Assassin's Creed Unity

Unity redefines the franchise as a whole. It may not be perfect or especially innovative, but the astonishing attention to detail, paired with a great level of personalization and a fresh cooperative option make this game an amazing experience. If Ubisoft commits itself to giving each Assassin's Creed the same amount of care as it did to this one, we won't care if each iteration comes out every year or every six months.

Brilliant graphics, one of the best locations in the series and a renewed focus on the game's main gameplay pillars make Assassin's Creed: Unity a worthy entry in Ubisoft's franchise. It's however far from a perfect experience, due to a bit too many glitches and bugs, especially during co-op matches.

A vibrant playground that you can tackle alone or with friends, it adds just enough new while still staying faithful to what made it successful in the first place.

AC: Unity is a fantastic game, with loads of atmosphere, gameplay and an enormous city to spend days or even weeks of your time. The game could've used more polish, although the glitches and bugs can't spoil all the beauty and fun it offers.

There are tons of things to do in the game, with even more in the multiplayer and side quests. Hours of play long after you think you are done.

Expanded mission choice, more cohesive movement options, a wide variety of customisation options all set in an immersive world combine to promote the exploration every player possibility. And not to say it’s without its faults, as noted with some minor, yet impactful, movement snags and a dated combat system.

Whoever wanted a revolution, not just in the plot but in gameplay terms, will be disappointed. Trying to make combat and parkour more complex and compelling, Ubisoft Montreal overlooked some complications, and that's a shame, since it will show in every aspect of the gameplay. On the other hand, the digital version of the revolutionary Paris is stunning, and there's a lot to play, so fans of the brand will have their fair share of entertainment.

It has its ups and downs, but it's a really good game. If you like the setting and the franchise, AC Unity won't disappoint you.

Every revolution has failures and victories, and Unity has more successful ideas in a videogame that means a good entry in the next-generation.

The latest Assassin’s Creed features an interesting storyline and some nice but broken technology. While the game still manages to be enjoyable, ultimately Unity lacks polish. [Dec 2014]

The best thing about Unity is its incredibly detailed portrayal of a city of Paris that looks more alive than any other scenario in Ubisoft's long running franchise.

After two games that departed from the original model, AC Unity is a more familiar game, a sort of homecoming.

Unity is an attempt to get back to the basics of stealth-action, and there are a lot of subtle upgrades that make the formula feel freshly tailored for this new generation. This is an extremely ambitious, beautiful game that you can spend a lot of time with. Unfortunately, system performance may vary substantially, Arno’s story is a bit underwhelming, and if you don’t have a few patriots to join you in battle the co-op missions won’t impress.

With gorgeous visuals (and some bugs, as usual), Assassin's Creed Unity is more an evolution than a revolution, but what it changed it did it right, giving a new stealth approach and adding a fresh experience with the co-op missions.

One of the strongest games in the series. Paris is beautifully remade on an impressive scale and with attention to detail. Arno is a decent lead, making good use of the improved combat and parkour in the game. Unity has hours upon hours of content, some varied and some repetitive, but all in all a very good open-world game.

True to its name, Unity is a cohesive collection of the fundamental elements of the Assassin’s Creed experience, and feels like a much-needed reset for a franchise that was starting to become bloated and scattered.

Unity offers plenty of enjoyment and variety. It never gets boring and you can spend many hours inside the beautiful reproduction of Paris of the first French Revolution. It fails to deliver something new in terms of gameplay, though, and less-than-decent AI screws up many of the missions the game offers.

Beautiful visuals, a likeable Assassin, and fully customisable skills and equipment: you’ll spend months on your virtual trip to the French Revolution. Mind your head.

While it's true that Assassin's Creed Unity lacks the polish we would expect from the series by now, it's bolstered by its fantastic location, interesting new mission types and deeper emphasis on customisation.

Glosses over the changes and additions made in Black Flag, but it's more than deserving of recognition. The skill and attention to detail make this hugely accomplished, if flawed. It's a return to Brotherhood - but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Inordinately long load times, repeated onscreen notifications, and a couple of hard freezes prove that Unity is a complex game that hasn’t yet had all of its bugs smashed. However, Unity’s frequent missteps are balanced against an astonishing array of engaging content set in a stunning world.

Unity is immensely good fun to play, even though an average story combined with a number of smaller issues let it down. That said, the improvements to free-running and combat make the experience very enjoyable. The best part of Unity is Paris itself, and just how good everything looks. The city is full of interesting things to do, and when you factor in some enjoyable co-op and the brilliantly overhauled assassinations, you’re left with a solid adventure that just isn’t quite as revolutionary as you might have hoped.

The setting and atmosphere [are] cool, but some of the best ideas are marred by bad checkpointing and a story where the historical elements often feel like an afterthought. Assassin's Creed Unity is a solid action game, but a disappointing follow up to Black Flag.

Unity may be the hardest game the franchise has produced thus far. Regardless, I welcome any open-world game that can dedicate resources to this kind of heavily-directed play while maintaining the living environments you spend most of your time in.

Every aspect of the Assassin’s Creed formula has been taken apart and put back together again, all while existing in a world populated by impressive crowds of thousands. Sadly, the game pushes right up against the hardware limitations of the new-generation consoles and does not have the quite narrative ambitions or scope as previous games in the series.

Unity is not the huge leap forward that a next-gen Assassin’s Creed promised it would be – rather it’s a familiar adventure dressed in exceptional decoration.

It could have been a gorgeous new beginning for the franchise. And in many ways this is the best Assassin’s Creed since Brotherhood. But with technical glitches, serious framerate issues and bugs you start to think if Ubisoft bit off more than they can chew.

