Great overview! I feel much the same, for almost all the same reasons. You broke it down _really_ well, I'm a big fan of going about it very mathematically.
Thank you, Leo, it’s good to see that other people who approach these games in a much more technical way seem to see the same positives and negatives that I do.
If you get Unity to do what you want it to, it feels amazing, but waaay to often it just doesn't, so I end up staying undecided between which one I prefer, AC1-Rev parkour or Unity's. Other than that, the Kenway games kinda feel like a middle ground between full control on the player and a system with cool-looking motion-captured animations and AC1-Rev gets the first one better and Unity gets the second one better, so idk, it falls on a weird spot to me. In the end I can say I really love all the systems pre-Syndicate, they all get different things really right, while the ones after Syndicate just don't.
To put it simple: The newer the games, the worse the movement. It's really depressing to see how parkour has slowly lost importance over the past decade. It was once a core gameplay mechanic but it's virtually non-existent in the new games.
It didn’t lose importance over the games. Unity Parkour was a much bigger focus then in Brotherhood, 3 and Rouge. It just was extremely clunky like the rest of the games
Jcers states that he is trying to be objective but then he says Unity bad? This is not right. Unity is one of the best ac systems ever, if you are looking at it objectively, you have to weight certain things. The justification Jcers gives for his opinions are because he is *good* , he is *good* at video games and that makes him view certain things in a skewed manner. This is why bing bong his opinion is wrong. This is an objective fact. Jcers is incorrect. Arno do pretty twirl more important than Arno be able to cancel. Unity has an incredible system for the casual player who doesn’t really care. Arno do pretty twirl , Arno important. That combined with Paris and Versaille being perfect. It is perfect for the casual . But Mr. good at video games over here doesn’t agree. SMHmyhead, what next are you gonna say that mario bros was too easy. Or that pokemon Y was too simple for you. Whats important is arno do pretty twirl and Arno do pretty twirl in pretty world. Unless you think Paris isn’t pretty , Paris is the city of love , known for its landmark “Big Ben” and the winter carnival in which beloved character “Pompière ”shows up. “Pompière ” means snowman in australian . Snowman are what kids build, Jcers hates all kids Thats the only explanation for what he gave unity. (Note have not watched video yet)
in the beginning of the game in odyssey you take fall damage but no matter what height it still will not kill you, so that was a really a fully intended mechanic
Yah ac3 definitely gets animation right from parkour to combat it all seamlessly flows together. Nice tier list I like that you broke it down to different categories.
I really enjoyed this, a really cool video, it makes it especially great because you spend so much time learning the tiny details between each parkour system in each game. Thank you for this. Also I totally agree with parkour on Unity, it’s very hard to get it to do what you want it to, but when it works and flows smoothly it looks incredible and paired with the excellent world design it’s great. But again Arno isn’t very obedient 😂
I’m glad to hear that! I tried to be as in-depth and objective as I possibly could, lol. And yea, if you don’t need to be super precise, Unity is usually pretty fine. If you need even an ounce of precision from it? Utter nightmare, lmao
@@jcers Unity fulfills my assassin fantasy because I actually feel cool when playing him. Every other game, though they may “work” better mechanically, it’s not “cool” doing parkour in other games. IMO the rest of the games feel like parkour is more of just a tool that you can master proficiency of rather than something that is fun to do because it’s cool.
AC3's animations are trully amazing, the best in the industry if you ask me. and yeah it's kinda strange that they didn't reuse the cool little animations from this game in 4 and Rogue.
I mean obviously a prite who spent most his life on water wouldn't move as smooth as a naitive who grew up climbing trees and learning parkour to hunt.
@@daddybadguy4324 oh wow, now it makes so much sense that it has janky animations! lets blame it on lore instead of Ubisoft's laziness, that's really productive!
AC Unity really took the biggest hit on responsiveness. And understandably so due to it basically being so unpolished in general. Otherwise it could've easily been in the B-Tier.
Is there a chance we get a short continuation video regarding Mirage? I absolutely adored your analyses in this video, so it would be nice to round it up with the newest game just below Valhalla
I may make an update to this video at some point to include Mirage and to reevaluate a number of the rankings I gave here because I quite frankly don’t agree with some of the stuff I said here anymore, haha. I’d also want to include the new classic AC parkour mod in the ranking just to get the word out and be able to talk about it in reference to all iterations on classic parkour from later games
3 minutes in and you explain the fundamental of your tier list, which is not common in this kind of videos. Kudos. Discussing the complexity of parkour in the franchise is a rare treat, and at least hearing it is a joy. A couple of opinions and notes I take while hearing: in responsiveness, to me in AC1 is fairly common that you came in contact with a beam like object, and Altair missteps and does that stiff fall; in expression, in AC2 you have quick walking but it's tied with pickpocketing, and I hate that; totally agree with the comparison between the different AC2 and ACB, in the latter there is also less variety in aesthetics because is one continuos place; in ACRev also the tombs are more restricted in movement variation and camera work while trying to be "cinematic", which I don't like. Haven't played the rest in years or don't own them, except for ACU, which parkour I appreciate only because of yours and Leo's guides. Keep up the good work
1:00:45 another example of an animation that only appears once is when playing as aya and climbing that huge tower towards the end of the game, there is a point where you jump off a ledge and grab a pole on the side of the tower and side eject off with similar/same animations to wall bridging in unity - its hard to explain but it caught my attention
i think the kenway era is the most underrated system among the bunch. the only thing they lack is the map design that actually utilizes the parkour mechanic IMO
For sure, you don’t ever hear people picking that one as their favourite. It’s either Unity or AC1-Rev, with the one the person didn’t pick always being second. It’s definitely under appreciated, especially in the animation department.
@@jcers for me actually 3 is the best connor's movement and animations felt the most satisfying to me and the tree climbing just made it god tier. So it will always be the best imo
@@TheButterAnvil that’s where the franchise should of gone after Unity, took all that they learned over the years and try mesh it in to one beautiful system. I think it is always gonna be a hard task to make movement feel as consistent as AC1 to ACR because of how many more animations there could be which Unity showed but that definitely could of been a platform to build off instead of fully devolving after that system.
I know it's an older video, but I want to show this to literally every single person at Ubisoft. Maybe it was inadvertent on your part, but by breaking down the finer nuances (and the greater divides) that separates the parkour between the games, I think you've illustrated exactly how AC's movement has regressed in a very digestible way. Genuinely, this puts into words so many ideas that I've been unable orate, so I'm thankful to that. I mean, we know Ubisoft chases trends like crazy, so they must be keeping their ear to the ground when it comes to this sort of thing. So surely they must be aware of why people say AC parkour peaked with Ezio. I can only hope they realign their vision with the series' ethos enough for them to actually feel compelled to take these criticisms to heart and improve. AC Valhalla's map design being a step-up (and it being something that Ubisoft specifically touted to entice older fans) gives me some hope that they at least see why older fans have fallen off the series. Or maybe they'll just play it safe, like always, and just give AC Infinity the parkour from Unity. At this point, I'm genuinely concerned that the amount of rave reviews Unity's parkour gets has actually led Ubisoft to think that they peaked with traversal in that game.
Coming back to this vid would of loved to have seen a Liberation parkour rating included in this list. New Orleans is personally one of my favourite cities to traverse across out of the games releasing after Revelations, there is a bunch of vaulting opportunities above ground level. The whip added freedom to move across larger areas while also acting similar to a rope dart in combat. Not to mention the Bayou also has some decent tree traversal routes. To think all this could fit on a vita. My only complaint is wishing we could explore more of Chichen Itza, the story overall isn’t very compelling too.
"Enough self pluging" he says lol. I'm finally getting good at the old parkour system, and its actually pretty dope. I am of the opinion that the change they made in unity was a great evolution as well as regression. If beggars could be choosers, I would have the old parkour integrated with unitys sick animations. But that's just me
I’m glad you’re enjoyed AC1-Rev! It’s super sick. And I’m pretty much in agreement with you; AC1-Rev with more cinematic, flashy animations would be awesome.
This video is absolutely phenomenal, fact. And despite lasting well over an hour, it still felt short to me because of how much I was enjoying it. Leo’s stealth tier list and your parkour tier list are perfectly explained and executed so well, I also especially appreciate how you made a great point-based system on a separate tab before assigning a game to a certain tier. The fact that I can hear disappointment in your voice once you get to Syndicate and latter ones is hilarious but sad at the time 😄 I agreed with every single number you’ve put for each game, despite there being a lot of ratings for each individual mechanic. Probably the only rating where I would partially disagree is your rating on Syndicate world design being way too low. I agree that it doesn’t hold a candle to Unity’s Paris in terms of parkour, but I feel like I’d just bump that one for maybe another number or two, but not more. Maybe I’m saying all of this because I have a weak spot for Syndicate, I love that game way too much. London is my favorite city in the whole franchise, no competition. But buildings really are way too distant for people who enjoy real parkour, I just don’t personally mind it. Overall, great work. Your voice and explanations fit these types of videos really well, both you and Leo should do this more often. Now I am just hoping I will sometime in the future see an AC combat tier list, where you’d discuss how combat changed throughout the franchise! That would be a great stuff to discuss.
