Assassin's Creed Unity places you in the around the time of the French Revolution in which you play a Frenchman by the name of Arno Dorian. The backdrop to this new Assassin's Creed is definitely a welcome back to form of when climbing and parkour was fun in Assassin's Creed. Though the map isn't gigantic like Black Flag or as expansive as Assassin's Creed 2, the map in Unity is large enough with the 1:1 scale in which the developers stuck to makes Paris feel like a gigantic bustling city. Buildings are tall and joined wall to wall or by cables on the roof to allow you the ability to go from one point of the map to the other by just running along the rooftops, reminiscent of the classic, and in my opinion the best Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed 2.
The story starts off with you playing as Arno when he was a child accompanying is father on a business venture. It is at the business meeting where Arno meets Elise De LaSerre of whom becomes your game long companion/lover. During the event of meeting Elise you find that your father had been assassinated and Monsieur De LaSerre, being the gentleman he is, adopts you into his family.
As the story progresses through the first two sequences you find out that your father was an Assassin and after the quick death of Monsieur De LaSerre you find, to your surprise, that he was Templar also painting Elise as a Templar. The theme of a Templar being in the midst of Assassins or somehow being connected personally in the first few sequences has sort of become a trend across the last few games in the series.
Ultimately, you on a journey to find out who murdered De LaSerre because Arno thought of him as a father above a Templar as his reasoning. The whole story is completely focused on Arno even though this time around you are invited into the Assassin's Order far earlier. The game also introduces to you a bunch of characters such as Bellec, of whom invites you into the Assassin Order, and the four Grandmasters of which barely make a noticeably important appearance other than to tell you what to do or hinder your progression. The story is completely focused on Arno and his relationship with Elise more than it is about Assassins or Templar.
The story missions are straight forward BUT they are also some of the best designed missions in any Assassin's Creed to date. The objectives are clear but the way you can approach each mission can always be different. The unique events that can trigger if you perform certain actions is definitely a nice change of pace to the usual go to point A and kill Target A. The developers have done a great job in designed interiors in the game as well as exteriors to castles and cathedrals and such that it makes it feel like you're actually as Assassin at times, sneaking through rooms trying to avoid detection and taking out the target without raising an alarm. The bonus objectives in this game are a lot better and easier to perform compared to Black Flag which makes it fun to 100% each sequence mission.
The gameplay of Unity is improved slightly from Black Flag. Although Black Flag mastered climbing UP, Unity made it easier to also climb DOWN with the ability to free run down walls making it a cinch to get from rooftop to ground floor. The combat sees the return of health bars which was a much requested feature to return. The health bar makes combat harder as it forces you to upgrade your equipment so you can tackle the enemies without being completely destroyed by their superior damage and defense. The combat is easy to learn but hard to master because the delays inbetween attacks really make the game feel sluggish and unresponsive. You press the button to parry the attacks but Arno stumbles and gets stabbed all because the animations and inputs don't flow in combat as well as they should.
There is a lot more end game content in this game compared to previous titles. There are plenty of chests and collectible as usual but there are also side missions. Some missions involve solving a murder case and others involve joining a cult to eliminate the enemies within. All in all, the extra side missions definitely extend the replay value of the game much better than the previous titles. Note though that not all chests can be unlocked, some chests require to you play the Initiates Program which doesn't even work yet and the mobile companion app which is slow and boring to say the least. Basically if you want to 100% the game, you're going to have to 100% your time to Unity.
One of the greatest features of the game is the return to form of customization of equipment. You can choose from a range of weapons from swords to maces to spears and heavy two handed axes and even pistols and rifles. Each weapon fits a certain playstyle and the addition of such an array of weapons is a great feature from the developers.
You have the ability to switch between pieces of clothing that all provide different kinds of stats that are melee, health, ranged and stealth. These provide different kinds of playstyles as the reasons these exist also is because you can take your customized Arno into multiplayer so you can be part of a 2 man or 4 man brotherhood, or sisterhood, or assassinhood. You can edit your head (hood), top, bottom, arms, and boots. The amount of customization is great and you can also change the color of your Assassin from royal blue to hot pink to piss yellow.
Skills is a system first introduced in Unity allowing you to raise your assassination abilities such as unlocking double assassinations or longer eagle vision because eagle vision actually comes in handy in Unity compared to the other titles.
All these skills and customization abilities all tie into the multiplayer/coop aspect of the game which was one of the most requested features to be in an Assassin's Creed game, I know I wanted it. Although the system is not perfect, it does provide a rather exciting experience of being able to voice chat and properly plan out your assassination attempts or going head in and aggroing all the enemies and dying. The coop is definitely fun but it's without its bugs. I believe the coop games run on servers because there was no reason to why any of the people I played with were lagging. We all had a chance to be the leader of the group but it all came out with the same results of lag and delayed inputs. These problems can be patched later but releasing a game with a semi broken coop mode should not be tolerated in this day and age.
This brings me to the bugs in the game. I haven't experience any of the floating eyeballs, no face bugs but I have experience clipping into buildings, camera angles messing up and all sorts of mass crowd AI issues such as pop ins, disappearing AI and in general AI being stupid and walking into walls or on random objects. This has the be the buggiest Assassin's Creed to date and I was lucky enough for the bugs to not directly affect my gameplay too much but it was annoying to see.
Overall, Assassin's Creed Unity does some elements correctly such as the bigger and better parkour/free-run systems and the ability to customize the character again but it falls short in the story mode, the issues with bugs and glitches and sometimes the combat. If there was no performance issues or bugs or glitches, this would honestly be one of the best Assassin's Creed games. Sadly, though, I finished the story in 12 hours of which extended across 12 sequences which feels very short for an Assassin's Creed game. AC2, AC3 and AC4 all had, atleast, 20 hour stories but Unity makes up for it with side missions.
7/10 - Unless you're a big Assassin's Creed fan, I suggest you skip this one until the fix the issues plaguing all the systems. If you have friends you should get it for the coop because it is fun but if you're looking for a story experience, skip it. Other than that, this is a somewhat solid entry into the franchise. Here's to hoping Ubisoft fix all the issues this game has and hopefully through quality control make the next Assassin's Creed even better.
