Assassin's Creed | Complete DLC Ranking

[Music] at this point expansions are an Assassin's Creed staple some are so expensive so good that they eclipse the games that they belong to and others arguably are the inverse blemishes on otherwise well-liked games and since this Series has such an interesting history with the LC I thought I'd rank all 16 Mainline expansions and it should go without saying that this is the personal opinion of another [ __ ] with a microphone and that's exactly how you're gonna have to truth it because there are some Oddball placements in here that you're just gonna have to hear me out anyway enough Preamble here's the list the dawn of Ragnarok is a groundbreaking expansion in a few weeks it was the first to be excluded from a season pass in this series the first expansion I've ever played to boast a 40 price point and this was also the first use of the Ubisoft original branding in this series which would be endearing or not for the hair the price of admission the reason this is way back here is because this expansion is almost completely unremarkable the next few spots on this list are also pretty rough but at least there's stuff to laugh at to be mad about talk about there's something to salvage there as opposed to this emotionless list of tasks that is probably best played catching up on podcasts or something if you are going to play it that is despite being the most audaciously priced expansion in the series it is the least additive I can wail on odyssey's expansions all day and I will in five minutes time but at least with those there was an attempt to meaningfully expand which in my eyes is what an expansion should do very broadly speaking valhalla's DLCs are meant to be playable at pretty much any point after arriving in England and so none of them can have a lasting effect on the main game's characters or world aval can't experience any significant change and so this like valhalla's other two expansions is insula it's a completely detached story with Odin or Odin's aval however you want to phrase it just representation of what Odin did in his lifetime because they can't touch that stuff and I don't think an expansion needs to play directly into the main story and the protagonist but it has to expand on something which is possible even under such strange circumstances Freedom Cry although it takes place after Black Flag following a different character it's able to do this it adds depth to a central character in the main game recontextualizing some important scenes through a story that gives way for new takes on Old gameplay it's singular sure but you can't deny that it's expansive to that main game in ways that dawn of Ragnarok simply isn't the main story can't really be expanded upon directly nor is there any attempt to re-contextualize anything but in terms of mechanics there is one real addition which is the Huger this power wheel you can harness ice fire flight and rebirth which basically allows you to resurrect and enemies as allies you know me I don't enjoy Fantastical stuff in these games and I'll avoid it where possible but some of this stuff does have a use and on one occasion it is even integrated into this story which is something that I always like most of the time though Huga isn't used interestingly it's typically the means to bypass the same boring roadblocks although it is something in the way of an addition and I do want to be fair to go back to story because I guess that's worth looking at as its own thing it's not good there isn't a beginning nor end to it and I'm not saying that as some snarky riddle dawn of Ragnarok is the middle 70 of a story you dropped into this quest to find your captured Sun Boulder mid dialogue well after Harvey's discovered that he's been kidnapped and this wouldn't be so bad if maybe there were some flashbacks to flesh out Boulder and his relationship with Javi or maybe if Harvey's relationship with Boulder's mother has explored this woman you're expected to care about when she dies five minutes in you as a player and never really given reason to emotionally invest in the main quest of the expansion it's never properly established and Harvey isn't sympathetic in the least it's amateurishly sloppy and points to a story cut short I really do think that this expansion was released purely to capitalize on the AC brand in a year when no big content was lined up and so I speculate that this was kind of spun up reusing and repurposing lots of existing assets without pulling too many resources and heads from the many many projects Ubisoft are currently developer I do feel like cash grab is a term often applied to stuff that is just bad but this is a case where it genuinely applies and that is most blatant in the story which just ends after you kill the final boss you kill a big fire thing for what feels like the hundredth time and that's it the credits roll after this I'm serious if this doesn't seem stupid to you let me demonstrate just how insanely unsatisfying this is foreign [Music] the lack of any falling action or even attempt at conclusion is detrimental to this and any story without meaningful resolution a story feels like a series of only somewhat connective ideas and events with no relation no point no complete unifying body it's almost like if there was a point to this it wasn't to craft a satisfying narrative but to oh although there was one moment where I found myself becoming kind of interested in the story Harvey finds out that his son is dead and is ready to just give up and die in his single really human moment in this expansion it's visually interesting too and then a character he had a rushed sparkless relationship with is killed and he reverts to being really mad again just the same person he was for the entire DLC and that's depicted as a good thing this moment of Triumph and that flicker of humanity is never addressed or alleviated at all because again the expansion simply doesn't conclude it all just feels so sloppy like at the beginning of each chapter there's these quote screens that pop up that had no reason not to be Saints and they just don't fade away or into cutscene you have to skip them like cutscenes or else they play indefinitely even getting past a clumsy story and a lack of Polish there isn't really anything to pick up that slack the world and Quest design are so boring there's nothing to do it's just caves and Bandit camps there are no areas of density and traversal is not even an afterthought here's a Viewpoint it took over two minutes to climb with no interesting obstacles or alternative routes you just kind of dropped into this big empty Vertical World and are immediately tasked with finding shelters and Gathering silica it's not even the worst of Valhalla it's much worse than that it's the very most banal of Odyssey this branding of the most ambitious expansion in AC history is frankly insane an expansion that is not just the most ambitious supposedly but also the most expensive in this series should justify that boldness with Polish cohesion and genuinely meaningful expansion in story and gameplay all are absent here in fact as far as ambition goes 14 of the 15 other expansions on this list have it beat this is meant to be a representation of some of the events preceding the Toba catastrophe but this filter of Norse mythology is so thick that it's a nightmare figuring out what translates to what I wouldn't mind vagueness and use of analogy if this Fantastical metaphor felt like actual metaphor within tension instead it feels like the sole focus of the expansion Justified later with reference and comparison to ISU things we know it just feels like cheap bait for God of War fans the current popular thing and with a completely empty boring map and two-thirds of a story that lays out several inconsistencies with the main game Ragnarok ends up feeling like an unfinished product which for the price tag is not ideal this is the worst Assassin's Creed DLC and I hope for the good of this franchise that it stays that way face of Atlantis is a mess this DLC is the connective tissue between the end of Cassandra or mistios I recorded this on an alexios playthrough so we'll just say miss the oath for the sake of visual consistency anyway it connects the end of their story in the main game of Odyssey and the end of the present day where Layla is given the staff of Hermes to send her off to be the heir of memories it's alethia teaching mistios hail to wield the staff holding her Consciousness so that she can get it to Layla now the way that she teaches Misty ice to wield the staff is by creating simulations a premise that is taken to the most bizarre yet boring of places to impart learning on mystios alethea has them ticking boxes in Bandit camps and politicking with transparent manipulative leaders which it surely isn't a learning experience to a person who at this point has to be a Bobby Fischer level Talent at doing exactly those things this whole framing device of a simulation built to teach just makes odyssey's tiring repetitive game design even more conspicuous when not only is it devoid of fun or certainly novelty but you can't even reverse engineer some kind of purpose to this laundry list of tasks as you can in other expansions it's largely what you've come to expect from Odyssey killing nameless leaders destroying supplies and once again the fantasy is sacrificed for the formula I can see this otherwise very pretty world for exactly what it is a space that serves as nothing more than a vacuous Zone built for busy work the same of course going for every character and questline and the fact that this is simulation consistently undercuts the desired weight of this story We and mistios are told time and time again that the events that we're seeing aren't real yet they're conveyed as if they are Leonidas and Phoebe [ __ ] and they are treated with complete seriousness it's not like mistios is just kind of taken aback or reminded of a tragic they seemingly completely believe this the weight of the simulation is given and taken at the writer's convenience and the player's inconvenience there's a lack of consistency here that never ceases to frustrate it's virtually impossible to get and keep your bearings it's very clearly just a contrived reason to play with Greek mythology and like the implementation of a lot of Mythology in this sort of Trilogy the issue we used as a justification demystifying them and telling their stories with this aesthetic that is incredibly far removed from their core appeal it's all to make these events more digestible to mistios elithia has kind of translated these ISU into Greek gods and myths which is the focus here but unfortunately even that isn't consistent for example Minerva is referred to as Minerva which was just one of several names that she had that she gave to Ezio and by extension us as players because Minerva is the Italian or the Roman interpreter station of her now her direct Greek equivalent is Athena risk was confirmed in the last ascendants over a year before this DLC was released once again mistios is just a player Avatar with none of the benefits that come with that style of protagonist this inconsistency doesn't matter to them because all nothing does they accept the bazaness of all of this with a sociopathic nonchalant it's really sloppy in the Integrity of the ESU comes second to all of the other [ __ ] this really foundational Central law is managed with so little care and without any of the attention to detail or the respect of rules that used to make Assassin's Creed feel almost plausible and the universe so rich The Sixth Sense the ISU ability to perceive time and possibilities is made into something that can be studied and learned by ostensibly a human and this isn't explored whatsoever it's just an excuse to incorporate another collectible to pad out an already mercilessly long expansion which pretty much summarizes why I don't like the handling of any of the ESU stuff here you have this really interesting Concept in a mostly human hybrid learning to use the Sixth Sense sort of like what was planned with Desmond and instead of exploring that it's a mere justification for yet another soul-crushing checklist alethia's entire manufactured series of events is never explored either it's a surface level excuse to have you go do epic [ __ ] with this flashy coat of paint this manufactured history is never held to scrutiny or even questioned maybe alethia would sway history her way and we'd see some biases in play but she has no reason to even depict this history nor attempt to manipulate mistios or Layla because they are completely on board from the get-go way too on board mistios has complete trust in alethia that this is worth his time and that he isn't being [ __ ] over for absolutely no reason conceptually I love the answer Esther being a conduit and connecting ISU to ancestor to descendant but when that Central Link has no personal investment or expressed understanding or misunderstanding of the weight of this role or conflict around it just apathy it doesn't work Ezio's role as a messenger was so fantastic because while he never really has complete Clarity it lingers with him for decades there's a sense of Duty he has in being Prophet that burns him and pushes him ever forward well into his Twilight years and it contributes to the greatest payoff in any game I've ever played whereas Cassandra alexios they aren't characters they're without defined characteristics this conduit role is without any real weight this concept is the only thing that I really like about the DLC and it never had a chance of working even if you make mistiosa character the more I guess experimental ideas are held back by odyssey's very nature the game can't even convey a one-on-one conversation convincingly for example there's this one scene that conceptually I really like It suffers considerably for its animation it's an air of memories when Layla's reliving the memories of demos or suffering from the bleeding effect as mistios she's now torturing a person that the latter saw as an ally and is struggling to stay synchronized because she too renders this person as an ally on paper this was the strongest the modern day had been in a good while but then it looks like this and is written and performed very awkwardly it's also just dropped as soon as it happens I take issue with a lot of odyssey's dialogue animations but the fact that they're applied to alethia in a simulation of the real her as she moves her hands around in the same way a merchant or pirate or any MPC would it really doesn't help this problem of the ISU being completely detached from what we understand the ISU to be there's no eccentricity or uncanniness they are well and truly demystified in this expansion even the dialogue just sucks everyone's swearing all the time like it's it's lame in the main game sure but it's ramped up here to Shadow the Hedgehog teenage fan fiction levels I didn't bow to your wife and I won't bow to you [ __ ] ing when every character is doing this or philosophizing like a 14 year old who's made the unfortunate mistake of stumbling Upon Our slash stoicism you have to laugh at it if you're gonna play it you can't take it seriously I'd I'd been awake for two days playing this and by the end I was just [ __ ] slumped in my chair giggling like a [ __ ] and it was almost fun but I do want to discuss some of the more decent stuff in this expansion it's not at the very bottom for a reason and to say that it's all terrible would be uncharitable some efforts are made to make these Realms feel like a part of this unreal simulation like the now almost dreamlike jingle when you activate a Viewpoint I think that's neat I like that combat has a bit of a different surreal Dynamic with this Stone archetype that targets