Assassin's Creed: Revelations / YMMV

Alternate Character Interpretation:
- Did Clay want to die? He seems rather excited when the Animus begins to delete Animus Island and an earlier talk with Desmond reveals he has no desire to linger on as a Virtual Ghost.
- When Abbas is saying that he hopes to see his father in the afterlife and learn the truth about his death before "finding" Altaïr, was he making a Dying Declaration of Hate and promising to torture Altaïr beyond the grave, or was he saying that he's willing to forgive Altaïr if he learns he was telling the truth?
Anti-Climax Boss: Every one of them, but the most prominent is the Big Bad who comes close to being a Cutscene Boss. The closest you get to having a boss fight with him is when you chase him on a carriage and punch him while falling off a cliff.
- The next closest we get to a final boss is with Manuel Palaiologos, who can put up a difficult fight. Unless you just kick him into the nearby water.
Arc Fatigue: Note that this isn't an indictment of the game as a whole; Constantinople is a great setting idea, bomb-crafting is neat, and there are some really good moments... but while Ezio and Altair got a well-received closure, some players and critics felt that Ezio's story was kinda played out by this point, having already completed his Hero's Journey and a post-Hero's Journey.
Awesome Music: The music from the E3 2011 trailer, the triumphant and sorrowful "Iron" (by Woodkid) seems almost written for this purpose. You feel what Ezio must be feeling, from finally reaching his destination, to fighting for his life and experiencing hallucinations, to being dragged to his supposed death. It sums up perfectly the finality and closure the game will bring.
- Scheduled for Deletion is very powerful. Considering it's also used in the trailer for The Lost Archive, it may very well double as Sixteen's theme — fitting, especially with that title. A pity it's so short.
- Den Defense. Say what you will about the minigame, but the music is amazing.
- On The Attack is really badass. Similar to AC 1's post-assassination theme, in that it has a techno-ish feel to it and feels pretty damn intense, except this time, there is an epic distortion guitar and various other instruments at play as well.
Awesome: Video Game Levels:
- Ubisoft is in some kind of competition with Naughty Dog over chase sequences; Sequence 8, Memory 3; End Of The Road has Ezio parasailing behind a runaway carriage, dive-bombing like an attack falcon to dispatch mooks!
- The Hagia Sofia level brings back some great memories of the Hidden Tombs from Assassin's Creed II.
- The Minstrels level, which asks you to beat up the annoying bastards and then lets you pretend to be one, is the Funniest Level Ever!
Contested Sequel: Reaction towards Revelations among the fanbase and some critics was somewhat mixed at the time of its release. It was either seen as a decent, even remarkable sequel for Brotherhood that ties the stories of Ezio and Altair beautifully before the next installment... Or a worrying early sign of the eventual Seasonal Rot and severe case of Sequelitis that the series became notorious for in the beginning of the eighth console generation. Even nowadays despite more favorable reception from fans, it is still debated whether this is the strongest or weakest installment of the Ezio games.
Demonic Spiders: Janissaries. Ubisoft felt the need to take Papal Guards, the Demonic Spiders from the previous game and make them even stronger. Much more health than a Papal Guard, immunity to execution chains and counter-kills, very strong ranged attacks, and very difficult to hit in melee. Good luck if you ever get into open conflict with one, let alone a group of them. Subverted when you get the Sicilian Rapier, which can kill them all like flies.
- Siege Engines in Den Defense, especially the cannon types. They make quick work of your barricades (the cannon types in particular can destroy fully-upgraded barricades in a single hit) and take forever to take down even when constantly firing at it. If there's a single enemy that will defeat you in a Den Defense game, this is it.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Yusuf Tazim was rather well-received by the community due to his Memetic Mutation moments, likable personality, and overall coolness despite being a supporting character. This makes his death at the climax of the game even more of a Tear Jerker.
Fan Nickname: Leandros is more commonly known as "Evil Bald Guy With A Cape," thanks to Tobuscus' literal trailer, which pegs him as, well, an evil bald guy with a cape.
