Assassin’s Creed III Remastered

Genre: Compilation / Stealth / Open-World Action-RPG

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: UbiSoft

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Assassin’s Creed Anniversary Edition Mega Bundle along with Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection and Assassin’s Creed: The Rebel Collection.)

Assassin’s Creed III Remastered is at least nominally a remastered port of two Open-World Action-RPG games with heavy Stealth elements: Assassin’s Creed III, originally released on multiple platforms in 2012, and Assassin’s Creed Liberation, originally released on the PlayStation Vita in 2012 before getting a remastered port to multiple additional platforms in 2014. The latter game is sometimes referred to elsewhere as Assassin’s Creed III Liberation as both games share some similar gameplay elements and feature a story with a focus on roughly the same part of the world during the same time period: pre-Revolution America. However, the two games follow separate characters whose stories are mostly (but not entirely) separate from one another.

This marks the second time that Assassin’s Creed III at least has found its way onto a Nintendo platform – the original release came out on the Wii U alongside other platforms. However, given the poor sales of the Wii U, many Nintendo players may not be familiar with these games. Hoo boy, where to begin… well, they are technically both modern-day science-fiction stories as well as historical fiction tales, as they take place in a version of our history where major world events have been influenced by a war between two secretive organizations, the villainous and controlling Templars and the somewhat less villainous freedom-loving Brotherhood of Assassins (no one’s hands here are very clean). In the modern day, this war has taken the form of the Templars using corporate funds and technological prowess of their front company, Abstergo, to spread their influence, making use of a technology that allows them to have people experience the past behaviors of their descendants, with the goal of exploring those memories Inception-style to try to find clues leading them to powerful artifacts of a technologically-advanced precursor race.

Are you still with me? Okay, because I’m not even halfway done.

Assassin’s Creed III is actually the fifth major entry in the franchise, and players new to this franchise will definitely be feeling this game’s placement as a very much “middle of the story” game. At the onset, you’re given a brief introduction to modern-day series protagonist Desmond Miles and his ragtag band of Assassin comrades, including his father. There are numerous references to the events of prior games, and while you can more or less get the gist of where the story here is picking up, you’ll definitely be feeling like you’re missing something if this is your first game in the series. Throughout the game, Desmond will be diving into his past as his ancestors engage in their secret war between Templars and Assassins during the events leading up to the American Revolutionary War, with players running into famous historical figures, American founding fathers, and even taking part in momentous events like the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, with the game taking place in East Coast locations like Boston and New York City, as well as miles of American wilderness between them and the seas connecting them.

Liberation, meanwhile, is fairly self-contained, and there’s an argument to be made that it may even make for a better starting point for new players. In this game, players take the role of an unnamed modern-day customer of Abstergo exploring the past-life memories of Aveline de Grandpré, the series’ first female protagonist. Her story takes place in New Orleans and the surrounding Louisiana bayou at the end of the French and Indian War, with a plot focused on Aveline working as an assassin to thwart Templar plots involving the slave trade in Louisiana.

In addition to the core games, this release also contains production and promotional art, as well as most of the original games’ DLC content (lacking only some bonus content players could get for connecting the two games, as well as no longer having Liberation’s multiplayer mode). Retailing at $40 for the two games plus all bonus content, this is a fairly decently-priced package, and there doesn’t appear to be any “Switch Tax” present here either.

However, that’s not to say that what players are getting here is the same thing other platforms got. Aside from an improvement in the games’ resolution, many have noted that there’s very little “remastered” about the Nintendo Switch version of the game. This version doesn’t feature the improved textures, lighting and shadows seen in other versions

Having said that, the improved resolution is definitely still a marked improvement over the original… in one of the two games here, at least – Assassin’s Creed III runs at a nice 1080p while docked and 720p in handheld mode. Liberation, meanwhile, only runs in 900p while docked (still 720p in handheld mode), and the lower resolution is really noticeable in the heavy aliasing that can be seen in the game’s visuals. It’s not enough to kill the experience, but it’s definitely a downgrade.

There’s another issue here though, and that’s the framerates. Assassin’s Creed III generally runs between 20 and 30FPS, which is mostly decent, but during sections where things get particularly busy, the framerates can absolutely chug to a crawl. Liberation fares a bit better in this regard, going between 20-40FPS, although that wide range does mean that Liberation is less consistent, at least barring those places where III becomes a slide show.

There are other issues here too. Both of the games in this collection suffer from a considerable amount of pop-in and texture pop-in, which is really jarring at times. In this case, it’s far more noticeable in Liberation, with characters popping in frequently in busy areas. I should note that this isn’t just the game’s stylized “simulation” elements at work here – this is the game falling behind the experience it’s trying to deliver to players.

All of this is on top of the fact that the overall visuals being delivered here feature a level of detail that doesn’t seem too far beyond what was in the original versions of these games, with some ugly character models in both games that definitely look dated. At the very least, I can say that the environmental textures in Assassin’s Creed III can be nice (after they pop in), and the character model for Aveline in Liberation looks pretty fantastic, although this is undone somewhat by poor textures in some of her outfits. Plus, some of the environments in Liberation look outright primitive, with some trees that look pretty polygonal and foliage that is noticeably flat.

To sum up the graphical presentation here, Assassin’s Creed III is a game that was born on Xbox 360/PlayStation 3-era hardware, and Liberation is a game that was born on the PlayStation Vita, and both of these games very much look like it, even if the resolutions for both are improved over the original versions.