Since yesterday i watched a lot of your ac videos. And you're already my fav youtuber. I love your passion for the Assassin's creed games, and you're a master at parkour. Ily man. Keep doing these ac videos😊🖤
Unity is the only system I have spent tons of time with, and so it'll be the only one I can comment on. Let me just say, "never before have I been so offended by something I 100% agree with." You make amazing, well-thought out arguments and I really need to appreciate you for that. I agree, Unity tends to be one of the flashier systems. In fact, that's what first attracted me towards it. But nowadays, I find it un-assassin-like to be so showy and flashy, so I end up simply letting go of HP before any kill. In terms of movement, too, the problems the new system poses far outweigh the merits, so the rating is understandable. I really take an offence to how laggy and clunky Arno feels and how Arno's moveset is very _RNG-based_. I know that the animations are _super_ camera sensitive but it really never feels like it. I absolutely hate it when I'm trying to take cover when running towards a wall, and Arno chooses to climb it because I was holding PK-up moments ago. It's a shame the game goes for style over control and certainty. Unity really tries hard to make it difficult to make mistakes, to appeal to doodoo players like myself, but in doing so, it causes significant pain to veterans like yourself. Unity has all the variety and depth, but it really insists on doing all the parkour itself, which takes from the player agency. As much as it hurts me to say this, I would also rate Unity somewhere near C. Franciade, Versailles and Paris can only carry Unity so far :/ Solid video and top tier tier-list
you do realise that the side eject thingy in concept is animation based elsewell because in AC1s engine of its parkour makes your character play an animation to a specific ledge point for the player character to grab and you're trying to discredit as Unity being different to the point of there being no player control when you still have to actually do a manual controller configuration to even side eject to position yourself to any specific point to get up higher or keep the 'momentum' going... you do realise that in concept AC1 - Revs parkour system can be said to be entirely based on animations which btw isn't true and the same goes to Unity... the devs only did parkour animations to tie it in the parkour system and not have 'thousands of trigger points throughout the world' what does that even mean regarding Unity... how do you know that and where did you get this info from... i could LITERALLY say the exact same thing as to how AC1s to even AC3s engine of its parkour system to have 'thousands of of trigger points throughout the world where an animation can be triggered from' - you still have MANUAL movement that you can pull off with control with its moves like how the dive feature works... yes you do need to have a position to do the dive move but you're not CHOOSING which path to take like its a f3cking cutscene... wtf is that analogy, you still have to POSITION yourself at any point where you can freely jump towards it from any position that allows you do that dive jump and get to the ground to maintain momentum or you can pull the L stick backwards where Arno swings back in a motion that leaps from the momentum that Arno left and keep the momentum in going in a different path compared to going forwards to get to the ground faster
Let's fucking go, release order basically. I think you might've been a bit too forgiving on Unity, and I think I would've put AC1 a bit higher just because of vaulting and how diagonal beam jumps feel better than in 2.
It's......it's like you read my mind to the decimal point. I fully agree with this list in every way. Everything you said just resonated perfectly with me. I really love this approach to tier lists, it's interesting! Personally AC3 has my fav parkour since it's 95% of the classic system but with some QoL features, and Ratonhnhaké:ton's animations are gooooooooood. That's actually one of the things that kinda disappointed me about 4 & Rogue, the animations seem stiffer than Connor's or Haytham's
Surprised you didn’t mention how Brotherhood removed the Climb Leap for Sequences 2-4. I’ve always thought that was a pretty big bummer while playing, and made early parkour less fun.
Honestly, I very rarely use climb leap, so it being gone doesn't bother me all that much, haha. It is true that I probably should have brought that up here, though.
Did you subconsciously quote me with the "Clunky, as in the actual meaning of the word" in the Unity segment ? I remember you responded to my comment in a reddit thread about Unitys parkour system, where i used that exact phrase :D I would be honored if that was true haha. Anyway, awesome video. I loved LeoKs ranking for stealth, and this is also brilliant. I will forward people to this video if i ever have top explain my preferences for the first parkour system again for sure.
a thing I haven't seen adressed much if at all is that ezio stumbles/halfway slips off roofs a lot, altair barely did that at all. is it just something I do that ac2-rev is more sensitive to than 1 or does ezio have shorter legs or something? xD
Hi, I am sorry to send you this in a comment, but I did not see another way to reach you. I make videos on games, primarily Assassin's Creed, and I am writing a review on Unity right now. It is a long form video at about an hour and a half, and it is a negative one overall. In it, I bring you up when discussing creators who have made impressive content in Unity, and I also briefly showcase a screen recording of this video when I talk about input lag and input queuing and how they impact the game compared to other entries in the series. I didn't want to name you in my video without your permission, and if you request that I take those segments out I can delete them as per your preference. Please let me know. I plan to upload it next week at some point, and in case you do not see this request until after I publish I will and try to structure the video so that I can remove instances where I name you through the UA-cam editor without disrupting the video if you ask me to.
Awesome video! Thank you for all the insight into all the games' parkour systems. Up until now, I've only played the games from AC3 - ACOrigins. I never played the original 4 until I decided to finally play them a couple of months ago. Right now, I finally reached and playing through Revelations and for the sake of discussion, Revelations is infact, the only one I disagree with. To be fair, I've been only playing it for around 10 hours, but this is what I have in mind. I feel like Revelations' city, was actually the one most designed around the entire parkour kit and you actually mentioned this. I think it really comes down to weather or not you like the hookblade. I think the problem most people have with the hookblade is the cancelability. The reason why I have no problem with this, is that I don't think I should use the same playstyle in AC1&2 inside Revelations, but to work around the new animations in a way that's similar to Unity. You did say though, that the new animations are cool, but not that impressive to you, so maybe it's not worth it to play around the new animations to you and that's just gonna be subjective thing. To me Revelations is the compilation of everything from AC1-ACBR into one game, from the entire kit to the city that's designed with every move you have in mind. Each half of the city can be nearly entirely traversed on rooftops while having the possibility to use nearly every single move you have in a viable option. The hookblade to me is such a good addition both mechanically and aesthetically. You know how AC2 added the lanterns/flower pots which were cool, well ACRev kinda has the same impact on me, because all the lanterns have a double use now, giving even more freedom. Climbing straight upwards is fast, but can be faster if you measure the distance and press jump at the right points to use the hookblade. This is a good thing because it makes walls with no side/back eject possibilities (like a view point tower for example) have more to do than just waiting to reach the top. Ziplines give more variety to traversal and not only for moving from point A to B, but they also added more assassination opportunities and you have the ability to cancel mid way straight into a catch-ledge for example. Not to mention that you can also enter ziplines midway with a catch-ledge. Subjective thing, but personally catch-ledge with a hookblade feels more satisfying to me with the hookblade than just with your hand, especially on thin ledges. Also an added addition is the ability to quickly drop into catching a ledge from the edge of a building (holding run+catch-ledge button when running off of an edge) gives even more movement opportunities like going from running ontop of a building into a side/back eject from that very building, which can never be done as smooth before outside of vaulting in AC1, which was still a very specific situation. I know this was a jumbled mess of ideas, but I tried to cite some stuff that came to mind while playing ACRev, because I was honestly quite surprised with how much I liked the overall gameplay of the game. It even has great things outside of parkour like the best combat out of the first four games and the cool bomb crafting system with variety and customization never seen in later games. The only thing I'm still not sure of is the story and pacing of the game. I'm pretty sure I'll like the ending, but ACBrotherhood has a weak middle part IMO that didn't quite pull me. Again thanks for the video and thanks for reading. I truly appreciate it! Have a good day/night!
Great vid ! I can't argue with your ACU points, but did want to say that to me somehow that game is more than the sum of its parts, I can't pinpoint what exactly but it did have something special that for me makes it more than a B (when rating overall, not just parcour)
It’s the assassin fantasy. Cool > functionality wins with these games. I’m on board for it because I don’t play these games to be a pro. The new games are 0 cool and sub par fictionally so it’s a fail on all fronts.
Small thing I noticed recently during a Brotherhood replay is that the camera doesn’t lock during a wall run if you’re Desmond for some reason Weird stuff
Great vid, I agree with a lot. I'd dock Valhalla a point in two places though, Cancellability and World Design. In Valhalla you can't cancel that drop down animation that occurs when you simply push the stick over a small edge. Once it begins, it seems like it doesn't stop. In Origins if you stopped pushing forward Bayek would do a little balancing animation and wave his arms. I've accidentally dropped down quite a bit in Valhalla because of this. It's never really too consequential, but it is annoying. In World Design, yes the cities are decent enough, especially when compared with Odyssey, but outside of them it's not as strong as Origins. Towns will only have one or two parkour routes if they have any at all, whereas Origins had some decent traversal in towns like Kanopos, Sais, and others. Also, due to the low and steepled nature of the buildings, lots of parkour routes even in denser cities, especially Wincestre but it's true elsewhere, make HEAVY use of simple rope connections, so you basically just push along them like you're riding a rail, which just isn't very fun.
To give you a comment that isn't a shitpost, I really like this video. You're probably one of the most qualified people to talk about this, due to how much you, personally, move in this game. As of me typing this I've only played AC1- Brotherhood, but I want to try to contribute something at least. 7:06 I've had this happen to me in AC1 and Brotherhood, but not in AC2 for some reason I personally like how Ezio feels in Brotherhood over AC2; I like how the added heft makes him feel a little more grounded In AC2 I felt like the camera hated me and wanted me to die a horrible horrible death, lol. So many times I would go to side eject and Ezio would either climb leap or back eject The camera in Brotherhood locks horizontally when you're climbing vertically, I've found out. Which is aggravating, but not nearly as aggravating as back ejecting to my death
Thank you, Mint, I appreciate that :) I definitely get where you’re coming from; AC2’s camera is noticeably more finicky to wall eject/climb leap actions in that there is much less margin for error, to a point where it can occasionally be pretty annoying. It’s why I almost never use climb leap, just because of how inconsistent it can be.
