Assassin’s Creed: The Rebel Collection

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 III Remastered.)

Assassin’s Creed: The Rebel Collection is at least nominally a remastered port of two Open-World Action-RPG games with heavy Stealth elements: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, originally released on multiple platforms in 2013, and Assassin’s Creed Rogue, originally released on multiple platforms in 2014. Much as with the previous collection of Assassin’s Creed games, the two titles here share a lot of gameplay elements, but have mostly separate (though connected) stories.

This marks the second time that Assassin’s Creed IV 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. But there’s good news if you’re one of those players who have never touched this series – players new to the franchise may actually find Assassin’s Creed IV to be a great entry point for the series, as it comes after Assassin’s Creed III largely closed out a long story arc, and IV focuses almost entirely on completely new characters with new plotlines. The story of Assassin’s Creed IV is still set in the same timeline as the other games, but you needn’t have played those other games to understand it, as it does a great job introducing you to its concepts on its own. Rogue also focuses on mostly new characters, although its plot ties more into both Assassin’s Creed III and IV, acting as a connecting piece between the two. However, newer players need not have played Assassin’s Creed III to understand what’s going on here.

I’ll avoid spoiling here some stuff that players of earlier games in the series would know going into the game for the sake of those new players. The Assassin’s Creed games 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, players take the role of a nameless employee of a company called Abstergo Entertainment, a company with the technology to explore the “genetic memories” of individuals of note in this secret war for the sake of producing hyper-realistic films based on those recorded memories, although there may be more going on at Abstergo than players are at first made aware of.

The majority of Assassin’s Creed IV takes place during “the golden age of piracy”, following the story of Edward Kenway, a Caribbean pirate from a downed ship who washes up on an island with one of his attackers, a Brotherhood assassin who Kenway kills, only to discover there may be money to be made by posing as the man, unwittingly inserting himself in the middle of the ancient war between the Brotherhood of Assassins and the Templars.

The majority of Assassin’s Creed Rogue takes place roughly 40 years later, during the Seven Years War, and follows a young recruit of the Brotherhood in America named Shay Cormac, who comes to find himself at odds with the Brotherhood and must resolve to hunt down his former allies. Given the time the game takes place as well as the location, there is some crossover in this story with some of the characters from Assassin’s Creed III, though this game’s events take place before most of what happens in that game. This game also marks the return of at least one major character from Assassin’s Creed IV and refers to some events that took place during that game, so players are probably best off playing IV first.

In addition to the core games, this release also contains the original games’ DLC content. 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 of the game does feature some improved lighting and shadows over the original release, but it’s nowhere near as extensive as what other platforms received, and other improvements like foliage that reacts to your movements is not present in this version.

Having said that, I feel that the presentation of these games fares much better than the games included in Nintendo Switch’s release of Assassin’s Creed III, thanks in part due to the fact that the original games are more recent, and unlike Liberation, both games here were full console releases. However, it’s not just that – many of the graphical problems present in the Switch ports of Assassin’s Creed III and Liberation are not present in Rebel Collection, making for a game that, while not as nice-looking as what other platforms got, it still a much better-looking game than its predecessor.

Both of the games in this collection feature 1080p dynamic resolution in docked mode, with Assassin’s Creed IV dropping as low as 900p and Rogue dropping to 14672×828. In handheld mode, both games feature a 720p dynamic resolution (thanks to Digital Foundry for the numbers). This is more or less on par with what we saw in Assassin’s Creed III on the Switch, but here’s the big change: where Assassin’s Creed III suffered from horrible drops in framerates at times, both of the games in this collection feature an extremely steady 30FPS (in very rare cases dropping into the mid-to-low 20s). I cannot stress how much this improved my experience here.

Beyond the numbers, Assassin’s Creed IV is just overall a better-looking game, with better textures, environments absolutely filled with tropical foliage, and some truly gorgeous water effects. This last part really needs to be highlighted – given these games’ focus on naval combat, it adds to the experience immensely to be able to see how the rolling waves affect the battlefield, and the way light is refracted in water in shallow areas is fantastic. I won’t go as far as to say that this is the best water has looked in a videogame, but it does look damn good.

Rogue, meanwhile, is a bit of an odd one to compare here, as it sorta’ re-uses some of the locations of Assassin’s Creed III, albeit depicting them a few decades earlier, so they’re not quite the same, plus there are changes in lighting that really make things look different. Still, it’s hard to put my finger on it but something about the visuals feels cleaner… maybe it’s the use of less fog, better texture work, or better shadows… It’s hard to say exactly, but Rogue definitely looks better. Plus, once again this game uses the impressive water that was in Assassin’s Creed IV.

