Recent reviews by Damniel47

Underrated game in the AC series, I hate to give ubisoft credit because they've ruined so many games with micro-transactions and anti-cheats in single-player, but they did get it right with this game.

For once they've listened to the feedback removed everything that made the AC series unenjoyable/repetitive:
- The future/out of animus story-line. I think I speak for almost everyone when I say that nobody really cared about this (including the voice actor for Desmond Miles) and they've actually reduced that part of the game to about 10 minutes, instead of the hours that were spent in AC I - AC IV.
- The 'last words' cutscenes. Nobody really wanted this in the series and it kind of ruined the immersion whenever I would see this, it made sense for a few select characters, but having it for every single target was stupid because most of the time they wouldn't even say anything relevant to the storyline.
- The tailing missions. THANK F#CK FOR THAT.
- The infinite worthless collectibles that only had the purpose of preventing you from reaching 100%.

And don't get me wrong, the game is definitely a bit more grindy than the older ones, the game-play is actually mildly challenging even on normal difficullty and very challenging on hard and some side-missions are bascially required to proggress the story-line, but it's not as tedious or bloated as Valhalla, the side-missions are mildy interesting and there are even some cool boss battles like Medusa. I've spent a lot of time on side quests, but If you were to focus only on the story-line missions you could complete it in 35-45 hours.

My only critique for the game is that optimization is lacking a bit and also the DLC's are quite bad, so don't waste money on that, the game on its own is worth the full price

TLDR: Good game with a terrible technical part which ruins the whole experience, somehow this 2013 game overheats my CPU more than Detroit Become Human, maybe get on a discount if you have the patience to put up with a lot of BS.
UPDATE: 4 weeks later, can't even start the game now because of their launcher that won't connect to the game server: 'An ubisoft service is unavailable, please try again later', for whatever reason resetting my password made it work again, although the password was correctly input each time, I even double checked it when resetting it, either way ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ experience all around. Ubisoft is now a sinking ship just like the frigates in this game and the only thing they can do is: "Hey guys look we've added achievements to the old games, isn't that great? You all loved the games we made before selling out so can you keep buying the new ones that are infested with micro-transactions and spyware?"

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
This game kind of left me bittersweet. Although I've enjoyed the story and most of the gameplay, I've had way too many technical issues with it that I just have to knock at least 3 points of the 7.5-8/10 score I would have given it.

1. Parts of the game missing: Kenway's fleet (basically easy side missions for gold) were not accessible and so was the DLC I paid for (Freedom Cry) up until I downloaded a fixed .exe version from the steam console and used that for replacement in the game files (thanks to some random guide I found on steam), having to manually update a game through shady means after paying $40 for it is just perfect.
2. Terrible optimization: Frame drops, stuttering, lag particularly in sea and ocean areas or during rain. Mind you I was running this game on an RTX 3080 intel core i9 laptop and for whatever reason the only thing that would make the frame drops go away would be keeping my charger plugged in at all times (this wasn't a power optimization issue, as I've tried altering those settings) but in some main missions even that wouldn't matter, almost as if the game wouldn't want to use the full potential of my PC.
3. Wonky freerunning: Comparing it to AC3 this game gets the angles for jumps/ freerunning wrong a lot more often than it's prequel, it's also a lot more likely to drop you through the map/ship, or just teleport you if you're trying to run away from combat, and the last mission was really frustrating as sometimes I would make a jump and Kenway simply wouldn't grab the ledge and just fall of to his death.

And then there's some minor classic Ubisoft stuff, like the game sometimes just taking 5 minutes to connect to the server and having to log in manually every time I'd start despite linking my steam account to my Uplay account.

So even though I finished the game, I wouldn't really recommend anyone buying it at the full price, you'd kind of just be paying for an unfinished product, either wait for a sale, or do the most ironic thing possible and p!rate it...

Great educational and Christian game to enjoy with your entire family. God bless the US 🙏

So I've spent a lot more time in this game than I would have expected to spend in visual novel, but it's oddly addictive for how simple it is.

First off, let's address the elephant in the room: If you're down bad, this isn't the game for you. The game is purely about romance and as of yet there are no sex scenes/nudity in the game, but I'm sure eventually one of you perverts reading this will work on a mod to solve that problem.