I have noticed the character's hands phasing through objects in AC3 as well, which you mention for AC4. Okay, finished the video, and gotta say, I agree with almost everything you say. Just feel that AC1 could've been one tier above and Syndicate one tier down
Yea, it happens, but not generally in the context of catch ledge. It’s more just everyday clipping in AC3, like when you’re hanging on a wall. Glad you liked the video!
@@thatsaweirdone huh. I’ve never experienced Connor phasing through obvious handholds when reaching for ledges. The main place that it happens in 4 is on ships while up in the rigging and on their masts. It doesn’t even really happen outside of that context for me.
@@jcers well, we can't really help that I guess. Same went for Parkour Down (today). I parkour down-ed immediately after landing on the non-standing object, and Connor tackled the dude under him
What I don´t like about the open space in Brotherhood is that there are a lot of hills and elevations that are only accessible one or two ways. This was also before they added the feature where waypoints show up on your screen, as well as your minimap, so trying to find chests on those fucking hills was frustrating as hell. You would spend like a minute working your way up the hill, only to find out that the chest is somewhere under it.
Maaaan this sucks. I was planning on enjoying how people without listening to your points and not having half the experience you have in the ac series get angry and leave a cringy comment. I got my popcorn and everything ready. Very dissapointed
You analysing by making section is really awsome. And i agree with almost every point. Hay what do you think of lift in acb, as it introduced from there only.
Yea, the jumps don’t feel proper. Your character accelerates and decelerates at physically impossible rates all the time in those games, and when you land, it tends to feel like you _dropped down_ onto something rather than having jumped forward onto it.
@@jcers exactly. I especially hate that I can instantly change the direction I am walking without having to slow down it just feels cheap. Unity may have a lot of input lag, but I can appreciate that your character actually feels like a real person when you play them. I wish that they just improved on the Unity/Syndicate system instead of redoing everything and cutting everything out :(
You will be flamed for Unity but I fully agree with everything. Unity's animations, despite being pretty, are so damn slow. Especially when compared to Ac2's snappy and efficient movement. Maybe I disagree for Brotherhood being higher than Ac1. I think Ac1's world design better facilitates parkour than Brotherhood's Rome and thus it's a better traversal experience. Those Romulus tombs though are great.
Funny thing is that I actually do prefer AC1 to Brotherhood, too, it’s just that the way I had the scoring system set up had them in a slightly different order to what I prefer.
I imagine the reason it was removed was because they wanted to include tackling from above, and there was a control conflict with the buttons. It’s pretty unfortunate, because I already hate that mechanic, lmao
@@jcers The easiest solution to distinguish vaults from air tackle would be to assign one to button press, and another to button hold. And if you add Lock-on to it, it would block the vaulting so that you'd be able to tackle from above 100% of the time.
@@bloodymares You know speaking of air tackle, the worst example of it is in AC rogue. Not only the enemies but also civilians. Every time I drop down it either does what I want or it just air tackles so rogue is the worst in the Kenway games in my opinion...
If I had one criticism for this tier list, it would be that you overrated Odysseys animations. They are markedly worse than Origins while running and while jumping. In Odyssey, running is a robotic, static loop that appears to belong to a ps2 title. Jumping, along any parkour routes, looks the worst out of any AC game. Origins and Odyssey uses the same animation path a lot of the time, but Odyssey uses fewer actual animations than Origins, producing a blockier, stiffer and all around uglier result. So, Odyssey should, at best, be a 35. These are hard hitting criticisms, I know.
You wound me with your cruel, cruel, words! Lol, but seriously, I largely agree, I just forgot about this because I hadn’t played Odyssey in almost 2 years when I made this video so I just assumed it had Origins’ animations plus the new ones for jumping off of cliffs. Playing it again recently for the crossover thing had me noticing this sort of thing. I’d say that jumping in Unity and Syndicate can still look a lot worse due to those games’ absolutely wack-ass physics, but Odyssey’s animations are definitely the most boring.
@@jcers it makes you appreciate the nuance of the original AC's animations. Even though they have the same "problem" of using the same animation over and over, in AC it comes across as practiced discipline from decades of training; using the correct movements at the correct time. In Odyssey, it just looks robotic. But I think i understand why you forgot how Odysseus animations look. Since its such an expression vacuum, the movement becomes a vehicle for the gameplay, rather than being the gameplay itself. So you must kind of zone it out after a while.
I've played almost every game so I'll give my ranking based on parkour: 1. Unity/ AC2 2. AC1 3. AC3 4. Revelations 5. Black Flag/Rogue 6. Brotherhood 7. Origins
That’s true but I despise stats with every fibre of my being and prefer to avoid doing them, lol. Also, I honestly don’t think that the actual tier list would be different even if I had weighted the categories by importance
@@spoodurmin9742 my guy went out made his own paragraph of his opinions and then commented every comment on this video Seemed like he was takin the piss of everybody liking other games But I digress, I didn’t catch the joke, my b
Ifeel mostly same but ithink in reveletions hook blade design and animations are 9 out of 10 Becous all of the moves are designed for the city buldings And catch ledge is good but Not good as ac bh And ithink ac bh world design is 10 out of 10 becous you can parkour on anything the design of the ground Objects are really good too they match with that place and pretty usefull for side and back eject Even in country side parkour is good Most of the time there is no problem with them!
Honestly, I think that giving Unity a 1 for responsiveness was a mistake. I tried to grade things as though on a bell curve, with 5 being the average and anything above or below that being away from it, but I don't think I did that properly for basically any of them, so applying that here for Unity in giving it a 1 disproportionately lowered its score. What I should have done was give all of the games a rating from 1-10 and _then_ curved the ratings to make the tier list. As for Unity's world not being built for its controls, I'm just going to have to disagree. The world is designed very well for its controls. There are always opportunities to access the contextual moves that the system offers (even if the jank doesn't always let you trigger them, haha), and the level of possible player expression is very high. The only real instance where the world design and the controls have a real conflict is when trying to move quickly inside interiors. That is where things start to break down.
Couldn’t agree more with this list... Its so sad to see the last THREE Games on F. If Ubisoft would have focused on special parkour/stealth for these trilogy, they could habe a crazy parkour when even the Parkour from Ac1(2007) mindblowing is.
@@fredster594 Guess I’ll eat shit then, because AC Unity’s parkour is dogshit in comparison to AC3 and the Ezio Trilogy’s parkour, and the game itself is a mediocre mess in almost every aspect besides Soundtrack and Open World Design.
@@spoodurmin9742 Unity is a bad game before the patches. But after the patches it's an instant classic 10/10 perfect combat, amazing graphics, perfect parkour, amazing story, twirls, AC2 unpolished and unrefined baby.
Im commenting this three years later but its an issue i somewhat have with the community I respect your opinion even tho unity is my fav in the series I agree with the ezio trilogy being an S too its my second favourite Most comments are people mocking unity fans claiming they only like the parkour because of tge fancy twirls and it kind of annoys me Most people have that thought that Unity fan=casual fan Which is just not right You migh think im mad but i like unity's parkour because of how it feels Just wanted to discuss that but i have no problems with your favoured ac parkour i just dont like being treated like toddler most of the time in the ac community😂
It's fair. If you have a preference despite being well-informed, that's not something I can take away. It'd be like trying to convince someone who likes chicken more than steak that they need to change their preferences. Not much someone can say to change that. The mocking is more in relation to a lot of people who will, despite knowing nothing about classic parkour, claim "blinded by nostalgia" when someone promotes classic parkour and refuse to hear any criticisms of Unity's system and/or downplay (or sometimes even just ignore) the good elements presented as arguments in favor of the Classic games' superiority. If that's not you, then no need to worry.
I personally think Origins deserves at least D tier, sure the parkour is basically non existent a lot of times but it still let you jump off cliffs to your death unlike Valhalla and Od- yeah that game, and once you get into a good flow it feels good
W video, honestly everything about unity is pretty overrated, I personally prefer Syndicate's parkour the most in my opinion since its easier and leans into the Batman/vigilante fantasy making climbing/parkour practical
I'm sorry but you can't claim the kenway games have better parkour than unity, it just cannot be done. Other than that big agree, although I think rogue is better than black flag.
I’d love to discuss where you disagree with me on the scores in the individual categories. The main reason Unity’s as low as is it is is mainly due to the annoying amount of input lag, but cancellations and freedom are also definitely worse than the Kenway games. What would you change on there?
@@jcers @Jcers I mean in the categories you have made i would bump unity's feel up, and also make unity's animations a 10 and lower the kenway games animation score a few points to compensate. I would also lower the expressiveness score of the kenway games along with possibly the world design.
