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Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is a game I never played during my initial attempt to get into the series years ago. I beat the first two and then jumped into Brotherhood only to stop after about an hour or so and didn’t play another Assassin’s Creed game until Black Flag. Back then I got burnt out on this series quickly for some reason. But this time I’ve been enjoying myself more. I still don’t much care for the first Assassin’s Creed. It’s repetitive as hell. II is a much better game in every respect and Brotherhood reworks a lot of stuff from II and I prefer the changes and new mechanics. So I’ve been looking forward to Revelations which continues Desmond’s and Ezio’s storylines.
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations was released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC in November, 2011. It was remastered along with Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood as part of The Ezio Collection which released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in November, 2016 and Switch in February, 2022. For this review, I played the remaster for Xbox One on a Series X. The original game does come a multiplayer component that was not included in the remaster so this review will only focus on the single player content.
Following the events of the previous game, Desmond awakens on Animus Island and meets the consciousness of the previous Animus test subject, Subject 16. There, Desmond learns he must repair his mind by once again reliving the memories of his ancestor, Ezio Auditore. Ezio’s story opens with him travelling to the Assassins’ former fortress in Masyaf to search for secrets left by Altaïr. He discovers Masyaf is occupied by the Templars and that Altaïr had built a secret underground library that requires multiple keys to unlock. The Templars have found one and are searching the city of Constantinople for the rest. Ezio heads to the city to search for the keys himself and while there, also helps the Assassin Guild eliminate the Byzantine Templar control and influence.
Much like Brotherhood, Revelations is another game that feels very much like what it is, a sequel, so I would recommend playing through the previous games first because you’ll get more out of this if you do. For the most part, I enjoyed the story. Revelations really shows how much Ezio has grown or changed and the plot even covers more of Altaïr’s story through a series of flashbacks. Altaïr, who seems to have more of a personality here than he does in his own game. The game will pluck you out of Ezio’s world so you’re back on Animus Island with Desmond every so often, and it’s usually for brief expositions.
Revelations also reveals more of Desmond’s past in a very unfun way in my opinion. On Animus Island are multiple doorways or portals, whatever you want to call them. One takes you to Ezio’s time and the others take you to different locations or memory sequences that you explore for data fragments in a first-person perspective. You will have to build blocks in an effort to reach certain areas and to navigate around obstacles all while more of Desmond’s past is being conveyed through dialogue. More of these types of sequences were added in via DLC called The Lost Archive which covers Subject 16’s past. I don’t know why this information couldn’t be conveyed through cut scenes or Assassin’s Creed’s typical brand of gameplay but I don’t find these sequences to be all that enjoyable. I guess the developers thought this was an interesting way to do it and it certainly is. I just don’t think it’s fun.
I want to state up front that I enjoyed Revelations but I feel like this game exposes the series losing steam or the developers running out of ideas because of much of what’s here feels recycled. I’ll say right now that if you enjoyed Brotherhood, you’ll probably enjoy this. Don’t get me wrong, there is some cool new stuff here but not enough to make it feel like a big or significant improvement. I felt Brotherhood is very much Assassin’s Creed II reworked. By that I mean many elements that are in II are carried over to Brotherhood but it handles them slightly differently. I can’t say the same about Revelations. From a gameplay perspective, it feels more like a recycle job with some new stuff tacked on if that makes sense.
I’m not going to go into too much detail about anything that was present in the previous games because much of it is unchanged. Like Brotherhood, the game is primarily set in a single open world. Constantinople in this case. Most of the shops return and serve the same purpose as before but Book Shops replace Art Merchants now. The factions return and serve the same purpose but Romanies replace Courtesans. The Faction Guilds along with their challenges return, the Assassin Guild and recruitment returns, the hideout returns, liberating regions by killing captains and igniting towers returns, renovating and building shops around the world returns, full synchronization requirements return, viewpoints return, and Animus Data Fragments and Memoir Pages are the form of collectibles this time around. Horses were cut for some reason but tunnels used for fast travel return.
