Assassin's Creed®: Director's Cut

I got this game on sale recently, and it was the best 6 bucks I have spent in awhile. Fun to go back and play the first one.

There are several interesting ideas in this game, but the developers didn't polish it enough to make it an enjoyable experience. So often I would end up doing not what I was supposed to do, both in travelling around and engaging in combat. Special mention goes to the utterly annoying pursuit system, which sends guards to chase you with ridiculous commitment. Doesn't help that some of the map locations and missions don't work well for how you play it. On paper this could be a great game, but in execution it's very frustrating. The story is weak, it's full of mysterious lore, but the characters are barely there. They have some interesting themes, mainly concerning assassinations and collateral damage, but it's very surface-level, barely mentions. There are filler missions that are semi-mandatory (you have to do 40% or 60% of them to proceed with the story), and those get old quick. The cities of Damascus, Acre and Jerusalem, where the majority of the game takes place, are interesting as a background and even a little bit distinct from each other, but I came out barely knowing anything about them. Nor did I learn anything about the historical conflict taking the place. For a 'historical' game, this is a failure. P.S. The game has a weird bug where it constantly connects to a defunct internet address, causing stutter every minute. You have to look up a solution to make it go away.

A little tedious, but still feel a bit of nostalgia for the "open" running this game allowed you to do. Sometimes I will just run around the different locations to see what paths I can take. Game does have a tendency to stutter on a fairly regular interval. It doesn't really harm anything other than the 3-5 seconds you have to wait for it to get past the stutter.

Its missing subtitle support, and controller support needs to be modded for windows. Along with if you have your wifi on the game stutters.

Dated, but charming. Less overstuffed than the modern games, with more conspiracy thriller elements and a story with fewer historical figures and events. Combat is clunkier, especially in the early game, but it picks up as new abilities and weapons are unlocked.