Slit necks, rinse, repeat.
If there were one aspect of this game that I think turned out the best, it would be the climbing. You can climb just about anything that looks climbable. And battles are surprisingly fresh. Nice.
But then you assassinate the 5th or 6th figurehead and suddenly... it wears. Running around and capturing flags; trying to save citizens and fending off hordes of guards to do so. After awhile it's almost gratingly annoying. Especially having to stop and wait for missions to load or "unload" and listen to 20-30 second cut scenes with NPCs that all say practically the same thing. There's no skip button.
Even scaling towers gets somewhat bothersome after awhile. I remember the days when climbing buildings had this grandeur to it, and it does the first couple of times here too. But the milk runs dry.
Okay, so this game isn't horrible. It has great production values and you can tell a lot of time was put into it. It looks stunning and the gameplay is above average... until its charm wears off...
For some reason I think of Crackdown when I play this game... that game didn't seem to get as boring as quickly though; not sure why.
Check it out. Rent it... then buy it when it's a bit cheaper... if you still like it after 3 or 4 hours.