adrenaline basically forcing you to be more conservative although by the end game of Fate you're given so many skill points you can kind of abuse them and that power dynamic levels by back out which is like so annoying having power withheld from you constantly to inflate the game's run time and then having it gifted to you in excess when you don't really need it anymore and it's to the game's detriment as I touched on earlier the three Realms in this expansion are rather pretty or two of them are and that's not to say that I hold it against the Underworld for not being a holiday destination each World feels very distinct and aesthetic and they all have their own Viewpoint Jingles the one in Elysium specifically is quite nice my issues with the world are in verticality and substance and unfortunately the lack of the latter completely eclipses whatever Beauty there is in terms of verticality the structures in each realm are so tall and smooth that these teleport pads are introduced which is such a boring way of navigating a single space necessitating a rope launcher was bad sure but literal teleportation around one space or structure speaks to a complete disregard for interesting movement in a series where interesting movement is absolutely Paramount in terms of substance there's not really any replaying all of these expansions for this video I wanted to get the full breadth of each and to give each of them their Fair Shake even those I don't really enjoy playing and I can safely say that there is nothing here the vast majority of significant locations or landmarks are directly tied to the story and there's nothing to really discover Yourself by the time you complete the main story you don't feel this push to go out into the world and discover which I feel is very important for an RPG and fight continues to fail at being the kind of RPG that Odyssey was trying to be one of complete agency once again you have none this became blatantly clear in the first episode set in Elysium the big artificial Choice here is between adonis's rebellion and the reign of Persephone the thing is you're required to do Quests for both parties where you basically [ __ ] with the other it's obvious you're playing both sides and there's never a point where there's any conflict over this or a cutting off of one of those quest lines because if there's anything Odyssey needed it was more content in all of my choices I tried to make it abundantly clear that I was sympathetic to the rebellion and was as insulting as it was possible to be to Hermes and he didn't care he patiently waited until the third act bell rang to begin being upset with me this approach to Choice makes Not only mistiosa's lack of character and your lack of genuine agency more apparent it makes these characters and their conflict feel completely contrived and insincere this is choice at its very most benign and ruinous the modern day of this DLC because this DLC does have a modern day is bad the worst the modern day has ever been and it has been very bad I don't know how I'm expected to sympathize with Layla when not only is she unlikable at every turn but uncharacteristically stupid to the convenience of a Bad plot Layla is established as a character who is very well versed she's always rattling off facts about whatever mission is at hand and here it's effectively retcon that she knows anything about the ISU pieces of Eden or basic human communication as she is repeatedly manipulated by an ISU like that is their signature [ __ ] move man that is that is their only move and still Layla just does her bidding without really considering ulterior motive it's all so contrived like Layla's conflict with Victoria escalates so inorganically there's this scene where Victorious scolds Layla for killing an abstergo death squad who moments ago were doing their job as a death squad and literally a minute later they're talking like Marvel characters oh I'll never get used to that she comes out of nowhere glad you're back that even you didn't see that abstagram bush coming alethia not exactly but as long as they're gone and you're ready your journey with the stuff continues after that Cliffhanger in the pit of Elysium you bet I'm ready I have to see what happens next just constantly undermining the white of these very grave events Even otso Berg is made completely gullible as his new fat to Greek head makes its first and final appearance and this is truly a fine addition to the Berg Pantheon that we've got going on the playing this just made me incredibly sad that we never saw angloberg in AC Valhalla because that's the that's the coolest funniest one just 40 body fat nicotine stained teeth and Norwood 4 on the balding scale I really dislike how Even otso Berg isn't immune to this Mass dumbing down this master strategist this unbelievable fighter takes on Layla with a stick and and gets leveled while spouting some of the most typical villain dialogue can see believable everything is just kind of uncanny it's almost like peering into an alternate universe where the icons and the Staples of AC remain but the original vision for this series was fundamentally different the bleeding effect is Warped into something inconsistent with its past and current self there's choices not just in the Animus but in the modern day for some reason the ISU lack any sense of heightened intellect or eccentricity they're very dull fate of Atlantis does kind of seal Odyssey is a worst case scenario Assassin's Creed and for that I hold it in a fairly poor regard Legacy of the first blade is a rough one it's very concept is pretty shaky the expansion sees missed the ice meeting the legendary Darius who was introduced in Assassin's Creed 2. he's one of the six legendary assassins of such caliber and importance to the Brotherhood that his statue stands beside altairs in the sanctuary Darius was the first recorded user of the hidden blade using it to kill the Persian King Xerxes he was an imperative part of the brotherhood's Mythos until 2017 when he and half of these people suddenly weren't because the hidden ones were founded more than 50 percent of the way through recorded history these are now proto-assassins the Creed's rituals their ideology it all originates from bayak and Aya who have no connection to altani Yu or Darius discounting what is basically lip service okay fine it's not fine but fine so what is the right way to deal with Darius do you retcon the retcon making for the completely lateral move or do you accept that Darius can't really be an assassin without devaluing the origins of the actual brother Legacy doesn't exactly do either because Darius in a fair few ways is an assassin a cloaked stealthy man who uses a hidden blade to ensure Freedom with his covert group of Freedom Fighters they also have a hidden Bureau by the way and it's difficult to argue that he's just a Proto assassin when on top of all of that he's doing the leap of faith something that has always had serious meaning but was made deeply personal to bayak the game before so not only is the establishment of the Hidden ones made emptier when they basically already existed but their Foundation is made less personal because the leap of faith is no longer this unique family tradition that bayek wanted to pass on to his son it's just a jump apparently this situation isn't good as you can probably tell from the rather passive aggressive opening of this segment I dislike the foundation of the Hidden ones on a number of levels I think that it's bad enough that it Ripples and hurts several other games succeeding it and eventually preceding it if you choose to take it into account and the retconning of the proto-assassins is arguably its worst offense it's this choice that invalidates some of the earliest most important Assassin's Creed lore told to us because Darius were you and iltani are irrelevant to the formation of the Hidden ones bayek uses darius's hidden blade Without Really questioning who or where it came from and their traditions and ideals are established independently now I really like the idea of proto-assassins and Templars the series is better for their introduction in Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel but solidifying these characters as being Central to the series Mythos in not just games but object active encyclopedias and then just retconning them into redundancy years later it's the kind of attitude towards law and narrative consistency that feels like it punishes long-term investment instead of rewarding it it's one of my least favorite creative decisions in this series so Darius being ostensibly an assassin is a bad thing it devalued the then new origins of the Brotherhood but it absolutely shouldn't be a bad thing I dislike the framework that makes that so but I also dislike how he's used and wasted in this expansion independent from Origins the entirety of Legacy feels like a clumsy attempt to make Odyssey more significant by connecting it to Origins most awkwardly with the reveal that Aya is a descendant of Cassandra an idea that fails itself and its very conception that is executed very very poorly this is something that could never work because for Odyssey to truly prioritize Choice as advertised and told to you in game the player would have a saying decisions as significant as marriage and Parenthood if you wanted your mistios not to have relationships or if you wanted them to be gay or if you weren't swooning for Greek NBC 107 you would find your supposed agency violated yet again this expansion evidence is just how impractical odyssey's one foot in one foot out approach to choice is any attempt to make the protagonist more than an apathetic Avatar means that narrative just collapses in on itself and boy does this thing collapse like it or not miss the ice forms a relationship with darius's child nekates who in a world of Warriors Scholars and degenerates feels like a bafflingly boring choice and there's just no chemistry there anyway the child Cassandra has with nakitas is as it turns out an ancestor of Aya an insane choice that serves no purpose Beyond senseless fan service that doesn't even track the Apple has no reaction to Aya despite her having what would be a high concentration of ISU DNA it's one of those Disney Universe style connections that makes this expansive World feel smaller as opposed to deeper because this Revelation means that Aya is a descendant of not just Cassandra but Darius Pythagoras and Leonidas and I would be happy to give a coincidence like that some slack if it actually served the narrative but neither of these characters benefit from this link if the point was that Cassandra did indeed further the bloodline don't use a character who apparently doesn't have a significant amount of fursive DNA anytime that I play Origins this completely slips my mind because it doesn't really contextualize this story or character in any meaningful way like what was the point of this it's not like I inherited the blade Cleopatra just had it the name Legacy of the first blade would suggest that the expansion is at least in part about the blade which is given no backstory or new law Darius just has it because well he's Darius he's supposed to despite featuring a lot of Assassin's Creed things and people Legacy doesn't expand or add to anything really no amount of flubbed iconography is going to give this story a point in fact mistio seemingly just forgets any of this happened like the second the credits roll I don't think it's ever as insane or confusing as fate of Atlantis but the writing ear is seriously some of the least engaging in this series there's not a believable relationship in the entire DLC in place of character building everyone speaks in cliche and platitudes similarly to last Maharaja every character is animated so strangely that even if the dialogue did feel human a character's General expression would Telegraph something completely alien you what are you doing here there's so much I want to say so many things please [Laughter] [Music] I don't have a whole lot more to say on this one because it does share a lot of Atlantis issues that I covered fairly extensively but in any case I'd Place Legacy of the first blade near to the bottom this sounds mean but the last Maharaja is the single most unremarkable piece of Assassin's Creed content sure odyssey's DLCs are a swing and a miss in this case the batter got too [ __ ] up the night before the game and slept through the Innings this is brutally skippable there is there is never even a moment that Maharaja really tries to hook you into its story which is a half-assed conflict existing only to repackage a bunch of missions you've already played for a few dollars more and I really do mean that this is Assassin's Creed Syndicate greatest hits with the dull Carriage chase the train defense the ambush in there I'm I'm being a [ __ ] but I'm right the expansion starts with us meeting Julie Singh where we get some of the most stilted dialogue and animations this Series has to offer I mean look at this calm Thomas this isn't enough of a challenge let's shorten the timer but I could not resist the chance of seeing you again it's been far too long I've heard nobody throws a party better than my dearest friend serious matter it was most likely just an echo leave it be now [Music] you're still here about that second shot I don't know that there's a single Exchange in here that doesn't feel completely inorganic which doesn't help when Singh Is enlisting you on a mission you already have no reason to care about the entire thing is about Singh's displacement as India's Maharaja but the expansion does absolutely nothing to make you care about jalip or the fate of India this entire story is without Stakes a good example of how to make a player care about a story like this is the Patsy conspiracy which holds white because time is spent establishing Florence as Ezio's home it's warm and the music is quite it feels homely it's important to him and by extension us early on in the game we see Lorenzo standing up for Florence against uberto he is a much favorable alternative to the scheming Templars by the time of his assassination attempt Stakes have been established Florence will suffer at the hands of the Patty who are very personal enemies and so I feel encouraged to thwart this assassination and to save my city etzion those share some really great moments and I want to help him this is an arc with motivation and gravity and none of that is understood or attempted by Maharaja which just lazily thrust you in the direction of two hours of regurgitated slop I'm sorry but I feel bored even talking about it you know for the first half of this DLC I assumed you could play these missions as Jacob or Evie purely because none of the dialogue being spoken at me was at all personal all of it was expositional or instructional with zero subtext or emotion I was at a complete loss starting a memory that forced me to be Jacob because I just spent a lot of time with Henry as Evie these two characters have a supposed romantic interest in the other yet the dialogue was so flat and impersonal I genuinely believed I could have been playing as her brother it's astounding that a two-hour DLC somehow drags this much because Maharaja is Tiny and somehow Quebec still managed to under deliver with such divining competence that I almost admire the existence of a product so impossibly lifeless I don't know how you make a mere two hours of content so so boring or I will wants this sleep deprived rambling session is is wrapped up and out the door this is maybe the driest 120 minutes I've spent in a futile attempt to have fun the the meaning of which I have since forgotten even challenge basic resistance is something you're deprived of with the excessively long timers the charitable