Impressions of Assassin's Creed III Liberation
This installment was released alongside Assassin's Creed III. It was made for the handheld PS Vita, and only later got an HD version for home consoles and PC. Still, it is very noticeable that it was not made for them.
The game is laggy and buggy. I had some completely unreal lag on launch. I changed the resolution to 1920x1080 and it became smooth. But the controls on PC are very clumsy, and I kept running into glitches with them. At one point the engine suddenly decided I was in water even though I was on land. As a result, the character was dangling in the air to the sound of splashing water and could not move anywhere. I had to reload from a checkpoint. It is a shame I played it after the excellent Part IV (Black Flag), because with that contrast it looks even worse.
The main character is a girl named Aveline. The only truly original difference in this part compared to the others is that you can change her outfit. There are 3 appearances for different purposes. Lady — a woman in a dress, she cannot climb buildings or fight, but she can charm people and barely raises suspicion anywhere. Slave — a girl in simple clothes (according to the story, Aveline is the daughter of a slave who was freed and then adopted into a rich family), can climb and fight, though not especially well. It lets you slip into various places disguised as a worker and avoids drawing too much suspicion from the guards. Assassin — full combat gear, lets you use all weapons and fight at full strength. It immediately arouses suspicion among the guards.
You can travel by canoe in the game. However, because the controls are very clumsy, this is constantly a problem. You crash into something, fail to turn, or just get stuck and stop moving forward.
There are several locations. On the one hand, there are some bright spots, but on the other, everything looks just as dull and bleak as in Assassin's Creed III.
Chichen Itza was nice, though. An ancient temple, caves, catacombs — not bad.
The main villains are vague somehow. The plot too. Everything feels dull and, in my opinion, wildly dragged out. While playing, 2 or 3 times I thought, well, this is finally the end of the game, but no, the story kept going for some reason. Unlike the other parts, I had no desire at all to do side activities like buying and opening businesses in the city, because it all looked rather pointless here. There are barely any counters either; it does not even show the number of synchronization points.
Like in Part III, you can climb trees and branches in the forests. There were a couple of cool missions built around that. But again, the clumsy controls spoiled them.
The graphics are nothing special either, except perhaps for the character detail. And not for all characters, and not entirely either. Still, that is understandable. It was originally made for a handheld console.
At one point you go to New York, where you meet Connor, the Native American hero from Part III. The problem is that he does not look anything like either the hero of Part III or even a Native American at all. Only his outfit does (the screenshot above is not him). That is odd too.
The most interesting part of this game comes at the end. In fact, after the credits, when you think everything ended in a certain way. Still, I am unlikely to ever want to play this installment again. Though as a fan of the series, I still wanted to check it out. The game can be finished in 3 evenings, so it is okay for a look.