My relationship with Assassin's Creed is a little different.
When I was quite younger, and back when we shared just one computer as a family, my brother was the only one of my siblings that could afford to buy any videogames. One of those games were the Assassin's Creed games. I, on the other hand, remember seeing the series' ads a lot on the internet, and as someone with a life-long interest in history, I've thought it was the coolest thing ever. Not to mention, back then, open-world games were so interesting to me because it was something I've never played before, so obviously, watching him play the first game, jumping around and doing acrobatics, I always wanted to play it AT LEAST ONCE.
So so many years later, I had bought it on Steam, and before I could find time to try it out, this time it was my sister who played it -- telling me she loved it. I remember being preoccupied with some stuff then, and when it was over, I finally played it too.
And it was an absolute disappointment.
I remember thinking, "This is what I died to play?"
The "open-world" was not even that open, and the whole "complete side missions to unlock main story" was SO BAD because all the missions were the same! Not to mention the bonkers fight system...
So after that whole debacle, I gave up on the game for good -- much to my sister's dismay, because she LOVES the Ezio trilogy -- and I wanted to see İstanbul too, but I just can't get myself to play through that horrible game design ever again.
Now, flashback-back to 2024 and 2025 -- I and a moot talk about games involving Ancient Rome, moreso the Octavian era because it's my obsession after I got
smitten with Augustus from Civ7. I told them about the game I was playing -- Shadow of Rome, I still haven't finished it -- and we complain about the lack of actual RPG games about Ancient Rome.
In this game, Octavian(us) has a long, Final Fantasy-like anime twink haircut. But you can actually change it into a more period-accurate hair, and he looks so cute with it! And I really like the way they did his face! Look at that nose!
INTERLUDE: SHADOW OF ROME.
I started playing this random ass Capcom game I've never heard of before, just because I saw Octavian is one of the protags. And at first I thought he'd just be a story character but he's actually playable, and to top it off, it's stealth! It is kind of ridiculous now I think about it, but his sections were the fun parts... The constant change between his parts (the actual story happens in his side) and the boring, repeating slashing parts of Agrippa (who's for some reason made into a gladiator of all things) made me take a break off this game.
Seriously though, why are they always 4X games?
Anyway, then they (the mutual) tell me about Origins. I am surprised, I thought it took place in Ancient Greece. Turns out that one was called Odyssey and I just combined them together in my mind. "You can fight Romans" and I'm sold like that.
I was still a bit busy then so it took me a lot of time to play the game. And at first, I didn't like it -- I thought the stealth was so butchered just for the new mechanics. The use of Senu, gear and leveling thingies, currency... I was like "What are all these?!"
I took a break, but then I returned. And I returned for good.
I did my best and actually finished the whole game with the DLCs before the 2nd week of the semester.
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