Ally health bars and the Fast and Furious slo-mo that gives you a safety margin fit for an infant I know that because I an infant flubbed this shot twice somehow and wasn't punished for it and I think that the real Joy of last Maharaja does come from that awkwardness here's a few favorites of mine foreign good you can't get away that easily Thief may this not be the end of our adventures together no let's not end this partnership just yet we can only move forward from here good day it's not here the story itself wraps up so prematurely and inconclusively I open my map afterwards to check for the next mission Julie just kind of discontinued service with the assassins and gives a brief Hollow speech about India its leadership and himself worthless when none of those three are prescribed meaning to the player when that's the first thing the story should have done we're missing all of the context and characterization that makes something like the Patsy conspiracy compelling even Jacob is just not there while this is happening and for once I empathize with this character he might be left wondering why this isn't at the very bottom as I've had nothing good to say about it unlike dawn of Ragnarok or some of the concepts in fight this is here not by virtue of quality but by virtue of being much less offensive in its poor quality it's it's never hitting fate levels of inadequacy and maybe that's an indictment in itself that it's so mundane it deprives itself of the possibility of being memorable really bad which in some way might make it the worst anyway that's enough like gamer philosophy you know a thing is dull when instead of talking about it you'd sooner philosophize around it it's rough it's the one that I find to be characterized by boredom the very most which is the very worst thing to associate with a bad product disengagement Maharaja almost gives me a sense of begrudging respect for odyssey's dl6 which while having huge stretches of monotony will sometimes have me screaming or laughing psychotically at my monitor depending on which stage of the grieving process I mean but yeah you get the idea to be totally transparent I was never really expecting a lot of valhalla's first DLC what I hoped for going into this was basically just one of the better arcs from valhalla's Main game with enough substance and uniqueness to justify existing as its own thing and in some ways that is what this is and in other frustrating ways that's what this isn't if there's one thing that Valhalla needed that Abel needed it wasn't yet another Arc centered around doing murderous odd jobs for another king only without Odin or any kind of character growth there is nothing here that adds to Abel's character or the overarching story no modern day development no interesting spin on any gameplay system in the main game or anything it's a DLC that's safe to the point of boredom we can say what you like about Tyranny of King Washington or lost archive if that's not your thing at least those expansions did something a little audacious and different in regard to story and play to justify their respective price Stacks even this story doesn't feel new you're going back through the same motions you were so many times in the main game to the point where these characters don't feel like characters but recurring archetypes the would-being leader their transparent turncoat and the old comrade who serves as nothing more than a shaky motive to justify the ark's existence there's multiple story beats that had me feeling Deja Vu from the minute Kira mentions that she was a druid you know exactly where the story is going and how it's going to end if you fed an AI the main game and asked it for another Arc this is what it would spit back out at you I like plenty of the arcs from the main game in fact I really like a few of them but even the weaker ones the arcs that are often written off as filler for the most part felt as if they had some thematic significance contributing at least moderately to Evil's ongoing internal conflict at the very worst there was usually still a discernible point but when this Side Story exists almost outside of time with nothing to say about the characters or the world it just feels tiring there's nothing to push me through that fatigue I tried I really did try to get immersed and to enjoy this new story for what it is but this story very quickly begins to feel like a mere framework to take you from Bandit Camp to Bandit Camp I really couldn't grasp any investment in it Evil's main goal in this expansion is to secure Island under flanchina's rule in order to secure trade with the country and because of the way this game is structured you're not going to see that difference in gameplay or story because again you're able to play The Arc at almost any time it doesn't matter whether you have that trade relationship or not and the King that you intend to empower truly could be anybody it's never explained what he believes in if his rule would be better or worse for the people that he would rule over and the other kings that you win over bar two aren't given names or faces let alone any distinct think motive or reason for working or not working with flanchester they are just a reason to throw filler at you you clear Bandit camps or steal non-descript jewels for them you need to complete six of these at a minimum if you want to complete the expansion it's a shame that for the last few years DLCs have seemingly been built around a very rigid structure in which the story comes last and this story specifically suffers for that for all of these detours that serve no purpose that only exist to pad this thing out in the main game there's a few arcs that suffer for being condensed into these relatively short stories certain plot points end up feeling as if they've been rushed to their conclusions or maybe a key character's motivations end up feeling underdeveloped and here I really did expect the largest scale to Aid the story to forego those issues but instead of spending extra time developing these characters in these groups and building investment you're just thrown quest after quest of the same unmotivated filler content any investment just kind of hemorrhages as more and more time is spent doing just [ __ ] you become so bored and detached that in a moment like the death of barath you don't feel the intended gut punch you can't feel it because you've been spending so much time steering non-descript Jewels for a non-descript Bandits instead of giving us more of bharath or more of sigtherith so that his eventual coronation is king of Dublin means something more in terms of other narrative goings on there's obviously the climax where Kira uses the Leah fall which has sort of similar effects to the Apple it controls minds and in-game play there's those weird AOE attacks my problem with the Leo fall isn't a logistic one it's that it's just sort of this Shameless excuse for an epic boss battle an older game or [ __ ] it this one would question why it was there who built it and why it can only be used by the women of Kira's bloodline the DLC establishes a series of questions that I did have interested in that aren't answered nor even touched upon because I don't need answers but it would be much better for Unique AC law to be prioritized and thoughtfully integrated into the story here it serves as a loose rationalization of yet another boss fight in terms of some things that I did like because this is far from being the worst DLC I thought the trading system was okay I am a big fan of those sorts of micromanagement elements in AC so that was cool although I do wish it was a bit more grounded in the world in story what made montrezoni so fantastic was that you could observe and feel the fruits of your labor and not just visually watching the town grow and become less derelict but also in a more material way unlocking the minds and the well for you to explore or earning discounts from local shops whereas with this trading system everything is concentrated within this menu with the only real tangible rewards being I think two outfits and some tattoo even Dublin leveling up its Renown is only effective to the trading menu which makes it feel totally insular and kind of pointless I think it would have been nice if the system was connected to ravenstorpe too that's probably my biggest issue with Wrath Of The Druids there's a total lack of integration with the main game it doesn't add anything to Abel's journey in fact it's completely parallel to it it doesn't recontextualize anything from any of the main arcs I realize that you can't reference certain events without throwing ubisoft's a whole insistence on you know weird pseudo non-linearity out of whack but adhering to it so rigidly deprives this DLC of any narrative purpose the final product just feels like a bit of a waste of time that is often regressive of the main game you no longer have stranger events which while kind of flawed did add this element of the unexpected that steered away from formula and really it's formula that this expansion is burdened with you don't have confessions anymore which really so looks because they're very good in Valhalla the zealots are basically a tertiary background part of the order that could have just been a bunch of soulless red shirts meant to make a long list longer but their confessions don't just serve to make them a bit more individual it also fleshes out the order in this particular era which makes them so much more than just a list of bosses I would say that the zealots and their confessions strengthen Alfred's final cut scene or penultimate cutscene and also his last two letters so then when you take confessions away from The Druids none of them besides those two that actually are characters feel unique and you also miss out on the chance to expand on the group something that was desperately needed to make them feel less shallow and one-dimensional than what they actually ended up being in terms of other issues the thing is kinda broken I got to maybe the fourth Quest where you go to the coronation in myth and KIRO simply wouldn't move no amount of other side quests or closing and reopening the game fixed it so I had to reload an earlier autosave and get back a couple hours of progress besides that you have you know the typical Jank of invisible walls NPCs running but not moving clipping completely broken detection getting stuck inside objects NPCs just refusing to comply I don't know if all of that still applies because I wrote this the day this thing came out for a review of the DLC that I ended up shelving the reason I didn't just replay that first Arc to get to this on a new save is because I plan at some point relatively soon to revisit Valhalla and to really focus on it I want to do a video looking back at the game in its entirety now that the final quest is out and I've probably or I know that I have changed my mind considerably on some things and so I don't really want to mess with that Replay by dipping my toe back in to go back to a DLC that I'm fairly sure I'll still feel the same about for the most part so I apologize if this particular segment reeks of is avora Templar triple accented error walshe any strangeness bad opinions here that's on him new AC new IC YouTuber anyway on to the next one The Tyranny of King Washington or as it should be the Tyranny of King George is a strange expansion especially for its type the premise of this one is that Washington now has an apple and we'll get to that but since then he's been tormented by these terrible dreams where he's this brutal totalitarian American King so he confides in Connor who is in these dreams the two touch the apple and in a split second they envisage this alternate reality that is the basis of this DLC so the events of tyranny at least the main story do not happen in Canon and I don't actually take issue with this I think that what if stories can be an interesting way to delve into a lot of things you couldn't otherwise explore they can stress the importance of certain events that they'll don't occur taking characters to different places entirely highlighting the things that make them them and what keeps them together ideally a what-if story is complementary to the text it's based on and the characters in it unfortunately tyranny doesn't really complement anything it's quite clear which expansions are led by their stories and which are led by the prospect of new systems and mechanics this ends up feeling like the latter to the extent that the story serves no real purpose at all that's not to say that there isn't a story there is it just fails to capitalize on that alternate reality entirely where we leave Kana he is acutely aware that power is corruptive and generally he's skeptical of Washington naturally so there's no Revelation in this for him Washington on the other hand while an incredibly ambitious Man by nature of his many positions and policies there are never the seeds of dictatorship and Detachment that we see here this alternate reality exacerbates traits in Washington that are never really presented to us this character is otherwise mild-mannered and modest as he supposedly was in real life so this story is teaching a lesson to a protagonist who has been beaten over their head with it for his entire life by use of this this other character who is so cartoonishly evil and so far removed from his basis that he is practically somebody else I'm fine with him being somebody else I mean especially here but it needs to play on existing traits that are heightened by the corruption of the Apple else there's no point in using that character I can't see anything ever making Washington publicly execute civilians with genuinely evil indifference and so I'm completely detached from this antagonist and the conflict as a whole he is so unrecognizable and this story is so silly that none of his genuinely awful transgressions hold weight beyond that main concept though there are so many interesting possibilities to be explored and one of these that the expansion does explore is the possibility that Zeo Conor's mother never died and really disappointingly nothing of value is done with this you have this opening scene where Connor is in disbelief that his mother's alive and that's it really Haytham is name dropped Kane inherits his hidden blights and it's all kind of swept aside even though he remembers everything about his real life for some reason and there's one conversation one abandoned narrative promise with Zeo that is particularly egregious to fight back against Washington's forces who are burning Villages the clan leader wants Connor to consume the tea the tea gifts its drinkers with these insane physical enhancements now Zio hates the idea of this and Conor is forbidden from drinking it as she explains that for all of its great physical benefits the consequences that it has on the mind are just as great doubly so for Kana who is the son of a violent man now when she dies the very next thing that Connor does is drink the tea there is one line of stiff apology before doing this and that's it there's no inner conflict nor any of those cautioned effects on his psyche he is the same before and after betraying his not yet cold mother's memory for this forbidden fruit only now he has an admittedly sick gang of ghost wharfs now as a male I understand that most men would do anything to be a wolf or God knows any kind of cool primate or maybe Bobcat but there needs to be consequences when a huge choice or what should be a huge choice is explained to be deeply grave and is forbade several times this is what I meant when I said this is led by new gameplay opportunities and not story and honestly such poor implementation puts this down probably a whole spot or two it's that annoying to me and this failing