It has a lot of issues, and fails to live up to the Assassins Creed name. The game strays from its roots.
-spoiler warning- (I do mention some plot elements)
I overall found he game to be rather boring, but maybe its because I was holding it to the light of Assassin's Creed II. The protagonist Connor is just very boring, though theres not a lot ubisoft could have done to match the charisma of the Renaissance womanizer we know from the last game. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but going through the campaign of Connor made me feel like he wasn't very appealing as a character at all, he wasnt a badass, he just played the role of stereotypical native american, against killing, peace and love, and an unhealthy obsession for Charles Lee.
Theres a point in the game where Connor is chasing a man in town, when you finally catch him (note you cannot actually pull out your gun and kill him, despite being a assassination target), connor gets beat up and put in jail, he eventually breaks out to try to kill the man again, and fails. again.
He's then brought up to the gallows to be hanged, only to be saved by Achilles, this is pretty much a subtle way of saying he's no where near as cool as Ezio was considering the last game featured ezio alone being almost hanged and escaping like a badass.
The rest of the characters aren't really developed as much as they were in Assassins Creed 2 either.
You never find out why Achilles failed to stop the templars, or what he was even doing there in the first place. He was really just a plot convenience for Connor to get into the Assassins. I personally would have liked him to have much more meat in the story, considering he was the only ally character who consistently showed up throughout the game.
Haytham is pretty bland as well, if you talk to Shaun after the haytham segment, you find out that he betrayed the Assassins to join the templars. Why? How? None of this is ever touched on, and having his son be an Assassin, or having Charles lee kill connor's mother (his lover) doesnt make him question his loyalty to the Templar order at all. Everyone in this game is flat and two dimensional.
Going on to the gameplay, another major issue is that you'll spend most of the time walking from one place to another, whether it be in between cut scenes or for a side quest. I started calling the game Colonial staircase simulator after finishing the Haytham segment of the game. Mostly you'll be walking next to someone in the form of an interactive cutscene with little to no substance. Very rarely will you actually pull out that Tomahawk and bash some skulls with it.
Which brings us to combat, an aspect of this game that was changed for almost no reason. Ubisoft claims that they made it easier to run in and out of combat, but the dev who said that probably has never even touched an assassins creed game, and they actually made getting out of combat a lot harder than it used to be.
In every AC game previous to this one, you could easily just turn off the targeting and run away. But not in Assassins Creed 3, you now have to awkwardly walk away from your target for 15 feet or so until the auto target disables, allowing you to enter freerun mode. But if that target is one of the type of enemies that can run fast and tackle you, you'll find yourself auto locking on to them and be completely stuck in combat, until you manage to kill off all the enemies, and hopefully patrols don't join the fight endlessly like they normally do in the AC games.
Another problem with the game is its money and lack of uses for it. In previous games you could buy armors with stats like higher defense, or weapons that attacked faster or hit harder. But in this game, money is completely useless. I went through the entire game with the stock Tomahawk and I never had to upgrade once. There isn't even a very large selection to upgrade to, theres no armor, just a sword and a some different tomahawks. But you're at your peak combat efficiency at the very beginning of the game.
Why is this a problem? It makes the entire homestead idea entirely pointless, all maxing out your homestead will get you is a few fancy houses to look at, and a lot of money, which has no application to the game at all.
This also makes hunting useless. Who needs to hunt for money, when you dont need money?
It also makes the naval missions pointless as well, the rewards for it are just more trading routes for your goods, to make more useless money.
I will say though, the graphics in this game are beautiful, unfortunately, the cities you get to climb around in aren't very interesting, they kinda blend together with the colonial style. I cant really call that a fault of the game though, as the Italian Renaissance was probably the best place to have free running in assassins creed.
The frontier however, is pretty amazingly made if I do say so myself.
I was worried that it be too obvious where you could free run and where you couldn't but ubisoft did a pretty good job hiding it and making it look like a beautiful wilderness. Shame its pretty much just a bunch of open space with nothing to do, but its a pretty one.
Overall, I was disappointed in this game. For how much ubisoft pushed it, it really didn't do to well for me.