Assassins Creed: Rebellion

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Title: Assassins Creed: Rebellion
Developer: Behaviour Interactive
Publisher: Ubisoft
Website: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/assassins-creed-rebellion/
Genre: Adventure, RPG-strategy game
Platform: iOS and Android
Audience: Rated 9+ for the following: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Release Date: 21/11/2018
Price: Free – Offers In-App Purchases

 

What the Developers Say

Join Ezio, Aguilar, Shao Jun, and many different Assassins simultaneously for the first time ever!

Assassin’s Creed Rebellion is the official mobile Strategy-RPG of the Assassin’s Creed universe.

Exclusively developed for mobile, a new version of the Animus allows us to experience memories from the past and play with different Assassins simultaneously. Gather powerful Assassins in a single Brotherhood and unite against the Templars and the oppression raging in Spain.

Introduction

I’m a big fan of the Assassins Creed series, having played all but the latest edition, my favourite undoubtedly being AC2 with Ezio, although the first game really laid that foundation of love and wonder of this new approach to story telling.

Assassins Creed: Rebellion is the latest “mobile platform based” strategy/RPG/base building game based within the Assassins Creed franchise and is very reminiscent of Fallout shelter. This game relies heavily on the Intellectual Property of Assassins Creed to bring you into the game, much like Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes and Marvel Strike Force.

This game follows the Spanish Assassins under Aguilar de Nerha during the Spanish Inquisition and features characters such as Ezio Auditore, Claudia Auditore and Niccolo Machiavelli, along with more than 30 new characters to unlock.

Looks and Sounds

The game looks incredible. I genuinely love the graphics and animations. It also keeps the animus sound effects and delivers an ever-changing score depending on where you are in the app.

Gameplay and Replayability

The game begins with the infamous Ezio taking you on that ever important tutorial mission not to exclude leaps of faith, stealth attacks, distractions and assassinations that are nostalgic to the original content.

You glide through the tutorial with a very powerful Ezio, and for a brief moment, I was excited to think that he would be leading this game. Alas, as the tutorial closes out and introduces your headquarters, he leaves and the game awards you with a new recruit, Aguilar de Nerha.

On the surface, this game offers you something new and exciting, but as you slowly work through the levels, you realise there’s a lot of complexity and depth to this game which might not always be the best thing for a mobile-based game.

This game has many different aspects designed to help you complete each level, complete objectives and upgrade your Assassins.

There are also different character roles in the game, with specific character roles being recommended at the start of each mission. The first non-assassin character to be introduced is an enforcer role named Tariq, and he specialises in high damage per second output, fighting enemies in direct combat and effectively dealing more immediate damage to enemies than your assassin can. Then there are Shadow Assassins, Specialists and more.

AC Rebellion uses DNA fragments as a means to unlock recruits, every legacy mission you complete you collect DNA fragments. Collecting a certain amount of fragments will unlock a character and then continue to collect fragments to increase that characters star level. Sound Familiar?

Rebellion also has a map and with each region having progression missions and stories to play and once you complete all the tasks in that region, the next area of the map will unlock.

So how does it keep you entertained enough to return every day? Well, you have daily objectives, achievements and daily login rewards that will give progression materials and fragments to continue to grow your roster and strengthen your brotherhood.

The Free-to-Play Model

My biggest gripe with this game is the in-app purchases.

The screen was bombarded with pop-ups for exclusive purchases, limited time offers, daily packs and even an insane monthly subscription at £8.49 month, which gives you nothing more than 20% extra in rewards and tokens.

That’s £101.88 a year for no additional content, exclusive unlocks or even a unique character, and I’d only been playing an hour!

In-app purchases, exclusive content, bonus preorder content and in-game credit purchases are killing games and the free to play platform. For £101 a year I would expect 2 AAA titles for my PlayStation4. I would’ve happily paid £14.99 for this game without any IAPs.

Conclusion

This game has a lot of potential; the graphics are beautiful, the character movements and actions are reminiscent of the Assassins Creed franchise. However the amount of stuff to do in the game could be a burden if you don’t plan on spending all day on this game, and when you need a game to dive in and out of, this could fall to the wayside.

Rapid Reviews UK Rating