that a "skill". You don't need to master any type of timing or flow. AC1 had its rhythmic combos where you press the attack button again the moment your previous attack lands and you'll chip away at their defense. Brotherhood/Revelations had the chain kill system. AC3 had a system borrowed heavily from the Batman Arkham series (and there's nothing wrong with borrowing a good system). But Unity's combat doesn't use any of those systems. Timing is only important in regards to how quickly you can react to that yellow or orange attack indicator. Timing your swings or button mashing offers no difference in effectiveness.

Instead of a horizontal line, the attack indicators should be icons. They need to show along the side/bottom of the screen if the attacker is off-screen. The indicators should immediately show the color of the attack type, rather than being red for the first half.

Attacks and parrys need to flow together better. The reaction windows need to be a little more forgiving, and there should be a benefit to timing your strikes rather than button mashing. Ideally, I would love to see AC1's rhythmic style attack chains combined with the Arkham-style counter system, but have the counters only parry and not kill. You should need to work for the kill, but the combat should feel fair. And it absolutely needs to retain the facet of too many enemies means you should run away.

I'm digging the new parkour animations. While they seem a little out of place for the 18th century, it's still a nice refreshing change from the previous animations.

Downward free-running is a much-needed addition to this series!

In previous games, getting down involved either a dive into a haystack, a jump that craters you into the pavement, or walking to the edge and slowly dropping down one handhold at a time. Now you can get down quickly in almost any situation. It's not quite as smooth as climbing up, but it's quick and it does the job. And once in a while, it looks pretty cool.

The more stylish parkour-inspired animations are only used in very specific situations, and it's difficult to consistently trigger them manually. I like the idea of having to get good at the game's movement system in order to look good at it, but it's just too situation-specific. The majority of the time these animations are nowhere to be seen. It's to the point where when they do play, it catches you by surprise.

When I first saw the downward free-running in action in a video from Ubisoft, I was blown away. It was fast, it was stylish. In practice, however, it only looks that good in places that were specifically designed for it. Everywhere else, it's just Arno doing a quick drop-catch over and over going straight down. If you wiggle the control stick around you can sometimes get a cool animation in there, but it's mostly lackluster.

Although this isn't a change, the free-running on the ground still has issues. Arno is all too happy to climb onto a crate or paint easel when there is never, ever a good reason to do so. Objects like that should either not be climbable at all, or have the game only consider climbing them when you're free-running with the / button held. The rest of the time it shouldn't ever try to make you climb onto them (vaulting over them is fine though).

Take some of those fancy new parkour animations and put them to use in more situations. Have the system even put you into some of them automatically when it seems applicable. Or at least have a more reliable way to intentionally trigger them so that you can look good with practice.

For the downward free-running, anything that is narrow and horizontal should act like the bars where you do the trapeze swing. That alone would spice things up a lot. There should be spinning and twisting and leaping to reach more ideal spots on the way down. Getting down quickly should be about flow as much as speed. Just doing a drop-catch over and over should never, ever happen. It's way too boring. The game engine should always be looking for non-linear paths when parkouring down.

I would make the downward free-running do its best to avoid having you land on a crate or table instead of leaping slightly further to land on the street. The fewer steps taken to put feet to pavement, the better. I hate getting stuck on top of a box during a chase and having to leap off like a moron or take a slow step down.

Lastly, if you're at street-level and are running while holding / and / , it should make you not jump onto any object whatsoever. Vault over or slide under, yes. Jump onto and have to jump off or climb down, hell no.

We can finally crouch! This has been sorely missing in every past AC game. It's so nice to be able to sneak past soldiers when the only cover is shorter than your character. Sure beats having to backtrack and climb up to the roof to stay out of sight.

It's supposed to be a toggle, but half the time it doesn't register the toggle and you stand right back up. Or don't stand up if you're toggled in the sneak pose. It's iffy. And since it's so important to be sneaky, you can't risk the iffy toggle so you end up holding the button down the entire time anyway.

You can't crouch-run. Even Splinter Cell has this!

