Here we are. The third and final entry in the Ezio collection, and it’s been a wild ride ever since I started these games back in July. For the longest time I considered myself a non Assassin’s Creed fan. Mainly because it led to the creation of an open world formula that’s been done to death, and the sheer amount of entries I’ve seen so many people talk badly about. This is a series that's been milked to death by the corporate overlords holding it by a leash. I never wanted to get into the Assassin’s Creed franchise, but I did. I chose to play the second game out of sheer boredom and I was proven wrong. These games, the ones I’ve played at least, are amazing. Debating whether Assassin’s Creed fits the description of a good “video game” is one that’ll set people off. Setting this aside I have come to understand why so many people have an emotional attachment to this franchise. The characters, the stories, and how the world revolves around them. As if to say time can’t stay still for even a moment and that they must keep marching forward. That’s what I think the heart of Assassin’s Creed is. Finding peace and balance in a world that feels like it can topple down at any moment. Don’t know if I’d play every entry, but I’ve warmed up to these games.
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is the angelic sendoff to Ezio’s story and a lot of hype surrounded the game leading up to its release. This is Ezio we’re talking about. The poster boy of the series. I mean you can’t talk about Assassin’s Creed without mentioning Ezio. Revelations was the end all to end all, and everyone was expecting it to be perfect. Assassin’s Creed 2 redefined the series by elevating it to new heights, and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood for a majority of people was an achievement for how Ubisoft Montreal managed to churn out another great Assassin’s Creed game one year immediately after Assassin’s Creed 2. Here comes Revelations to continue all the greatness or at least that’s what people thought. When Revelations was released, reception for the game was quite mixed. It wasn’t hated, but it wasn’t as good as fans hoped. Some said the ending was great and others felt as if the game didn’t achieve much. Some say the game failed to make any good innovations to the Assassin’s Creed formula, and others like the new changes. There are players who had a consistently fun time with Revelations, and others who thought the game was more technically unstable than the last two entries. AC: Revelations were divisive.
Yet again, that claim can be made for any Assassin’s Creed game after Brotherhood. Everyone hated Assassin’s Creed: Unity for the technical mess it was at launch, and now people are coming back around to say it’s one the peak points in the franchise. People hate the recent RPG trilogy, but appreciated it more when the bar was set lower with Assassin’s Creed: Mirage. A good old case of “Perhaps I treated you too harshly” and one of the games at the top of that pile was none other than Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. I was not there for when any of this happened. Again, I was not an Assassin’s Creed fan for the longest time so all of this is new to me. What I can say though is I had low expectations for Revelations. Everyone warned me about it and so I kept my excitement to a minimum so I wouldn’t disappoint myself with a collection of games I was really enjoying up until this point. Didn’t want a repeat of Mass Effect, but to my surprise that is not what happened. I like Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. I like it a lot and it’s kind of what I wished Brotherhood could’ve been. Yes there are flaws and it repeats problems Brotherhood had, but it feels like a bigger step forward. I enjoyed the gameplay additions, the narrative, the setting, the bombastic cinematic sequences, and so much more. Revelations are awesome. Assassin’s Creed 2 is still my favorite in the Ezio trilogy, but believe me when I say it’s better than Brotherhood in my opinion. Let’s talk about Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and why it deserves your attention.
Story
We step back into the shoes of Ezio Auditore once again as he’s now entering his fifties. He’s old and has seen everything life has to offer for an Assassin. Killing dozens of Templars to preserve order in the world, training dozens of other Assassins since he’s the Mentor, and keeping every single thing in line. One day during one of his study sessions he learns of an ancient library built by one of the previous mentors of the Assassins years ago. Altair Ibn-La’Ahad, protagonist of the first Assassin’s Creed game, and the one who preserved peace during the terrifying crusade across the holy lands. Before Altair died he hid an ancient relic within his secret library, and locked the door to it to prevent anyone from gaining access to it. Ezio journeys away from home to find this library, which he does as he steps into the fortress where Altair and the Assassins once stood. However, the fortress is overrun by Templars who are searching for the same artifact Ezio is looking for. Ezio manages to make it to the door and kill the Templars, but discovers that the door needs five keys Altair hid in Constantinople.
Not wanting the relic to fall into Templar hands, Ezio sails off leaving his sister behind to take care of his home and people. Ezio arrives in Constantinople where he quickly runs into another member of the Assassin order. Yusuf Tazim, and he has heard wonders of the mentor several seas over. Ysuf tells Ezio that the order has been waiting for Ezio to arrive. Having the utmost respect for him and willing to help in whatever cause he has. They even have a spot for him to study in what is the secret Assassin den of Constantinople. Yusuf gives Ezio a quick rundown of what is happening in the city. Everything is f*cked. The Ottomans and Byzantine Empire are walking on a thin line between each other. The people are considering whether or not to rebel against the governing force that takes advantage of them. The Ottoman princes are arguing over who will take over after their father, and it’s said someone within the Ottoman forces is sending out troops to look for the five keys. Ezio will have to make some new friends within the foreign land if he ever wants to find those keys. Along the way he’ll learn about how Altair spent the rest of his life and what decided for the world and order.
