It’s hardly a secret that Assassin’s Creed: Unity had a troubled launch. First there were multiple connectivity issues that made it impossible to enjoy multiplayer or even download the game. Once Unity was actually running, it featured a host of bugs that ranged from silly to utterly game-breaking.
Four patches later, Ubisoft claims that “most” major bugs are now fixed. So is it finally time to play Assassin’s Creed: Unity? Let’s take a look.
The Main Game
The main Assassin’s Creed: Unity game is definitely in better shape than it was at launch. Gone are some of the most obvious bugs such as the infamous face-removal glitch. Arno doesn’t get stuck on the scenery nearly as often now, though Ubisoft is still fixing a few areas in the game world. For many people, the framerate is noticeably improved, though some PC players report that it’s worse for them after the latest patch.
Unfortunately, at least one doozy of a game-breaking bug remains. For certain players on all platforms, it’s literally impossible to progress past a mandatory button-mashing QTE in Sequence 7, Memory 3. Even when the sequence is correctly completed, the game loops back to the beginning instead of allowing the player to progress. I suffer from this problem myself, and it’s still listed as unfixed on the official Known Issues thread. There are some player-discovered workarounds to this bug, but they don’t work for everybody, especially not console players who can’t run a third-party cheat program or change the game’s aspect ratio.
Other remaining bugs can be worked around, but if you’ve got this one and the workarounds aren’t an option, it all progresses in the main campaign. It’s really a bummer, especially when the problem is a button-mashing QTE. Does anybody like those? I don’t think so.
The Expanded Experience
In Unity, Ubisoft has connected it’s out-of-game experiences more closely to the main game than ever before. A ton of chests scattered throughout Paris can only be opened by people who have played the Unity Companion App (which requires a compatible smartphone or tablet), while others require a certain amount of progress in the web-based Assassin’s Creed Initiates program.
Initiates is meant to reward long-time AC fans who have played or completed many games in the series. I’m not sure what the Companion App is meant to do except annoy those of us who can’t access it. The big problem here is that both out-of-game experiences are a terrible, buggy mess.
Since Initiates launched, my Initiates rank has fluctuated wildly with every patch as different parts of the site break—and that’s when I’m able to connect to Initiates at all. In the meantime, players who have the Companion App report regular issues with their progress being erased. At this point, I’d suggest that Ubisoft simply scrap out-of-game things like this entirely, especially when launching a game with a new engine like Unity.
Should You Play?
So if you’ve been waiting on playing Unity because of all the bugs and issues, is now a good time to start playing? If you own the game already, I’d suggest dropping in and seeing if it’s working better for you. If you don’t have the Sequence 7 bug, you might find that it’s now fairly enjoyable to play.
If you haven’t bought the game yet or are the kind of completionist who will be driven mad by unavailable Initiates and Companion App chests, I’d suggest waiting for more patches and perhaps better sales. I love the Assassin’s Creed series, but Ubisoft really screwed this one up. We shouldn’t be seeing progress-halting bugs this far after any launch, and no company should make people wait for months in order to properly access all of the features of a released game.