Overall this is a great game, but some additions/changes don't work as well as they should.
I will start by saying the story for Altair and Ezio are better than the previous game. They are well presented, engaging and fun to follow. The game does suffer slightly from having no obvious villain for the first half or more, but that is overshadowed by the great conclusion and satisfying wrap up for Altair and Ezio. The Desmond arc does answer some of the questions from the previous game, and the conclusion to this chapter is very cool, but Desmond is de-emphasized in this game.
The gameplay has been refined once again, with a few new added abilites, such as bomb crafting (which is fun) and a new version of eagle sense. No combo and assassination kill moves also add to the variety of animations available. Overall you have more tools to complete your missions than any other game you could image, and no two people will approach the missions the same way.
The multiplayer, which I was a huge fan of in Brotherhood seems a little... off for some reason. They changed some things that needed changing such as contesting kills when you get the drop on your attacker and still getting points even if you lose, which works much better than the previous unreliability of slap. Also, stealthy kills without getting noticed get you a quicker animation so you can move on immediately as opposed to sloppy kills which take longer making you linger. Other changes don't work as well. They moved some of the tried and true abilities like Smoke Bomb and Morph deep into the leveling tress (20+) and made throwing knives really overpowered (hopefully they will tone them down). Also instead of getting full points for a subtle kill you now need to build the meter by tailing your target, which makes it much easier for them to evade you as well as making you much more vulnerable to your attacker.
Deathmatch is also problematic. It is ok for a few matches to relearn the ropes and what has changed, but most fans will quickly move on to one of the other game types, Deathmatch gets old fast (small maps, little to no strategy or stalking). But for whatever reason "Play Now" only rolls Deathmatch. Out of 20 or so tries on several days I have never gotten anything else. So you must go in and manually chose your game type to team based or wanted and then be limited to that type instead of the randomized match types in Brotherhood. IMO they need to either allow you to check a box to skip over DM in Play Now or add a "Anything but Deathmatch" selection to the custom game menu.
[b]Pros:[/b]
- Good story, satisfying conclusion for Altair and Ezio.
- New tools added - bomb crafting, improved eagle vision, and such are well integrated.
- Great visuals, everything looks goods, from character animations, to day/night cycles, to building design and textures.
- Multiplayer is still great, but takes a bit of relearning.
- Improved and added animations add a lot of variety to kills.
- Constantinople is a bustling metropolis full of things to do and missions to complete.
- Scripted events are fun and exciting, especially the last one.
- Recruiting and training assassins has been improved and made more useful.
- No more collecting and completing missions to unlock weapons and armor.
- Being able to completely customize your characters in MP is really cool (weapons, skins, animations, etc.). But the old favorite carried over from Brotherhood - the Courtesan - cannot be customized.
[b]Cons:[/b]
- Story takes a while to get going, and some questions aren't really answered.
- Rifleman on rooftops are super-annoying in singleplayer.
- Defending assassin dens from templar assaults isn't fun, which encourages you to always keep your notoriety at zero to avoid it.
- Ability progression in MP isn't as good as Brotherhood and some abilities need to be toned down (ie - throwing knives).
- Deathmatch is only fun for about 2 rounds, and is overemphasized in multiplayer.
- No real memorable characters in singleplayer compared to Brotherhood.
The problems I have with Revelations really are nitpicks and it speaks to how good the game is that these minor announces are all I can come up with for problems. I really think anyone who played any of the other games will enjoy this one and really anyone who enjoys competitive multiplayer that is not twitchy CoD style will enjoy Revelations. I would definitely recommend this game as a must buy. Easily my favorite game so far this year, I'l be playing it until ME3 comes out in 3 months.