Game-Breaker: Before patches/the Ezio Collection), Piri Reis would sell you bomb equipment with a 15% discount, and would buy it back at the full retail value. Six figures for fifteen minutes work, anyone?
Genius Bonus: There is a hypothesis that suggests that the human population was reduced to around 10k-15k around 70,000 years ago. Look up "Toba Catastrophe Theory". Sure, it wasn't caused by a solar flare, but you know - Alternate History.
Good Bad Bugs: It's possible to unequip all of Ezio's armor and to lower his hood by replaying and then quitting certain missions^note. Some players actually prefer having no armor and Ezio's hood down as he doesn't look out-of-place like with the traditional assassin gear.
Hilarious in Hindsight: The game was conceived as Nintendo 3DS exclusive before being made into a full console title. 11 years later, it was finally ported to a Nintendo handheld on the Switch.
Iron Woobie: Altaïr. His mother died giving birth to him, and his father was executed. Then his best friend's father committed suicide in front of him, feeling responsible for the execution. He got disgraced by his mentor, whom he killed out of necessity afterwards. His son and wife were also killed by the brotherhood, and he was exiled. In the end, however, he persevered, rebuild the brotherhood, and kept the Apple of Eden safe for the greater good. Ezio describes him the best.
Ezio: Through anger and betrayal, Altaïr lost those closest to him, and yet he carried on. I have never felt pain so severe.
It's Short, So It Sucks!: Has the shortest main quest out of all the Assassin's Creed games, barring Assassin's Creed Rogue. The sharp reduction in the number of faction side quests as well as the removal of Assassination Contracts doesn't help much.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Oliver Bowden's novelization of the game is rather dry, sticking heavily to the source material of the game and adapting the Altair scenes again (Bowden had earlier in 2011 done a novelization of the first game and included what would become Altair's flashback scenes). It's commonly considered the weakest of his novels, largely just for adding nothing the game doesn't give you (Unless once doesn't get Assassin's Creed Embers, which ties up Ezio's story).
- The game itself is also criticized gameplay wise for basically being Brotherhood again in a different city, and with the few new additions (tower defense, bomb crafting, hookblade-zipling) hard to get excited for.
Ho Yay: It's hard to interpret the way Sulemain playfully refers to Ezio as 'my handsome minstrel' as anything but this.
Memetic Mutation:
"The Hookblade has two parts. The hook, and the blade."
- From the trailer, there are many comments like this:
"Shoot me with an arrow? Fine. Destroy my legendary hidden blades and sentence me to death? Fine with that. Touch my hood, all bets are off."
Moral Event Horizon: Where do you begin with Abbas Sofian? Having Altaïr's son Sef killed and telling him that Altaïr ordered the execution? Or framing Malik for said murder, having him imprisoned, then after he gets saved by Altaïr, has him decapitated to make the other Assassins doubt Altaïr's motives. According to Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade, he did all this because Altaïr told him his father committed suicide when they were young. Which was the truth.
- Swami, Abbas's Dragon, also deserves some credit for the above actions. He was the one who actually killed Sef and Malik and, when he meets Altair in person, brags about how he told Sef that Altair was the one who ordered him killed. He then kills Altair's wife, Maria as she's trying to stop Altair from killing him.
- The Big Bad Prince Ahmet, who took Sofia hostage with her ransom being the Masyaf Keys, but presented himself as a sincere Templar who believed in the ideals of peace through unity (in the same vein as those from the first game) and described their conflict as "two men who should be friends quarreling over the keys to a library." Ezio hands over the keys and Ahmet allows him to go unimpeded to rescue a hooded "Sofia" atop a tower, only for Ezio to find a decoy (although apparently kidnapped to act as an unwitting decoy), then turn around to glimpse the real Sofia being hanged from a tree far, far away.
