“Assassin’s Creed 3” was a step back in the right direction in my opinion. The game was far better than “Revelations” as far as game play is considered, and it made me feel like I was playing a game again and not just wasting my time. I won’t mention the story much to avoid spoilers, as well as focus on what I find more important about the game which is the actual game play, but I will say Connor practically has no backstory when we compare him to Ezio, but I think that Ubisoft can get away with that.

Like I said, I don’t want to get into details with the story, Connor’s backstory included, but I do feel like I should at least mention why I feel like it isn’t as important in my opinion. In “Assassin’s Creed 2,” Desmond needed to live through Ezio’s life as both a way to find out what Ezio knew, and to get his training as an assassin. In this game however, Desmond doesn’t need training, just information, so it’s not important to know every little thing about Connor.

With that out of the way I can get to the fun part. If you read my review on “Assassin’s Creed Revelations” you’ll already know that it disappointed me for many reasons and you may be glad to know that this game did what I predicted it would do by doing everything right this time. Main story missions no longer feel lack luster and thrown together like they did in the previous game. There is more focus put into the assassinations which makes for far better “puzzle solving.” I say “puzzle solving” because I always end up thinking of the sneaking portions of the game like a puzzle with multiple answers, and this time around it actually felt like that again which made me happy.

Also the combat was changed and felt more fluid. It made it possible to counter almost all attacks once again but only if you as the player were targeting the attacker, which was a nice change. I also liked how combat feels more strategic but I also feel like enemy NPC intelligence dropped significantly. I could talk on and on about the improved combat or dumb enemies, but there’s far more to talk about.

Along with better story, missions and an improved combat system, new weapons were added in along with many other side things you can do. The weapons all have their own purposes in the game, but the ones I found to be the most fun (and most overpowered) were the rope darts. I’ve had people argue against them being overpowered and I will admit that it still takes you knowing what you’re doing to use them well, but I feel like a strange mix between “Spider-Man” and “Spawn” as I rope dart a man from a tree to swing down, or use it to kill four guys rushing me. You can even use it for speedy hunting as long as you don’t mind the fact that all the fur you get will be damaged. Which was a good add on by the way.

There are a couple ways you can make money in “Assassin’s Creed 3,” and hunting is one of them. I see this as essentially a way to pad the game’s overall playtime more since there are things you actually want to buy this time around, but that’s a better method of padding than “Revelations” had, which is good enough for me. Especially since the game made it worth upgrading your things or buying new weapons to use. You can also spend money on your ship so you can rock the naval battles harder (which is a fun side thing to do.)

I was a lot happier with how this installment of “Assassin’s Creed” turned out. I had a lot of fun while playing it and the only major gripes I had, like NPC intelligence or some awkward story bits, didn’t take away from the overall fun I experienced. I would recommend that you play the previous games to get a better handle on the already confusing at times story, but game play wise there’s a lot more fun things added into this one that the other games didn’t have.

4/5 stars