Recent reviews by mazeY

One of the best game I have ever played. I will never stop loving to play this as it's challenging and forces you get better every single time you play. The only way to dislike this game is to play mindlessly hoping to eventually get better and complaining about it being laggy or teammates being awful. I will agree that the servers are not always perfect and sometimes the balls clip but in the end if you're skilled enough and actively trying to be better you will have a lot of fun. I will also agree that whom you play with is important but as long as you don't do too many mistakes and take the opportunities that you're presented with you'll do just fine most of the time.

TL;DR - I think the game is great and I would recommend anyone to buy it. Ubisoft did a great job of taking the serie a step further and while the game can never compete with early AC's in my heart I'm very much enjoying this new fresh start. It feels way more engaging gameplay and story wise which I felt was missing in the couple previous games!

So, I've been considering posting a review for a couple days. I've, so far, loved all of the RPG elements I think it adds to the experience of the player, like you're part of your character's life and that makes the game more engaging. Like anything it has it ups and downs as it makes the game have somewhat of a small grind. There is an alternative way to collecting ressources which is constantly fighting to get loot and just dismantling it which might be a bit more enjoyable for some of us but I personnally don't mind hunting for a while. The game is so beautiful that it doesn't feel as much of a chore, it will never be 100% enjoyable to run all over the place doing the exact same thing but still I don't mind doing it, especially because of how much of a living world Origins is.

The combat system, I'm still getting used to it, I'm not going to say it's great or bad, it's different and I'm enjoying it. Was it better before? I honestly don't know since I liked it very much as well it was simple and elegant, made you almighty! I feel like the new one is again more engaging and adds to the difficulty which I enjoy very much. Before you could just take on 20 enemies without thinking and stand in the middle of them and wait to counter, now you actually have to focus and get rid of archers first and be mindful of trying to dodge arrows and combos consistantly, fighting 20 enemies is still possible but it takes some more skill. The control scheme is were I'm all messed up, by that I don't mean I hate it, it just isn't the same to previous AC's so I'm kind of dying inside when I play. I'm better than when I started the game but I'm not as skilled as I'd want to be. It's something to get used to!

I like the story so far, I'm not too far in because I do a lot of side quests and exploring, the game is so beautiful I just can't help myself in taking it slow. I think Bayek is one of those characters we'll remember for future AC's however I doubt he'll ever reach Ezio's or Altaïr's level for me. I do feel more engaged with this new game than the couple previous AC's we've had and it's due to many things. I've already mentionned the combat and RPG elements, but even the story adds to it, I think Ubisoft had lost track of what I felt was important in the first couple games of AC's and the further along we got the further off it seemed. I liked the fact that we were linked to Desmond for a bit and without the shadow of that lineage I felt underwhelmed by the other AC's. Since we'll never get Desmond back I wasn't sure to ever have the same feeling about the serie and Origins has brought back some hope. I feel like I can relate better to his story and his character than the twins or even our lovely pirate Ed for that matter. We've still got a bit to go I think but it's way better than it was. If my view changes I'll update this review, I mean I'm still not done with the story so it could all go to ♥♥♥♥, though I doubt it.

Most complaints are linked to the performance of the game and to be honest, I don't understand how people can have such poor results even with high-end rigs. I have a [email protected] and a GTX980, I can run this game flawlessy with a good steady 55fps in highly populated area and 60 fps everywhere else with settings on High and Very High, just a little tweaking here and there to make it more stable. We can all agree that I don't have bad specs and am over recommended specs but I'm nowhere close to have the BEST TOP END COMPUTER that exists. The only reasons I can see about poor performance is linked to either the computer, the drivers or the guy in the chair. You can't expect to run this game on Ultra settings even if you have a more than decent rig. Ultra is unambiguous, you need the Ultra computer and tech to run it and if you haven't updated your drivers then you can't blame Ubisoft.

Wait! I forgot poor performance due to DRMS and such. While I understand the point that it's not ''acceptable'' from Ubisoft to add anything to block pirates from cracking the game at the cost of performance. I would ask you this one simple question. Wouldn't you protect ANYTHING you sold from being stolen/cracked/hacked/destroyed? So again I do agree that it might not have been THE GREATEST solution ever, but I think we can all relate to the fact that nobody wants their ♥♥♥♥ stolen. There is possibly a better idea than ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on game performance, however I do not know of it and if you do please MAKE A SUGGESTION, but I'm not going to bash around saying they're a bunch of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and not recommend a great game because they lacked better ideas. They might've seen no alternative (which I doubt) or they simply thought that it was a great and cheap way of fixing a problem they had and thought people would understand. Which ever it is, it could definitely be better and we can all complain about it which is more than fair, but I'm still going to recommend people to get the game.

So, after I saw all the negative reviews I felt a need to write you one myself. Graphics wise, this game is gorgeous, people can say what ever they want about optimization and bugs, it's probably one of the most stable launch I experienced this year. I had no problem, not a crash, not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fps crash, nothing. It runs better than Attila ever did on my PC and for the record I pack an Intel i7-4790 @ 3.6 GHz and a GTX 980. Running mostly on Ultra with lowered Anti-aliasing, Texture Filtering and I upped my Unit Scale to Ultra because I wanted huge battles, my fps is a stable 60+ maybe it'll drop on very huge armies battles but I haven't encountered any yet.

Gameplay wise, I can't say it's the best strategy game ever but it gets the job done very well. AI would definitely need some more tweaking here and there like in most games anyway but overall, it's solid like previous TWs (unless you want to say it's always been bad and played bad games all along) and adds some refreshing new units that change the playstyle a little bit without breaking what we all got to love. The character items and leveling is also quite satisfying, they have a serious impact on battles, either by casting spells or simply by punching a pack and hitting enemies. Sieges are, for the moment, quite nice, it's a bit different than what we're used to but in previous TWs I really did struggle with the AI whenever they were fighting in cities. I think it's a good compromise to make the game enjoyable and still keep some kind of sieging since it's been a huge part of previous TWs.

Concerning the buildings which do not give any negative effect now, I know people will say it takes out complexity, I don't feel like it's a bad thing so far. In the past we used to simply balance buildings and that restricted our construction capabilities but in fact it was just annoying and didn't have that much of an impact in the later parts of the game (you can disagree here but that's how I felt about it). All the differences between the races also make it very enjoyable to play them all since you don't have the exact same units with the same models and the same names.

The UI and general presentation of the game is very well made, very intuitive and I love it. It's a lot simpler and less annoying than having to check the In-Game wiki every time you want to start building anything. You can see first hand all the information you need to know to make a decision. It's very useful to new players that would want to learn the game and also to veterans for the first couple games during which we are getting used to the small differences we have with the previous games.

Conclusion : I personnally enjoy this game a ton, I would definitely recommend it to anyone, veterans and new players alike for it's simplicity and it's challenge if you're playing on the higher difficulties. Please do comment in a constructive way and I'll do my best to answer, discuss and edit this review.