Everything You Need to Know for Assassins Creed Rogue

At a Glance

Expert'southward Rating

Pros

• Basically Black Flag two.5
• Interesting Assassin/Templar story set-up

Cons

• Story non given enough length to explore concepts
• No impetus to explore

Our Verdict

Hither's a comparison for Assassin'southward Creed fans: Rogue is basically the Revelations of the Assassin's Creed 3 era, and that'south okay!

I talked a lot of trash about Assassin's Creed: Unity this year. On release it was buggy and cleaved, sure, merely it also simply wasn't much fun. Protagonist Arno was merely a bland retread of series-favorite Ezio, the story managed to brand fifty-fifty the French Revolution feel sort of boring, the overhauled gratis-running was as well pasty and cumbersome, and I just overall felt information technology lacked the panache of the previous year's Assassin's Creed Iv: Black Flag.

There was another Assassin'due south Creed game this yr though—Assassinator's Creed Rogue, originally released for last-gen consoles and so recently brought over to PC. Knowing how I felt about Unity, this should be a pretty good endorsement for Rogue:

About of what'due south left is the legendary ship battles.

Black Flag Pt. Ii

Assassin's Creed Rogue is the all-time Assassinator's Creed game that you're probably never going to play.

This is basically the 2nd fourth dimension Ubisoft has done this. With the exception of the first game, Ubisoft seems to want to position the Assassin'southward Creed series as a chain of trilogies. Nosotros had the Assassinator'southward Creed II/Alliance/Revelations arc, wherein the first game was good, the second was neat, and then Revelations was basically an inessential coda for long-time fans to say goodbye to Ezio.

Well Rogue is the Revelations of the Assassin's Creed Iii era. In other words, information technology takes the all-time parts of Assassin'southward Creed 3 (which isn't much) and mashes it up with the best parts of Black Flag. In other, other words, information technology's Black Flag 1.5.

And I loved Blackness Flag, then that'southward fine with me.

The story takes place during the Seven Years War/French and Indian War, which spanned from 1754-1763. That puts Rogue right betwixt Black Flag'due south piracy and ACIII'due south American Revolution. Rogue takes advantage of this by pulling in characters from both of the previous games, giving some closure to Black Flag characters like Adewale and some backstory to ACIII characters like Achilles and Haytham Kenway.

It's a fascinating structure, although it'due south hampered by the fact that…well, Assassin'southward Creed III wasn't that good. Information technology's somewhat difficult to care about the backstory of characters you didn't necessarily intendance near to begin with.

Still, it's oddly heartwarming to come across some familiar faces in a serial that seems content with ditching its entire cast every year. Over the class of the game yous're hit with cameo later cameo from an extensive B-tier cast that plays foil to the new protagonist, Shay Patrick Cormac.

I don't know why Cormac'south story was wasted on Rogue. Hither'south a guy who was brought upwardly in the Assassins, turned traitor, and went to piece of work for the Templars killing off his old friends. That's a hell of a gear up-up, shedding more light on the relationship between the two factions than perchance whatsoever game in the serial thus far and providing all sorts of opportunities for moral ambivalence. Information technology's certainly more interesting than Unity'southward story.

And still information technology's given curt shrift in Rogue, equally a "budget" title. Rather than the dozen or then chapters of a normal Assassin'southward Creed game, Cormac is given a scant six chapters of story to cover both his upbringing in the Assassins, his plow, and and then the whole remainder of the game.

It's as well fast. Cormac isn't given nearly enough grapheme development to handle all that weight, nor are the other characters given plenty time for yous to learn to care about them. Information technology's probably good that you'll recognize most of the characters from previous Assassin's Creed games because otherwise they'd just exist nameless caricatures. Adewale, for instance, has probably two dozen lines in the entire game. That'due south not enough to exercise annihilation meaningful.

I'g left with the impression that Rogue is the nearly ambitious Assassin'due south Creed story—in terms of character, in terms of data on the ii factions, in terms of First Civilization lore—but information technology merely never clicks. In that location'due south a guy working for Abstergo Industries in the mod-day part of the game who continually tells yous that Shay Cormac is "the nearly important Assassin to always alive" or something along those lines, just at the terminate of the day…why? Because he killed another Assassins?

Told you so. (Click to aggrandize and read subtitles)

I don't know. I but don't purchase it, and that's a shame because I think in a full-fledged game Cormac could be that important. He only got screwed by playing B-side to Unity this yr.

On the other hand, it plays like Black Flag: sail your ship effectually, heed to pirate shanties, detect little littoral towns, dig for treasure, beat people upward in bars, accident up other ships. Rather than one big Caribbean area map, the sailing section of the game is at present divide between the River Valley (a role of New York that looks strangely like a retextured Caribbean area) and the North Atlantic upward by Halifax (which as well looks strangely similar to the Caribbean, albeit with snow and icebergs).

There's also a third, fairly large New York City/Manhattan map repurposed from Assassin's Creed Three. This map plays more like traditional Assassin'due south Creed, with you running around and unlocking zones. It's as well the almost boring of the areas, because there's surprisingly little grapheme to such a big city area. And the game seems aware of this, rarely bringing you lot back to Manhattan.

In fact, the game is generally terrible about making yous explore. Because the story is so condensed, missions only bear upon a handful of locations. Your simply impetus to go and find the rest of the map is "I want to."

And I mean, I did want to. I went to every location. I collected 100 percent of all the collectibles, considering I actually love sailing effectually. But Rogue never feels as tight or well-designed as Blackness Flag. There's a lot of space here, between the three maps, and very lilliputian reason to engage with whatsoever of it.

Bottom line

Play Rogue if you want more Blackness Flag. Play Rogue if you lot want to larn about the complex relationship between the Assassins and Templars. Play Rogue if you hated Unity and want a better Assassin'southward Creed experience this year.

Those are the three cases I can recall of where you might end up playing this game. Is information technology essential? Absolutely not. But there's a decent game here, and my simply real regret is y'all can tell at that place's the potential for a much amend game if just the developers were given more to piece of work with.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/426728/assassins-creed-rogue-review-the-best-assassins-creed-youll-never-need-to-play.html

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