I say this as a hardcore fan of the franchise but my patience is wearing thin as the game's technical problems are slowly eroding any fun I got out of this game. The game is constantly crashing about every 1/2 an hour on average for me. The game might be playable in 4 - 6 months time but for now, it is definitely not worth playing.

Game mechanics are more or less classic AC. That's great if you enjoyed any of the previous instalments. However, because Ubisoft has decided to force Multiplayer on us. Here's what you are missing out on if you just want to play the game totally solo single-player and not participate in any co-op or any of the guild (called clubs ingame) content (which I must add, the club competitions are NOT EVEN RELEASED YET) You are completely locked out of the 5 star gear upgrades if you are a solo player meaning you will hit a glass ceiling in terms of gear.

The Armor set in Unity that can be unlocked is basically a reskinned Altair's costume (Either a Pro or Con depending on your preference), however it is basically a skin and has no statistical advantages so it is pointless to pursue if you are not a fan of the looks. I should also mention that you need to collect about 12 seals to unlock the gear which means it will take a while to do as well.

The Parkour is great in this game and probably the best in the entire series so far however as usual, it has a lot of stickiness issues. I've basically bounced about on all 4 sides of a window for 30 seconds or so because the game just doesn't want to let me climb to the exact spot to climb into a building.

Level design is much better than the last few games. Now they give you a more open area and let you figure out which route you want to take to get your target which is pretty fun when you perfectly execute an assassination. However there are a few levels (or some spots used in assassin missions) where the layout and guard density can get pretty ridiculous. Overall though the level design is pretty good in Unity.

The Stealth detection mechanics are pretty spotty in this game. I have encountered issues where guards were alerted of my presence after I stealth killed another guard on another floor or issues where guards all across the restricted zone are alerted to me when I killed a guard and there were no other guards looking my way.

Combat is a lot more difficult compared to previous games (which again could be a pro or con depending on your preferences). No longer can you fight off 20 or so guards and win easily. All guards carry guns which can take out 1/2 to 3/4 of your HP if you stick around too long so you have to try not to stay in combat for too long. The Double Assassination mechanics seem to be pretty spotty too in my experience. Even with 2 enemies clearly highlighted for a double air assassination, I have found myself frequently seeing Arno only hit one target which causes me to aggro the 2nd guard and consequently every guard in the zone is alerted to me.

The Story is pretty meh and doesn't really take advantage of the interesting setting of the French Revolution which is pretty unfortunate. You only seem to read about the events of the French Revolution behind the scenes through the ingame journals or dialogue but are not really involved in many of the big events. I can't think of a single character outside of Elise who is memorable or even has any kind of personality. Arno is okay but is a poor man's version of Ezio.

Ubisoft has also included chests that rely on you playing a Mobile App to be able to unlock. I decided to give it a try but uninstalled it 2 days after playing it after it reset my progress twice. Another broken component of ACU... There is also an AC Initiates web game which I'm not too sure what the point of it is as it is still half built at this point on the website and it has also reset my level earlier. To unlock the legacy skins like Altair's Armor, Ezio's armor, etc you need a certain Initiate level before you can open the chest. (Seeing a pattern with Club Competitions, Companion App and Initiates? I'm not sure why Ubisoft is adding in all these extra things to the main game when they are all pretty much incomplete, unfinished and bug-ridden)

Frankly if Ubisoft couldn't get all this working, they should either have left them out of the game completely and made sure their main game is fully featured and actually works properly or delayed the game release.

Fixes microtransactions before framerate drops 10/10 -ign

I'm a huge fan of the Assassin's Creed Series. Sadly though in the last few years the games (well, more likely Ubisoft) has let me down. It started with revelations (not a great game storywise) and went on to AC3 (a huge dissapointment. Mainly because it had so much potential, but they half arsed it instead of taking their time). What really annoyed me, was that AC3 was so bugged i wasn't able to get the game to 100% completion. And believe me, i tried! So when all hope was lost, along came AC4: Black Flag. And what a beautiful game it was. Good story, beatiful setting and a open world to die for! So with all my hopes back up i bought AC Unity with the season pass. 80€ wasted.
Don't get me wrong, i absolutely love this game! The freedom and the setting is as if you had combined the best two games in the series (AC2 and Black Flag). There are a lot of new features which gives the game a new edge compared to the ones before, like the Co-op. (For more details on the new features, read other comments)
So why not recommend it? My fps aren't great even though my settings are at the lowest. But seeing that my PC isn't top-of-the-range, that doesnt bother me. Because even though the settings are on "Low" the game still is beautiful. So that's not the reason. My main problem is, is that the game constantly crashes. When it happens once in a while: ok, it can happen. But 3 times in two hours? That's pushing it.
I want to love this game! I really do! But in this state it's unplayable and it just ruins the entire experience. So it's with regret that i have to not-recommend it. Wait until its on sale in a year or so. Maybe then it'll be halfway fixed and worth it's money.