of potential unfortunately is a consistency at least in terms of writing because otherwise there are some neat twists namely in world there's all this propaganda around every corner of an inhospitable World a new notorious all the time so you feel encouraged to stick to the Solitude of the rooftops much like you are in the greatest game of all time I just wish that the nature of this new world was reflected in color a little more it's a new save file entirely instead of missions set in the normal world so it would have been nice if there was a recolor fit to this depressing dystopia that aggressive tint in these four repeating MPC character models really did take me out of that dystopia I mean look at this sun-kissed sea of beige here truly an inspired choice to have the evil dictator speech take place at [ __ ] Daisy circuit and on the topic of color they just straight up didn't remaster the fragmented Memories the actual final cut scene or the Recaps and bear in mind the scenes in the Recaps are already remastered uh but luckily if if it really bothers you you can just remaster them yourself in any editing software but back on point the soundtrack like in the main game is fantastic I know that Lorne balth has really made a name for himself on some huge projects in the last decade but I really really hope there's a place for him Man Assassin's Creed's big future he is really great but with the exception of world and soundtrack The Tyranny of King Washington is a failure of concept in story and in commentary huge potential goes wasted on micro and macro scale this idea of a tyrannical American monarchy arising just years before its king would have assumed the first American presidency that has a lot of implications for one how would the assassins and Templars react to this this could be an opportunity to present some unexpected common ground and to elaborate on the main games many observations about this conflict and what it says about power and Free Will in human nature whether humans are better off controlled and to what extent the fact that the series central conflict is ignored in an expansion with such major political ramifications speaks to how little it really belongs in Assassin's Creed but this is the first time that the series really dips its toe into the Fantastical the pieces of Eden are not Fantastical Powers the difference is not just in aesthetic but explanation or eventual lack thereof the pieces of Eden were designed as tools created by the ones who came before as a part of this series pseudoscience and there is a distinct unique aesthetic tie to them as well as originally real sometimes poetic consequence for the wielders of these tools and weapons that were just as extreme and unpleasant as what its victims experienced even if a piece of Eden is used to wave away their existence as ISU magic this fails itself these tools were built with purpose and must adhere to their pseudoscience and its trappings the ones who came before are not magical even if these powers and Aesthetics have passable in-universe explanations which a few times they do they belong here as much as flying cars belong in GTA or children in a gentian impact Lobby I'm saying this here discussing the precedent of Fantastical gameplay mechanics so that I don't have to say this over and over this video because you've probably already heard this talking point a thousand times over whether from me this Scotch degenerate or the guy who was so mad about these things that it literally broken but anyway they are there so we may as well discuss them for what they are in tyranny generally I consider these abilities to discourage expression and creativity more than they provide that the worst offender here is certainly the bear power which is an AOE attack that destroys anything within about 10 feet of you discouraging use of a pretty good combat system in favor of mashing the Y button dashing away to get some health and then doing it again and I wouldn't mind this really powerful ability as much or not so interruptive to the quite enjoyable flow of combat you basically have to stop everything you're doing to use this and then the animation plays in full with no cancellation this is why I much prefer the eagle and wolf abilities although I do see both of these as being equally kind of corner Cutty you can integrate them into regular stealth and parkour fairly smoothly it's still they just don't feel particularly in keeping with the series ethos in regards to these systems and how they're built upon were additions like the climb leap or smoke bomb might parkour and stealth more multi-dimensional and open these abilities make more expressive mechanics kind of obsolete especially the eagle it feels like he presented with a choice to either engage with the DLC how intended or to get get the most out of Assassin's Creed's core gameplay pillars although I will say the Valley Forge mission where dogs can sniff you out that's a highlight that has you thinking on your feet and I think the wolf ability is Far and Away the best and I do quite like the actual unlocks of the powers to be fair especially the one where Kana fights the cast of The mouthwash advert anyway to loop back around to story Washington just has an apple he says he took it from a captured officer after the siege of Yorktown and that's it of course by this point the truth had established that there are more than two apples and we know Washington had the third from the truth but him just happening upon it is or was strange because pieces of Eden are pretty devalued now but a single apple back in 2012 or 2013 was a huge deal and each had a history I wish there was more to it than yeah I found it because prior to Washington it doesn't have a history you could do anything with this specific Apple pair and so Connor dropping this one into the sea at the end and doesn't feel poignant when the Apple has started to feel so ubiquitous and typical and FDR just finds this one 150 years later or less it's a small thing that only really preceded this shift towards the pieces of Eden completely losing their value but it still bothers me just just a little bit also Washington builds a pyramid in Manhattan as I guess the new capital I mean if his government even has a need for one and this is strange even if you look past the goofiness on the surface of it all which I think you kind of have to do surely the pyramid is a symbol of prosperity and innovation in this context it would make the most sense as a symbol of Oppression and dominance but you would kind of be assuming the misconception that the pyramids were built by slaves so it's not like it justifies its own existence thematically it's so silly yet the very existence of the thing kind of asks that you take it seriously I'm trying to be genuine here because everyone makes fun of this but I cannot figure out what they were going for here is it just Washington being ostentatious why a pyramid it's been almost a decade and I'm still baffled by this what I did like though was the The Rage Quit seriously it's a very endearing Time Capsule back to 2013. and I think that's about all I have to say on this one or actually by the way up until this point there was always a narrative reason as to why we relive the memories featured in one of these and that's stop now but this is the first DLC without explanation and it's also the most baffling one to not explain because otherwise you're led to believe that Desmond potentially hours from the end of the world is just living out like the most deranged old history YouTube videos but yeah we've spent more than enough time on this one tyranny is one of the few DLCs that I I don't just dislike but I feel disappointed by it's a shame to see such a wacky yet very interesting concept wasted on a story that says absolutely nothing the hidden ones expansion is the DLC that disappointed me the most on replay in the three to five months after this expansion released I probably played this three or four times it was one of my favorite Assassin's Creed experiences out I would replay Origins much too often and the hidden ones was an essential part of that experience to me one that was even better than the main game which at the time I really liked I remember it doing a lot of good stuff but above all I remember it being this really meaningful story that added beautifully to the origin and philosophy of the Brotherhood and in retrospect it is not that the story of the Hidden ones is built upon the AC expansion standard there is a threat subjugating the citizens of a new land in this case Rufio a Roman ancient is oppressing the Sinai with the help of his underlings what comes of this is a rebellion that naturally you Ally with led by gamalat and this conflict is the groundwork for the establishment of some of the Hidden ones core values namely one tenet of the Assassin's Creed and mention of another which in concept is good origins certainly could have been better at the whole origin thing but in delivery the formation of this tenet Central to this order these characters this franchise it's really underwhelming the main tenet established here is stay or blade from the Flesh of an innocent which is basically declared albeit in different words when gamalat is assassinated in and of itself it's a really well performed solidly written scene but this tenet is born through the violence or Violence by proxy of a person who is only adjacent to the hidden ones that you don't even really get to know that well over the course of this 90 minutes two hour DLC and still bike speaks as if this is some established member of their order acting in their specific interests when he isn't the canonization of one of the Creed's most Central principles should surely carry much more white than this we know that bayak I am even the more tangential hidden ones like Caster probably wouldn't make Martyrs of civilians by virtue of the fact that they aren't unabated Psychopaths at least as far as we can tell I will kill everyone it doesn't feel like this moment of epiphany that the presentation and writing tells you that it is instead it feels like a gigantic waste in regard to the hidden ones to the relationships between these characters that are so deeply connected to the order and to other characters centuries out that serve this order and live by these tenets I think it would have been a lot more interesting and effective to have seen bayek and or Aya directly making the kind of mistake that warrants this tenet maybe I having spent four years as amunet has started to see herself and her work is being more important than the people it serves disregarding human life to meet a greater end I mean anything is preferable to this anything that doesn't feel so detached and Hollow there's never a moment where you give time to relate to or care for this struggle in particular there's no angle that ever presents the oppressed civilians as anything more than casualties propelling the plot toward thoughtless fan service and the antagonists are no better their individual outlooks and wrongdoings break down to while this guy is kind of a prick and so finding out that gamelot's been implicating villages in bloodsheds so that they'll rise up against the evil ancient it rings completely Hollow for me there are so many layers of Detachment here and I could go on about how bad this is but you get the point it's just as empty as the whole the hidden ones shouldn't fight in the open line I realize it isn't as concrete of a foundation for that tenet as gamalat's confession is for you know don't harm innocence but it's just kind of strange the need for their assassinations to be covert is like one of the main points of the foundation of their group surely it's implicit in the name hidden ones the need to repeat this so soon makes the hidden ones strange poorly defined Origins even murkier it feels like these tenets should have been worked into the actual origin of the Hidden ones instead of clumsily arriving at them later and after that reiteration that a hidden one shouldn't fight in the open I think I think the very next objective is to kill everyone in open combat the elaboration on this already flimsy foundation of the Hidden ones just ends up feeling empty in fact I don't think the DLC really delivers on a hidden one's feeling or fantasy in any regard the assassinations are all forgettable in respect to Quest Design Story and certainly in respect to their confessions which aren't really confessions at all the reasons for assassinating these targets like I said earlier are completely forgettable they're just motiveless bastards who exist to die I enjoy the Rufio assassination that was interestingly designed and posed a bit of a different challenge but the first three ask that you infiltrate generic Bandit camps and kill what may as well be just another nameless leader or Captain and the biggest subversion of expectations here is just a repeat of the lizard gimmick now I don't think that every single Target needs to be super compelling and game-changing but in a DLC centered around the hidden ones in their formative years it would be nice if targets were used to establish what the hidden ones are fighting against and why they should fight against it if a single DLC needed compelling targets assassination and confessions it was this one and they just aren't here these assassinations end up feeling obligatory almost like filler a crime for any Assassin's Creed DLC or not the hidden ones themselves are also lacking Tahira is mental or what would be the mentor of the Hidden ones in the Sinai and it's she that tells bayek to immortalize the Creed and it's her death that really motivates the Final Act of the expansion it's strange how much importance the main game and this DLC imparts on a character you never really become that acquainted with she appears in one side quest you can very easily Miss in the main game that serves as her introduction and if you do miss that the game's third Act is even more baffling than it otherwise is and even that Quest doesn't really make her feel like anything more than one of Egypt's many Quest givers Origins repeatedly assumes much more connection with the hero than we could possibly have and it repeatedly suffers from She lays dying back is paint he describes the hero as being as loyal as a mountain but that loyalty and even their relationship more broadly is never truly tested she's apparently a savior to many we don't see this nor do we understand what that even means to her Origins continues to tell and not show even at an emotional climax this scene this crucial scene feels like Channel skipping and just kind of hanging around for a few minutes the performance is a strong and it looks good the soundtrack is emotional but we're lacking all of the context to really connect with any of that emotion and so it just feels empty and puts me at a complete disconnect with this story and these characters that I now feel less familiar with I have been ragging on the story a bit but some stuff I did like the opening is I think my favorite origin scene it's an effective introduction to this new story and a pretty good reintroduction of bayak you have the singer Guy expositing commissary writing the Sinai in its darkest hour and then by ex stealthily and smoothly killing one of its oppressors answering the call and then that one liner to remind you that he still has his Charisma and Char I also like Aya more in this one although is she and bayak do still speak in bizarre platitudes from time to time even still with those few positives I was really disappointed playing this one more so than with any of the other DLCs here virtually everything I Remember Loving about the hidden ones fell flat the Scarab Sun I remember his side quest being fantastic but it