Kassandra the Pirate

Traditionally I had never really been a fan of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, but that changed in 2017 when the entire thing pivoted hard. I feel like the modern incarnation of the series is very much UbiSoft attempting to capture the magic of The Witcher 3 and duplicate it. So if you too had bounced off early titles, but also love big open world adventures… then maybe AC is a series you should check out again. It took me awhile to really attach fully to Origins, but when I finally did I loved the game and greatly enjoyed playing as Bayak of Siwa. Then the sequel released and brought us to Ancient Greece and while I picked it up… I never actually got around to playing it.

Since I seem to be rolling through a series of single player games and after coming off Guardians of the Galaxy, I decided to remedy never getting around to this game. I had started the game but never really got very far into it, so I picked up from the original save and kept going. I had heard from many people that Kassandra is the far better option as far as the game goes, and is a more interesting character. I’m already a big fan and I am looking forward to see how this character evolves over the course of the game. I had some “free” outfits waiting on me, so I have dressed my Kassandra is Norse outfits that I am guessing I got around the launch of the next title in the AC series.

I am not super far into the game but have essentially completed most of “tutorial island”. There are a lot of things about the game that feel like they have improved since the previous outing. There are quality life life improvements like the ability to just crank up your walk speed to where you are running all of the time. Essentially in an open world game like this… I don’t love using horses. I am not sure what it is about horses, but I always just end up running around everywhere and my pinky finger gets tired mashing the shift key. I think part of it is that I feel like I miss a lot while mounted, because I live for random combat encounters as I move from point A to point B. Additionally it allows me to pick up all of the random iron and wood that I happen across along the path.

When I stopped playing for the night I was finally out on the open waters with my ship and crew. I learned how to do me some open water piracy and such. This series has always done a better than average job of ocean combat, and I greatly appreciate how they have improved a lot of aspects of it. For example you can just hit a hotkey to board the ship, and it will align the ship so you can jump across and do some deck to deck combat. Similarly you can just hit a hotkey to “dock” the boat when you get close to land. Things things were always somewhat fiddly in Origins and I am always on board for improvements.

This is a pretty huge game, so I fully expect to be engaged in this one for awhile. Maybe even long enough for Horizon Forbidden West to come out next month.