Both games do still have occasional issues with pop-up, though not to anywhere near the same extent as Assassin’s Creed III did. Also, there is some weird graphical glitching going on with shadows and textures viewed at a distance, most noticeably when players go to a high place to “synchronize” to add to their map – at these points, Assassin’s Creed IV looks outright ugly on the Nintendo Switch. However, these are brief moments of ugliness in a pair of games that overall look much, much better than Assassin’s Creed III. There’s also the issues with aliasing present here, far more noticeable in Rogue, although you do get used to it before long.

Oh yeah, and unlike Assassin’s Creed III, I didn’t encounter any game-crashing bugs while playing this collection, though I did once encounter a bug while playing Assassin’s Creed IV where the “blurring” effect used in win screens continued into the gameplay, but I’ll stress that this only happened once, and stopped when I transitioned to a different area.

To sum up the graphical presentation here, both Assassin’s Creed IV and Rogue still feature a presentation that is less of a “remaster” than an enhanced version of the original games, so it’s not as nice as what you’ll see on other platforms. However, these are more recent games that look better, and don’t suffer the same graphical problems that plagued the Assassin’s Creed III release on Switch.

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, mostly just in menus (which doesn’t add much, but it’s still nice that it’s there).

Okay, but what about the gameplay? Well, where I had mixed feelings about the games in the Assassin’s Creed III collection, this time around I had a much, much better experience.

Assassin’s Creed IV may very well be the best pirate videogame I have ever played. The Han Solo-esque lovable rogue Edward Kenway is just the right mix of likable and despicable, the story is a swashbuckling tale worthy of the genre, and the setting and tone absolutely revels in piratey imagery, but the real joy here is that this time the gameplay feels in sync with that freedom-loving spirit. When in one of the game’s towns, players run around and perform free-running acrobatics and assassinations as per the series norm (though this time the controls feel much better, though not without their occasional hiccups), but players are quickly introduced to the world of high seas piracy, and that brings a whole new element to the game.

Where I felt that Assassin’s Creed III was ashamed of its open-world nature, IV absolutely embraces it, giving players a massive area of open ocean to explore, islands to discover, and plenty to do within that world. Players can scout islands for treasure or hunt animals for resources, they can fight and capture enemy vessels, something this game greatly expands on over what was seen in Assassin’s Creed III. They can raid enemy territory to plunder resources, they can pick a fight with numerous seaside forts, they can even manage their captured fleet of ships to sell off their plunder on charted trade routes, a sim-like element of this game that feels a lot less clunky and confusing than Assassin’s Creed III’s ledgers.

I’m a little less enthusiastic about Assassin’s Creed Rogue, in part because it borrows the majority of what it does from Assassin’s Creed IV, with strong elements of Assassin’s Creed III. In doing so it not only fails to do much to innovate, it also struggles somewhat to have an identity of its own. The gameplay is still the same sort of stuff players were doing in IV, but without the piratey theme, many of the elements here feel forced, like the game’s designers were struggling to try and find a way to make stuff like treasure maps and plundering booty work in a game that isn’t about pirates. However, if you enjoyed the gameplay of Assassin’s Creed IV, you’re likely to enjoy this game as well, and those who played both Assassin’s Creed III and IV will undoubtedly enjoy the way Rogue ties into both of those stories and casts their characters in a new light.

In the end, I was honestly not prepared for how much more I would like this collection over the previous Assassin’s Creed collection on the Nintendo Switch. This is simply a pair of better games in a much better port, but even more than that, Assassin’s Creed IV specifically is an absolute joy of piratey goodness, and while both Assassin’s Creed IV and Rogue may not be quite up to the level of quality seen in the versions of these games brought to other platforms, it is nevertheless still every bit an incredible Open-World Action-RPG Stealth-based game that deserves a spot in every player’s collection, and for those whose primary game platform is the Nintendo Switch, it also makes for a great entry point into the series.

tl;dr – Assassin’s Creed: The Rebel Collection is a compilation of improved ports of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and Assassin’s Creed Rogue, although not quite as improved as the versions of these games other platforms got. Still, these games are both solid ports that largely lack the flaws the Nintendo Switch port of Assassin’s Creed III had, and they’re better games too, with Assassin’s Creed IV in particular being an absolute joy of a swashbuckling tale that remains not only one of the highlights of the entire franchise, but also a great entry point for newcomers to the series. This is an absolute must-own collection of games, and the Nintendo Switch version is an excellent version of the game.

Grade: A-

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