feels so rushed and empty after four years of resentment bayak beats up this kid tells him he'll kill him if he doesn't join his cult and co-ab in seconds is just redeemed making any of that hatred Central to the main themes of the quest forgiveness and growth feel completely Hollow I'm sure this will be one of the more divisive placements on this list and it was the one that I was the most unsure of my recording software it was [ __ ] up so I ended up playing this three times and I spent the other two playthroughs Desperately Seeking whatever it was that made me like love this DLC I was sure that I was holding it to unfair scrutiny or that I was just missing something but after hours of pouring over it I just don't think it's very good the spirit of origin's main game really lingers as the hidden ones fails to expand on the Brotherhood meaningfully fails to create a captivating Supporting Cast and it fails to transcend a box ticking formula even in assassinations which are surely Paramount to an expansion explicitly about assassins when I was writing this segment I I had to check myself a few times for repeating the words Hollow and empty but I realize that there's a reason beyond having the creativity of an AC YouTuber that my mind keeps resorting to those two words everything that impressed me so much five years ago I now realize is devoid of substance meaningful payoff and certainly the genuine sentiment to engage me now I really really wish I had something nicer to say about this one as this DLC was like quite important to me once but with its many shortcomings the hidden one stands as one of the weaker Assassin's Creed expansions Siege of Paris was something of a pleasant surprise for me actually my expectations for this were subsurface and this expansion certainly isn't all bad after the forgettable slog that was Wrath Of The Druids I very much expected the same thing here and for the first hour that was an expectation that was Vindicated the setup conflict characters all exhaustingly familiar and the fatigue began to take over until the first assassination mission and these assassinations are undoubtedly the Crown Jewel of the expansion they're far from perfect quite far but you do have some of the essentials down barring of course interesting targets among a few others that we'll get to investigations are back in a way they're very different from the ac1 obviously everything's much more scripted your hand is guided in certain directions instead of being an authentic sandbox where you're just given the information and tools and where any guidance is virtually invisible to the play player who was just kind of let loose and that is my biggest problem with these assassinations that they don't trust you to be intelligent and by extension they don't trust you to be independent an example of Siege treating you like just a bit of a [ __ ] is this riddle or puzzle the last obstacle between you and your first Target comprising of two out in the open fires that simply need to be lit like that's the final obstacle and the lack of genuine trust an agency will take replayability out of these but then again these were never going to be as free or as focused as something like ac1 so I guess I do appreciate that step back in the right direction it felt pretty clear to me that these were inspired by the new Hitman Trilogy especially in the Cinematic gory deaths it could feel a little unearned given the underdeveloped AI written NPC on the receiving end of them still for their flaws I enjoy the simple appeal of finding my way in and out of a place hiding in plain sight and killing and leaving unnoticed valhalla's honorable Global detection did impede my enjoyment of the stealth like a lot but I guess that's not a part of the expansion so we'll let it slide the rest of the expansion though isn't quite as enjoyable I thought that time away from the game would do me good I hadn't picked it up for probably eight months when I played and wrote this card this review is old but still I found myself totally apathetic to the remaining 75 of the expansion every major player is just this interchangeable trite not even character archetype just these banal tired components rehashed and mixed and matched again and again with a new transparent coat of paint each time I hate to be this much of a downer but I cannot put into words how little I still care about the prospective naive yell and the older conflict generating yell who doesn't quite like the new way things are being done again or really any of these people that I know I'm never going to see again in a few hours time that can't have any lasting effect on evil because of this weird [ __ ] non-committal timeline if Ubisoft hadn't made the baffling decision to have expansions take place along a weird floating timeline Not only would you forego a lot of those issues I mentioned in The Druids and Ragnarok segments you could really get a lot out of this setting specifically France is hugely important to the Templar order especially in ac1 the game that follows Valhalla in terms of chronology everything this game does in respect to the order of ancients Templars is pretty [ __ ] great and just like with tyranny I find myself pained to see an opportunity to elaborate on great source material completely wasted all because Ubisoft wanted these expansions to be playable from four hours in imagine what could have been done with an older able an able with a better understanding of this conflict seeing the consequences of her actions unfold is this order expands eastwards and plants itself into European bureaucracy it annoys me so so much here because we know when the second Siege of Paris took place and it's after the main story and what we have in place of the Templars are the bellators and other throwaway group that serves merely as a force for you to combat for a few hours within this story though there were characters that did initially interest me then go on to make such contrived decisions that that just dies Odo for example seemed as if he could have been compelling the moment where he and Abel come to a truce salvaging some much-needed honor as his wife lays dying was compelling to me until he comes and tries to destroy that truce maybe 30 seconds later making his core values that felt Earnest and human that made him stick out as more than archetype fickle and flexible to a plot that needs to last another two hours and then avor is clueless enough to talk of him as a man of honesty and honor which is just baffling Abel's introspection and maturity in this DLC which I did enjoy is made somewhat Hollow by her doing stupid [ __ ] it that she is way too smart and experienced to do it honestly any point in Valhalla like leaving Siegfried alone in a church with children you know the same children they were arguing about him potentially killing not too long before just to accelerate this conflict arbitrarily the story also suffers from a lot of General Valhalla goofiness like the moment where ashadis is burning at the stake and avor just kind of lets it happen for a full minute to do an epic entrance and then face off moment I I think I literally had to pause because it was that funny then you've got lots of facial animations just being bad like a lot worse than in the main game and there's lots of moments where you have this Confluence of bizarre almost inhuman character animations and poor empty sound design that makes both the characters you're conversing with and the environments they're conversing in totally unbelievable still the story does have its redeeming elements primarily this darker Grim tone that is upheld quite well with little if Annie poorly placed humor Paris was a lot of fun and there's some really great parkour roots in there I haven't touched the rest of Valhalla in a long while but I think it might be the best designed City in the game which does make it a mighty shame that you can't access it after the main story which is insane creating the best designed City we'd had in the better part of a decade letting you introversing it and then pulling it from you is such a strange devilish move that makes zero sense but yes Siege is just kind of bland outside of a few fun but flawed assassinations a pretty good boss fight and France itself being rather nice it's a mediocre DLC if there ever was one but one I might be inclined to replay the Battle of Foley has to be the biggest drop-off in quality from Main game to DLC acting as an arbitrary buffer and Pace Killer bookended by much better content the Battle of Foley is mandatory if you're playing Assassin's Creed 2 via the Ezio collection which most people will be these days and so it's an absolute Pace butcher it's at the end of the 11th sequence that Ezio formally completes his transformation into an assassin with this reminder of just how far Ezio's come it feels as if he's being readied up for a final mission not this smaller less additive action before the final mission I can forgive bonfire on this front because Ezio has a realization that's crucial to the game's ending and Ezio's Arc but bonfire doesn't serve that much of a purpose to the overarching story with DLC becoming commonplace in these kind of games at the time it does feel like many AC DLCs that his story was reverse engineered from the demand for one the entire setup is bizarre as SEO decides to hide the Apple in fully for some reason away from the assassins in a political stronghold that will probably always have eyes on it but as far as wacky Misadventures go the cast for this one is pretty fun you've got Machiavelli and mainly a lot of Katarina I actually wouldn't be surprised if she was the motivation for a fully based DLC given how brief her appearance is in the main game and how important she was going to be in Brotherhood she's the highlight of the DLC and Sparks a lot of life into this conflict where the Aussie Brothers kind of don't I get what they were going for with these smug Psychopaths but they end up feeling kind of dull and they aren't nearly as threatening as they probably should be the Fantastic Andreas of purges really nailed that kind of performance the next year with Brotherhood and that's not to say that he's bad as kakko he just didn't have a particularly compelling script to work with honestly I'm spending most of their one real scene I guess there's two watching seven orola lurk about Foley which as a setting is fairly weak it's drab and dirty which is fine some worlds should be plenty of great worlds are but in a game with superbly designed sissies with their own attributes and characteristics Folly really falls short Florence is Ezio's home the sound the people and the colors associated with it are quaint its wealth is reflected in architecture the palazzos and the great Cathedrals then you've got Sanji maniano which is very vertical it poses climbing challenges and arches are a serious problem here Venice is bustling and densely packed together traversing the floating city is very different to traversing Florence as a kind of floor is lava element to it the worst thing that can happen during a run is the kind of mistake that leaves you slowly swimming ashore to start all over again each city has a unique color palette sound and traversal Dynamic that helps make it and the sequence is tied to it feel more distinct Foley isn't special all it really has to distinguish itself is is its color which again is drab the city is an unfriendly host to a series of uninteresting missions consisting mostly of open combat if you know what you're doing ac2's combat system is pretty decent but this DLC is characterized by combat I mean it's the Battle of Foley which makes sequence 12 an even bigger anomali the main game keeps all three gameplay pillars engaged combat stealth parkour and it's parkour that is pretty much completely absent from this expansion stealth isn't shifted quite as much in fact I do really like ludovico's assassination the lighthouse is a great really well designed obstacle between you and him but generally there isn't a lot more to be set which I think is to the favor of battle at Foley it's only 45 minutes long and doesn't end up dragging too much because of that this story didn't need to be mandatory playing by any means it's an okay side Adventure that doesn't really fit into the main story it's kind of cool but what I didn't need to know where Ezio got the map to the Codex and besides that the Battle of Foley isn't really that additive it's a decent fine DLC that probably appears to be a bit worse than it is purely because of its placement and the fact that it pales in comparison to the rest of the spectacular game that it's attached to it has its strengths but it's probably one of the more middle of the road Assassin's Creed expansions curse of the Pharaohs was one of the more pleasantly surprising expansions to replay as I said earlier I played Origins over and over in the months following its release and after completing this in April 2018 is a rabid 14 year old origin superfan I was actually quite disappointed this didn't feel like it added anything to this character and this game that I adored the story felt like the most formulaic of origin side quests stretched out to four or five hours with no satisfying conclusion and I didn't think that emphasis on fantasy in aesthetic and story really belonged there was a lot more I wanted to see from this game from bayak Aya the hidden ones it just didn't do a lot for me we're picking this up for a second time Christ nearly half a decade later I think that this is the best that AC Origins has to offer it's not a masterpiece or anything and many of those drawbacks still stand but there's some good even some really good stuff in here for a start there is some personal motivation in baek's quest even if it isn't really tapped into enough he's seeing another artifact rupture another Community only now he's in a position to stop it I really like the scene where sutek accuses bayek of having lost nothing in another excellently performed scene we're reminded of what bikes lost and what drives him he feels less passive and disconnected than the protagonist of a fair few of the other expansions and for that first I'll know hour 45 minutes there is a sense of well-crafted intrigue that feels well worth investigating unfortunately though that does fairly quickly dissolve until you're back going through origin's regular motions it's the worst thing about it I'm not allowed to forget that I'm playing Assassin's Creed origins in the moments before that can happen I'm tasked with rescuing a person I do not know from people I do not know in a place I do not know for a person I mean you've played the [ __ ] thing right I've no clue what point you're in production it was decided that the hidden ones was going to be the short DLC and this the long one or if that was always the plan but curse would be so much better off for having a similar length to the hidden ones that accommodates this story's natural beginning middle and end rather than nailing the jump and landing in half speed this Intrigue has meandered and died by the halfway point is you just doing the same odd jobs you've done for the last 30 hours instead of making the most of this cast of varied characters with differing motivations I like them well enough but not enough time is spent distinguishing their motives and creating a sense of sex you have a very typical modern AC story where some traitor or interloper is established and you're left to Rack your brains about which of the three other guys it could be it's just another Origins Quest made long Origins very restrictive foundations are only made more apparent when they're applied to some of the most visually inspired Landscapes the series has to offer the first thing that happens entering