When it works properly, Unity is the pinnacle of what makes Assassin's Creed, well, Assassin's Creed. The heavy focus on player-created stealth, a ton of options on handling your opponents, less of a focus on brutal combat, and a massive parkour/engine upgrade, all of this leads to a fantastic experience of playing in an actual great system. I always think of AC as having a few components - parkour, stealth, story, combat, emotions. This game pretty much has it all, with combat probably being the weakest of the bunch, simply because the focus is entirely shifted off of combat for this game, which makes it a unique and challenging experience. However, literally every single thing in the game is hindered with bugs, a few game crashes, Arno being stuck mid-air or civilians not moving out of the way in combat, meaning you phase in and out of combat and you cannot dodge/parry... Let's focus on specifics. The parkour system is one of the greatest I've ever played in any AC game, if not straight up the best. When it works properly, the fluidity is unmatched, you can scale insanely complex and tall buildings with Arno truly making it feel effortless most of the time. Particularly the descending and the passing over/under objects whilst running make running across the city, rooftop or ground floor, VERY effective and, more importantly, fun! I had infintely more fun listening to Arno's footsteps across the streets of Paris, the smooth descend off of buildings and smooth escapes from detection than anything that's ever happened in Shadows. The world, Paris, Versailles and Franciade all feel different enough to be unique, despite Versailles having very little to do in it. Paris, at the height of the revolution, French flags strewn across the streets, HUGE crowds of people forming protests in front of government or official buildings, the constant fighting, dancing, unity (hah), yelling, chanting, singing all over the streets and pubs really captures the feel of a revolt, of people fighting for their rights and opposing the systems in charge. It is simply amazing just running around the city, witnessing the city falling apart, and a FANTASTIC detail is the more you progress the story, the more the city becomes rugged, more riots break out, more guards roam the streets, more crime happens, it is simply all beautiful. Versailles has a couple good things going for it, it is where Arno grew up, it feels very much like home, a warm place where you can come to get some collectibles, and eventually, when Arno is kicked out the Brotherhood, a place where he falls back to, and, of course, where he assassinates La Touche - which is one of, if not the most, satisfying assassinations in the game. Franciade feels exactly how the story of the DLC unfolds, creepy, dark, moist, very dramatic, tense, like you can't shake the feeling of unease in the city, like it was plague-infested. It certainly had a different vibe to the main game, which I can respect. A few collectibles were added, some weapons/outfits for it, I think, as a DLC, it does a great job of changing just enough of the formula to make it passable as the DLC for Unity. The story...people really don't like the fact Arno picks Elise over the Creed. I quite enjoyed that little detail and the fact that was the focal point of the story, the love Elise and Arno have for each other, how they hold immense passion for one another, but both have different views on what a relationship like that means to them, Elise expecting Arno to be more ruthless and less protective of her, trying to focus on bringing Germaine down, and Arno not caring enough about anything else besides Elise. Love it. (her death felt unnecessary, though, even if it kind of made sense) All that being said, the story isn't particularly fantastic like Ezio's or Edward's, and some of the memories are quite short, but overall I'd say it's a great story. Many historical figures, like Robespierre and Napoleon, along with the many, many characters that appear in the side quests, line up quite well to the events in the game, and they felt very organic, not forced in that much at all. I think the game overall did a great job of covering a LOT of the French Revolution, even though there was still things that could have made it in. The stealth system is great, having smoke bombs, poison gas, phantom blades, berserk blades, stun grenades, money pouches...you had a ton of tools at your disposal to create the perfect entrance/exit into practically any situation the game would throw at you. I wish the cover system was a lot smoother, it would make the stealth really click and be an undeniably fantastic experience, but that combined with some enemies having insane vision of you kind of hinders it from being perfect. The combat is the weakest out of everything mentioned, not because I expect to be able to swarm hordes of enemies like the Kenways, but because the system literally punishes you for engaging in combat. If you decide to exit out of combat or you get interrupted or Arno sheathes his weapon for whatever reason, for those few moments out of combat you are vulnerable to snipers, gunshots, strikes and you cannot parry or dodge whilst out of combat, which made it very frustrating and even resulted in some deaths early on in the game (thankfully I only had a few deaths from combat due to this, and they were all in the first couple hours of gameplay), the snipers were particularly annoying, they have insane vision and will always cause you to be in conflict, so you'd have to deal with them stealthily, which wasn't a difficult task, but felt tedious. One last thing I'd like to mention - the level designs for the important assassinations are amazing, but the level designs for every other mission (heists, side quests, most co-op missions...) really didn't have a lot going for them. That's why it felt very rough to transition from playing the main story, where you have very smooth missions, to the side stuff, where you are fighting 10 enemies every so often in different areas without having much counterplay. Overall, though, the stealth and level designs were really good. Overall, the bugs are the biggest problem by far, and it isn't close. This is a fantastic AC game, comfortably sitting a bit below Ezio's games and Black Flag for me, so a very strong A tier, comfortable 8/10 for me. Go back to more of this, please, Ubisoft!