Make it a proper toggle and swap the button mapping with the aim button. The triggers are always easier to hold than the bumpers and sneaking should be a toggle, so there's no reason for them to be mapped the way they are. Every other game has you aim with the left trigger and fire with the right trigger. This shouldn't be any different.

While in sneak mode, holding / should have you remain in sneak but move faster. Have it make the same amount of noise as walking upright and move faster than walking but slower than running.

Any good stealth game needs a good cover system. I like how they borrowed from the Splinter Cell series for this. You can even dive for cover and hop over the objects you were just hiding behind. And Arno hiding behind cover makes for some great screenshots.

What's even cooler is that when being chased you can turn a corner to break line of sight, then stick to that corner and stab your pursuer as he runs by. No more omnipotent guards.

It's too 'sticky'. Once you're locked into a cover spot, you can't always get out of it quickly (at least not the way you want to). If you press to the side and / , thinking that you're going to break cover and start walking, you end up diving over to the other side of the doorway and locking there. If you want to get out of cover, you first have to make sure that you are not moving or in the middle of any animation, then tap / and wait for Arno to disengage from cover. Then you can move. If you want to bolt out of there, / plus movement allows you to go, but just because you're in a hurry doesn't mean that you want to sprint. Sometimes you have to move quickly and quietly.

There are a lot of spots throughout the game world that look like perfect cover, but they are not coded as cover spots so pressing A next to them does nothing. I'm guessing this was simply an issue of there being too many for them to catch every one.

Like the two most recent Splinter Cell games, while you're in cover you should be able to look around at other cover spots and tap / to dive for them. This should also work when you're stalking around with / . Make cover easy to get into and move around in.

When in cover, tapping / to get out of cover should be a higher priority for the game engine. It's too sticky and needs to allow you to get out of cover and move quickly at a moment's notice. Or change the key mapping – since / makes you switch to an alternate cover, use a different button to get out of cover, like / .

Leaping forward over the object you were hiding behind requires you to press / + / . Why can't we just press / ?

Holy hell is this fun. I've been waiting for this since I first played the original Assassin's Creed in 2007. This feature alone makes most of the game's cons a lot easier to swallow.

While sneaking around in the dark and slitting throats is always a great time, doing it with a friend is even better. You can work together for some spectacular feats, or you can compete to see who gets to the goal faster or who can get the most kills. Sometimes you'll even try to sabotage your friend(s) by leading enemies to them while they're trying to be stealthy.

I felt that the adversarial multiplayer in previous AC games was interesting, but it never really held my interest for long. Co-op, on the other hand, I think will keep me playing for months, perhaps years.

Dealing with Uplay is never a fun time. Setting up a decent profile on the website is a pain, the service itself is often laggy, and apparently there are matchmaking issues (I haven't done co-op with strangers yet).

You are required to play these missions to unlock a lot of the gear. Some people have no interest in multiplayer and playing the missions solo, while it's great to have the option, often ends up being overly difficult because the missions were specifically designed to have multiple people working together to succeed.

I haven't spent enough time with it yet to have any real concerns that need to be addressed. I just wish co-op had been in this series earlier.

We no longer have to wear the same clothes for years in a row! You can customize your clothing for a (small) variety of looks. Personal expression is always a good thing.

It's too limited. We have separate parts from what, eight outfits? Mixing and matching pieces between outfits looks terrible, so it's not really an option if you care about how your Arno looks. On top of that, most of the outfits look pretty lousy and don't fit with the game's setting.

Stats are tied to gear. If you want stats that support your specific gameplay style, you don't get much choice in appearance. What's worse is that in order to maximize specific stats, you have to mix and match pieces from different sets. You'll be kicking some ass with your optimal stats, but you'll look like a clown doing it.

You can't customize your face. I understand that this is primarily a single-player game and they wanted Arno to look a specific way. But it sucks in multiplayer when you've got a team of clones running around.

Stats should be separate templates from appearance. I should be able to strive for the stats I want while retaining the appearance I want. There are several good ways to do this, as evidenced by a number of other games (especially MMORPGs).