Gameplay
Revelations continues off the foundation set up by Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood. You’ll run around the world getting to wherever you need to be, kill any enemies you see as a threat, try not to stir too much commotion, and progress the story. Carrying over are all the tools you had in the previous games, so you can get creative with how you tackle missions and problems. Course you have the Hidden Blade for stealth kills, assassinations from above, in hiding spots, and so on. There the poison blade for jabbing a dude and watching him squirm in public. Mini throwing knives to take out dudes afar silently. The gun deals a heavy ranged attack, but it must be aimed and it can alert other enemies within the vicinity. Smoke bombs to create a cloud to disappear in, and much more. There’s two additions to your arsenal and those being the Hookblade and crafted bombs. Early on you unlock the means to create your own custom bombs using resources you collect from exploration. You go through a list of components, read their traits, and create the type of bomb you want. Maybe a heavy bomb to blast through enemy armor, or a flashbang to stun them easily. You decide what is best for the problems you may deal with. The Hookblade on the other hand is a traversal helper. Allowing you to hook onto grabable points with ease even if you think you can’t reach it. You can also travel by zipline to reach far distances.
You can plan your attack carefully, but more often than not you will get caught. This will lead to enemies chasing after you which you can either run away from or fight back. Combat is just like the previous games in that you attack, dodge, counter, and just slice them up till they’re dead. Simple and gets the job done. An aspect returning from Brotherhood is the brotherhood of course where Assassins can be recruited into the order and summoned in the field. You may want to use them for tricky combat encounters, or picking off an enemy you know that if you tried to kill will raise attention. Your Assassins gain experience from killing enemies, and can be leveled up when enough is gained. New this time around, to me at least, is sending them out on missions. Allowing them to gain more experience and clear out zones of Templars. New to Revelations is the tower defense minigame. Dens can come under attack and you help defend them so that your Assassins can maintain control of an area. Accumulate points with time, plop your Assassins down, and see them handle oncoming forces.
As you complete missions and explore you earn cash, and cash can be spent on upgrades for you and your gear. Armor to improve defense and maximum health, better weapons, new weapons, a larger capacity for certain equipment, and much more. Money can also be spent to open shops and such, and the more that are opened the more you get from investment which can be collected at a bank. Engage with it if you want, because having lots of money is good for the best gear in the game. You’ll run around, do story objectives, occasionally hop into a crypt that’ll test your parkour skills, and take on assassination targets. You may even get the occasional cinematic sequence where you do something cool like chase after a boat of a violent river, or be dragged along the dirt during a carriage chase sequence. It’s fun stuff and hard to describe without going into fuller detail. Hope for now you can uncover the secrets of the past.
Thoughts
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations was an exciting experience through and through. It may not fix all of the problems I had with previous entries, but it roughens out a lot of the edges to create what I think is a better follow-up to AC2 than Brotherhood. I’ll touch upon the narrative later as for right now I want to address the gameplay. One thing I kinda liked about Brotherhood was that it was smaller in scope. I liked how it went for one map rather than the multiple maps of AC2, but in the end I still preferred the multiple maps. That was because each of the cities in AC2 had variations that set them apart from each other. Not saying Rome didn’t have any, but there wasn’t anything unique to make it stand out. Revelations does though and I would say I prefer its city over Rome. Constantinople is a wonderful city to run around in. Two districts separated from each other that you have to sail between. Rooftops and tons of verticality that make you consider how to traverse the world just like in the first of the trilogy. There’s a lot of brown, but the city is lit up with its bright color, cloth, and contrast. The design of the city accommodates your new tools well. With ziplines always being placed in places you didn’t think you’d need them in, but do and they feel great. The verticality leads to a lot of climbing, and one technique I learned was that if you jump up and hit the button again you perform a maneuver where you launch yourself upward.