@@titularhero I suppose a lot of that is subjective. For me, responsive, quick controls that make my character feel agile are what make the movement feel good. Unity has neither of those things. In truth, the only reason it’s not lower is because I needed to leave room to go down for O/Od/V. For animations, the reasons I have Unity lower than 3 aren’t so subjective. Arno will regularly phase through world geometry when parkouring around (beams, ropes, tree trunks, etc). Trying to parkour down into the middle of trees consistently breaks the animation cycle in horrendous ways. On some diagonal wall runs, Arno hangs in the air for so long that it looks like zero-g. On a large number of jumps, Arno has no jump arc at all and just goes in a straight line to his next destination. When Arno performs laches, it’s like his momentum suddenly shifts to being slower for the duration of the swing animation before returning to normal. There’s a lot more I can mention. It essentially boils down to the technology of the animations rather than the choreography. The choreography is all great, but the presentation once it runs through the game itself is nowhere near AC3’s level. It’s why you’ll always hear the phrase “when it works”. When Unity’s animation works, it looks really nice. AC3’s animations always work. I’m not entirely sure why you feel the need to decrease the expressiveness of the Kenway games. At their core, they have all of the same verbs that AC1-Rev have, and even some new ones. The only real difference is the nerfed animation cancelling, which ultimately does hurt it a noticeable amount, but the cancelling is still significantly less restrictive than in Unity, and very few of the actions are contextually-bound. As for world design, I already gave Unity a 10/10, so there’s no way that I undersold it there. Lowering AC3’s rating makes no sense, because that would in the same category as Valhalla, which it doesn’t deserve. Lowering 4’s rating doesn’t make sense, because Havana on its own is an easy 10/10 and everything else is at least significantly better than anything in AC3. Lowering ACR’s rating also doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, as all of Rogue’s urban areas are at least somewhere between Nassau & Havana’s level of quality. I understand why you might prefer Unity’s system, but the reasons why I’ve ranked the games like I have are all completely valid. You’re always allowed to disagree with me, but saying that I’m not allowed to say the Kenways have better movement than Unity when I’ve given plenty of factual background information as to why I’ve come to that conclusion feels a lot like arguing in bad faith to me.
Personally I desagree with unity being below ac3, black flag, & rogue. In my opinion unity is the best system. My main problem with the RPG trilogy is well there is no parkour aside from parkour up lmao. In kenway saga you push one button and that's it. It's extremely basic but it is very fluid which is why I enjoy it over ac1-reveleations sometimes. Just depends on how I feel. But in ac1-revelations I think the system is very precise. It's to the point where if my left stick is 2 degrees off of for example those tightropes they put in between buildings ezio or altair will completely miss the object I was aiming for. When you play games most people when they push up or left or down on a thumbstick they don't directly push up on the stick. Most people will push up and a little to the left or right and that little adjustment causes ezio or altair to jump in a completely random direction. It is unrealistic for me to look down at my controller to make sure my thump is completely pushed straight up. This doesn't happen every single time but it happens a lot of the time and it's enough to ruin my experience. Not only that but the game feels sooooooo slow especially ac1. Also climbing down is painfully slow and not fluid at all and the entire parkour system isn't fluid whatsoever. That and the world which ill get to in a bit make these game's parkour system awful. When you climb down a building in these games if the distance below is short, and I men short they'll simply jump down. But if it's for than like 5 feet the characters say nah. Then they do a slow turn around animation and then you press b (for xbox) and they fall straight down and you have to catch the ledge. i mean it looks stupid and awful and it's slow as well. Now my final gripe is the world design. In ac1 most buildings arent' climbable and you have to use ladders and the ones that are, are not made for parkour as no building has a straight up path for you to climb. You forced to move to the left and right to grab objects to climb on. In ac2 it's even worse as most buildings, the rooj sticks out so you have to wait for ezio to do this slow jump to the rooj animation, watch him hang for a second them he pulls himself up. It's overall slow. Yea they have these parkour routes to take which is good but does not deserve a 10. Compare this to unty where every building is climbable (aside from maybe a few but this is so rare it's basically not existant) and it's not like you have to go out of your way to climb these. You can parkour straight up a building. Also not every roof does not stick out which makes parkour more fast paced. Not only this unity is extremely fluid and everymove links to the next. Side ejects look great compared to how clunky they look in the ezio games and ac1. Climbing down a building is super fluid and fast. Unity's also has this feature where arno magnets to objects he trying to jump on which removes the issue I had of ezio completely missing a tightrope because my thumbstick was 2 degrees off. It's not bad to the point where arno jumps to random objects but it's the perfect amount to where I'm not completely missing objects I'm trying to get to. Also unity makes certain things like jumping off the map a little harder and that's a great feature. You can still jump off the map but to back eject to your death for example you have to double tap the back eject button which prevents you from accidentally killing yourself where in ac2 sometimes I would run up the wall and the game registered me pressing a twice causing ezio to back eject to my death. Unity gets rid of all problems in the older games or makes these problems less accessible or common so the player isn't fustrated.
I don't know, I find old AC games boring. Imo Valhalla has better animations, combat system, parkour and the world that you actually can feel. I had the best time playing Valhalla, the worst AC 1.
I don't know, i find new AC games boring. Imo AC 1 has better animations, combat system, parkour and the world that you can actually feel. I had the best time playing AC 1, the worst Valhalla.
@@ngnevergone7587 dads always got the bodily functions going crazy. Sometimes when your dad use the bathroom she's gotta be evacuated for at least the next 3 hours
![[Tier List] Assassin's Creed | Stealth Gameplay [2021]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cV7XybywqSc/mqdefault.jpg)
![[Tier List] Assassin's Creed | Stealth Gameplay [2021]](/img/tr.png)
Great overview! I feel much the same, for almost all the same reasons. You broke it down _really_ well, I'm a big fan of going about it very mathematically.
Thank you, Leo, it’s good to see that other people who approach these games in a much more technical way seem to see the same positives and negatives that I do.
The swinging on lamps using hookblade was the coolest thing ever. And it feels so good to do it too.
Yea, the long jumps are pretty satisfying.
Now try to catch a zipline mid fall/jump, it feels incredible
1:11:43 It forms an "F" with the origins trilogy as an underline, indicating we all should press F for the franchise
F
F
If you get Unity to do what you want it to, it feels amazing, but waaay to often it just doesn't, so I end up staying undecided between which one I prefer, AC1-Rev parkour or Unity's. Other than that, the Kenway games kinda feel like a middle ground between full control on the player and a system with cool-looking motion-captured animations and AC1-Rev gets the first one better and Unity gets the second one better, so idk, it falls on a weird spot to me. In the end I can say I really love all the systems pre-Syndicate, they all get different things really right, while the ones after Syndicate just don't.
I feel largely the same.
That’s why ac3-rogue is my favorite system. With ac3 being the best as it’s less buggy and tree parkour is smoother
To put it simple: The newer the games, the worse the movement. It's really depressing to see how parkour has slowly lost importance over the past decade. It was once a core gameplay mechanic but it's virtually non-existent in the new games.
Yep. You hate to see it.
@Travel Explorer tbh Yh
It didn’t lose importance over the games.
Unity Parkour was a much bigger focus then in Brotherhood, 3 and Rouge. It just was extremely clunky like the rest of the games
Jcers states that he is trying to be objective but then he says Unity bad? This is not right. Unity is one of the best ac systems ever, if you are looking at it objectively, you have to weight certain things. The justification Jcers gives for his opinions are because he is *good* , he is *good* at video games and that makes him view certain things in a skewed manner. This is why bing bong his opinion is wrong. This is an objective fact. Jcers is incorrect. Arno do pretty twirl more important than Arno be able to cancel. Unity has an incredible system for the casual player who doesn’t really care. Arno do pretty twirl , Arno important. That combined with Paris and Versaille being perfect. It is perfect for the casual . But Mr. good at video games over here doesn’t agree. SMHmyhead, what next are you gonna say that mario bros was too easy. Or that pokemon Y was too simple for you. Whats important is arno do pretty twirl and Arno do pretty twirl in pretty world. Unless you think Paris isn’t pretty , Paris is the city of love , known for its landmark “Big Ben” and the winter carnival in which beloved character “Pompière
”shows up. “Pompière
” means snowman in australian . Snowman are what kids build, Jcers hates all kids Thats the only explanation for what he gave unity.
(Note have not watched video yet)
This made my day, dude, thanks for commenting this 😂
nice
LMFAO THIS IS GOLD
take ur pills
dude this fucking comment is golden
in the beginning of the game in odyssey you take fall damage but no matter what height it still will not kill you, so that was a really a fully intended mechanic
Yep :( At least we have fall damage in Valhalla, but it still manages to be a worse system overall, lmao
Yah ac3 definitely gets animation right from parkour to combat it all seamlessly flows together. Nice tier list I like that you broke it down to different categories.
AC3 animations are just better than most games in general, tbh. Glad you liked the video!
When is the Assassin's Creed Tierlist Tierlist coming out
Unsure
@@jcers 2035
I really enjoyed this, a really cool video, it makes it especially great because you spend so much time learning the tiny details between each parkour system in each game. Thank you for this. Also I totally agree with parkour on Unity, it’s very hard to get it to do what you want it to, but when it works and flows smoothly it looks incredible and paired with the excellent world design it’s great. But again Arno isn’t very obedient 😂
I’m glad to hear that! I tried to be as in-depth and objective as I possibly could, lol. And yea, if you don’t need to be super precise, Unity is usually pretty fine. If you need even an ounce of precision from it? Utter nightmare, lmao
@@jcers Unity fulfills my assassin fantasy because I actually feel cool when playing him. Every other game, though they may “work” better mechanically, it’s not “cool” doing parkour in other games. IMO the rest of the games feel like parkour is more of just a tool that you can master proficiency of rather than something that is fun to do because it’s cool.
47:24 when he said "how mad do I want ppl to be at me"
I felt that
Lmao
I like how the series slowly declines lmao
Very sad times 😔
AC3's animations are trully amazing, the best in the industry if you ask me.
and yeah it's kinda strange that they didn't reuse the cool little animations from this game in 4 and Rogue.