The scope is stunning, the customization is satisfying, and the multiplayer touches upon some really ambitious ideas. But the lack of a strong main character or interesting take on the Assassin’s Creed universe costs it momentum and excitement, and the persistent control problems are still a thorn in its side.

Assassin's Creed Unity is big, beautiful and spectacular, but it's a known game with many graphical bugs. Ubisoft people don't risk, they play to what they believe is insurance.

If you're invested in the classic AC style, this will do the trick. You'll love being a part of Ubisoft's Paris. [Jan 2015, p.68]

There is a lot to love in Unity, like tons of content to keep you busy for hours on end, but you have to be willing to overlook its truly ugly shortcomings.

Assassin's Creed Unity makes me sad. Boasting moments of excellence, it falls way short of being the new-gen Assassin's Creed game that I wanted.

Unity’s predictable narrative and constant technical quibbles mar what would otherwise be a solid entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Come for the side-content and co-op, but don’t expect any important revelations here.

Unity suffers from too much emphasis on a level of technical achievement that it falls short on delivering.

As the first next-gen addition to the series Unity is a stepping stone on the way to something outstanding, but not an outstanding game in its own right. [13/2014, p.32]

Look, Assassin’s Creed Unity isn’t a bad game, it’s just not up to the standards of the franchise. It needed more development time – more time to optimize the experience and to get its systems to work smartly.

Ubisoft’s insistence on releasing what is, frankly, an unfinished product is inexcusable. Players falling through floors, obnoxious NPCs interrupting cutscenes, characters turned into terrifying grotesques as they are rendered without skin. All have been exposed in Unity’s litany of bugs. You could be lucky and not see any of them at all, or they could come and spoil your fun entirely.

It stumbles out of the gates, but underneath the issues lies a pretty good experience that I would hope will get better with patches.

Ubisoft tries to create a sense of greatness, but the technical flaws keep this game from really doing so. This is a tremendous let-down, as the tougher fighting system, the extended missions and the co-op multiplayer experience are all great assets to the franchise.

Assassin’s Creed Unity is not the evolution everyone was looking for. Ubisoft has done a good job with the brand new cooperative multiplayer mode, but the game has too many issues to be a real must-buy. Paris is awesome but having just one place to explore is quite boring, and the lack of horses or side gameplay elements such as the sea battles from Black Flag can be a problem too. And there are too many bugs even after day 1 patch.

Entertaining and beautiful but lacks new ideas.

Unity attempts to improve on some of Assassin's Creed's innate problems, but it misses the mark as often as it hits. Nevertheless, you'll want to play it for the gorgeous rendition of revolutionary (etc.) France and the involving, opened-ended primary assassination missions. It's clear Ubisoft is trying to shake up the series a bit, but next time they need to shake a little harder.

It's a great story wrapped in a more confusing story, some satisfying stealth action, and mechanics that leave me banging my head against the wall. It's Assassin's Creed, warts and all.

It's very good, maybe even great in places, but the story's smaller focus has come at the expense of its exquisitely rendered backdrop. The grandness and spectacle that so often graces the finest Assassin's Creeds is sadly sorely lacking here.

My lack of enthusiasm for the multiplayer is mirrored by my experience with the rest of the game. Unity does take a few extra strides towards advancing the series, but in many ways it feels like a step back from Black Flag.

Unity is still one of the weaker entries of the series. Co-op, while fun, feels half-baked; the game is ultimately meaningless in terms of the series canon because of the lack of focus on the present day story line; and many of the design decisions feel driven by the unwelcome addition of micro-transactions. Better luck next year, I guess.

Unity follows in the original Assassin’s Creed’s footsteps in many ways as the first game in the series developed exclusively for the new generation of consoles. And, much like its ancestor, for every good thing Unity does, it adds something else that just leaves you scratching your head—giving the whole experience a hit-or-miss feel that we haven’t seen from the series in a long time.

In the quest to build something that looked and sounded "next generation," Ubisoft Montreal failed to fix the problems that have accumulated over so many annual release. Combined with an uninspiring story, and a long list of considerable technical problems, Unity falls short of the fresh start Assassin's Creed needs.

Assassin's Creed: Unity is full of ideas and systems that don't gel or haven't reached their potential.

What could have been the definitive entry in the Assassin’s Creed series is actually the definitive example as to why releasing an unfinished product is always a bad call.

Whether you can get over these glaring flaws or not is going to probably be the main thing that affects your opinion. We fought through the overall unpolished finish of the product, and we were glad that we did so, but this really isn't how anyone can reasonably have expected the game to have turned out.

Paris shows some promise, but it's hard to enjoy a game when it's so nauseating, even if it does suggest a return to the series' best ideas. Maybe next year. [Issue#119, p.65]

Assassin’s Creed Unity is a beautiful game that’s fun to play with friends. It’s also an outmoded mess that incenses with its dated controls and shoves Ubisoft’s executive-minded priorities directly in the player’s face.

Not the bold new reinvention that Assassin’s Creed needed but instead a rushed, patently unfinished mess whose improvements are minor and failings more obvious than ever.

I’d love for every iteration of Assassin’s Creed to be great, as I genuinely enjoy the series. Assassin’s Creed 2, Brotherhood, Black Flag…these are all fantastic games to me. But Unity doesn’t compare favorably at all to the better entries we’ve already seen.

Assassin's Creed Unity is the best and worst of Assassin's Creed. It's hard not to appreciate everything that it gets right, and you'll have a good time if you can wrangle some friends for co-op, but it's impossible to ignore where Unity falls tragically short.

As of this writing, Ubisoft has created a live blog that promises to address all of the technical issues that is plaguing their high profile game. Considering their misplaced priorities, however, they hardly deserve a pass for releasing Assassin’s Creed Unity in the miserable shape that it’s in, which damages both this decent entry in the series as well as the very AC brand itself.