Assassin's Creed III brings a fresh new feel to a great series.
Desmond Miles' story comes to a conclusion in AC3. The segments as Desmond in this game are much more fun than playing as Desmond in any other game. It was cool to see Desmond put everything that he has learned from Altair, Ezio, and Connor to use in his real life situation, in an effort to, well, save the world. I found myself actually caring about what would actually happen to Desmond in this game, and I honestly never really cared much for his story in the other games. I just wanted to play as the Assassins. This game does a good job of making me actually look forward to Desmond missions.
In the Colonial setting of the game, it does take awhile to get going. You don't actually start the game as Connor, but as Haytham Kenway, a British man, who later turns out to be Connor's father. When this first happened, I was just expecting maybe just a quick mission or two as Haytham before I played as Connor, but that wasn't the case. You actually play as Haytham for about 3 hours, before Connor is even born. I know most people were probably annoyed by it, but it didn't bother me too much. As much I was looking forward to play as Connor, I did enjoy the whole origin story he was given. It gave a nice backstory, and I was okay with that. When the story gets going, it's extremely fun. You get to interact with all of these historical figures from that Revolutionary era, including George Washington, Sam Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, and many more. You also get to take part in many historical events and battles from The American Revolution, which makes the game even more fun. This game made me feel more patriotic.
This game takes place in Colonial America, so don't expect climbing any huge temples or anything like that. In previous Assassin's Creed games, many buildings in the Renaissance era were extremely tall. In this game, there is very few buildings higher than 2 stories. I'm not gonna take away from the game for that, but it does make this game feel a lot different. My biggest complaint for Revelations was that it felt too similar to Brotherhood. This game finally gives the setting a new feel, which I think is a good thing. You only get to explore two cities, Boston and New York. I kinda wish they threw in another city or two, but the two cities were really well done. Unlike most other Assassin's Creed games which are almost 100% played in large populated cities (in different time periods of course), this game focuses a decent amount on wilderness. In fact there are two whole regions comprised of nearly all woodlands. This definitely made a new feel for free roaming in an Assassin's Creed game. Because of this new type of setting, there is a new type of gameplay involving hunting. There's not really too much to it, just basically kill animals and take their fur and meat. It's not really that special, and it gets annoying when a gang of wolves decides to come after you. You do get money for trading in fur and meat, but you won't find yourself caring much at all for the hunting aspect of the game.
The combat of this game is extremely fun and more fluent than any previous Assassin's Creed game. It's relatively simple and involves a lot of countering. An awesome new addition is the tomahawk, which is more badass than any other weapon and much more fun to use. You can dual wield a tomahawk and your traditional blade, which can make for some awesome bloody kills. If you counter two British soldiers at once, Connor does some pretty unique executions of both guys at once. You can even use human shields against gunfire for the first time, which creates for more creative ways to kill the British.
Stealth in this game is the usual Assassin's Creed stealth, there's not much new to that, which is fine. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The same detection meters from the enemies are back, and you can use the same strategies to avoid detection, like blending with a crowd of people.
One whole new type of gameplay is Naval Warfare. As Connor, you can captain a ship and do many different Naval missions, most of which are optional missions. It can be fun at times, but just frustratingly difficult at others. It's fun the first time you do it, but gets kind of repetitive as you do it more. You may enjoy it or you may hate it. I do like that they put a whole new gameplay mode into the game, but there's nothing really amazing about it.
The length of Assassin's Creed III varies on how much you do in the game. If you do a good amount of side missions, which you should, it will take at least 20 hours. There is a huge amount of fun side missions and side activities to do, probably more than any other Assassin's Creed game. A cool part is that you can liberate forts held by the British by killing a bunch or redcoats and raising an American flag, which made me feel pretty patriotic. There is also liberation missions within the cities, which are inspired by what really happened between British soldiers and the colonists. Helping liberate parts of cities has a nice feeling to it.
The game's biggest flaw is the huge amount of glitches. Yes I know every game has at least some glitches, but some of it just got annoying in this game. Sometimes, as Connor, I would randomly freeze for a few seconds while walking, then randomly end up on the other side of the map. I got really annoyed when it would glitch during important missions, and I would have to restart from a checkpoint because of it.
Besides a few flaws, Assassin's Creed III is still a great game that I recommend to everybody. It brings new life into a great series.