REVOLUTION FOR DUMMIES
Only two stars? Let’s set the average review score aside for a moment. Cherry-picked and approached on its own terms, Assassin’s Creed: Unity can actually be a pretty cool game. In this eighth entry in Ubisoft’s long-running franchise, the main storyline is dramatic and surprisingly emotional. It’s carried by Arno Dorian, a Parisian anti-hero driven by desire, entitlement, and vengeance — essentially an Ezio for a new generation: darker, angrier, and with a British accent softened by the occasional flirtatious French phrase.
After a brief playable prologue depicting the assassination of Arno’s father, we rejoin him years later as a carefree young playboy. He has become the ward of the distinguished François de la Serre and is romantically involved with de la Serre’s daughter, Élise. It’s late 18th-century Paris, and the French Revolution is looming.
When de la Serre is murdered and Arno is falsely accused, his life changes overnight. Imprisoned and desperate, he swears revenge. With the help of a fellow inmate — conveniently an Assassin — he escapes and joins the Parisian Brotherhood, uncovering a conspiracy intertwined with both the Revolution and his foster father’s death. Along the way, Unity indulges in the series tradition of historical celebrity cameos, including Marie Tussaud and the Marquis de Sade.
The core assassination missions are varied and often genuinely inspired. Many offer multiple approaches and optional opportunities to manipulate the environment. You might distract guards by igniting a fireworks display — or infiltrate a lavish party and poison your target’s wine. These moments show the series at its creative best.
A handful of standout sequences briefly break free from the main timeline altogether. These surreal detours into alternate historical periods — such as fleeing a storm in La Belle Époque or climbing the Eiffel Tower under Luftwaffe fire in World War II — are Unity’s most memorable flourishes. They’re brief, bold, and criminally underused, but they point toward what the series could be when it dares to experiment.
From a world-building perspective, Unity is magnificent. Revolutionary Paris feels alive in a way few Assassin’s Creed settings ever have. Crowded streets swarm with starving, furious citizens demanding blood, while cafés echo with “La Marseillaise” and other revolutionary hymns. Each district has its own identity, and landmarks like the Bastille and the Louvre are brought to life with loving detail, supported by an informative and entertaining database.
Visually, Unity remains impressive even today. Released as the franchise’s debut on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, it still holds up remarkably well. Gazing down from the rooftops at the seething masses below is breathtaking, and it’s clear Ubisoft understood how to exploit the new hardware. As a historical immersion, Unity stands alongside Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag as one of the series’ strongest entries.
The game also introduces light RPG elements. Gear upgrades affect combat efficiency, and experience points unlock skills that nudge your playstyle toward stealth or aggression. Weapon classes offer some variety, and while the system feels rudimentary by modern standards, it represents an important step toward the deeper leveling mechanics introduced in later entries.
In many ways, however, Unity also retreats to the series’ core structure. You’re confined to a single city, traversing it on foot via parkour that looks spectacular but often feels unreliable. While climbing and descending have been streamlined, automated movement frequently clashes with player intent, especially in dense environments.
At launch, Unity was infamous for its spectacular glitches, most of which have since been patched out. Unfortunately, what remains untouched is the emptiness of its surrounding sandbox. The side content is largely indistinguishable filler: repetitive, underwritten, and mechanically shallow. Even the more elaborate side missions boil down to familiar routines — approach, assassinate, loot — with only token variation.
Without tight mission design, the game’s underlying systems simply aren’t strong enough to carry themselves. The optional co-op missions exist, but I never touched them — I’m unapologetically a single-player purist.
Some side activities are bafflingly dull, particularly the murder investigations, which amount to slow, unengaging walking simulations. Rather than enriching the experience, they actively drain momentum.
The bloated map says it all: an overwhelming clutter of icons layered atop one another like spilled Lego bricks. At one point, I genuinely lost track of the main mission marker beneath the sheer weight of collectibles and filler objectives. I had to toggle through the map markers to eventually find my target.
The modern-day framing story fares no better. Reduced to perfunctory cutscenes, it exists largely out of obligation. Frankly, I don’t miss it. The Abstergo storyline has long since outlived its usefulness, and I’d happily see it abandoned altogether.
Combat, meanwhile, feels oddly unresponsive. Arno often moves with frustrating delay, stumbling through crowds and failing to react with the precision expected of an elite assassin. Despite his acrobatic animations, direct control feels sluggish, making Unity one of the hardest entries in the series — often for the wrong reasons. Some assassinations are overly unforgiving, with alarm bells everywhere, droves of enemy guards patrolling the premises, and no mid-mission checkpoints.
Unity’s fundamental issue remains unchanged: Assassin’s Creed still relies too heavily on scripted moments to compensate for clunky systemic gameplay. Without strong direction, it collapses into frustration. And despite years of iteration, the series has never truly escaped the shadow of Assassin’s Creed II.
That’s why Black Flag remains my favorite entry — it dared to reinvent itself. Unity doesn’t. And without meaningful innovation, the revolutionary spirit it depicts never quite reaches the player’s hands.
A revolutionary setting alone isn’t enough. The revolution must be embedded in the mechanics themselves. Until Ubisoft embraces that idea, the Assassins’ dream of freedom risks becoming just another inherited routine — endlessly repeated, but no longer truly alive.
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