The main character is an outcast with no social skills (relatable) and no desire to pursue academic success (or any success for that matter). A lot of people in the reviews seem to have criticized him for his unstable and erratic personality, I didn't mind this aspect that much, but maybe it's because I am also a loner like him who despises society just like him, but also everyone seems to overlook the fact that the man lost both of his parents at a young age, so obviously no one could have ever taught him how to act and look out for himself.

The personality of the girls are of the complexity of a 7 sided rubik's cube, just when you think you have them figured out, you find out there's more.

The story of the game despite being enjoyable is slow paced and really long. The choice system in the game is structured in a way that makes it really hard to get a good ending and most endings will be bad, this is because the game is very unforgiving of inconsistent choices, making it challenging and also realistic, (cause it do be hard to get the girl when chasing after 2 at once) some people may find this aspect lame, but I think it's way better than having a cheap story with easy choices just for some sexy scenes at the end.

The soundtrack is awesome and the visuals might not be the best, but they're good enough to create immersion.

The biggest let-down for me was encountering a major bug that has prevented me from getting all the endings. Which is quite annoying, but no-one else seems to have this issue and I'm sure it will be patched at some point.
Update: Got all the endings in the end, all good.

Really thought this would be a game about making tough moral decisions in difficult situations, while it does have those, most of the game is about managing money and running petty errands for people that WILL LITERALLY KILL YOU if you say the wrong thing to them.

The gameplay mechanics are way too frustrating and difficult for game that's supposed to be based around choices and morality, the game keeps throwing all kinds of bullsh*t over bullsh*t at you. Your family will ask for more and more ridiculous amounts of money with everyday that passes, if you can't keep up with those, your family dies, if you can't solve all the problems of your tenants, your family dies, if you resort to illegal means for money, you get arrested and your family dies, if you screw someone over, whether for money or by accident, they'll kill you with a weapon they shouldn't even have in broad daylight. (and your family also dies)

Everything in the game is set up for you to fail in every way possible by simple mismanagement and not bad choices. You are the center of the universe and everything and everyone depends on you to solve their problems, but the problems are under a timer and require money that you don't have and don't know how to get, cause the game only taught you how to install cameras and write reports.

At least I can appreciate the nihilistic symbolism of the game that no matter what you do and how hard you try, in the end everyone dies and nothing really matters.

I really wanted to enjoy the game, but I got very quickly tired of it and requested a refund because every time I progressed to a new level the game simply crashed.
Now that might just be an isolated issue, given the fact that I have a pretty bad and old PC (though I doubt it as the game isn't that demanding), so I'm going to address some of the core problems this game has:

1. Lack of Realism and Immersion: It may sound shocking to most people, but illegal software ownership, cats stuck in trees, dumpster fires and red light offenses aren't considered 911 emergencies. None of them. So I would really like to know why is 90% of the game about those sorts of incidents, and only 9% real emergencies? (With 1% going to the fake emergencies)
   I know it wouldn't be fun if the game was completely realistic and most of the calls were fake, but it just feels so stupid that the game actively punishes you for not responding to situations that aren't even emergencies.
   The choice system in this game is also very linear and boring, whilst you might be presented with 3 or more choices at any point in a call, there really is only one right choice and you can't really be as bold with your choices as you would expect.
   
2. Lack of content: From what I've seen, the game only has about 5-6 hours of 'Real' content, after that everything just starts repeating itself and becomes dull and unengaging. In my opinion that's not worth the full price of 15€, not even close, especially given the fact that some of the more exciting content seems to be hidden behind DLC's, which is something I can never appreciate in any game.

Also I should mention that the controls and interface are rather wacky and weird, but you can totally get used to it. Not that you'd want to get used to it given how little gameplay and replayability the game has.

Maybe it just wasn't my cup of tea, or maybe it was because there were no choices involved in the game story. Either way, I found the story to be dull and disengaging and I found myself multiple times just wishing for it to end faster. It just dragged on and it took huge self-control to not call it quits and skip through it all because I wanted to give the story a chance.