It's unfortunate, yea.
Which ones did they not use in 4? The little vaulting over fences was there.
@@birchtree14 it was there, but the quality of the animations were not
I mean obviously a prite who spent most his life on water wouldn't move as smooth as a naitive who grew up climbing trees and learning parkour to hunt.
@@daddybadguy4324 oh wow, now it makes so much sense that it has janky animations! lets blame it on lore instead of Ubisoft's laziness, that's really productive!
AC Unity really took the biggest hit on responsiveness. And understandably so due to it basically being so unpolished in general. Otherwise it could've easily been in the B-Tier.
For sure. If Unity was as responsive as AC3, it would be above the Kenway games in B.
Is there a chance we get a short continuation video regarding Mirage?
I absolutely adored your analyses in this video, so it would be nice to round it up with the newest game just below Valhalla
I may make an update to this video at some point to include Mirage and to reevaluate a number of the rankings I gave here because I quite frankly don’t agree with some of the stuff I said here anymore, haha. I’d also want to include the new classic AC parkour mod in the ranking just to get the word out and be able to talk about it in reference to all iterations on classic parkour from later games
@@jcers makes perfect sense, thanks for the acknowledgment 👍🏻
Cheers
3 minutes in and you explain the fundamental of your tier list, which is not common in this kind of videos. Kudos. Discussing the complexity of parkour in the franchise is a rare treat, and at least hearing it is a joy. A couple of opinions and notes I take while hearing: in responsiveness, to me in AC1 is fairly common that you came in contact with a beam like object, and Altair missteps and does that stiff fall; in expression, in AC2 you have quick walking but it's tied with pickpocketing, and I hate that; totally agree with the comparison between the different AC2 and ACB, in the latter there is also less variety in aesthetics because is one continuos place; in ACRev also the tombs are more restricted in movement variation and camera work while trying to be "cinematic", which I don't like. Haven't played the rest in years or don't own them, except for ACU, which parkour I appreciate only because of yours and Leo's guides. Keep up the good work
Thanks, David, I’m glad you appreciated my thoroughness, lol.
1:00:45 another example of an animation that only appears once is when playing as aya and climbing that huge tower towards the end of the game, there is a point where you jump off a ledge and grab a pole on the side of the tower and side eject off with similar/same animations to wall bridging in unity - its hard to explain but it caught my attention
i think the kenway era is the most underrated system among the bunch. the only thing they lack is the map design that actually utilizes the parkour mechanic IMO
For sure, you don’t ever hear people picking that one as their favourite. It’s either Unity or AC1-Rev, with the one the person didn’t pick always being second. It’s definitely under appreciated, especially in the animation department.
@@jcers for me actually 3 is the best connor's movement and animations felt the most satisfying to me and the tree climbing just made it god tier. So it will always be the best imo
This is so true. If we had a game with AC2 or Unity world design and AC3 animations, it would basically make for the perfect parkour system.
@@daddybadguy4324 the animations are really good. My ideal system would have ac1's controls, with ac3's animations, with unity's parkour down
@@TheButterAnvil that’s where the franchise should of gone after Unity, took all that they learned over the years and try mesh it in to one beautiful system. I think it is always gonna be a hard task to make movement feel as consistent as AC1 to ACR because of how many more animations there could be which Unity showed but that definitely could of been a platform to build off instead of fully devolving after that system.
Off topic but damn you've got a very soothing voice i must say. I like how you don't overuse vocal fry which tends to be difficult to get rid of
Thank you! I make an effort to avoid using that too much when I’m recording audio, haha. It really grates on the ears after a while, I’ve found.
Lmao everytime i look at all the bars on the screen i feel sick. It's like those optical illusions
Evening Haythem. Did you know that you are one of the very little redeeming qualities of AC3?
Lol, don’t take a stats class, your time spent in Excel will not be fun :/
@@fredster594 Sadly, What you speak of is the truth
honestly jcers you are the only reason i gave ac3 a chance and am still trying to enjoy it as much as you do
I’m glad that I was able to convince you, haha! Hope you enjoy the game :)
Gonna use this as asmr to sleep tonight
I know it's an older video, but I want to show this to literally every single person at Ubisoft. Maybe it was inadvertent on your part, but by breaking down the finer nuances (and the greater divides) that separates the parkour between the games, I think you've illustrated exactly how AC's movement has regressed in a very digestible way. Genuinely, this puts into words so many ideas that I've been unable orate, so I'm thankful to that.
I mean, we know Ubisoft chases trends like crazy, so they must be keeping their ear to the ground when it comes to this sort of thing. So surely they must be aware of why people say AC parkour peaked with Ezio. I can only hope they realign their vision with the series' ethos enough for them to actually feel compelled to take these criticisms to heart and improve. AC Valhalla's map design being a step-up (and it being something that Ubisoft specifically touted to entice older fans) gives me some hope that they at least see why older fans have fallen off the series.
Or maybe they'll just play it safe, like always, and just give AC Infinity the parkour from Unity. At this point, I'm genuinely concerned that the amount of rave reviews Unity's parkour gets has actually led Ubisoft to think that they peaked with traversal in that game.
Coming back to this vid would of loved to have seen a Liberation parkour rating included in this list. New Orleans is personally one of my favourite cities to traverse across out of the games releasing after Revelations, there is a bunch of vaulting opportunities above ground level. The whip added freedom to move across larger areas while also acting similar to a rope dart in combat. Not to mention the Bayou also has some decent tree traversal routes. To think all this could fit on a vita. My only complaint is wishing we could explore more of Chichen Itza, the story overall isn’t very compelling too.
"Enough self pluging" he says lol. I'm finally getting good at the old parkour system, and its actually pretty dope. I am of the opinion that the change they made in unity was a great evolution as well as regression. If beggars could be choosers, I would have the old parkour integrated with unitys sick animations. But that's just me
I’m glad you’re enjoyed AC1-Rev! It’s super sick. And I’m pretty much in agreement with you; AC1-Rev with more cinematic, flashy animations would be awesome.
@@jcers I think AC 3 could had been that game with some tweaks and a better city environment.
@@KartikSingh-nm1ik honestly, yea.
@@KartikSingh-nm1ik as well as cleaning up the bugs that are still rampant with parkour😂
Ty, someone finally didn’t overrate Unity’s parkour. The jumps you can do in that game are ridiculous.
Wow your reviews for each category were very well put
Thank you 🙏🏻
you know so much and go so in-depth, even if I love unity parkour, i can't disagree with your opinion!
Thanks! I enjoy Unity parkour, too, but I had to be honest about it, lol
That was interesting. I (in this case unexpectedly) watched/listened the complete video. Thumbs up as always. :D
Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it :)
im gonna enjoy this
This video is absolutely phenomenal, fact. And despite lasting well over an hour, it still felt short to me because of how much I was enjoying it. Leo’s stealth tier list and your parkour tier list are perfectly explained and executed so well, I also especially appreciate how you made a great point-based system on a separate tab before assigning a game to a certain tier.
The fact that I can hear disappointment in your voice once you get to Syndicate and latter ones is hilarious but sad at the time 😄
I agreed with every single number you’ve put for each game, despite there being a lot of ratings for each individual mechanic. Probably the only rating where I would partially disagree is your rating on Syndicate world design being way too low. I agree that it doesn’t hold a candle to Unity’s Paris in terms of parkour, but I feel like I’d just bump that one for maybe another number or two, but not more. Maybe I’m saying all of this because I have a weak spot for Syndicate, I love that game way too much. London is my favorite city in the whole franchise, no competition. But buildings really are way too distant for people who enjoy real parkour, I just don’t personally mind it.
Overall, great work. Your voice and explanations fit these types of videos really well, both you and Leo should do this more often. Now I am just hoping I will sometime in the future see an AC combat tier list, where you’d discuss how combat changed throughout the franchise! That would be a great stuff to discuss.
Finally got 1k congratulations you make amazing content I watch all your videos and I wish you best
Thanks, Black Swan, I appreciate your support :D
Since yesterday i watched a lot of your ac videos. And you're already my fav youtuber. I love your passion for the Assassin's creed games, and you're a master at parkour. Ily man. Keep doing these ac videos😊🖤
Thank you! I’m glad to hear you’ve been enjoying my stuff!
Unity is the only system I have spent tons of time with, and so it'll be the only one I can comment on. Let me just say, "never before have I been so offended by something I 100% agree with." You make amazing, well-thought out arguments and I really need to appreciate you for that.
I agree, Unity tends to be one of the flashier systems. In fact, that's what first attracted me towards it. But nowadays, I find it un-assassin-like to be so showy and flashy, so I end up simply letting go of HP before any kill. In terms of movement, too, the problems the new system poses far outweigh the merits, so the rating is understandable. I really take an offence to how laggy and clunky Arno feels and how Arno's moveset is very _RNG-based_. I know that the animations are _super_ camera sensitive but it really never feels like it. I absolutely hate it when I'm trying to take cover when running towards a wall, and Arno chooses to climb it because I was holding PK-up moments ago. It's a shame the game goes for style over control and certainty.
Unity really tries hard to make it difficult to make mistakes, to appeal to doodoo players like myself, but in doing so, it causes significant pain to veterans like yourself. Unity has all the variety and depth, but it really insists on doing all the parkour itself, which takes from the player agency.
