Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands brought the series back to The Sands of Time continuity (with Yuri Lowenthal as the Prince once more). There's not that much of a narrative tie-in; I wasn't even sure at what point it was set chronologically -- apparently between The Sands of Time and Warrior Within, according to Wikipedia. I also read The Forgotten Sands was originally going to be a tie-in with the film adaptation of The Sands of Time but because the movie was delayed, the game was pivoted into its own thing. (They were both released in 2010 in the end, though.)

Prince of Persia (2008)

My 5-game Prince of Persia franchise run finally exited the janky PlayStation 2 era of gaming and entered the more civilized Xbox 360 one. Prince of Persia (2008) is the second reboot of the series -- and remains to this day as the sole mainline entry in its continuity. I greatly appreciated the so-much smoother gameplay but the experience was also conflicting due to the game feeling like a spinoff: whereas the previous games were divided pretty evenly between combat and platforming, was this one 90% of the latter.

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones finishes the PlayStation 2 trilogy of the series. It was co-developed by Ubisoft Montreal and now-defunct Ubisoft Casablanca. The game returns in many ways to The Sands of Time -- like with Yuri Lowenthal reprising his Sands role out of fan demand -- yet it does retain Warrior Within narrative elements that make it darker than the first game.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is a direct sequel to The Sands of Time and a surprising change in tone. The game is darker and not just visually: the Prince got a new voice actor, music is even heavier on the rock band instruments it's played on (with the Persian elements gone), and enemies get dismembered (bleeding sand instead of blood, though). Warrior Within is also longer than The Sands and non-linear experience, featuring instead quite a lot of going back and forth.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

GOG was like: "Wanna buy four Prince of Persia games? For cheaper than the usual sale price for you, newsletter subscriber." and I was like: "Okay, fine, I'll do a Prince of Persia franchise run." I unchecked The Sands of Time from the offer, though, because Ubisoft had already given it away for free during their 20th anniversary. I also bought a fifth game, The Forgotten Sands, on Connect because GOG doesn't have that one (yet anyway).

Assassin's Creed Unity

I remember Assassin's Creed Unity being mired in technical issues at release. One vivid memory is of character face textures not loading but eyes and mouth still being there -- the stuff of nightmares. I think in general people didn't like the game back then but the perception of Unity seems to have curiously turned around: you see a lot of positive comments these days. Playing it now for the first time, I personally found the game to be one of the worst in the series.

Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag (& Freedom Cry)

My playthrough of Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag coincided with the release of Skull and Bones. The latter's development was troubled and costly -- and the end result was not something people thought worth the time it took for the game to come out. A common sentiment I saw: Ubisoft had already made one good pirate game: all they had to do was to build upon it. However, I'm not certain if Black Flag's single player campaign would have lent itself into a multiplayer live service format that easily. There's a multiplayer mode too in Black Flag but it doesn't involve naval combat, which is what Skull and Bones is about.

Assassin's Creed III Remastered

I finally got back to continuing my Assassin's Creed franchise run. The next game on the list was Assassin's Creed III (2012) and specifically its 7 years newer Remastered version. I was previously perplexed why Ubisoft had remastered this particular one but the reason really is obvious. It's the same as always: money. They had a good window to sell the same game again on a newer console generation.

Far Cry Primal

The amount of interesting games on Ubisoft+ was getting pretty low, even nonexistent. But because I still had two whole weeks of the cheap month left, I had to dig up something. I ended up on Far Cry Primal.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Post-Release Content Updates

Ubisoft+ subscription was again 1€ for a month and it was time for me to return to Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which had finally gotten the last of its story updates at the end of last year. And there sure was a whole lot of content added in the two years the game was actively supported post launch. In total, Valhalla got three paid expansions and about five free additions that could be considered as separate bigger features. I was finished with the full game at 270 hours played.

Assassin's Creed Revelations

Unlike previously in the series, Assassin's Creed Revelations' (almost) whole open world is unlocked very early on. I did right away pretty much everything that didn't progress the main memory sequence and thus had an unusually story-focused playthrough after sequence 3. That may have had a slight effect but I think that even without beelining the story, Revelations' ending is a very satisfying and conclusive finale for the Ezio trilogy.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

I started Assassin's Creed Brotherhood expecting a quick and cheap standalone expansion kind of deal. To my surprise, it instead polished and added enough to stand on its own as a separate game.

Assassin's Creed II

It's like I had skipped a game in the series. The first one truly was like a tech demo, a proof of concept, so much does Assassin's Creed II improve from it. The potential was claimed and the result is a well-rounded game that is surprisingly close to the newer end of the series, at least feature-wise -- there's still room for polishing.

Assassin's Creed

My Assassin's Creed franchise run (of the pre-Syndicate games) started earlier than intended when Ubisoft in July (I think it was) announced that on September 1st they would again decommission online services (i.e. anything that requires an online connection, including the redeeming of unlocked Ubisoft Connect rewards) of a selection of their older titles. At the end of August, Ubisoft postponed the decommissioning by a month, allowing me to finish all of the affected AC titles in time.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla

I didn't expect to be back on Ubisoft+ so quickly but another month for 1€ was too great an offer to pass. During the month I played Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which I had previously dismissed because:

1. I hadn't played AC Origins yet,
2. I expected it to barely even run on my PC (the game's performance turned out to be about the same as AC Odyssey's though, meaning just about playable 45 FPS with a mix of medium and high settings), and
3. The game's not fully done yet, still receiving updates and DLC.

One title update during the month even introduced an immensely annoying bug with the constantly appearing player avenge quests, making every interaction with any world object to constantly re-accept the quest (show the text and play the associated sound effect). 

Assassin's Creed Origins

To get more value out of my 6€ Ubisoft+ month, I decided to play Assassin's Creed Origins as well. Origins is not quite as content-bloated as AC Odyssey which came after it but I still barely managed to complete it before the month was up. You really start feeling Ubisoft Open World fatigue when you finish two of such games at 100% completion back to back.

Far Cry 4

I had been wanting to play some sort of action game and Far Cry 4 happened to be on sale. It was less than 5€ when combined with the 100 Uplay points discount (gotta spend those on something since they now expire after 2 years) but I still feel like I should have saved the money instead. My graphics card also got bricked while playing the game but I doubt it was specifically Far Cry 4's fault.

Far Cry New Dawn

Far Cry New Dawn could have included the digit 5 in its title. I have trouble understanding why exactly it is not there. Most often -- if not always -- the reason companies do anything is money, though. Maybe there's no 5 because this way the game seems more like a new title instead of DLC which people generally aren't as keen on buying. Regardless, New Dawn is very much a sequel to Far Cry 5. I'd say it's also a better game, a more even experience even if somewhat smaller in scale -- thus the lower asking price.

Far Cry 5

I was late to Ubisoft's Uplay+ service launch. Playing their games for free in September would've been nicer than paying for a month later on but I thought it would still be worth it since Ubisoft doesn't really make games that I'd see myself replaying after finishing them once. Thus Uplay+ was a good way to knock three Ubisoft titles off my wishlist even though 15€/month is a pretty hefty amount compared to something like the Xbox game pass for PC beta with its 1€ price tag. You do get an access to the complete editions of the games however -- all released DLC is included.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Ubisoft has been giving out one of their games on Uplay for free every month since June as part of their 30th anniversary celebration. Most of the titles are not something I would like to play but I have claimed them to my library anyway. Beyond Good & Evil actually seems interesting but apparently it is not guaranteed to play ball with Win10. I would rather try GOG's version.