Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection review for Xbox One, PS4, PC

Happy New Year readers! Let?s hope we get a ton of new releases in 2017 and not a stockpile of remasters that may or may not be warranted. This collection is one of those that?s right in the middle. There is a couple of reasons for this. One, its Assassin?s Creed. The series has had some major decline in popularity as the sequels became buggier and less interesting for existing fans. For me, The Ezio games were the best in the series for several reasons. The biggest was the Desmond Miles Arc, which I won?t go into spoilers, but it left me extremely dissatisfied by the end of it.

This was when the series took a drop for me, so this is one of the positives for a remaster. Assassin?s Creed II was one of the most improved over its predecessor in every way. Quick travel, better combat mechanics, and an unforgettable protagonist that fans still speak about to this day. The thing that keeps me in the middle of whether or not if merited a remaster was the lack of new content and the removal of some.

Assassin?s Creed: The Ezio Collection is a great single player remaster. I say single player because both Brotherhood and Revelations? once included a multiplayer mode that was removed for this release. For me, I?m ok without them because I barely play online. On the plus side, all of the single player DLC that was released for each game is included along with the short films ?Assassin?s Creed Embers and Lineage?.

If you?re a fan of the series just looking to revisit good old Renaissance Florence as the one of the best assassins in the series, Ezio Auditrore Di Firenze, then this is the perfect collection for you. Believe it or not, there are some gamers out there that simply want to replay games like these because they either traded in their previous consoles to get their current one and/traded the games to get the new games, which is just a shame. (Unless of course they traded them when they weren?t worth pennies.)

The best way to enjoy this collection is with low expectations. Expect to play the originals, just a little prettier. I say this because, even with the updated textures and character models. I won?t go into the weird npc glitch from ACII because I didn?t experience it personally, but you can see it here. (Credit to IGN) The game still suffers from visual hiccups and performance issues. At its best, ACEC will run at 1080P at 30FPS which is more than satisfactory for games from 2009 and a little later.

Out of the three titles, ACII is the weakest link because it shows its age. Out of all the newer titles, one thing that improved vastly was the parkour mechanics and overall control scheme. If you?re a veteran of the series that has played the more recent AC Syndicate, your expectations may be let down as the collection shows its age when it comes to the combat and parkour mechanics. I would think the best approach to a proper remaster is to re-define things that have evolved over the years with a franchise vs. keeping it the same.

This is why I felt the majority of ?remasters? in 2016, were more ?re-releases?. The worst part is only some developers admitted to this and some after the game is put back out. So again, ACEC is not the best way to play these three titles, but not terrible if you treat them as simple re-releases with the focus on single player, which is what the series is best for. You can grab it on sale here and there so I wouldn?t shell out the full $59.99 asking price.