the field of reeds this striking wondrous location of huge importance to bayek is the delegation of three odd jobs that have you running around smashing jars dropping a torch on a thing and then washing your face it's a real shame honestly and curse being tied to Origins formula is what keeps it from hitting the highest spots after a point the story has fizzled out completely and the quest design is hardly picking up any slack Bandits are taking people why now fantasy is Central to this expansion I stand by what I said earlier I don't think it will ever really belong but it has more place here than it does in something like Odyssey bayek's religion is Central to his character he is incredibly spiritual like most of his countrymen and so it makes sense for the duet and atom to be projected onto this deeply theistic Society bayek is aware that what he's seeing isn't real and unlike fate of Atlantis there's never a moment he treats these happenings as being real for the sake of empty drama and because of this bike is fairly disconnected from all of the things that he's seeing when he's completely aware that they're illusory which I think is kind of a shame you really could get a lot out of bike thinking that he's entered the Duart but the worlds themselves are very visually striking and distinct from one another when I think of this DLC it's these Landscapes that I think of and the music that accompanies them curse's soundtrack was composed by Eliza alexandrova I hope that's it and I think she's really good she did Rogue to do and that soundtrack I do also quite like bosses are another thing that curse gets right with some notable exceptions this Trilogy doesn't have the best batting average when it comes to interesting boss fights but curse is an exception to the trend with some unique opponents that pose unique challenges such as a Hamilton and his slow sweeping strikes unfortunately though the main story just doesn't end on the best note it felt like they just didn't know what to do with this Apple so they had bayak bafflingly give it to sutek a fairly untrustworthy guy I guess to bait a sequel or at least that's what we thought it was at the time internally Sofia must have knew that bike wasn't getting one so this is really strange anyway I think that this one is fairly middle of the road the Jack the Ripper DLC was the first big piece of new Assassin's Creed content in my many years as a fan that I didn't get in the weeks because it really wasn't that long between the release of Syndicate and its first DLC I had soured on the game so much that I had no desire to touch it again and this was only Consolidated by this terrible portrayal of Jack the Ripper that I kept on hearing about so picking it up years later expecting it to be awful I was surprised to learn that the DLC is a huge Improvement on the main game one of my biggest qualms with Syndicate was tone there was this sense that no action no matter its size Harvard any consequence and lots of things that should have been taken seriously just weren't and when they were there was often a hell of a tonal Whiplash from the quip that would come either before or after but from the off with Jack the Ripper there's this ominous gorgeous cinematic a weary more serious Jacob and a new soundtrack composed By the Fantastic bear area that really bolsters this new Sinister tone but we're not that far down the list yet there are still some big big problems chiefly the titular Jack the Ripper who somehow got that tone just looking at him is enough to annihilate any chance of him being intimidating because visually there is a lot to run with and assassin turns serial killer that's an unusual concept waiting to be capitalized on instead he's just wearing a standard Jacob outfit with a [ __ ] bag on his head I mean everything from the performance the the accent the comically evil letters they're screaming they're flashing and hacking effects to make sure you understand how [ __ ] up and psycho he is because I guess five gruesome murders didn't cut it you gotta dish out one line as the Showcase just how detached Saucy Jack is from it all I don't know how you take a figure as inherently disturbing as Jack the Ripper and make him a joke while trying so desperately to do the exact opposite well come to think of it that is why it's desperate both writing and general messaging beat you over the head with silliness with one-liners and smarm and caustic comical sadism by the time you take on Jack's perspective for some reason any opportunity for genuine sympathy is unsalvageable too much time has been spent overselling the evil of the man through these cheap tonally dissonant methods instead of letting that genuine evil speak for itself which it does lens at Jack the Ripper's Wikipedia page is more disturbing than this genuinely and that's nuts considering that there's an all too vain effort to humanize Jack into more than a list of murders Jack's experience with the Brotherhood and their perceived failings of him is the would-be Beating Heart of this DLC if they nailed Jack who is at the core of this story I'd place the expansion a few spots higher easily the fact that the tone is so exceptionally crafted and then so thoroughly failed it it kills me of everything on this list Jack the Ripper is the biggest saddest failing of potential this Underdog DLC kind of rising up from a poor game to amend many of its errors only to fall victim to the very worst of them it's a huge shame because every other character here is solid there is real palpable dramatic tension between Evie and Abeline that beats anything from the main game and serves to remind you there are actual Stakes here a feeling I don't think I ever felt in Syndicate regardless of its sometimes colossal scale the loss of a single life here packs a much meaner punch than any of the I mean the tragedies from the main game Evie is a protagonist is quite enjoyable she's older wiser a lot of growth has clearly happened it is a bit of a shame that we never got to see any of it for those 20 years I mean discounting that one comic but I wouldn't count that because Evie does really act her age in this like a matured version of her 20 year old self she's middle aged here and she looks it too like actually looks it not like a video game 40 year old but a real middle-aged woman to to some people Chagrin apparently the crime scenes here yeah are quite derivative and much too easy but they really ground the mystery and the weight of the expansion these women are made to feel like lost lives instead of the justification of a new checklist to complete the big new mechanic is fear which for what it is is decent you can basically frighten your enemies by using some repurposed tools and mainly fear takedowns these brutal kills which while goofy are not exactly helping any of those issues that Jack has in regard to tone differentiate him in play to Evie according to his very different personality or actually not because Evie can also use these for some reason which I think was the complete wrong move these brutal kill animations meant to traumatize guards into fleeing or freezing up completely should be exclusive to Jack because not only would it firmly separate the two in terms of play style with one being abrasive and reliant on sheer brutality and the other more graceful and thoughtful but because these are outright cruel and feel so out of character for Evie to use there's a sense of dissonance in Evie being so disappointed and disgusted by Jack and his vicious tactics and then her using them it's not that big of a deal but I kind of wish they came up with something else or just omitted this from her tool set especially when most of the time that you have an opportunity to use fear as Evie it's just gonna end up alerting more guards to your presence making use of it pointless in terms of side activities the existence of all of them is just as arbitrary side content like I struggle to believe that anyone was jumping for joy at the prospect of creating Nelly and Weaver's Brook activities and that's another thing the existence of Jack's gang is so dumb and exists solely to be the focus of this pointless bad side content there had to be some kind of anime faction to be the face of all of the usual side mission types even if that came at the detriment of the narrative sure it's occasionally and very flimsily theorized that Jack the Rippers attributed murders were committed by a group but he does all of the killing on his own and this is just a gang of converted Rooks there's no assassin or Templar basis they don't have principles it's just a totally Hollow Edition that only further flenderizes Jack into this silly Cockney Kellerman and it's mainly this very unfortunate betrayal that leaves Jack the Ripper as a perfectly playable decent DLC when it could have and should have been quite a lot more Freedom Cry is an all-around fairly Solid DLC notable for switching its protagonist and completely diverging from the main game as I touched on in the Ragnarok section I don't mind a DLC that splinters from the main game because these kinds of deviating stories when done right will elaborate on the main game in Play theme and story generally and Freedom Cry Builds on a few components of Black Flag to varying degrees of success the most significant of these components would of course be and a y who is in a completely different role as a protagonist in Black Flag adewale is basically Edward's foil and by Nature that deprives him of a lot of Edward's overt leading man qualities where Edward is Brash unbothered and very avoidant when it comes to his issues at a is quiet principled and very reflective it's his well-meaning confrontations with Edward the give way for some of the strongest moments in a very strong story so putting Edward to one side for his stoic count apart was a pretty audacious move that I think yields mixed results so adewale is on Assassin business intercepting a package the precursor box he retrieves it but is Shipwrecked on Sand the may he meets the intended recipient Bastian Joseph Madam of a local brothel and she promises to give him a ship or passage off the island for helping out the Maroons and from there add a neglects whatever assassin Mission he had to Aid the Maroons growing more and more invested in their course now this in and of itself isn't something that I take issue with as a former slave and an assassin it makes sense for him to Aid their courts in every conversation with Bastian you can hear him becoming more attached and impassioned as he takes on this starry-eyed idealism Tristan delala is really great in this and I'd say that his performance makes at a a deeper character but unfortunately he fails to be a particularly compelling protagonist because there's a total lack of conflict and growth here at a while I chooses to abandon the Assassins for two years is to pursue a cause that while just and deeply personal to him isn't theirs it's a very human choice but one that isn't even really depicted as a choice he States a few times that he needs to return to the assassins and when he doesn't there's no conflict or consequence he just goes back to them after a while and nothing has changed he hasn't changed the DLC ends without awale talking about a tide shifting with him how he now has complete conviction in the Creed and freedom but this is who he's been since the halfway point of Black Flag or thereabouts all of the things that he's discussing as Revelation here he preached to Edward and despite being really well performed and having some solid moments and I just feel static in this he makes mention of being an older man now but he's in the exact same position he was roughly 15 years before and so those really strong excellently scored moments feel inconsequential when Ada Wale's understanding of just how important freedom is is it the very Foundation of his character and Edward's development in Black Flag the maroon war is a prime Conflict for telling a compelling story with this character but it's taken in the complete wrong direction and concluded in a very unsatisfying way despite there being moments that in isolation I quite like in large part because of the brilliant soundtrack composed by Olivier de rivieri who also composed both play games the storm is an absolute highlight to the intense strings of Oaks 60s horror and other tracks feel just as emotional and intense in a franchise made up of some unreal soundtracks Freedom Cry stands fairly struck so one of the few things that actually gives portal Prince a sense of character because it does otherwise feel a lot like another city or town from the main game with few things really making it stand out I will say that the jailers are an apt addition needing to be wary of these walking restricting areas that were sick guards on you it's a nasty way of emphasizing The Bleak situation of Ade and the Maroons even in free roam in most of the expansion site activities are centered around liberating slaves and building up the maroon Rebellion at least one mission is locked off until you've recruited a certain number and the stronger the Rebellion gets the more weapons and upgrades they're able to give you some external gameplay-based motivation for Liberation is certainly a good thing the issue is that that can easily end up overshadowing any intrinsic motivation like locking missions behind freeing slaves is to the detriment of the expansion's themes it happened to me at the start and then not again because I did do a lot of side content fairly early on but this can happen I think five or so times and in a story centered around the inhumanity of slavery a player should never end up thinking ugh I gotta go liberate slaves again in fact Liberation missions do get really repetitious there's a few Encounters in the open world but these aren't really ideal because slave ships and plantations yield greater numbers for what's not really a lot of effort the plantations are all fairly similar in terms of design and the slave ships are the same activity placed at different points in the ocean these get really repetitive and there's no human element to them which comes at the cost of the very weighty themes of the expansion these are activities you should never feel apathetic to or fatigued by unfortunately motivation ends up being almost entirely extrinsic despite setting up these weird checkpoints the actual story never conveys the growth of The Maroons the cause that atawale has dedicated himself to Augustine their leader is the face of the group but he's in three brief cutscenes that fail to really make the group more than an idea represented by numbers although it's Quebec's best creation bias stretch it's easy to see the seeds of Syndicate and odyssey's design here if Ada and Augustine had more of a relationship if he was somebody who you wanted to help who reminded you of the gravity of the situation and the real people affected Liberation missions might feel like more than busy work which is the very last thing they should be in a DLC like this led by this character although I will say that the slave ships do ask for some level of caution as if you damage them captives will die it makes for a different more considerate Naval Combat Dynamic instead of just rushing in and [ __ ] everything up generally though the naval aspect of this DLC is a bit underwhelming you're given a new ship the experto creda and upgrades to it are linked to Liberation missions the issue is that there's not really any motivation to actually upgrade the ship you can deal with most threats without any upgrades and there's no big Naval challenge to encourage you to actually perfect the credit beating a really high level Fort or a legendary ship makes all the effort you put into the jackdaw feel worthwhile and