What I do enjoy about Revelations is the freedom you’re given up front. One thing I didn’t care for in Brotherhood was icons on parts of the map I didn’t have access to yet. Most of the world seems to be accessible from the beginning here. I also like how Revelations doesn’t do the video game thing of stripping you of all your shit at the start just so you can acquire it all again as you progress through the story. You will re-acquire some familiar equipment but you get to keep most of what you learned or acquired in the previous two games. The game introduces the hookblade which makes it a little easier to get around and opens up some new moves like counter-stealing and hook and run. Revelations also places a big focus on bombs. You will acquire money along with various bomb crafting materials or ingredients by pickpocketing people and from chests in the environments and can use the ingredients to craft different types of bombs.
You can craft bombs with different effects and they can be used for eliminating enemies or creating diversions. While this is all cool, I can’t really say it adds much to the gameplay. Outside of the objectives for achieving full synchronizations, I never really felt the need to use bombs. But that’s not to say they never come in handy, it’s just that you can easily get through the game and overcome most obstacles without using them. This is yet another Assassin’s Creed entry that I don’t find to be all that challenging but still proves to be fun, nonetheless. The chaining executions mechanic returns but it appears the developers realized how easy that made the fights in Brotherhood because enemies seem to be able to block it more often here or they’re more aggressive and attack more often during your chain. That was my experience, anyway. Winning fights is still not hard but I just found it a little more challenging to pull off long chains. Maybe it was my choice of weapons. I don’t know. But I still found the combat to be enjoyable and the executions never get old.
The Assassin Guild has been fleshed out more. You can still recruit Assassins and call upon them to help you out, send them out on missions, and apply points to their armor and combat skills as they rank up. But now when they reach a certain rank, you can assign them to one of your Assassin Dens as a Den Leader. These dens are simply the Templar Dens or towers you ignite to liberate regions, and this ties into the slightly modified Notoriety system now known as Templar Awareness. When Templars are aware of Ezio, he can bribe heralds and kill officials to lower the Awareness. Nothing new there. But wanted posters have been removed and I’m guessing one reason why is because the posters were everywhere in the previous games so it was really easy to find and remove them and lower Ezio’s notoriety as a result. I’m also guessing it’s because the devs want the player to experience the new Defense minigame.
When Templar Awareness is full, there’s a chance the Templars will launch an attack on one of your Dens. If this happens, you can defend it and it plays out like a minigame where you place units and barricades to defend the den from waves of attackers. It’s actually kind of cool but it’s very easy to avoid the whole thing. Even without the wanted posters, it’s not hard to reduce Awareness and I’m one that likes to keep the heat off me so I would reduce it whenever possible. As a result, the Templars never attacked any of my dens and I only got to experience the minigame once and that was during the tutorial. What is annoying, though, is Templar Awareness is raised whenever you renovate something and I’m not sure I understand why. It might have been explained and I missed it. I guess it makes sense that by renovating buildings, the Templars are aware of the Assassins’ presence. But from a gameplay perspective, it’s just annoying. I have a feeling it’s another one of the game’s attempts to push you towards that minigame.
Ezio will earn income that can be collected at Banks just like in Brotherhood. And one way to increase income is by renovating buildings. Another way is by freeing other cities from their Templar influence and helping them prosper, what the game calls Mediterranean Defense. A system similar to the Assassin Contracts in Brotherhood. But now you can reclaim the cities and then send your assassins on missions to help the cities prosper or in other words increase the assassin presence and your income and these missions will often cost you money. There is a chance the Templars will attack these cities and if they do, you’ll have to send your assassins to defend them. I actually really like this system. It is simple but once again money isn’t all that hard to come by and these cities are just more things to spend money on but you increase your income as a result and I found that to be somewhat addictive.
