Gameplay
What an improvement! Jumping on the rooftops has never been this fun and the new animations when jumping from a rooftop to another makes the player feel the fall. Not only the parkour element, but also the fighting has been improved. New awesome animations, that take a use of environment, e.g. Arno taking last fatal jump off the wall to finish off an enemy with his sharp blade piercing the body. Action feels more live and it's also harder than before. It's not extremely hard, but even as an experienced gamer I did face numerous deaths due to combat. It's not like you could rush into the middle of an army and finish them off just like that. The new approach to the assassin's creed really makes you consider your moves beforehand. And there are various ways to approach an enemy. It no longer feels like you have to walk a certain way to finish someone off, it really does feel like the choice is up to you. Choose your own way at anything you do.
Now that they decided to separate climbing down and up to two different buttons (o for down, x for up on PS4), it really does help out the accidental climbing when running on the street, but it doesn't completely remove that problem. Once a while you will still find yourself stuck climbing something, however, it's still better than before.
Story
Stories are probably more important to me than an average gamer. I really like to care about the story, I never skip cut scenes, even on a bad game. Now, I think Unity starts off with an interesting storyline, it sets the story up pretty well. However, somewhere in the middle it gets a little lost and all the story missions feel a little too random. It's like a movie that has been cut poorly together, so that it feels just like a lot of misplaced scenes together. Fortunately though, Unity manages to get a hold of its story closer to the end and provide an interesting and touching ending. Also I think with the right writers, the story of Arno could be continued to be made even more interesting as the character itself is interesting, likeable and while not a copy of Ezio, much like another type of Ezio. Also, I don't know why some said the relationship between Arno and Elise wasn't believable. I thought it was good, though not great, but good. It would've been great if they had taken a little more time to swim deeper into that ocean of love. All in all the story was good, but not great. With a little more thought put into the story, it would've been great. Wish they had taken that extra time to create something magical, like they did with Assassin's Creed 2.
I miss the current time sequences though. Unity has no current time sequences, if you don't consider the few messages a sequence. Ac 1-3 had an interesting concept of turning the main character into a modern time assassin, but I guess that idea is buried now. I wish it wasn't though, as it would be really cool jumping around New York City assassinating evil politicians as they plot corruption somewhere on a skyscraper.
French Revolution
I think the game really captures the feeling of the French Revolution. The city is filled with NPC's, I mean there's tons of NPC's wandering around, so you'll never feel quite alone there. You can feel how the city is tearing itself apart and how the people react to the Revolution. Revolution is around everywhere you go. The city is also filled with tons of side missions, collectibles and co-op missions. I thought it's good they had put much more work on the side stuff than before, as the missions are not that repetitive, and locksmithing boxes open turns out to be sort of fun challenge. Allthough I do wish they had made the main story slightly longer and perhaps a little bit more stuff to the middle and dialogue.
Overall
+ Gameplay improvements
+ Arno's character
+ Parts of the story
- Parts of the story
- Occasional stuck at climbing something moments