I recently picked up AC3 for my Switch, just for pure nostalgia. I remember it being my most anticipated installment. Studying history I loved learning about the American Revolution, and the American Civil War. The icing on the cake was that Connor was Indigenous. Perfect! My favorite section of history and some semi-personal representation (Connor's Mohawk, I'm Cherokee. But hey, they're both Iroquois) recipe for my new favorite game, lol.

I liked the idea of the historical characters being painted in a very human light. Ben Franklin made a bunch of great inventions, and was a greatly intelligent human. But you meet him as Haytham, spend a few conversations with him, and read some of Shawn's database entries, and you find out that he was a lush, a womanizer, and a massive poon hound. (His conversation about older women with Haytham is lifted directly from either a memoir or a journal, I think?) George Washington is pointed out to be a man of incredible valor, and ideals. But he was constantly second guessing decisions, losing major battles left and right, and well, he fought pretty exclusively for the freedoms of white colonists wishing to leave the crown. I thoroughly enjoyed that the Founding Fathers were painted as human beings, and portrayed with the glaring flaws that should be looked at.

But I definitely remembered the game way differently. I forgot how many Sequences you actually spend as Haytham (4?), and how rushed the story feels. I think the time jump from Sequence 6 to 7 is a full decade? It just feels like half of an Assassin's Creed story. There aren't a lot of intricacies to the plot, and the "Doomsday Countdown" aspect of the modern story feels sluggish. The Remaster definitely fixes a lot of the old jank that was in the original release (only fell through the world once!), but I feel like there were a plethora of Sub-Sequences that could have fleshed out the plot a lot more. I would have loved a mission where John Hancock needs you to help convince the other Founding Father's to sign the Declaration of Independence.

I feel like the knife twist ending of "Oh yeah, your "friends" you won the Revolution for? They just did the thing you've been trying to prevent, this whole game, from happening." would have hurt a little bit more if we actually saw how ingrained in the Revolution Connor seemingly was. Kanento:kon's betrayal I would have liked to see fleshed out, see him slowly become a darker character instead of the instant 180 we get. Don't even get me started on killing off Desmond, lol.

The Tyranny of King Washington? Pretty fucking solid "What if...?" scenario built off of Washington's legitimate hesitation to take that kind of leadership within the government, and denouncing taking a role as "King". Even if it is a pain in the taint of a difficulty spike sometimes. Lol

Overall AC3 is legitimately my favorite of the franchise (not saying a lot, I've only played up to Black Flag, minus Liberation, and Rouge), but it's also the most disappointing entry of everything I played. It earns a lot of it's final story beats, Achilles' death, Connor's name reveal, the betrayal of the Revolutionaries, Haytham's role as an adversary and reluctant father. But I don't think it earns a lot of praise for story pacing, and overall gameplay.