As much as it hurts me to say this, I would also rate Unity somewhere near C. Franciade, Versailles and Paris can only carry Unity so far :/
Solid video and top tier tier-list
but Unity doesn't insist on making the parkour do 'all in itself'
you do realise that the side eject thingy in concept is animation based elsewell because in AC1s engine of its parkour makes your character play an animation to a specific ledge point for the player character to grab and you're trying to discredit as Unity being different to the point of there being no player control when you still have to actually do a manual controller configuration to even side eject to position yourself to any specific point to get up higher or keep the 'momentum' going...
you do realise that in concept AC1 - Revs parkour system can be said to be entirely based on animations which btw isn't true and the same goes to Unity... the devs only did parkour animations to tie it in the parkour system and not have 'thousands of trigger points throughout the world' what does that even mean regarding Unity... how do you know that and where did you get this info from...
i could LITERALLY say the exact same thing as to how AC1s to even AC3s engine of its parkour system to have 'thousands of of trigger points throughout the world where an animation can be triggered from' - you still have MANUAL movement that you can pull off with control with its moves like how the dive feature works... yes you do need to have a position to do the dive move but you're not CHOOSING which path to take like its a f3cking cutscene... wtf is that analogy, you still have to POSITION yourself at any point where you can freely jump towards it from any position that allows you do that dive jump and get to the ground to maintain momentum or you can pull the L stick backwards where Arno swings back in a motion that leaps from the momentum that Arno left and keep the momentum in going in a different path compared to going forwards to get to the ground faster
Let's fucking go, release order basically.
I think you might've been a bit too forgiving on Unity, and I think I would've put AC1 a bit higher just because of vaulting and how diagonal beam jumps feel better than in 2.
That’s totally fair, dude. And yea, #releaseordergang
A solid point of view, I generally agree, thanks for the video
It's......it's like you read my mind to the decimal point. I fully agree with this list in every way. Everything you said just resonated perfectly with me. I really love this approach to tier lists, it's interesting! Personally AC3 has my fav parkour since it's 95% of the classic system but with some QoL features, and Ratonhnhaké:ton's animations are gooooooooood. That's actually one of the things that kinda disappointed me about 4 & Rogue, the animations seem stiffer than Connor's or Haytham's
Surprised you didn’t mention how Brotherhood removed the Climb Leap for Sequences 2-4. I’ve always thought that was a pretty big bummer while playing, and made early parkour less fun.
Honestly, I very rarely use climb leap, so it being gone doesn't bother me all that much, haha. It is true that I probably should have brought that up here, though.
Did you subconsciously quote me with the "Clunky, as in the actual meaning of the word" in the Unity segment ? I remember you responded to my comment in a reddit thread about Unitys parkour system, where i used that exact phrase :D I would be honored if that was true haha.
Anyway, awesome video. I loved LeoKs ranking for stealth, and this is also brilliant. I will forward people to this video if i ever have top explain my preferences for the first parkour system again for sure.
Hello, Darkronymus, and yea, that was almost certainly the case, now that I think about it, lol! I’m glad you enjoyed the video :)
@@jcers I will certainly keep an eye on your channel from now on :)
@@fashionkiller11 thanks for the sub! I appreciate you sticking around :)
a thing I haven't seen adressed much if at all is that ezio stumbles/halfway slips off roofs a lot, altair barely did that at all.
is it just something I do that ac2-rev is more sensitive to than 1 or does ezio have shorter legs or something? xD
Yea, that’s something I noticed too, I just kinda forgot to mention that while recording. Not sure why they made it work that way.
Hi, I am sorry to send you this in a comment, but I did not see another way to reach you. I make videos on games, primarily Assassin's Creed, and I am writing a review on Unity right now. It is a long form video at about an hour and a half, and it is a negative one overall. In it, I bring you up when discussing creators who have made impressive content in Unity, and I also briefly showcase a screen recording of this video when I talk about input lag and input queuing and how they impact the game compared to other entries in the series.
I didn't want to name you in my video without your permission, and if you request that I take those segments out I can delete them as per your preference. Please let me know. I plan to upload it next week at some point, and in case you do not see this request until after I publish I will and try to structure the video so that I can remove instances where I name you through the UA-cam editor without disrupting the video if you ask me to.
Awesome video! Thank you for all the insight into all the games' parkour systems.
Up until now, I've only played the games from AC3 - ACOrigins. I never played the original 4 until I decided to finally play them a couple of months ago. Right now, I finally reached and playing through Revelations and for the sake of discussion, Revelations is infact, the only one I disagree with. To be fair, I've been only playing it for around 10 hours, but this is what I have in mind.
I feel like Revelations' city, was actually the one most designed around the entire parkour kit and you actually mentioned this. I think it really comes down to weather or not you like the hookblade. I think the problem most people have with the hookblade is the cancelability. The reason why I have no problem with this, is that I don't think I should use the same playstyle in AC1&2 inside Revelations, but to work around the new animations in a way that's similar to Unity. You did say though, that the new animations are cool, but not that impressive to you, so maybe it's not worth it to play around the new animations to you and that's just gonna be subjective thing.
To me Revelations is the compilation of everything from AC1-ACBR into one game, from the entire kit to the city that's designed with every move you have in mind. Each half of the city can be nearly entirely traversed on rooftops while having the possibility to use nearly every single move you have in a viable option. The hookblade to me is such a good addition both mechanically and aesthetically. You know how AC2 added the lanterns/flower pots which were cool, well ACRev kinda has the same impact on me, because all the lanterns have a double use now, giving even more freedom. Climbing straight upwards is fast, but can be faster if you measure the distance and press jump at the right points to use the hookblade. This is a good thing because it makes walls with no side/back eject possibilities (like a view point tower for example) have more to do than just waiting to reach the top. Ziplines give more variety to traversal and not only for moving from point A to B, but they also added more assassination opportunities and you have the ability to cancel mid way straight into a catch-ledge for example. Not to mention that you can also enter ziplines midway with a catch-ledge. Subjective thing, but personally catch-ledge with a hookblade feels more satisfying to me with the hookblade than just with your hand, especially on thin ledges. Also an added addition is the ability to quickly drop into catching a ledge from the edge of a building (holding run+catch-ledge button when running off of an edge) gives even more movement opportunities like going from running ontop of a building into a side/back eject from that very building, which can never be done as smooth before outside of vaulting in AC1, which was still a very specific situation.
I know this was a jumbled mess of ideas, but I tried to cite some stuff that came to mind while playing ACRev, because I was honestly quite surprised with how much I liked the overall gameplay of the game. It even has great things outside of parkour like the best combat out of the first four games and the cool bomb crafting system with variety and customization never seen in later games. The only thing I'm still not sure of is the story and pacing of the game. I'm pretty sure I'll like the ending, but ACBrotherhood has a weak middle part IMO that didn't quite pull me.
Again thanks for the video and thanks for reading. I truly appreciate it! Have a good day/night!
holy shit an in-depth vocal video
:O
I agree with you. AC 3 has better animations than Unity.
True, I feel like AC3 and the Colonist Trilogy's parkour in general doesn't get enough credit. Unity looks way too stylish and cinematic.
AC3 animation supremacy gang
We all know where the RPG trilogy will be ranked
Yup.
I look forward to more of these kind of commentary videos!
Haha, I’ll probably end up making more at some point. Glad you enjoyed!
Love this list order cause it somehow summarized how parkour became mere treverse the newer the games are
AC3 has the best animation in 60 fps
I agree.
Great vid ! I can't argue with your ACU points, but did want to say that to me somehow that game is more than the sum of its parts, I can't pinpoint what exactly but it did have something special that for me makes it more than a B (when rating overall, not just parcour)
It’s the assassin fantasy. Cool > functionality wins with these games. I’m on board for it because I don’t play these games to be a pro. The new games are 0 cool and sub par fictionally so it’s a fail on all fronts.
Love this kind of videos! Keep it up!
Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Small thing I noticed recently during a Brotherhood replay is that the camera doesn’t lock during a wall run if you’re Desmond for some reason
Weird stuff
AC being normal with consistent game behaviour once again
Finally somebody that doesn’t overhype Unity
I try
Great vid, I agree with a lot.
I'd dock Valhalla a point in two places though, Cancellability and World Design.
In Valhalla you can't cancel that drop down animation that occurs when you simply push the stick over a small edge. Once it begins, it seems like it doesn't stop. In Origins if you stopped pushing forward Bayek would do a little balancing animation and wave his arms. I've accidentally dropped down quite a bit in Valhalla because of this. It's never really too consequential, but it is annoying.
In World Design, yes the cities are decent enough, especially when compared with Odyssey, but outside of them it's not as strong as Origins. Towns will only have one or two parkour routes if they have any at all, whereas Origins had some decent traversal in towns like Kanopos, Sais, and others. Also, due to the low and steepled nature of the buildings, lots of parkour routes even in denser cities, especially Wincestre but it's true elsewhere, make HEAVY use of simple rope connections, so you basically just push along them like you're riding a rail, which just isn't very fun.
To give you a comment that isn't a shitpost, I really like this video. You're probably one of the most qualified people to talk about this, due to how much you, personally, move in this game. As of me typing this I've only played AC1- Brotherhood, but I want to try to contribute something at least.
7:06 I've had this happen to me in AC1 and Brotherhood, but not in AC2 for some reason
I personally like how Ezio feels in Brotherhood over AC2; I like how the added heft makes him feel a little more grounded
In AC2 I felt like the camera hated me and wanted me to die a horrible horrible death, lol. So many times I would go to side eject and Ezio would either climb leap or back eject
The camera in Brotherhood locks horizontally when you're climbing vertically, I've found out. Which is aggravating, but not nearly as aggravating as back ejecting to my death
Thank you, Mint, I appreciate that :)
I definitely get where you’re coming from; AC2’s camera is noticeably more finicky to wall eject/climb leap actions in that there is much less margin for error, to a point where it can occasionally be pretty annoying. It’s why I almost never use climb leap, just because of how inconsistent it can be.