here there's nothing to put you to the test and just one challenge would have gone a long way and while Naval is a little underwhelming here stealth isn't the really well-designed stealth missions are the highlights of this DLC for me peaking with the Manifest Swap this infiltration mission that has two cycling invulnerable Targets in gdan and the Harbor Master who you can't kill without failing the mission the Blunderbuss is also surprisingly useful in stealth when dealing with these conspicuously clustered groups of guards another weapon that freedom creates is the machete which has some great finisher animations that are fittingly brutal while Freedom Cry is certainly one of the better Assassin's Creed DLCs I just wish that add a while I had a more compelling story here I really like the character I like seeing more of him but this story concludes with him having gone through no change or Arc still it's decent and is at the very least a few hours of Kenway era fun the bonfire of the vanities is a strange one with its share of shortcomings but one that ultimately comes up on the better side of things the setup I quite like using the Apple Savannah oil has brainwashed Florence as most influential figures in the merchantry military medicine and so on or actually he hasn't brainwashed all of them something I really like about this DLC are its confessions which pose some really interesting reasons for these men submitting to somebody like Savin orola Ezio is sorry to kill two or three of them who truly didn't know what they were doing others didn't need convincing and were behind seven arola's plot to destroy alternative knowledge it's the captain who dies angry with himself for being so susceptible to the promise of power and my favorite is the nobleman who Ezio is quite sharp with because he capitulated he allowed himself to be influenced by the Apple the issue here and with the assassinations more broadly is a lack of meaningful context these are really interesting ideas but because I don't know the captain or the doctor or any of these men so devoid of character that they aren't given names they remain ideas and not the believable compelling World Views you'd see in a game like ac1 which this DLC mistakenly draws a lot of parallels to I say it was a mistake because it makes the failure of this concept a lot more conspicuous a good example of this is the farmer who mirrors a ball in the car he's hated by the people and seen as unworthy so he acts against them and that's as far as you get with his 25 seconds of characterization a ball on the other hand says that he's hated for his nature he's acne ridden obese and in some interpretations of his confession gay he has no desire to serve a guard who hates him and years of palpable resentment can be felt in his speech and following confession he points out hypocrisies in the Creed in Altair building on this growing doubt that he has in the Brotherhood and almali this Target in spite of his wrongdoings is sympathetic and supplemental to the overarching narrative and alter's development the farmer is not sympathetic the story and world are indifferent to his death and individually he has zero effect on Ezio this is one example but all nine Target to like this ac1 does a great job establishing who these people are and why they have such strong conviction each assassination is a lesson learned and a plot foiled each has a tangible part to play despite cute reference to ac1 bonfire doesn't carry this over there's a lack of context development and consequence in regard to each individual killing by the fifth or sixth assassination a sense of fatigue sets in from this non-stop killing which really starts to feel senseless it's a shame because some of these assassinations are really solid there's an openness to some of these that the main game doesn't really present to you very often and that's not to say that any linearity is bad it's often pretty great in the main game assassinations but here it feels like being presented this big final challenge that allows you to exercise the many tools and abilities you've unlocked over the course of the game which would score this some more points or not for the fact that that's what sequence 14 kind of already is I really enjoy these missions for what they are it's structure that kind of [ __ ] them the missions in relation to one another and the sequence in relation to the game you're jumping from assassination to assassination back to back when assassinations are frequent to the point of losing novelty and so lacking in context that they feel totally detached they unfortunately begin to feel like busy work regardless of how well crafted they are individually and that Detachment is only heightened by non-linearity the doctor could be your first or final Target he and the story are ambivalent either way uncharacteristic of classic AC progression feels most well represented in the numbers the Mist slowly clearing with each assassination is neat and you have levolpe and Paula Leading the People through the scene of each assassination but I don't think it's enough to offset there I guess this Stillness you feel as you single-handedly level like the Florentine upper class so when you kind of zoom out to macro scale and look at bonfire of the vanities as sequence 13 it feels like an hour-long buffer these two DLCs feel like Misadventures placed at the worst possible time that I always end up rushing through because the game has set up something a lot more interesting the whole thing is just a recipe for fatigue which in the final hours of your game your fantastic otherwise well-paced game is infuriating especially when there's good stuff here these really should have remained just impaired memories and you should have been able to just go back and experience them as side adventures with that said though there is a single moment in this DLC that elevates it into so much more than an assassination compilation and that's Ezio's speech one of the strongest moments in this franchise in this moment you can see all of the Charisma and magnetism that Ezio had as a boy only now he's using it in a display of mature security and marked growth in the same place his family were killed Ezio watches the crowd cheer on another cruel execution only now as a man as an assassin he can provide savanarola with the mercy that his family weren't given here Ezio is the savior The Protector that he couldn't be two decades ago this moment is an excellently written and performed Benchmark for Ezio's Monumental growth it's here that his character Arc has really come full circle establishing the kind of man that Ezio is going into the Vatican a wise man who has complete resolve and understanding in the Assassin Mission all without losing sight of his Humanity making his decision to spare Rodrigo understandable and compelling but that's a can of worms for another time this moment is what comes to mind when I think of bonfire of the vanities and for that I did want to score this higher originally bonfire was I think second on this list and for as much as its conclusion does elevate bonfire It suffers far too much for its structuring and lacking exposition to place it much higher which is a shame because I like a lot of the DLC in isolation the ghosts at the Villa out of Torre feel like quite a lot more than an Easter egg as Ezio's loss is instrumental to his development here I love the dialogue from the townsfolk as you enter the old Toronto District then wishing for the sasino to come back and save them and others disputing his existence as myth there is a lot to like and if you made this DLC a series of side missions akin to the da Vinci disappearance and if you cut the targets down from nine to say three that were flashed out and grounded in the story this could be the best Assassin's Creed DLC but that is quite a different picture and as it stands it's flawed but it certainly has its merits the Lost archive is an acquired taste if there ever was one and I completely understand why some people dislike the DLC but hate it if the gameplay is not even in the same vein as the main game it's this puzzle platformer in the first person and its narrative is all modern day which as time goes on is only less popular so yeah it is a pretty big deviation from established formula then and now though it's one that I think is for the better when it comes to Modern Day scented stuff like this Desmond is reliving Clay's memories via the black room and formula simply wouldn't accommodate this at least not very well pre-ac3 there was always a clear line between the way that the past and the present operated even those two missions in Brotherhood that have functionally tombs are completely different they're built entirely around story and cooperation with Lucy Sean Rebecca and of course there's no hood because you're not in the Animus it feels different and that line isn't super difficult to draw when you're packing each game with maybe 30 minutes of modern day spread over the course of a full-sized game so the devs were put in a strange position when deciding how exactly they were going to tell the stories of Desmond in Desmond's journey and by extension clay in Lost archive because leaping from rooftops and slipping between crowds just wouldn't make a whole lot of sense Clay's story is one of turbulence uncertainty and loneliness it's a tragedy and all of these things can and have been conveyed exceptionally well in a third person action-adventure format I mean look no further than this series but I think this format is much more accommodating of Clay's decline as well as the strange circumstances that allow us to view it clay has never given form or voice it you are basically an observer drifting through a troubled declining Consciousness and what this allows for is fantastic environmental and auditory storytelling completely unique to this Assassin's Creed experience and since this is an Assassin's Creed experience in the traditional sense I guess I can't keep running from the gameplay none of my many appraisals absolve the floatiness of the movement or the fact that your range of vision is restricted to the first person which really doesn't work with some of the more precise movements that are asked of it or the fact that some levels leave you completely lost without direction or location indicators well before that would service the story with all that said you're probably wondering why this is all the way up here and put simply it's because this is the greatest narrative an Assassin's Creed expansion has told to date and really in terms of story The Series has only had me this engaged a handful of times since if even that as much as gameplay is far from ideal the very most is made of this strange new format the image reused here is gorgeous and Eerie pairing with this fantastic hollowing soundtrack and really Vivid sound design to depict the decline into severe mental illness and then death in a very compelling way doing any big series wide ranking is always kind of difficult purely because there's been so many different incarnations of Assassin's Creed that are doing different things made by different people appealing to different people but story will always be Paramount through every rendition and this is truly one of the series greatest and certainly it's most experimental I replayed this after powering through dawn of Ragnarok an archive really makes me yarn for the days that this series would regularly take narrative risks that aren't to everyone's taste because no great stories really are replaying this really made me reflect on this vain mission to curb all edges in the hopes of making the most consumable product possible and it's narrative that suffered the most for this because to make a narrative universally appealing is to strip it of its spine its ambition its uniqueness without exception and those three qualities are what made this series storytelling so special and groundbreaking I don't want to sound like a complete cynic because I'm honestly quite optimistic about some of the current lineup especially in regard to narrative but man it's been a rough console generation I know this is all a bit of a trite sentiment in one year likely familiar with as an Assassin's Creed fan but I hadn't felt that yearning for the boldness that once characterized Assassin's Creed storytelling this acutely for a long time before replaying the last archive which is a far cry from the expansions of the last 18 months or so but in putting accessibility so far before story via this semi-non chronology and the excessive reuse of tired components restrict themselves from ever being as intense creative and certainly as memorable as the last archive it speaks volumes that the gameplay kind of sucks and still this is a much more memorable video game experience than the vast majority of Whatcom sets I'm kind of old now I can't clock in an eight-hour shift burning through Bandit camps as a number slowly increases without descending into utter insanity take I just can't do it anymore this is the kind of video game experience that I find much more attractive something ambitious a bit experimental with concision and purpose with that said it isn't completely concise and there is some excess fat in here there's two or three levels that could have been shortened considerably it really does feel like Ubisoft went out of their way to justify the then 15 price tags especially considering that the da Vinci disappearance was five dollars cheaper also as a matter issue that I don't fault the DLC itself for there is crucial modern day content in it if you didn't cough up fifteen dollars you were gonna fall behind on the series overarching story I've not touched on it yet because I don't think it's fair to fault individual DLCs for this but I dislike paid expansions pushing the overarching story I could kind of see why Ubisoft would take this route as more hardcore fans enjoy the modern day story and more hardcore fans are gonna buy DLC but I hate to imagine how many people have been completely lost on the main story of this series because they didn't pay for DLC especially seeing as Recaps have been a thing of the past for a long time but that's getting really off point I love the Lost archive it's one of the single most honest and touching depictions of depression isolation and everything that follows I've experienced probably in this Medium as a whole and I'm not just talking again about art direction or soundtrack but the performances the writing the emails between clay and both of his parents are brutal and again very real in the way that they all have different writing styles that change Clay's excitement about having found the assassins and a purpose is palpable and [ __ ] crushing and because the narrative is so strong I can kind of I won't say excuse some of the shoddy gameplay and design because I don't but it certainly mitigates that enough for me to look upon the Lost archive very favorably I really love the da Vinci disappearance this is the DLC with the strongest cast the most well-integrated history and the best Mission design it's just really strong through and through and one of those DLCs that's so strong it ends up feeling like a mandatory play more Ezio and Leonardo is of course A Plus and Sally is a great addition it's strange to think that he and Leonardo don't share a scene in the entire expansion because you do get a sense that the two are very genuinely close Sally knows who atseo is he knows about the Apple about Ezio's Eagle Vision and he has to clue at SEO in on pretty much all of this it's a kind of sad suggestion that in the few years Ezio is chasing cesare he completely lost touch with his closest friend who now has complete Reliance on sale I ate and both he and Leonardo fail to hide