The city is just a marvel. It never felt too big or too crammed. There’s landmarks that make it easy to tell where you are. From the bustling markets, palace, towers, and more. I’m still not a big fan of combat, but I will admit Revelations is the most refined these games have been. Ezio does what I need him to, and he does it efficiently. Part of the reason why I’m more used to the combat now is because I’m three games in, but play them yourself and you’ll feel it. I still love the amount of options you get for missions even if you don’t use them all. I can brute force my way by killing anyone who stands in my way, but more expressive players are rewarded with fun opportunities and cleverness of pulling such tactics off. Fortresses return from Brotherhood and I’d say they improved them. The fortresses are these tests of your stealth skills and adaptability. Locating where the captain is and shoving a knife in his throat. Finding him without getting spotted is hard, so you might want to try eliminating enemies one by one. Scale the building until you find a safe spot in the middle of the den. Calling your Assassins for help when you know what you can do will alert everyone. Knowing when hell breaks loose you better be prepared for all the guards in the vicinity, including the captain, to bum rush you. Combat isn’t hard like the last few games, but it’s that joy of finally lighting a tower ablaze to signal to your Assassins that you claimed the area.
There’s some mission ideas that kind of suck. The first few missions of one sequence had me do stealth kills without being spotted, and it was within busy wide open areas so trying to figure that out was hard. Some ideas feel a bit lazy, but I will say there are ideas much better than Brotherhood. Segments where they knew what they were doing and executed it without it cooking for too long. You have missions where you have to do platforming challenges within crypts. Carriage chases where you clash your rides about. A chase sequence down a storming river, or one where you have to catch a boat while lighting an entire harbor ablaze. Going to this one mini city in a cave, filling it with smoke, and rushing back to the entrance before you choke your lungs out. It’s mission ideas like these that keep these games from getting stale. My complaints mainly come with me not interacting with everything on offer and technical issues. Bugs were alright but noticeable. Once in a while you see an enemy stuck a few feet under a rooftop, or pop-in because you turned the camera in a weird way. Doesn’t break the game, but still. You can tell it being the third entry in a trilogy following the same dude amongst a yearly release schedule they’d have to rush certain aspects to meet a quota.
Now earlier I mentioned there being additions like craftable bombs, den defense, and returning once again is brotherhood management. I never engaged with this stuff. It wasn’t that it was bad, but I realized engaging with it was a waste of time. You don’t really gain much from it besides maybe extra cash, and even then the main story missions give you a lot of cash for completing them. Allowing you to afford good gear as the difficulty ramps upward. Again, much like the previous games combat isn’t that hard as countering an enemy allows you to instantly kill them most of the time even if you have the weakest sword in the game. It’s pretty hard to die when you can carry up to ten medicine bottles with you at all times and can loot them off corpses really easily. The craftable bombs seem neat for those wanting to experiment with different playstyles and approaches. I respect them, but why add them when I have so many other tools I’d use and are more efficient? Den defense seems like a nice minigame on the side, but much like Infinite Wealth and all its minigames, if I wanted to play tower defense I would’ve played a game that actually focuses around it. At the end of the day all of this is optional. Nice additions, but none of it feels particularly mandatory and you forget it’s there. I even forgot to bring up the newly added parachute!
This brings me onto the narrative. I think the way Revelations ended Ezio’s story was great even if it did have some flaws. Ezio is older, tired, and looks completely out of it. Wondering what to do for his order while still looking at what’s ahead. He’s wiser, but he’s still confused. He looks towards his order and their past to find guidance. He chases the footsteps of Altair hoping to find an answer. See if he should continue what he’s been doing for years. Hunting men, slaughtering them, and knowing the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Having to realize that maybe he doesn’t have to do it all. He could rest. Trust the Assassins around him to carry on what he has teach them. Know when to let go of past wounds and lean back. Live the rest of his days in peace without having to constantly think about regrets. Defining what Revelations is about is hard for me. I bet there’s essay videos that explain it better, but to me this feels like a game about the end. A game that says things will end, and you have to accept it.
Overall I strongly recommend Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. It’s more Assassin’s Creed 2 except with a different setting and mechanics, and that’s alright with me because I love Ezio and I find these games really fun. Gameplay is better than ever with refined movement, mechanics, combat, and world design that accommodates the new elements. Graphically I believe these games have improved a lot within the span of two years, which nowadays would take a long time. The focus is tighter than ever and never once did I feel like the game was wasting my time. It tells a great story about learning when to end things and the new characters they brought around help Ezio make the next step forward in his life. I know some people were bummed out not to get closure with the characters they grew up with in Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood, but I’m happy they moved on from the old cast. Yusuf representing a younger foolish Ezio, Sofia showcasing he can still love even when he’s heartbroken, and Selim being this light within the political world showing not all is lost amongst the chaos between leaderships. I really like this game. Your enjoyment may depend on if you’re up for yet another Assassin’s Creed game again, which is challenged further with how this is most likely your third entry if you’ve sticking with the Ezio trilogy. If you are fine then I can’t recommend this enough. I give Assassin’s Creed: Revelations a 9/10 for excellence.
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