The plot hasn't been concluded, but the series is obviously lost.
Don't get me wrong, Assassin's Creed 3 is not a terrible game, and it's certainly better than the big disappointment known as AC: Revelations, but it's NOT Assassin's Creed. The developers put so much effort into creating an improved experience for the series that they ended up making an entirely new experience. Aside from the main plot of following Templars and searching out mystical artifacts, you hunt, collect skins, and explore, search for treasure. They may as well have called it Red Dead Revolution. The ship combat is by far the most intuitive and exciting of any ship combat I've played and it's all nice and pretty, but what does it have to do with the rest of the game? Absolutely nothing. It's well made, pretty fluff, yes, but it has no bearing on the plot, the characters, or anything. This is evident at the very beginning of the game. After a brief introduction of the story in an opera house and lame "escaping" sequence, the main character (not Conner, the "new assassin", but a separate plot element), climbs the mast of a ship and introduces us to the title hovering in the sky. The problem is it took an hour of unnecessary actions like running back and forth to talk to people to get that far. Add to it two mini-games in the galley down below and even more time could have been wasted before even getting up the mast. This is the opening title! This is the most important moment to set the tone of the rest of the game and it was treated as "we'll get to it when we feel like it". I'm sure Ubisoft wanted a fresh take at the Assassin's Creed pattern, but they mistook mini-games and busy work for depth in the story. Board games, hunting, delivery quests, they just all get in the way and are nothing more than a distraction.
The skins and treasure hunts are supposed to be a means to buy upgraded weaponry, but even the most basic weapons are adequate for the lackluster combat system. Enemies move slowly and there's a prompt before each attack, calling for a button to be pushed to respond. The puppeteer control system of the earlier games has been replaced with a simple button mash system. No longer are you controlling the hands and feet; you simply see an attack, press a button to defend or attack, and watch the scripted action. Ranged weaponry is seemingly more useful but why bother posting up somewhere at shooting at range when you can merely throw yourself into a crowd of enemies and wipe them out with timed moves? In the original Assassin's Creed there was an urgency. You wanted to get away because tactics, not just combat, were your best weapon. Now the game is centered about nothing more than brute force.
This is reflected in the main character, Desmond's ancestor named Conner. He's young, inexperienced, and the Assassin order is all but extinct at this point so he gets little to no formal training, just what's hinted at between cut scenes. Conner makes rash decisions and throws himself headlong into combat rather than prowling about. It's reflected nicely in the story, but that's NOT Assassin's Creed! That is NOT what the series created and the rest of us returning fans expect. Like AC: Revelations, entire sections of story go by without a single assassination. In fact, I can count two actual missions that can be called "assassinations". The rest are open combat incidents where you fight your way to the target or some other action scenario. Why bother putting a "3" in the title when it has nothing to do with the games that came before it? Would want you turn Tomb Raider into a first-person action shooter, or change the Elder Scrolls series into a modern crime story? Why was the game made entirely different from its predecessors then marketed as being a continuation of the series?
I haven't forgotten Desmond. As previously hinted at in AC2, you get to play as Desmond and show off some combat and agility skills of his own. The missions are laughably easy and short of any sort of interest. The real world plot is brought to a non-conclusion, leaving an obviously intentional "what now" question mark that AC fans have come to expect, but what bothered me most was the treatment of Desmond. Without spoiling the ending, I can only say I almost felt as if there was a total lack of respect for the main character that brought us all this way. He deserves far better than what he got, and I feel that way about the series as a whole.
The historical setting is intriguing as the Templar presence in the New World fits nicely with the impending revolution; graphically, however, it does not translate well into entertainment. The low buildings and vast expanses of open space are something of a let-down compared to the dizzying heights and packed rows of buildings in previous games. The woodland area tries to accommodate with branches to swing and jump from, but this movement is cumbersome, not to mention it looks stupid, and it's easier and faster to just run along the ground. Horses are available again but they get stuck on pretty much everything that sticks out of the ground and are essentially useless on anything but a dirt path. With the removal of the legs being controlled separate from the body, Conner tends to stick to or jump on anything he comes near rather than just run straight, so even moving on foot is an unnecessary chore.
Bugs, bugs, and more bugs. I remember playing the original AC through twice before seeing my first graphical glitch and that was on a PC version. Now the issues are everywhere you turn in AC3. Clipping, people stuck, map issues, mission bugs, all kinds of nonsense abound. Ubisoft's QA really dropped the ball in this game; there is no excuse for this level of shoddy workmanship.
I've logged close to 20 hours into this game, but I couldn't tell you much that I found fun. I just went through the motions with the plot then trailed off to hunt rabbits or chase down other mini-missions because I was bored. Assassin's Creed is not a past time; it's not a mini-game like Farmville for you to turn on for a few minutes while waiting on something else to happen. Assassin's Creed is supposed to be the continuing story of some of the most deadly and philosophically intriguing people in history. By the time AC3 came around, the series is nothing more than bubble gum to chew on. The hunting and gambling in Red Dead Redemption had a place because it fit the theme of the game and there were important things to buy with winnings. In Assassin's Creed 3 it's just a waste of time, and I leave the series with a broken heart because that's how I feel about this final game as a whole. Despite what was shown in the cut scenes, Desmond, Altair, Ezio, and even Conner have now died a slow and meaningless death. I'm going to reload the first Assassin's Creed and relish the debates of what is real, and what is permitted, something Ubisoft has blatantly forgotten.