their affections in a very organic sweet way without ever outright declaring any kind of relationship the game illustrates just how much they care about one another it's nothing groundbreaking but it's the kind of showing and not telling in regard to relationships that I mentioned something like the hidden ones lacking a little bit early and their relationship serves as this additional motive on this quest to reclaim this six da Vinci paintings and the way that art of the time hugely important art is integrated into the plot in a very Assassin's Creed way is fantastic this is the AC DLC format done right and not just because of historical context but certainly Mission design right off the bat you're thrown into the Ferrara estate to recover enunciation and this memory is just fantastic one of the best in the game it's another of brotherhood's missions that is set in an entirely new one-off location licrezia's third and final husband for Duke of Ferrara is in ownership of annunciation so this is an excuse for you to infiltrate this big estate and to revisit Lucrezia it starts with this linear stealth segment that has you navigating The Stables and Gardens as the whole place is being shut down at lucrezia's demet and the mission ends with this big chase sequence as Ezio escapes the man it's a really great sequence that Beyond being very fun and well designed showcases the massive wealth of Lucrezia that's done absolutely nothing to make Irani happier she's paranoid and Incredibly lonely and I like that we do check back in with her after losing her family it's nice another returning character is ducho who has apparently maintained his 14 year old fashion sense and this one is a bit more of a combat challenge what I really like about the hunt for the paintings is that each core gameplay pillar is given attention and each Mission feels distinct and well designed or barring the one tailing mission that is at least kind of notable for introducing echoli and the hermeticist philosophy and hermeticism was another historical integration that I really like Ackley assumes that Ezio would be supportive of their calls because he believes in The Pursuit Of Truth and Ezio shuns actually for trying to force that truth his philosophy mirrors a lot of brotherhood's Truth segments about abstergo's ideal New World Order stripping Humanity of all of the options and ideas deemed incompatible with this Utopia only the hermeticists would share their Enlightenment where the Templars would kind of hoard theirs and use it to subjugate I find their brief place in this Grand conflict to be really interesting I I just wish that the expansion explored this a bit or a lot more through Ackley because you can really see that assassinate idealism in each of his brief appearances only he's desensitized to his violent means because he has you know the same level of conviction as rubber or hate I wouldn't say that it's detrimental to the DLC because it isn't really about their group but the inkling of that conflict is it's quite good regardless even if if it isn't fully realized and those two final memories are just pure Assassin's Creed Magic using your Eagle Vision to decipher a hidden message beneath historically significant artwork leading you to an ISU Temple so you can help your descendant like save the world all while bringing another villainous plot to heal that final 20 minutes has almost everything it it repurposes real history to evoke mystery and conspiracy it connects ISU to ancestor to descendant it poses some philosophical questions about freedom and the attainment of Truth a brilliant tomb that engages traversal and combat there's Charming character writing and thoughtfully implemented soundtrack it's truly a fantastic DLC that expands on the main game really meaningfully that the ending always gets me Ezio now having a complete understanding that this isn't meant for him and leaving the Vault just like bonfire of the vanity sees it's a good establishment of who Ezio is going to be going into the main game at least in respect to his role as profit the final conversation with Leonardo is also just great him dropping everything to talk about his art and Ambitions it is a really spectacular expansion in barring lost archive or my no I think this is my my second favorite story in one of these but it is close and I think that dead King's achieving what it does is really impressive given the fact that it's one of the shortest Assassin's Creed DLCs it's 90 minutes if left of linear missions but each one of those missions is so well written and designed that I would say the da Vinci disappearance stands Head and Shoulders above most of its much larger counterparts dead Kings is the defining Assassin's Creed expansion in the opening like three minutes everything just kind of hits you're being smacked in the face with those fantastic perfectly miserable ic-1 Vibes this descent into a glum compact grimy City perfect for an assassin then into this dimly lit Pub where the degeneracy is really concentrated as a stoic assassin wordlessly floods the room with anxiety with his huge ghostly presence this entire opening I just love arno's [ __ ] eye roll when the bartender starts doing the big monologue call to action and the implication that arno's been drinking himself sick again with the bartender calling on his tap the big charismatic hero is completely absent in the wake of elise's death which happens I'm pretty sure like a week before this in less than two minutes you have Arno subverting a few of his heroic qualities with the kind of indifference and self-centered that comes with huge grief all while fantastically building world and time this is a really strong opening and Jeffrey o'harlem's fantastic writing doesn't really falter the story really Finds Its footing when Arno meets Leon who is a really great foil following Lisa's death Arno is incredibly cynical and his duty tasks him with helping this boy who is relentlessly idealistic Leon is repeatedly challenging that pessimism and the way that relationship builds is genuinely very sweet I I really like Anna witness and on paper that relationship sounds very saccharine and dishonest about grief and cynicism but both characters are written really organically Arno is a mopey misanthrope and Leon is an idealistic child with all of the aspirations of heroism and Justice that you do kind of have when you're a 10 year old boy and his case ramped up by abandonment he really is written very convincingly as a smart ahead of his years rather than falling into the old trap of just writing you know a stunted adult and after meeting Leon that momentum doesn't really die down through Leon there is genuine motivation to reclaim arno's lost sense of Duty and another layer there is that you do feel some affinity for franciard itself through the side content the stories of frassiard and the murder mysteries but mainly the stories because the murder mysteries here kind of blow the mystery element and that's really one of the few issues with dead kings that does come to mind that the murder mysteries fall kind of flat I haven't played through the main game in I mean a good few years at this point but I remember them being so much stronger than these two but the franciards stories are quite good at giving the city a sense of character and mystery the city itself is pretty good much like the Holy Land frassiard always feels oppressive and cult making you opt for the rooftops which were clearly designed with Parkour in might generally it does feel like yubimo palier really wanted to create a true to character Assassin's Creed experience which is no clearer than it is in the dark depths of the caves which serve up these really unique stealth encounters that play into the Assassins being these ghostly deathbringers sowing paranoia into the hearts of their enemies I'd completely forgotten about the leader mechanic which basically allows for you to kill one stronger enemy making all of his underlings in the area disperse and although simple and a mechanic I'm certain isn't completely original it really does open up some interesting stealth opportunities a tactic I kept coming back to was sniping a leader getting his subordinates to hide and cluster and then blowing them up with the guillotine gun which was a weapon that I didn't really have any love for previously I saw this as something loud and abrasive and pointless through an assassin but picking dead Kings up again five years after my last replay it's clearly and kind of strangely a useful stealth tool for dispersing enemies and taking them out in groups using it in tandem with the leader another weapon or tool in dead Kings is of course the apple of Eden which in conjunction with the head of santhany Arno uses to conjure up illusions of bats scaring the writers literally to death as Chris velasco's gorgeous soundtrack escalates to This Angelic Victorious Peak I mean everything those new mechanics the Fantastic soundtrack offhand NPC lines the level outfit and weapon design all feed back into the Assassin being effectively a myth this invisible executioner enacting murderous Justice with a terrifying efficacy just like the older games did mainly ac-1 and 2 which had their respective protagonists grow into these kind of oligarchical folk Legends to the Templars Ezio wasn't Ezio he was the Assassin one Domino would fall and the next would shake and while this just sounds like basic consequence that element of myth and hysteria was the Assassin fantasy reflected in story when jumia air installs decoys and sebrant becomes psychotically paranoid I feel like the covert agent of truth that the core gameplay tells me I am this might seem tangential and insignificant but it really does strengthen that fantasy that unique assassin feel Yuri molpelier clearly prioritized it I know that there are a little on the smaller Side by Ubisoft standards but I really hope someday that yubim get a shot leading development on a Mainline AC game it's abundantly clear that interesting stealth specifically was Paramount during the development of this DLC and that's something I really do appreciate granted I did have some issues with unity's broken detection system and input lag but again I'm judging the contents of the expansion and not issues carried over by the main game it wouldn't really be fair otherwise in terms of actual negatives that you can pin on the DLC I think the three puzzles here are fairly poorly design the interact prompts work may be half the time and there's more fixed camera angles that really throw you off unnecessarily and really the shoddy puzzles and lacking murder mysteries are about the extent of my issues with dead kicks Rose ends up being a forgettable antagonist but I don't think this is a story that particularly suffers for that it's not like a flavius situation where a big thematic conclusion is impaired for the antagonist being a nothing character and the whole game suffers arno's development here is unimpeded by Rose's genericness and him being a completely unsympathetic bastard is weaved into a point with Napoleon talking about how people like him who are completely detached from any kind of moral compass are very useful when controlled it's Napoleon who really is the main adversary even though he has less screen time than Rose who was just one of his pawns because Napoleon is Unstoppable and driven and he has huge support all things that Arno lacks although there isn't any kind of personal rivalry there Napoleon has no idea Arno is even in frassiard he is this Relentless Force suited to such a story he's a sobering threat worth stepping up against and I really like how this version of Napoleon is written although only a few years have passed he's embraced the cynicism and the misanthropy that arguably got him so far and I would say that the cast of This one is pretty tight it's a lovely small group of characters that accommodate a very short story that never stretches thin the Raiders too is an enemy faction I do really like behaviorally they are quite distinct to the other two factions in unity my sole issue with them is the Rocks their projectiles have literally no warning time on them and I like that the way they fight reflects their shittiness but giving you no indicator whatsoever doesn't feel fair or in line with the flow of combat the game has taught you a shortened indicator would be cool but having none kinda sucks besides that though they are quite fun they're weak and rely on their numbers they'll cheer on a fight and then turn tail and beg for mercy when you end up killing the biggest baddest one where there's such [ __ ] scumbags I love them and if it's not clear already I love dead Kings as a whole I only wish the main game was this good because then I could do Unity as underrated videos and occupying that space in the Forbes list between Warren Buffett and white light dead Kings is what I wish Jack the Ripper was this almost Redemptive expansion that alleviates some of the most unfortunate shortcomings of its main game I don't think this is a Ballad of Gay Tony or a blood and wine Ubisoft have never really facilitated that kind of inventiveness or scope in their expansions but this is the Assassin's Creed read DLC model perfected or at least the closest we've come to perfection in two hours dead Kings builds fantastically on Arno making him 10 times as compelling as he was in the main game with a tenth of the time to do it and there's a sense of Harmony no other expansion in this series has achieved to such a level the deteriorating beauty of the architecture that's accompanied by mournful strings and organs the fogginess and grit of this world its stories its inhabitants the tone is exceptionally crafted and it all speaks to a morose detached Arno there's almost a purgatory-like quality to this one at least all the way up until Arno rediscovers his purpose and Dons his classic assassin robes once more and then some Vibrance is introduced and there's also a sense of connection that Arno has with Napoleon who like I said earlier is a total misanthrope who seems to exhibit basically the same world view as Arno but unlike Arno who grows and eventually does open back up Napoleon remains guarded and cynical he fails and is arrested while Arno is restored literally walking off into the sunset I really love this one and I could go on and on and I kind of am so we'll call it there I'm sorry this has taken as long as it has it should have been like three or four weeks that's on me I've realized that I hate these big gaps and I want to have more than five or six videos out in one year so while I do have a lot of big videos planned like a massive AC3 critique uh an SEO video in the same vein as the Altair one that looked back at Valhalla I think I'm going to try and have a smaller 10 minute ish video out at least every two weeks and that might be that might be how I actually cover Mirage but anyway I've kind of just gone from one ramble to the next I do this every [ __ ] video I I apologize I hope you guys enjoyed if you did May believe a like and if you didn't maybe let me know why thanks again and I'll see you all next time [Music]

Channel: Walshie

Views: 96,314

Keywords: assassins creed, Assassin's Creed, news, assassin's creed leak, walshie, ac, valhalla, assassin's creed news, top 5, ubisoft, mirage, assassin's creed mirage, basim, ac mirage, assassins creed hexe, information, ac mirage news, ac mirage trailer, project jade, jade, dlc, ranking, dlc ranking, ranking dlc, dead kings, unity, ac unity, fate of atlantis, expansions, legacy of the first blade, dawn of ragnarok, review, dlc review, top 5 dlc, best dlc, worst dlc, freedom cry, ezio, story

Id: h2S1zrUYd7Y

Length: 130min 4sec (7804 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 26 2022