Unlocking equipment shouldn't have such specific requirements. If anything, provide a currency that is only used for gear and allow the player to pick and choose what they want. I shouldn't have to play through a long mission that I don't like three times just to unlock the one piece of gear I want. Especially when it's a piece of gear that has a higher rank version that will just be replacing it later.

Allow for some facial options that only appear on our character when in multiplayer. Let us change the facial hair style, hair color, and let us toggle the hood up or down. Hell, the hood toggle should work for single player too.

Um, nothing...?

This lockpicking system is terrible. It is a cheap excuse for a mini-game that in no way mimics real lockpicking. It's only there to add challenge and a chance to fail the pick. What for? We don't need a mini-game, just let the lockpicking expert on my screen pick the damned lock already.

I would eliminate the mini-game. Make it take time, forcing Arno to be vulnerable while working. The tougher the lock, the more fiddling it takes. Upgrading the lockpick skill speeds up the process. This is how it works in Mark of the Ninja and it was still fun and exciting picking locks while staying out of sight.

To make it more interesting, you could still have the graphic show up and watch the pins fiddling with the tumblers.

No need for a finite count of lockpicks. Just have the character always have a kit on him that doesn't break.

• Hopping over/sliding under stuff is great, but I'd also like to see a sideways twist or spin to shortcut corners of objects, like crates, instead of having to run around them with a wide berth (in fear of the game making you climb up onto them).
• When you kill from cover, you should reach up with one or both hands and pull the enemy down to the ground behind cover and stab him there. It's kinda lame how Arno jumps out in full view, stabs the guy, then ducks back into cover, pulling the guy with him. If a guard sees that, instant red alert because they saw Arno. Instead, if a guard just saw his buddy lunge/fall to the side, he'd go investigate instead of instant combat mode.
• Similar to the previous point, if you're sneaking and you kill a guy, you should yank him to the ground and stab him there, rather than standing up in full view to make the kill.
• If an enemy is on a platform less than 2m (6 feet) above you, you should be able to kill them from ground level rather than having to climb up onto the platform and (almost always) blow your cover. If their feet are at your head height, knock their feet out so they fall on their back and then stab them. If they're waist height, just grab them and yank them to the ground (ledge kill style) and stab them on the ground.
• Borrowing Splinter Cell's "last known position" silhouette is a great idea, but enemies shouldn't come to a dead halt three feet before it and just peer around. Realistically (and more fun in gameplay) they should run past it a bit, stop and look around, then start searching. This is worst in the underground where you obviously just went further down the tunnel but they stop looking completely. Imagine breaking line of sight at a T-shaped intersection (street or tunnel) – enemies should run out into the intersection, look all around, then pick a direction and start searching.
• Many enemies don't investigate when they catch a glimpse of Arno. They see him and go into the yellow alert status, but they just stand there and shout. I can understand a sniper not wanting to leave his perch, but even brutes on the street will behave this way. Are they just big cowards? What a crock, that's no fun. Slap a pair of gonads on them and have them investigate like in previous games.
• Related to the previous point, enemies don't seem to care about seeing dead bodies as much as they used to. They used to curse loudly, move over to them quickly, examine the body and then start searching angrily. In Unity they saunter over very slowly, let out a quiet remark like "Hey, somebody killed Fred", look around a bit, then walk away like it never happened. WTF? Put it back like it used to be. If my buddies treated my death like that, I would haunt them for eternity.
• Why can't we move corpses anymore? It may not be quite as useful in Unity since the guards don't seem to care as much anymore, but they should care and we should be able to move them. Even if it's just a slow drag or rolling a body off a roof.
• Make loot more specific to enemy types. Snipers should always have ammo, for instance.
• If you have max medicine stock and you loot a medicine from a corpse, instead of it being lost it should automatically refill your health.
• Change the button to synchronize at sync points back to / . If you wait more than a few seconds after the sync animation ends, you have no option to climb down – you can only eagle dive off. If you press / to try to climb down, it replays the (painfully) long sync animation.
• Give us back the ability to jump on the spot. Sometimes there are objects above us we want to jump up and grab but there is no vertical surface to run up, so we have no way of doing it. It's kind of baffling why this was taken out.