Well, I finished
Assassin's Creed III.
Although the series will obviously continue, this game effectively ends the main story arc that began with the first
Assassin's Creed way back in 2007 and continued over the next four games, with present-day protagonist Desmond Miles accessing the virtual memories of three long-dead ancestors in order to continue the assassins' fight against the Knights Templar.
I'd love to say that
ACIII is a great game and a satisfying end to Desmond's story... but it really isn't. Despite moments of brilliance (including a series of missions featuring a truly fantastic new gameplay feature: ship combat), the game is largely an exercise in frustration and, well, glitches. There are several QTE, platforming, and chase sequences that are some of the most poorly designed to date; I actually found myself wondering if any beta testing was even done. And I know the developers wanted to increase combat difficulty by divorcing attack and counter from each other, but it's amazing how that one simple change makes fighting feel much more contrived and unnecessarily tedious.
Gameplay issues aside, I just wasn't very impressed with Connor as a protagonist. I realize they wanted to give us the reigns of a character with a chip on his shoulder, someone itching for revenge, but Connor comes off as angry, unbending, and unreasonable. He doesn't seem to go through any major emotional change or reach many new realizations; he's a blunt instrument that rages forward to a very predictable end. By contrast, the chief antagonist, Haytham Kenway (Connor's father), is far more personable and interesting because you buy his conviction. Starting the game in his shoes is a fantastic and surprising experience.
Desmond's story isn't much better. Since you spend so much time portraying Connor in the Animus, the moments in which you come out and control Desmond feel episodic and rushed. There are literally missions where you jet to Brazil or Italy, do your thing, and return as if it was just a trip to the gas station. But forget all that. How is the much-hyped finale? These games have long moved beyond convolution, so that's to be expected. This installment does leave the series (and the world) in a somewhat intriguing place, but I'm still confused on how we got here. There's a lot of telling, very little showing.
Finally, I have nothing bad to really say about the rendered frontier landscape, which is organic and phenomenally detailed, as are the two primary colonial cities: New York and Boston. It's the most expansive map to date, yet I was a bit nostalgic (and not in a good way) because it felt a little like the first game: an extremely detailed sandbox with nothing much to do. There are some board games and modest fetch missions to keep you busy, in addition to the obligatory scavenger hunts that have you tracking down feathers, treasure, and missing pages for bonuses. But there are countless buildings and people everywhere you turn, and no meaningful way to really interact with them.
That said, the inclusion of the Homestead and Captain Kidd side missions kept things from feeling too empty. And the hunting dynamic, though it was pretty laughable most of the time (there were clear respawn points, so I often found myself with an endless supply of elk and wolves to harvest), at least kept my pockets lined, as the trade caravan economy was pretty broken.
Obviously, every
Assassin's Creed game has frustrating issues. But
ACIII is the first installment, I believe, where scope couldn't really meet execution. It's still a perfectly playable game... it's just not a very satisfying one. The Aquila missions are absolutely worthwhile (and I'm salivating over
ACIV: open-world pirating!), but unless you're just hungry to complete Desmond's story or explore Revolutionary War-era America, I can't really recommend it.
Reply to Topic
I'm pretty sure I don't look like that to most other people, but yikes. 