I have noticed the character's hands phasing through objects in AC3 as well, which you mention for AC4.
Okay, finished the video, and gotta say, I agree with almost everything you say. Just feel that AC1 could've been one tier above and Syndicate one tier down
Yea, it happens, but not generally in the context of catch ledge. It’s more just everyday clipping in AC3, like when you’re hanging on a wall. Glad you liked the video!
@@jcers is that so? I was talking about catch ledge though
@@thatsaweirdone huh. I’ve never experienced Connor phasing through obvious handholds when reaching for ledges. The main place that it happens in 4 is on ships while up in the rigging and on their masts. It doesn’t even really happen outside of that context for me.
@@jcers well, we can't really help that I guess. Same went for Parkour Down (today). I parkour down-ed immediately after landing on the non-standing object, and Connor tackled the dude under him
@@thatsaweirdone :(
What I don´t like about the open space in Brotherhood is that there are a lot of hills and elevations that are only accessible one or two ways. This was also before they added the feature where waypoints show up on your screen, as well as your minimap, so trying to find chests on those fucking hills was frustrating as hell. You would spend like a minute working your way up the hill, only to find out that the chest is somewhere under it.
Sucks that ubi$oft dumbs down the parkour to appeal to new gamers 😪
Indeed.
Maaaan this sucks. I was planning on enjoying how people without listening to your points and not having half the experience you have in the ac series get angry and leave a cringy comment. I got my popcorn and everything ready. Very dissapointed
Haha yea, comments have been pretty tame compared to what I expected. I didn’t even get downvoted to shit on the AC subreddit for this.
You analysing by making section is really awsome. And i agree with almost every point.
Hay what do you think of lift in acb, as it introduced from there only.
Actually by making section it clearly understands where Parkour is good and where it lacks.
Thanks, shinobi! To answer your question, I quite like Brotherhood’s addition of fast lifts, they’re pretty helpful.
i'll never forgive them from dropping the vault from AC2 to Revelations..i really enjoyed it in the first game
The new rpg games are responsive but in a bad way where it feels like I’m controlling a character with no momentum.
Yea, the jumps don’t feel proper. Your character accelerates and decelerates at physically impossible rates all the time in those games, and when you land, it tends to feel like you _dropped down_ onto something rather than having jumped forward onto it.
@@jcers exactly. I especially hate that I can instantly change the direction I am walking without having to slow down it just feels cheap. Unity may have a lot of input lag, but I can appreciate that your character actually feels like a real person when you play them. I wish that they just improved on the Unity/Syndicate system instead of redoing everything and cutting everything out :(
59:11
Nice foreshadowing.
Lmao, indeed
AC1 also has a problem where there's like a cap to how far you can jump and then Altair pauses for a sec and then goes straight down.
Cap frames at 60 and enable VSync. That should stop happening once you do that.
@@jcers Thank you so much! I'm a big leap off tall buildings and catch ledge person and this helps me a lot.
@@thedestoryer21 no problem!
I love the original parkour system but i just wish they kept in the vault from ac1. Really makes no sense why they took it out
You will be flamed for Unity but I fully agree with everything.
Unity's animations, despite being pretty, are so damn slow. Especially when compared to Ac2's snappy and efficient movement.
Maybe I disagree for Brotherhood being higher than Ac1. I think Ac1's world design better facilitates parkour than Brotherhood's Rome and thus it's a better traversal experience. Those Romulus tombs though are great.
Funny thing is that I actually do prefer AC1 to Brotherhood, too, it’s just that the way I had the scoring system set up had them in a slightly different order to what I prefer.
That’s poggers
Epic gamer moment
Why did they remove the vault in AC1, AC 2 could have been better honestly...
I imagine the reason it was removed was because they wanted to include tackling from above, and there was a control conflict with the buttons. It’s pretty unfortunate, because I already hate that mechanic, lmao
@@jcers The easiest solution to distinguish vaults from air tackle would be to assign one to button press, and another to button hold. And if you add Lock-on to it, it would block the vaulting so that you'd be able to tackle from above 100% of the time.
@@bloodymares yea, that sounds like a perfectly logical way to do it. Sad that they didn’t go with this.
@@bloodymares You know speaking of air tackle, the worst example of it is in AC rogue. Not only the enemies but also civilians.
Every time I drop down it either does what I want or it just air tackles so rogue is the worst in the Kenway games in my opinion...
personally i think the movement system was at its best in the Kenway saga, especially ac3 and 4 but great video and sound opinion regardless
I can understand that. Glad you liked the vid :)
If I had one criticism for this tier list, it would be that you overrated Odysseys animations. They are markedly worse than Origins while running and while jumping. In Odyssey, running is a robotic, static loop that appears to belong to a ps2 title. Jumping, along any parkour routes, looks the worst out of any AC game. Origins and Odyssey uses the same animation path a lot of the time, but Odyssey uses fewer actual animations than Origins, producing a blockier, stiffer and all around uglier result. So, Odyssey should, at best, be a 35. These are hard hitting criticisms, I know.
You wound me with your cruel, cruel, words! Lol, but seriously, I largely agree, I just forgot about this because I hadn’t played Odyssey in almost 2 years when I made this video so I just assumed it had Origins’ animations plus the new ones for jumping off of cliffs. Playing it again recently for the crossover thing had me noticing this sort of thing. I’d say that jumping in Unity and Syndicate can still look a lot worse due to those games’ absolutely wack-ass physics, but Odyssey’s animations are definitely the most boring.
@@jcers it makes you appreciate the nuance of the original AC's animations. Even though they have the same "problem" of using the same animation over and over, in AC it comes across as practiced discipline from decades of training; using the correct movements at the correct time. In Odyssey, it just looks robotic.
But I think i understand why you forgot how Odysseus animations look. Since its such an expression vacuum, the movement becomes a vehicle for the gameplay, rather than being the gameplay itself. So you must kind of zone it out after a while.
Do You Play AC’s For Only Side Eject And Back Eject???
No, I like catch ledge too
I've played almost every game so I'll give my ranking based on parkour:
1. Unity/ AC2
2. AC1
3. AC3
4. Revelations
5. Black Flag/Rogue
6. Brotherhood
7. Origins
I think you could've made things more accurate by weighting each factor based on its value/importance.
Great breakdown!
That’s true but I despise stats with every fibre of my being and prefer to avoid doing them, lol. Also, I honestly don’t think that the actual tier list would be different even if I had weighted the categories by importance
@@jcers understandable. Not everyone can be data-male.
@@deskrabbit2190 data-male 😂. I love math. It’s just stats that make me want to commit toaster bath
Still thinking Unity has the best parkour. Good vid.
Ikr I jizz my pants everytime I see Arno Auditore Dorian do a twirl.
@@fredster594 hey fred, People are allowed to have other opinions than yours
@@wali33 I don't blame you for not understanding the joke. I suck at being sarcastic.
@@wali33 I found it funny lol
@@spoodurmin9742 my guy went out made his own paragraph of his opinions and then commented every comment on this video
Seemed like he was takin the piss of everybody liking other games
But I digress, I didn’t catch the joke, my b
Ifeel mostly same but ithink in reveletions hook blade design and animations are 9 out of 10
Becous all of the moves are designed for the city buldings
And catch ledge is good but
Not good as ac bh
And ithink ac bh world design is 10 out of 10 becous you can parkour on anything the design of the ground
Objects are really good too they match with that place and pretty usefull for side and back eject
Even in country side parkour is good
Most of the time there is no problem with them!
I'm sorry but how can Unity's World Design be a 10 when the Responsiveness is a 1? It's world is literally not built for it's controls.
Honestly, I think that giving Unity a 1 for responsiveness was a mistake. I tried to grade things as though on a bell curve, with 5 being the average and anything above or below that being away from it, but I don't think I did that properly for basically any of them, so applying that here for Unity in giving it a 1 disproportionately lowered its score. What I should have done was give all of the games a rating from 1-10 and _then_ curved the ratings to make the tier list.
As for Unity's world not being built for its controls, I'm just going to have to disagree. The world is designed very well for its controls. There are always opportunities to access the contextual moves that the system offers (even if the jank doesn't always let you trigger them, haha), and the level of possible player expression is very high. The only real instance where the world design and the controls have a real conflict is when trying to move quickly inside interiors. That is where things start to break down.
Couldn’t agree more with this list...
Its so sad to see the last THREE Games on F. If Ubisoft would have focused on special parkour/stealth for these trilogy, they could habe a crazy parkour when even the Parkour from Ac1(2007) mindblowing is.
Yup. It’s really sad to see.
I agree 100%
Unity best parkour. If you don't believe that it's the best parkour and best AC game eat shit.
@@fredster594 Guess I’ll eat shit then, because AC Unity’s parkour is dogshit in comparison to AC3 and the Ezio Trilogy’s parkour, and the game itself is a mediocre mess in almost every aspect besides Soundtrack and Open World Design.
@@spoodurmin9742 I think he's just being sarcastic.
@@spoodurmin9742 Unity is a bad game before the patches. But after the patches it's an instant classic 10/10 perfect combat, amazing graphics, perfect parkour, amazing story, twirls, AC2 unpolished and unrefined baby.