Honestly, I wanted to like this game. It looked like it was introducing new ideas, plus French Revolution seemed like an awesome place to run around in to do cool assassiny things. But, it was a let down for $60. The launch issues with the framerates and performce were bad. Arno constantly STILL gets stuck on things or jumps to objects you don't want to go to, which makes escapes and chases a pain in the butt. The story is mediocre at best and has a ton of holes in it. The map, while quite large, is splattered with collectibles, some of which you can't even get without using the mobile app.

It seems like this game is trying to do too much at once without focusing on story or character development. Arno is a weak character, and doesn't hold together well. Even Connor from AC3 was a better character development.

That being said, the game itself is gorgeous to the eyes. However, since the framerate stutters constantly, it's hard to appreciate it. Ubisoft should have pushed this out a while, and now they're trying to scramble to patch it and apologize for screwing up to save face with the community. Too late on that front for several people. I regret pre-ordering the game, and honestly can't recommend this to anyone. While some ideas are great, such as the new movement, both up and down buildings, or going inside of buildings, or the murder mysteries; the overall feel of the game is lackluster.

Wait for a year for them to fix it and pick it up on a steam sale. Can't recommend it until then.

Are your coders and programmers a group of mentally disabled chimps with no attention span and a limited supply of cocaine? Cause that 1.5Gb patch you lot just rolled out turned occasional framedrops into frequent freezes and crashes!

It's okay though everybody I can now start a mission from the world map without it causing the game to crash! That's whats important! Seriously every patch that is released the more problems I get. What the ♥♥♥♥ Ubisoft! I didn't pay $75 to have 50GB of my SSD made completely useless. The game is ♥♥♥♥ing unplayable now! Do the right thing and enable refunds and recall this broken piece of ♥♥♥♥ until it's fixed! Corporate money grubbing pigs.

GTX 780
Intel i54670k
16GB RAM

DO NOT BUY. GAME IS BROKEN AND KEEPS GETTING WORSE.

no, do not, i repeat, DO NOT buy this. does not work or launch. look at the other reviews for christs sake. right now, everything is broken, even my dad who couldn't care less about gaming said "hey, i heard there's this game called assasins creed unity, and people are saying it's the worst of the year..."

the gameplay itself doesn't look half bad, just it doesn't launch. it launches, then i press "start". i am greeted with the message "acu.exe has stopped working". in addition to this, it also screws up your machine to the point where you actually need to restart it, because firefox (and chrome) just goes completely whited out and when you read text on an app you can't cuz it's just a yellow unicode square.

very broken, wait for a fix, then i will update this.

edit: holy crap, 60 ratings this is the closest i've been to fame.

also max452314, if you're reading this, thanks for the game anyways! hope ubisoft fixes it.


also, did i mention their drm, udontplay?

This game has a huge difficulty gap compared to the previous Assassin's Creed games.
It is much harder. I couldn't even get past the first level where I had to click New Game on the Main Menu. It wasn't even an assassination. The lag monster made me lose and crashed my game.
11/10 Ubisoft would play again

This game should of came out in 2015.

It has to be the most glitchiest game ever created.

2.4/10

If this game was a potato, it would be a rotten potato with no limbs.