I feel like some of the changes the devs made were an effort to balance things more. Maybe because they realized these games don’t offer much in the way of challenge. But that may just be my experience. Despite some of the changes, Revelations still isn’t all that hard to get through. In fact, it might actually be easier. I was able to acquire the best armor in the game before unlocking the best armor the Blacksmith had to offer. As you may or may not know, better armor means you can take more hits before dying and let’s call it special armor doesn’t need to be repaired. Typically, special armor is acquired by completing a series of missions, usually side missions. In Revelations, there’s two sets of special armor and you can unlock at least one of them I want to say around the half-way point. By unlocking the special armor when I did, all this did was make it so I had to travel back to the Hideout to re-equip it every time I purchased new armor from the Blacksmith which offers less protection.
What is disappointing about Revelations is the side stuff. There’s doesn’t seem to be as much to do here compared to the previous two games and I was disappointed at the lack of Assassination Contracts. The Factions offer some missions but the assignments were cut. The Virtual Training trials were also not carried over which I guess makes sense considering what’s going on with Desmond. You can visit the Fight Club and fight for money, similar to the Mercenary Fights in the last game. There are Book Quests that require you to locate symbols or in other words the locations of hidden books and these offer no challenge whatsoever. And, finally, there’s the Master Assassin missions which can be accessed after reclaiming Templar Dens and assigning leaders. The game also tells you about events that can occur around the city where you can assist or fight citizens and most of the events I encountered were just fights.
Revelations features objectives similar to those in the previous two games. That means you’ll have to assassinate people, steal things, rescue people, and, of course, escort and follow people. And once again, I feel there’s way too many missions that require you to follow or tail people. I don’t know why Ubisoft keeps doing this but it needs to stop. As indicated before the, full synchronization requirements from Brotherhood make a return here. Most objectives are not hard to complete in my experience but achieving a full synchronization is a little tricker. To achieve a mission’s full synch you’ll have to meet certain requirements like use certain weapons, don’t get detected, complete the objective within a time limit – stuff like that.
When it comes to the presentation, Revelations actually disappointed me at first. Not this remaster as a whole but just the way the game presents itself. There’s a great looking cinematic in the beginning that made me think this was going to showcase some significant visual improvements and maybe some other stuff. But no. Don’t get me wrong, it does look better than its predecessors. Character models and faces look noticeably better but in the end, I guess I just expected something else after watching that excellent intro cinematic. As for this remaster, just the like other two games in the collection, the presentation is pleasing on the eyes and supports HDR. As for the audio, I prefer the soundtracks of the previous games but to be clear, it’s just a preference thing. The music here certainly isn’t bad and comes across as very moody in my opinion, helping to create a slightly different tone than that of the previous two games. On the technical side, Revelations ran smooth and I encountered no major issues. I want to mention again that I did play this on a Series X.
I think I enjoyed Revelations more than Brotherhood in the beginning but as I went on, I started to like it a little less. And that’s because it doesn’t do much that I haven’t seen before and because of the lack of things to do when compared to its predecessor. But I welcome most of the new stuff, even if the implementation isn’t the best. I appreciate the devs fleshing out the Assassin Guild stuff and enjoyed the new equipment like the bombs and hookblade but I can’t say they really elevate the experience. The game places an emphasis on bombs but I never felt the need to use them. You can utilize everything you’ve learned in the previous games to succeed here without ever having to use bombs. The hookblade allows for some cool new moves but it doesn’t drastically change how you fight or get around. At least not in my experience. Much of the game feels recycled but with a new coat of paint. The whole thing feels very familiar. That said, I still enjoyed it but it’s a very been there done that kind of experience.
I would recommend Assassin’s Creed: Revelations because it’s fun but I don’t think it reaches the same level as its predecessor. If you’re a series veteran, you may find it a tad disappointing. Revelations feels very much recycled. There are some cool additions but not enough to make the game feel like a step forward or even reworked for the better. But if you enjoy the Assassin’s Creed formula, I don’t see why you wouldn’t enjoy this.