Player Punch:
- Finding Yusuf dead. It gets bonus points for sending Ezio into an Unstoppable Rage.
- In The Lost Archive, finding out that Lucy is a traitor is tough enough but Ubisoft gets some serious kudos for revealing it just before Clay's breakdown — because you realize that he would have been fine if Lucy hadn't turned on the Assassins, because if she'd remained loyal, she would have gotten him out before the Bleeding Effect could have done any permanent damage. He'd have suffered no breakdown. No insanity. No suicide. She didn't just destroy his life, she destroyed who he was. She stood back and let Vidic break him to the point that killing himself with a ballpoint pen and painting desperate messages on the walls and floor in his own blood was a better option than living. She did that to him. It also has the distinct honor of retroactively making the player punch of the last game a Moment of Awesome.
- Worst of all is probably playing Altair's last moments of life, and knowing it. The game really hits you hard when it tells you to "Sit a moment and rest...", directing you to the very chair that Ezio finds Altair's remains in over 250 years later. It doubles as a Tear Jerker.
Polished Port: The Ezio Collection Remaster enhances the game's visuals as expected from a port from PS3 and Xbox 360 to PS4 and Xbox One, but the real star of the show is when the game is played on Xbox Series X or Series S where it runs at 60 FPS through the FPS Boost program.
Scrappy Mechanic: Den Defense, for being an Unexpected Gameplay Change with a fairly wonky interface and Schizophrenic Difficulty.
- Every time you renovate a building you gain Templar Awareness forcing to find a herald to bribe or someone to kill to decrease it when it gets too high. What makes it worse is that those two thing are the only ways to reduce it.
Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The Mediterranean Defence meta-game can be this, as it surprisingly absorbs lots of time and resources, once the player figures out its mechanics. ^note
That One Achievement: The Lost Archive has two trophies/achievements that require you to take no damage during certain first-person platforming segments. While the summonable platforms do their job well in normal gameplay, they still suffer from enough Hit Box Dissonance to make a No-Damage Run more difficult than it needs to be — the launcher platforms in particular tend to very precise about where you can land on them without immediately falling off. To rub it in, the segments are also located a good distance into the level they're in, yet require you to restart the whole damn stage if you want to retry.^note
That One Level: The first carriage chase after exiting Masyaf early in the game. Nothing else in the game compares to a Luck-Based Mission that's required to proceed... though it's less luck-based if you have good reflexes. ^note
They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Certain gameplay elements and mechanics, such as the Eagle Vision now be far more similar to Detective Mode from Batman: Arkham Asylum and the Tower Defense gameplay got the game criticized for overly liberally borrowing from other successful games. The former is all the more ironic given that the Arkham Series "free-form combat" is often considered an evolution of the combat Assassin's Creed itself started. Ubisoft seemed to have taken this criticism to heart as Assassin's Creed III introduced something of a reinvention of the gameplay.
Underused Game Mechanic: The new Tower Defense gameplay mechanic, in which one of your Assassin Den's would be put under attack by the City Guards should your Notoriety Level get maxed out. You are given a tutorial for how the system works at the start of the game, with you assigning one of your recruited assassins to be the leader of the specific den. The only problem is this will only occur if you max out your notoriety and it's very easy to game the system by bribing heralds and then stealing back your money. Add to this, once you max out your recruit assassin's level you never have to worry about the den you assigned them coming under attack, meaning there's a strong chance that the only time you do encounter this scenario is that very first tutorial mission.
Vindicated by History: At the time of its release, Revelations was positively received by critics but was considered a disappointing continuation to the series for its lack of serious innovation to the series. However, with more recent titles such as Unity, Syndicate and Odyssey, the game was began to be looked more fondly for its more traditional gameplay, beautiful art direction and map design, and emotional soundtrack and story bits.
Visual Effects of Awesome: We finally get to see what destroyed the First Civilization. One of the most terrifying yet beautiful visuals we've seen in the series thus far.

YMMV / Assassin's Creed: Revelations

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