I've been a huge fan of this series from the very first game. After extreme satisfaction from Black Flag, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this game, especially since it's set during the French Revolution. However, I am extremely disappointed in this game. I don't even think this was optimized, as I am well above the recommended specs but I cannot play on normal graphics settings without my fps dipping well below 30 FPS.
Melee combat has been nerfed on an extrodinary scale. This can be a good thing or bad thing depending how you liked the melee in the past games. I for one am not a fan of dying to 4 enemies. Oh, they also got rid of using people as a body shield when enemies are about to fire, lovely isn't it?
I'm not a fan of how co-op was forced upon us. You are forced to play co-op missions in order to get 5 star armor. Most people playing co-op have absolutely no care for stealth and will just run into the mission guns ablazing. I could expect this, but co-op should not be forced on us.
The parkour in this series has always frustrated me, no matter what. I thought they were getting better with it in Black Flag, but this game has taken 2 steps backwards. It seems like they've tried to get too cute with the parkour and now it's no longer flowing. There's countless times where Arno will just stay hanging from a ledge because I do not press the "free run up" button. Entering through windows is extremely buggy. Most of the time Arno will climb around the open window instead of actually climbing in it.
On top of all this, Ubisoft has decided to add microtransactions in game. This utterly disgusts me, and the fact that there are 3 different currencies in this game is just plain ridiculous.
Overall, this game feels like an Alpha release, and I cannot recommend this game whatsoever.

As of Patch 4:

Overall: The Performance of the game runs a little smoother. That is noticeable. Yet, alas... I can still only run on "Low Quality". Minor issue, more less personal taste. At least it runs better while roaming around for goodies or being able to sneak about.

However, If I am attacked by 4+ hostiles the game freezes and lags up still. Making defending (Parry) next to impossible. Using smoke bombs then only amplifies the lag.

In larger area's where the crowd is more dominate I will have issues with "locking-up". Even more so if being chased and shot at.

Speaking of which, please do something about enemy targeting with their guns. I mean, I'll sit there and watch a cutscene in story mode. Those guys couldn't hit anything if it were right in front of them. Yet, gameplay wise, these guys have DEAD ON accuracy. Dodging does not help. Sometimes dropping smoke does not help because they can magically see through it. For the love of god, please make them miss here and there. /end rant.

I've also noted missions that have you "Defend" a target are not working properly and had to restart the memory. What happens is that they get "stuck" and no longer follow you. I don't know if this was an issue or not seeing as I only reached those stories as Patch 4 dropped.

Playing Multiplayer, Every other mission causes my game to crash if I play online, searching for people or playing with a friend. BUT, If I play Locally, being on the same internet network, the game runs smooth and I never crash. Few glitches here and there. Having a target see me through a wall as an example. Other wise, aside from the expected lag (after searching or non local) I haven't stumbled upon any other issues.

The customize menu (Gear/equipment load out) is still rather laggy and is not enjoyable at all.

That's all I was able to notice so far. Still, a very sad panda. Since this was supposed to fix a lot of issues. Which, in a sense it did. But, I'm still locking up and crashing (multiplayer, non-local). I still cannot recommend this game.

Worst Assassins Creed yet in my opinion.
My System runs on 4Ghz QuadCore i5 and a GTX 770 with 16GBs of RAM and it lags
as hell - on lowest settings.

Words cannot express how furious i am feeling right now...

I've recently bought the game even though i know there were many issues but i was like "hey, maybe ill be one of the lucky ones experiencing little issues with the game"click...click...click. -$60 from wallet.

Finally done installing it and excited to try out the game.
Menu loaded, click New game...loading..."saving game" pops up top right corner..1.3 seconds later,

"ACU.exe Has stopped working" pops up. reloaded the game and tried again but same outcome.

♥♥♥♥ing i hate myself as much as i hate Ubisoft. Want my ♥♥♥♥ing money back but i guess i had it coming...
Me and my stupidity....SIGHHH.

To those of you that haven't bought the game yet, PLEASEEEE PLEASEEE DONT BE LIKE ME AND BUY THIS UNFINISHED GAME FOR $60. NOT ♥♥♥♥ING WORTH IT IF YOU CANT PLAY IT.

Just wait till they fix all the issues and even then DO NOT BUY IT!! Let others who already have the game test it out first before you spend $60 on this game.

Broken

Okay, seriously, this is a new low. And I'm not talking about performance issues (which are horrific), I'm not talking about DRM, microtransactions and all other stuff. I'm not even infuriated about the lack of english language in my regional version. Well, I am, sort of, but only because the pre-order clearly stated that all languages are included.
And suddenly after the purchase it isn't, and few hours later store page is updated to reflect this issue.

THIS.
IS.
♥♥♥♥ING.
FRAUD.

