It’s all entirely optionalĪssassin’s Creed 3, like the others before it, doesn’t require you to spend 100 hours completing every single quest just to finish the game. And no, I do not want to deliver your goddamn letters to barely grateful recipients when I should be hunting down Templars and promoting rebellion against the crown. Chasing down almanac pages (seriously, buy a fucking map) gets you recipes, but I never engaged in trade because there isn’t much need for money in the game. Sure, it took me a couple tries to figure out that I needed to parry the Ropebeater near obstacles like workbenches to beat him, but it was otherwise simple and mostly time consuming. Quests like the Boston Brawlers line that has you going from location to location to beat up some dudes and culminates in a street fight tournament. There are, however, a number of things to do which were not fun (again, this is just my opinion) regardless of their possible rewards. Turns out that it’s an outfit (well that and a piece of first civilization tech that supposedly acts as a personal shield).
There’s even a fun optional series of quests that involve finding 24 trinkets hidden throughout the world (just buy a map at the general store if you’re not a masochist) that lead you on a hunt to find Captain Kidd’s treasure. Then there’s the optional, but still interesting series of quests that involve the building up of the Davenport homestead area which will result in the awarding of a unique outfit at their conclusion. There is, of course, the main story quest line that involves being the strongest driving force behind the scenes in the American Revolution.
The great thing about Assassin’s Creed 3 for anyone that is looking for replayability in a game is that it happens to be full to the brim with all manner of quests and objectives. So I’m going to opt for a shorter game more often than not. Even when I really like a game like Assassin’s Creed 3, I’m working on a schedule to meet a publishing deadline. I write about something new every week on this site and I do that by sitting down with a title in nearly all of my spare (and often not so spare) time so what doesn’t work for me is picking up a game that requires 30 to 40 hours of play for the main story because I rarely have that kind of time on my hands each week. I want to put this right up front and tell you that I am a gamer on a timetable. Some of them are useful and develop a secondary story, but others are downright annoying and caused me to put down the game for weeks and months at a time as a result.
The tl dr version is that there are just way too many side quests. However, it took me a very long time to finally get through the game and there are a few reasons for that. So when I say that I enjoyed playing Assassin’s Creed 3, I mean it.
I’ve even written about Assassin’s Creed games in a previous article. I like games a fact that should be fairly obvious since I write about them very nearly every week.