By now it’s a safe bet that if you’re interested in Assassin’s Creed, you’ve already played one of the others. So this review won’t go into detail on all the nuances of the series but will talk mostly about the new additions to the game play, things like lifts, generating income, area influence etc.
The Assassin’s Creed franchise has always been sort of sloppy in the controls departme
nt and surprisingly, they’ve just never bothered to fix it, not even in this latest iteration. Trying to line up jumps and climb consistently is not much better than it was in the previous iterations. There have been some minor additions to the controls due to some new things that you can do but still, they get frustrating from time to time.
One of the major new changes to the gameplay is the influence system. The Borgia will have a tower in an area and that in turn is a display of their power. To begin renovations and rebuild an area you have to destroy the tower. To do that you must first kill the local captain of the guard. It gets sort of repetitive after a while as it is generally the same thing time and time again. Once you have done away with the tower you are then able to purchase local landmarks, renovate and upgrade shops, stables, banks, etc. This all earns you more income and influence. It also opens up the tunnel entrance in the area which is sort of a quick transport from area to area.
The money, of course, can be used to buy new weapons, ammunition and even dye your clothes different colors as well as bribe and purchase particular factions help for a time. Money can be gained from both landmarks and from renovating shops and banks.
The renovation system from ACII has been expanded outside of Monteriggioni which unfortunately gets taken out pretty hard in the opening of the game. But, as in ACII, the more you renovate the more money you make. Plus, as you renovate banks you can hold more money in the account. Buying landmarks is fun, my first purchase was the Coliseum.