This isn’t to say that the Nintendo Switch version of the remaster offers players nothing beyond portability in exchange for the reduced graphics compared to the other versions. This game supports HD rumble, gyroscopic aiming, and in portable mode it supports touchscreen control in menus (which doesn’t add much, but it’s still nice that it’s there).

One other note about a technical issue here before I move on – multiple times while playing Assassin’s Creed III, I encountered game crashing bugs. As you can imagine, this was extremely frustrating, and really put a damper on my enjoyment of the game.

Okay, but what about the gameplay? Well, I have to say my experience here was a mixed bag.

Let’s start with Assassin’s Creed III. This game presents players with a massive open world that is a fascinating look at what revolution-era America looked like, and intriguing story that does a good job working its original characters in with the legends of early-day America, and later in the game things open up beautifully with tons of stuff to do, including managing a growing base and its population, hunting, and sailing, with the latter being such a joy to play that it was made into a central part of Assassin’s Creed IV.

On the other hand, while much of this is thrilling, it feels like you have to put up with a lot of frustration and hassle to get to it. For starters, the controls – this is a game that generally tries to judge where you’re trying to move based on the context of the environment around you, and while sometimes this makes for a streamlined experience, often it means that the game is making you jump to a place it decided on rather than straight forward as you intended. And then there’s the fact that the button (which you can’t re-assign) for “pick up weapon”, “loot”, “grab body” and “whistle” is all the same stupid button, which makes it excruciating to try to do any of these things when another one of these potential actions decides to assert itself.

Another issue is that the first section of the game, which acts as an extremely elongated tutorial, lasts roughly 3-6 hours, depending on how much time you spend on detours and exploration. During this part of the game, there’s a wide area to explore, but not very much to do in it save for the story missions, making much of that open world wasted on this part of the game. Also, many of those best parts of the game that I mentioned above are inaccessible in these early hours of the game – the much-lauded sailing in this game, for example, doesn’t come until the tail end of that six or so hours.

The other issue here is that these story missions, while excellent in terms of building the characters and story, are absolutely terrible at giving players the same sort of freedom they enjoy in the game’s open world. Most of them are the sort of stealth missions where if you mess up once you fail the whole stupid thing and have to start over… you know, the absolute worst kind of stealth mission. In some cases, what is expected of the player isn’t entirely clear, and at other times there seems to be the illusion of multiple options for how to proceed when in fact the game expects you to do one thing and rigidly enforces it. It’s like this is an Open-World game that hates the fact that it’s an Open-World game.

Also, while I did enjoy fighting groups of enemies when they were human, battles with the game’s absurdly aggressive wolves were a huge annoyance, requiring the player to partake in limited-time “QTE” button-press challenges instead of building on the game’s combat engine.

Assassin’s Creed Liberation fares better in some ways and worse in others, and every one of these feels like a tradeoff at best. On the one hand, the tutorial section of this game is far less drawn out, making it much quicker to get into the game. On the other hand, this is largely due to the fact that much of the story and atmosphere that Assassin’s Creed III takes the effort to set up is stuff that we don’t really get at all in this game. We’re more or less learning about who Aveline is, who the people around her are, and what they’re all about as we go, and it’s a bit jarring and makes it hard to form an attachment to any of the characters when we don’t feel like we’ve gotten a proper introduction to them.

Liberation’s New Orleans location also feels like it has a delightful personality all its own compared to the Northern cities of Assassin’s Creed III, but within that location itself it doesn’t feel like it has the same level of variety within its locations. All of the swamp just felt like a swamp, and every part of New Orleans just felt like a part of New Orleans. Also, perhaps because Liberation originated on a handheld, the sense of scale here overall just feels smaller than Assassin’s Creed III.

Finally, this game does add an intriguing disguise system that allows players to swap back and forth between three different disguises at select locations, each with their own benefits – disguising as a high-class woman allows you to charm your way into situations rather than fighting, disguising as a slave allows you to go into some places without being noticed, and changing into your assassin outfit unlocks further combat abilities, and each of these disguises comes with its own wanted meter that players must reduce via different means.

However, since you’re limited to changing disguises at specific places, players will likely just pick their favorite and stick with that except where story missions require them to use a specific one (and that favorite isn’t likely to be the high-class disguise, which doesn’t allow for any player mobility beyond simply walking and running). What’s more, while this game system had a lot of potential, it’s not anywhere near as refreshing and fun as sailing in Assassin’s Creed III is.

In conclusion… wow, I think this may very well be the longest review I’ve ever written. There’s good reason why, I suppose. Assassin’s Creed III Remastered is not just one, but two massive games, and they are two games that have a lot going for them, but also have quite a lot of issues as well. Graphical issues, technical issues, gameplay issues… there is some stuff here that is an absolute joy to play, but it frequently felt that I was having to endure a lot of frustration to get to that great gameplay. And both of those elements are often at extremes too – this is a package with high highs and low lows, and while I can’t really give it an enthusiastic endorsement, I can’t very well dismiss it either. If you’re looking to add a solid Open-World game to your collection and can put up with a lot of flaws, you may very well find the joys that Assassin’s Creed III Remastered has to offer worth the hassle. Just know that this collection seems just as likely to enrage you as it is to enthrall you.

tl;dr – Assassin’s Creed III Remastered is a Compilation of Assassin’s Creed III and Assassin’s Creed Liberation that’s more of a high-resolution port of the originals than a remaster. These games have a lot to offer, but they also come with a lot of frustrations as well, with everything from poor pacing, frustrating game design, control issues, game crashes, and graphical issues, to name a few. However, for those who are patient enough to deal with all that, there are definitely some incredible moments here, such as Assassin’s Creed III’s excellent world-building and sailing.

Grade: C+

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