I am still diligently cranking away at the Assassin’s Creed series, having now completed the third and final entry into the Ezio Trilogy and the fourth in the overall series. This third game was a mixed bag for me. To start, the game was much more playable than its previous entries, which was great. The change in scenery from Italy/Rome to Constantinople was a welcome one, as I was already getting a bit tired of the Mediterranean. For the most part, I enjoyed getting around the new (old) city, but it was obvious the series was becoming scaled down even more. Brotherhood was an obviously streamlined and trimmed sequel to ACII, and Revelations cuts even more of the fat, with a narrower focus on story missions this time around.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Courtesan and Mercenary quests were decent diversions in Brotherhood, but nothing that really stood out. Even the property ownership and income played a lesser part this time around. Despite my OCD screaming at me to purchase every business and landmark in the game, I told myself I wasn’t going to bother and just focus on the missions. Of course, I bought a few properties, I had to have some money coming in for new armor and such, but I didn’t stress over it this time around. Unsurprisingly, and almost disappointingly, I was able to focus only on the story and complete the game without any problems. It confirmed my suspicion that all of that side stuff like business ownership and the entire Assassin’s Den mini-game was ultimately just fluff to pad out the play time. None of it was necessary.

The story was okay, but it was a bit of a mess. Keeping track of who was who was the most challenging yet. The majority of the characters, aside from Sofia and Yusuf, used very similar character models. At one point Ezio has a conversation with a major player I could’ve sworn I had just killed two missions before. This led to quite a bit of confusion as I tried to remember who I actually did kill and what their role was, because it obviously wasn’t who I thought. The mystery of the Masyaf keys was enough to keep me going, and required Ezio to navigate four mini-dungeons to get them. That was probably the best part of the game, and showed actual thought and care in these challenges. Unfortunately, the “revelation” after actually containing these keys was a little bit of a let-down, as it was something that anyone that has played throught the series saw coming.

One thing I did like though was the short snippets of back story for Altair. The fleshed out the fall (and rise again) of the Masyaf headquarters, although I wasn’t completely sold on Abbas as such a menacing antagonist as to keep Altair away for two decades. I’m pretty sure Altair could’ve made him his bitch a hundred times over. I guess his wife’s wishes were the only reason he didn’t? I don’t know.

The “historical” story still seems to be light years better than the whole Desmond present-day subplot. As well it should be, but at the end of each of these games, we’ve gotten a glimpse, tease, or some kind of cliffhanger to lead into the next game. At first they were cool, and mysterious, but now we’re just along for the ride, and I can’t see myself caring much about anything in the present day, especially if it requires me to manually leave the Animus and explore on my own, because that’s not gonna happen.

So I’m done with Ezio, and he was a great character. Now it’s on to Connor… something… and while I’ve never played Assassin’s Creed III, I remember enough to know that people just flat out hated Connor. Maybe it was because they had spent so much time with Ezio that it was hard to adjust to a new assassin, but we’ll see. I’m about to boot it up and get it started and judge for myself.