Assassin's Creed 3 (wiiu edition)
What I liked:
* an open world with plenty of things to do, side missions and stuff like that
* beautiful graphics and sounds
* some of the (side) missions are pretty fun. Naval missions and taking forts in particular
What I'm neutral about:
* the setting. I don't know anything of American history, so aside from Benjamin Franklin and that Washington guy, I don't know if something or someone is supposed to be accurate or fictional.
What I disliked:
* everything outside the animus is just a mess. There's this evil company, some ghost that talks to you, the world is going to end and more of that stuff that's just irrelevant. Perhaps it's because I haven't played the previous games, but even then...that today's world just breaks the flow. And for what? A couple fetch quests and a bunch of unskippable cutscènes.
* the first couple hours are basically tutorials for things you won't even need later in the game. Everything before Connor leaves his village is just filler.
* there's no upgrading your character, and hardly any better weapon than your starting weapon. While by itself it isn't that hard, it has this strange side effect that all the side missions have rewards that are basically useless. In fact, money itself is pretty useless (the only thing that actually costs anything over your budget are boat additions...and those missions are optional).
* full crashes. I had about a dozen of them, at random times (mostly while loading the game).And yes, I'm on the latest patch and latest firmware. I even have the game on the wiiu drive, so it's nothing with the disk.
* special mention: the whole assassin guild and the merchant menu...what's all that about? You can liberate entire provinces with the former, but it beats me what it does. And the latter...the game constantly floods you with recipes, extra items, extra things your men can do...that SERVE NO PURPOSE. At the end, I just bought all the items, invented/crafted everything possible and (after finally discovering how to create a convoy) sold everything to whomever wanted it. Result: I had EVEN MORE money I had no purpose for. Perhaps the most painful of this was that amidst the dozens - if not hundreds - of useless junk, there was actually a weapon that was better than what I've used for pretty much the entire game. But by the time I found that out, I had no more missions left where I actually needed it.
* the dialog writers (and voice actors) were obviously paid per word. God damnit...the templars and the assassins both think they're right. We get it! But no...every time you kill someone, there's this long ass drama about the dying guy going "hah! I may be dead but I'm STILL right!". At which point your guy goes all "that may be true, but you are still wrong because you did <some action>". After which "Yeah, but we did it for the greater good.". To which...ah, to hell with it. You could write an entire soap opera out of it. And it's not pretty believable if you killed said bloke while still being surrounded by a dozen other guys who want to kill you. I guess they just wait their turn.
* controls. While holding down the 'run' key, you also climb into trees or onto buildings. Result: more often than not, you accidentally climb into everything nearby.
* what's with those guards on the roofs? Why are you suddenly a suspect if you go up there? In fact...it happened quite often that suddenly a whole bunch of guys started chasing me, even though I was "incognito".
* some obligatory missions are...not my cup of tea. Pretty much anything that has the objective "remain undetected", to name one. There was this ship mission near the end that had me just going trial-and-error in the end, because those guards could spot me half the world away.
* the end in itself. As mentioned earlier: I don't know what that stuff outside the animus is supposed to be about, but even the final missions are sloppy. It's like the devs said "okay, guys...we're starting to run out of budget. Make it a mission where you have to actually catch the villain now.". And, technically speaking, that's still the second to last mission. The last mission within the animus consists just of "walk to a bar. Slowly. Then sit through a cutscene.". I wish I was kidding.