Assassin's Creed Origins
After a year of break AC is back. And this time we are going back way back in the past, into Egypt.
Agains public opinion I quite liked AC Unity & Sydicate which I thought was both good games; even throught they were not exceptional. Syndicate was better with both twins being more fun while Unity was quite dull.
But well compared to Black Flag, both remained unexceptional games. The main issue with both games was the story and the repetitive side quests. Black flag offered more diversity as the map represented a bigger area; but both Unity & Syndicate were in a single City and suffered immensively by repetitiveness.
The one year gap I think was needed for the Studios to see again their model. And meanwhile one of the best RPG's of all time came out as well. The Witcher 3 did nearly everything right. With a huge very, divers map, it's relatively unrealistic but beautiful graphics, fascinating secondary quest and most importantly over the top main story. They did it all right; ontop of that the Wine & Blood DLC...
The game was praised by everyone as one of the best games ever.
Ubisoft seems to have learned from their mistakes with Unity and Syndicate. They put in place a huge map with a lot of diversity; I believe bigger then the one in the witcher 3. Graphics are the best I have played with. The colors have this unrealness from the witcher that makes everything you look at betifull. The distances in the game it's incredible. From Alexendria you can see the pyrimids of Gize and even beyond.
The game also have very good side quests and a very good story line. Even if The Witcher is no match to the graphics of AC, the scenario of the side quests and of the main mission of AC are in no way near the level of the Witcher(which is exceptional) but are way above avarage, and very enjoyable
Whatever it was playing the main quest or secodary quests I never got bored in the game. When my level was to low for the main quest I was disappointed from not seing the end but I went into my list of side quests without hesitation.
Just to be on the same line; when it comes to being a RPG the witcher wasn't perfect, AC is quite the same even more. The level-up process is very well designed but the crafting is quite basic compared to the Witcher or other RPG games. This is actually something I quite like in this kind of Open World games that are not real RPG because the persons you play are not made by you anyway; they are who they are. So it's logical for them not to be to flexible.
Gameplay wise the whole parcour and climbing is like the the previous versions of the game. The combat mechanics have been slightly changed. My favorite improvement is the bow. This is the first AC where I actually systematically use one of the long range weapons. Theye re multiple different bows in the game for differet use cases. The predator bows allows you to "snipe" your ennemies from a far.
Senu the pet eagle of are majieh is also quite nice addition to the game. Senu is like a drone without distant limit or battery.
The onlly issue I really had with this game is sound. Sadly I found that the audio quality wasn't there. Sometimes I could hear Bayek breath other time he ran in complete silence. It wasn't disturbing le bad but noticiable. Music in the game are a complete fail as well. Again quite often there was no music but then there was moments with an dynamic music as if something is about to happen, but nothing does. Globally sound was not a sucess at all. (This has improved immensily since I wrote the artice)
Beside the sound issues I very much enjoyed this game from start to end. I didn't mind having my CPU running at 100% (I now know that my computer doesen't overheat). But I can understand people running it on laptops or straming not appriciating it.
That's is for this game review, a very good game that brings back the franchise.