Such freedom! Such cities! Yeah, Assassin's Creed does allow for some pretty amazing free movement in huge medieval cities - as a matter of fact this particular aspect of the game holds up to this day. But it's also pretty much all the game has to offer and frankly it's just an upgrade to what you saw in the Prince of Persia games (all of which were MUCH better games than AC). Combat is dull and the stealth mechanics are ridiculous. Unlike what one might expect AC is not like Hitman set during the crusades, it's a parkour simulator with some combat thrown in. And that's just sad, especially since the scenario and story are pretty cool. The huge problem with AC is that it provides a huge world that has nothing to offer. There's VERY few kinds of side missions (five I think) and they are so dull that you may already get bored the first time you try one of them. Climbing a tall structure and pressing a button for a nice view really isn't that awesome, Ubisoft. Neither is stabbing the exact same enemies over and over. And neither is collecting perfectly useless flags that are scattered throughout the game world. And what's worst is that not even the story missions are special in any way. They are always structured the same way: go to a place, watch a cutscene, kill the target (usually in open combat!), watch a cutscene, run away, watch another cutscene, next chapter. And "next chapter" means repeating the exact same dull side missions before you can continue the story. It doesn't help that the combat system is extremely simplistic (despite looking pretty awesome) and every enemy is fought the *exact same way*. Ubisoft certainly learned from many of the mistakes they made in Assassin's Creed and the sequels are far less repetetive. AC2 is actually already a decent sandbox game but sadly AC1 will always remain just a tech demo with a decent story. Let's hope that eventually Ubisoft will decide to release the later and much better AC games on GOG.
