Well, I’m glad I didn’t spoil the ending for myself before getting to it at least. Not nearly as bad as people had made out though. There may be spoilers to follow…

I didn’t like the final two “boss” fights. Haytham’s was complete rubbish and different to any other fight in the game, and Charles Lee’s was basically a chase followed by a cutscene. You don’t actually get to properly assassinate either of them – it’s done for you by the game.

There’s no way I’m going back to the game to do everything it suggests I can do. I’m not going hunting, collecting things for the homestead, doing naval battles, collecting feathers or doing any liberation missions or assassination contracts. Unlike similar things in previous games, all these things seem completely superfluous to the narrative. Sure, they weren’t essential before, but they’re an unnecessary chore here – not a fun character and/or money building task.

Speaking of money, there is literally no point to it in Assassin’s Creed III. You gain enough from simply following the story to unlock all of the extra weapons like rope darts and poison, and you never need to restock any as people you kill replenish them easily enough. As a result, I ended the game having only spent about £2000 on such unlockables, with a good £70,000 still in my pocket. At least in other AC games you could buy better swords and things, but here you don’t even need a sword and I never used one, intentionally at least (there’s a bug where you sometimes automatically get equipped with one for no reason), at any point in the game.

What I did do, however, following the end of the game, was find all the pivot points to get the “animus hacks”. Which was fun for a bit, although Fast Travel stopped working again so I had to go everywhere à pied. Sadly, these hacks were not as fantastic as they sounded (invincible, unlimited ammo, fast reload) as when applied you can’t save your game. Tch.

Overall thoughts on Assassin’s Creed III? Yeah, it’s aight.