Update
======
So I've been trying to resolve this with technical support of Ubi since release, aaaaand… you guessed right! Basically, their answer is: “You can go ♥♥♥♥ yourself, we took your money, we owe you nothing”. Additionally I must mention that support took their time responding. After first response: “We can't help you, go talk to Valve” and me catching them on their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ (publisher admins store page, not Valve) they waited WHOLE MONTH (even more, 34 days to be exact) to just copy-pase another “We can't help you, go ♥♥♥♥ yourself”.
It really amuses me. The price of changing one digital copy for another for a company is a ♥♥♥♥ing ZERO. Yet their support wastes time writing meaningless ♥♥♥♥. And worst of all: there is no other channel of communication. No phone number, no address (though they have regional office, but it's super-duper secret, so I can't even make a complaint about their horrible support).

You know what, Ubi? I've had enough of your ♥♥♥♥. I will never ever pay even a single cent for you game, no matter how good it will be. Oh, surely I will play it, but paying for it? Go ♥♥♥♥ yourself — that's my answer. I was a loyal customer for years, I've tolerated your lazy development, bugs and stuff. But pissing on me and saying it's raining? You must be really delusional to think you're doing good job. More importanly I will tell every person I know, every friend, every fellow online, when it comes to any of Ubi games, and the person wants to know whether it's good, should he buy it; my answer will be short: Hell no, go ♥♥♥♥ing pirate it, this ♥♥♥♥ers don't need your money, judging by their behaviour.

Ubisoft is now on my ♥♥♥♥ list.
This is one of the worst Assassins Creed games to EVER be released.
If you read all 2,000+ negative reviews, you'll quickly understand why this game was a waste of money for all fo us.
Don't make the same mistake we did.

Glitches, crashes, freezes, lost game time, lost saves, MORE glitches, MORE freezes....god F%$#^ing Da^mit!!
Ubisoft released this game when it was far from complete. Hell, it wasn't even half way complete...
They have been saying they are fixing it, more patches, and a few more patches.. But guess what?! Nothings FIXED

Do what you will...

Best bug simulator 2014!

Join co-op with a friend and experience said friend rage over the microphone.

Purchase the new Patch 3 DLC and reap all the benefits including earlier game crashes, missing textures and our newest standalone game - Missing Face Assassins: Unity

Grab AC:U on Steam now before Assassin's Creed: Victory comes out in 2015! You won't find another game like it worth €59.99!!! You must be a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ if you wait another second to purchase!!!

When the game actually functions properly, this is the best Assassin's Creed game to come out in a long time, at least machanically.

You have more control over your movement (still needs work though), the combat is actually a challenge at times, and you're not the overpowered demigod that you were in previous iterations of the series. It's the only Assassin's Creed game I actually enjoyed since Brotherhood. If everything went right, it would have been a step in the right direction.

However, as everyone knows, it didn't. The game has performance issues across almost everyone's machines for no discernable reason, and it's filled with bugs at every turn.

I was lucky. Maybe my computer runs on black magic or something, but at 1080p, almost max settings, I was able to get about 45-60 fps for the vast majority of the game. My computer however is likely just a fluke, as people with even stronger machines struggle to get that speed in the same conditions. I was also lucky enough to actually not encounter a single game breaking bug during my playthrough, the only bug I found was one time a NPC was running down the street, arms and legs stretched, flailing them like a necromorph.

Based -solely- on my experience with this game and not the experience others have had, I have to recommend it, but it is the most cautious recommendation of all time. I know that for most of the people reading this, your experience will not reflect mine. Honestly? Wait a few years until a new generation or two of video hardware comes out before picking this up. By then, maybe you'll be able to just throw enough hardware at the game where the performance issues won't matter as much.

Caveat Emptor buyers:

This application is still very much in Beta release, and the support for the product is less than steller. If at all possible, you should wait at least another month or two. Trust me, it will go on sale again. (As it's terribly flawed)

For the record I pre-ordered the title to support the AC game(s) franchise, but $90 later (gold version of game and season pass), buying around $800 in PC upgrades (Latest CPU,MoBo,& Video card), and only being able to use the game %33 of the time now since it's release due to MAJOR flaws in the game, I would have rather gotten a refund. (Game crashes completely on me at the start screen, even with the latest "fix" released just 1 day ago)

I did officially ask for a refund from both Steam and Ubisoft. (I had to try, right?) Obviously they said no... :-)

I was super excited about this game and payed my $60 within days after release, like I have with all the previous games. I get ten seconds into the first cut scene before the game crashes, and I have been unable to play it. I am very disappointed in this game and Ubisoft for the very poor game quality, or lack of anything closely resembling quality. I simply cannot recomend this game to anyone in its current state.