@@fredster594 If I had a dollar for every time some one tried convincing me AC Unity is good after the patches....
Im commenting this three years later but its an issue i somewhat have with the community
I respect your opinion even tho unity is my fav in the series
I agree with the ezio trilogy being an S too its my second favourite
Most comments are people mocking unity fans claiming they only like the parkour because of tge fancy twirls and it kind of annoys me
Most people have that thought that
Unity fan=casual fan
Which is just not right
You migh think im mad but i like unity's parkour because of how it feels
Just wanted to discuss that but i have no problems with your favoured ac parkour i just dont like being treated like toddler most of the time in the ac community😂
Agreed, it's fine loving Unity's parkour. I mean people do have preferences on the balance of animations and freedom on controls.
It's fair. If you have a preference despite being well-informed, that's not something I can take away. It'd be like trying to convince someone who likes chicken more than steak that they need to change their preferences. Not much someone can say to change that. The mocking is more in relation to a lot of people who will, despite knowing nothing about classic parkour, claim "blinded by nostalgia" when someone promotes classic parkour and refuse to hear any criticisms of Unity's system and/or downplay (or sometimes even just ignore) the good elements presented as arguments in favor of the Classic games' superiority. If that's not you, then no need to worry.
I personally think Origins deserves at least D tier, sure the parkour is basically non existent a lot of times but it still let you jump off cliffs to your death unlike Valhalla and Od- yeah that game, and once you get into a good flow it feels good
Unity at C tier really pisses me off, the rest i agree with
If I made this today it would probably be B tier and Rogue C or D. A few other minor differences but those would be my biggest shifts here
W video, honestly everything about unity is pretty overrated, I personally prefer Syndicate's parkour the most in my opinion since its easier and leans into the Batman/vigilante fantasy making climbing/parkour practical
I'm sorry but you can't claim the kenway games have better parkour than unity, it just cannot be done.
Other than that big agree, although I think rogue is better than black flag.
I’d love to discuss where you disagree with me on the scores in the individual categories. The main reason Unity’s as low as is it is is mainly due to the annoying amount of input lag, but cancellations and freedom are also definitely worse than the Kenway games. What would you change on there?
@@jcers @Jcers I mean in the categories you have made i would bump unity's feel up, and also make unity's animations a 10 and lower the kenway games animation score a few points to compensate.
I would also lower the expressiveness score of the kenway games along with possibly the world design.
@@titularhero I suppose a lot of that is subjective. For me, responsive, quick controls that make my character feel agile are what make the movement feel good. Unity has neither of those things. In truth, the only reason it’s not lower is because I needed to leave room to go down for O/Od/V. For animations, the reasons I have Unity lower than 3 aren’t so subjective. Arno will regularly phase through world geometry when parkouring around (beams, ropes, tree trunks, etc). Trying to parkour down into the middle of trees consistently breaks the animation cycle in horrendous ways. On some diagonal wall runs, Arno hangs in the air for so long that it looks like zero-g. On a large number of jumps, Arno has no jump arc at all and just goes in a straight line to his next destination. When Arno performs laches, it’s like his momentum suddenly shifts to being slower for the duration of the swing animation before returning to normal. There’s a lot more I can mention. It essentially boils down to the technology of the animations rather than the choreography. The choreography is all great, but the presentation once it runs through the game itself is nowhere near AC3’s level. It’s why you’ll always hear the phrase “when it works”. When Unity’s animation works, it looks really nice. AC3’s animations always work. I’m not entirely sure why you feel the need to decrease the expressiveness of the Kenway games. At their core, they have all of the same verbs that AC1-Rev have, and even some new ones. The only real difference is the nerfed animation cancelling, which ultimately does hurt it a noticeable amount, but the cancelling is still significantly less restrictive than in Unity, and very few of the actions are contextually-bound. As for world design, I already gave Unity a 10/10, so there’s no way that I undersold it there. Lowering AC3’s rating makes no sense, because that would in the same category as Valhalla, which it doesn’t deserve. Lowering 4’s rating doesn’t make sense, because Havana on its own is an easy 10/10 and everything else is at least significantly better than anything in AC3. Lowering ACR’s rating also doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, as all of Rogue’s urban areas are at least somewhere between Nassau & Havana’s level of quality.
I understand why you might prefer Unity’s system, but the reasons why I’ve ranked the games like I have are all completely valid. You’re always allowed to disagree with me, but saying that I’m not allowed to say the Kenways have better movement than Unity when I’ve given plenty of factual background information as to why I’ve come to that conclusion feels a lot like arguing in bad faith to me.
@@titularhero tbh animation and movement wise ac3 is better add to that responsiveness and smoothness ac3 crushs unity tbh
what exactly is "vaulting"?
When you vault over waist high objects instead of having to climb them
^
heres a vid by the goat leo k ua-cam.com/video/m2c6tuu8JOE/v-deo.html
Personally I desagree with unity being below ac3, black flag, & rogue. In my opinion unity is the best system. My main problem with the RPG trilogy is well there is no parkour aside from parkour up lmao. In kenway saga you push one button and that's it. It's extremely basic but it is very fluid which is why I enjoy it over ac1-reveleations sometimes. Just depends on how I feel. But in ac1-revelations I think the system is very precise. It's to the point where if my left stick is 2 degrees off of for example those tightropes they put in between buildings ezio or altair will completely miss the object I was aiming for. When you play games most people when they push up or left or down on a thumbstick they don't directly push up on the stick. Most people will push up and a little to the left or right and that little adjustment causes ezio or altair to jump in a completely random direction. It is unrealistic for me to look down at my controller to make sure my thump is completely pushed straight up. This doesn't happen every single time but it happens a lot of the time and it's enough to ruin my experience. Not only that but the game feels sooooooo slow especially ac1. Also climbing down is painfully slow and not fluid at all and the entire parkour system isn't fluid whatsoever. That and the world which ill get to in a bit make these game's parkour system awful. When you climb down a building in these games if the distance below is short, and I men short they'll simply jump down. But if it's for than like 5 feet the characters say nah. Then they do a slow turn around animation and then you press b (for xbox) and they fall straight down and you have to catch the ledge. i mean it looks stupid and awful and it's slow as well. Now my final gripe is the world design. In ac1 most buildings arent' climbable and you have to use ladders and the ones that are, are not made for parkour as no building has a straight up path for you to climb. You forced to move to the left and right to grab objects to climb on. In ac2 it's even worse as most buildings, the rooj sticks out so you have to wait for ezio to do this slow jump to the rooj animation, watch him hang for a second them he pulls himself up. It's overall slow. Yea they have these parkour routes to take which is good but does not deserve a 10. Compare this to unty where every building is climbable (aside from maybe a few but this is so rare it's basically not existant) and it's not like you have to go out of your way to climb these. You can parkour straight up a building. Also not every roof does not stick out which makes parkour more fast paced. Not only this unity is extremely fluid and everymove links to the next. Side ejects look great compared to how clunky they look in the ezio games and ac1. Climbing down a building is super fluid and fast. Unity's also has this feature where arno magnets to objects he trying to jump on which removes the issue I had of ezio completely missing a tightrope because my thumbstick was 2 degrees off. It's not bad to the point where arno jumps to random objects but it's the perfect amount to where I'm not completely missing objects I'm trying to get to. Also unity makes certain things like jumping off the map a little harder and that's a great feature. You can still jump off the map but to back eject to your death for example you have to double tap the back eject button which prevents you from accidentally killing yourself where in ac2 sometimes I would run up the wall and the game registered me pressing a twice causing ezio to back eject to my death. Unity gets rid of all problems in the older games or makes these problems less accessible or common so the player isn't fustrated.
YOOOOOOOOOOOO
Epic gamer time
Animations in AC3 are better than in Unity?.. also freedom of parkour in AC3 and AC4 is better than in ACU? hmm..
Yes, that is my position. I’d be happy to discuss further as to why I take that view, if you’re interested.
ACU is good for me
I’m glad you enjoy it!
MARUTT
ok idk wht to say but u butchered unity, and the bad thing is that was logical😅. but idc revelations hookblade was the best parkour addition imo
Basically just worse and worse with every new installation
Pretty much, lol
I love you
Haha, I’m glad, thanks for watching :)
LMAOOO 54:33
It is an unfortunate reality, lol
Assassins creed 2 and Brotherhood has a Bad parkour actually
how?
How?
Sounds like a skill issue
I don't know, I find old AC games boring. Imo Valhalla has better animations, combat system, parkour and the world that you actually can feel. I had the best time playing Valhalla, the worst AC 1.
Valhalla definitely has a better combat system than most AC games. It doesn’t have better parkour, though, from an objective standpoint.
To me brotherhood has the best combat system
I don't know, i find new AC games boring. Imo AC 1 has better animations, combat system, parkour and the world that you can actually feel. I had the best time playing AC 1, the worst Valhalla.
proof you don’t actually like ac games then
@@matiaseee8273 😂
Bro ur mouth noises are annoying af 😅 , but the video makes up for it OFC 🪶
I apologize :/
@@jcers I mean its tolerable cuz ny dad always does that when we eat and trust me he does it WAY worse than anyone I ve heard
@@ngnevergone7587 dads always got the bodily functions going crazy. Sometimes when your dad use the bathroom she's gotta be evacuated for at least the next 3 hours
@@jcers Nahhh my sad is TOO young for that 😂. He just got 50 a hefty of months ago , maybe in 10 years , if he will leave that long...