There was too much unnecessary dialogue and the story just simply failed to deliver any suspense in the way it was arched and the characters also felt pretty cliched. I feel like this game really had some potential by the effort there was put into it, but judging by the way it was put together, it really isn't worth its price.

Was good while it lasted...

Truly a hidden gem amongst visual novels! Very immersive atmosphere provided by some beautiful sound tracks, great character design, and while the visuals aren't the best, it really doesn't affect the overall quality.

Storywise, one of the best visual novels I have played, very engaging and always throwing something new at you varying from interest to complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. There's very high replay value provided by the multiple character routes and 13 different endings.Something worth noting is that the entire story is up for interpretation and can be looked at from multiple angles, regardless of which ending you get. It has a fair amount of humour (both whacky and Intellectual) and it does a very good job at explaining cultural references that may not be understood by the English speaking community which is something worth noting. While there are some minor plotholes, some of which are difficult to explain, they aren't very obvious and they don't distract from the overall quality of the story.

Overall, probably one of the best visual novels out there, and I can gladly recommend it to anyone who is even just a low-key fan of visual novels.

The game looked pretty exciting on the store page and they really did a good job both with the trailer and with the game info, however the gameplay is pretty underwhelming considering the presentation it offers.

One would think that this is a game about dealing drugs, you take drugs from a person, and you sell them to another, you stack some drugs in your house, maybe you produce some of your drugs, maybe you get high on your drugs, maybe you even get in some fights because of your drugs, that's what you would expect from a 'drug dealing simulator'.

What the game actually is, is just a stock trading simulator in which you buy the so-called 'drugs' online through an app which is supposedly provided by CIA (makes ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense), and you sometimes get into RPG type battles with random people, or the unrealistically perceptive cops in the game, because cops always know what a drug dealer looks like and whether or not he has drugs on him. I use the term 'so-called' because you could really replace the drugs in this game with anything and it wouldn't make a single difference in the gameplay.

The main character doesn't even have a house/apartment, he just goes around the town 24/7 with his tablet and backpack supposedly selling and buying drugs, I don't even know how he gets the drugs, the game never shows him receiving them, it just shows him purchasing them online, I suppose they drop from the sky or some ♥♥♥♥, maybe the CIA use their top notch technology to synthesize the drugs directly into his backpack. The cops in this game don't make any sense, they will attack you on sight if you have drugs on you or even legally owned weapons, and they will frisk you if you don't (which is clearly a violation of your rights in almost any state and country), and if you're at the start of the game good luck dealing with them, cause you won't be able to fight them, and you'll almost never get away. It would have really been a great thing adding character stats in the game like speed (so you can get away from the cops without tripping 7 times in a row when you try to escape) or strength (so you could actually handle the cops in fights without having to purchase the ridiculously overpriced weapons). Also, why does this game take the weapon system to the extreme? I'm pretty sure no low-profile drug dealer would ever carry a rocket launcher or a flame thrower in his backpack. (I don't even know how you could fit those into a backpack)

Also, the pricing of the drugs in this game is complete garbage. I mean, I'm not a drug-obssesed junkie, who just wants to snort coke everyday, but I know that a gram of cocaine doesn't cost $20,000. It doesn't matter when or where you buy it, you could get it in North Korea for cheaper than that. Hell, you could probably even get it into space for cheaper than that. I understand that it wasn't an easy game to make, (especially since you guys spent so much time filling all that background story that nobody cares about) but if you are to make a game on drugs, could you at least do some research on the average prices for street drugs?

And yes, they use the famous 'unit' as quantity measurement, just so they can discount pieces of criticism like this, but for real, that unit could be a gram, an 8 ball, an ounce or even a pound of cocaine and the pricing still wouldn't make sense. And even if we are to talk about the kilos, it still wouldn't make sense either, as the other drugs would be way too cheap. Needles to say, if you were to carry pounds or kilos of drugs in your backpack and walk through the entire town for days on end, you would probably break both your back and shoulders at some point.

I personally can't recommend this game because it's poorly made and not what I expected, I don't really know what I expected from a 2€ game, but I guess I expected something a bit more than a stock trading simulator.