In the end it just ended up being an often frustrating, head scratching and far too repetitive game.
I'm going to start with the bad because there is a lot I have to get off my chest.
The game is extremely repetitive. All you ever did was get the name of a new person to kill, go to that city, and search around to find investigation which always requires climbing some tall building. Then those investigations are either to pick pocket, interrogate, ease drop, or do work for some lazy informers. Then once you do two or three of these investigations you are able to kill the man you originally went there to kill...and you do this each time over and over and usually in the same cities more than once.
One thing that really bothered me was that none of the cut scenes in the game could be skipped. I mean it is bad enough that I do not care about the story and just want to kill the target, but I have to listen to them speak with some dialogue and speeches that were pretty bad. Also when you saved a citizen you had to listen to them say the same damn piece of dialogue as the others and you are not allowed to walk away...this while guards show up to see dead bodies all around you. To make matters worse is if vigilantes are nearby you are stuck looking at them for a brief moment when all you want to do is leave. The worse of all this is the scenes after you assassinate a target in which I will touch upon in a moment.
The camera got on my nerves a lot. Mainly when trying to counter and it would randomly cut to some low angle, often in some bush or tall grass and you couldn't see what was going on.
I think the game creators were having a laugh when they decided, for some ridiculous reason, to place drunk or sick people randomly to push you as you walk and they would often go out of their way to do this. I mean what is the point? It is just annoying, doesn't in any way add to the games difficulty and seems like some practical joke.
Speaking of jokes, how about the fact that the main character can not swim? An assassin that can not swim seems very useless to me. What's worse is you don't even get a chance to jump out of the water or grab a ledge, rather you just die instantly.
Another aspect of the game that was completely useless was the horseback riding. You only needed to do it once for each city and then you were able to just fast forward...but for some reason you still needed to ride to the outer gates of the original city. Why? I have no idea but they should have just done away with the horseback riding all together or at least given an option to never use them. I know there are places outside the cites, small towns and what not but I'm not one to go exploring in a game like this, which doesn't seem to have much in rewards so they should have thought of those like me because I know I'm not alone in this.
The whole game was just not as fast paced as I would have hoped, you either stay and fight which can take awhile or run which can not work out so well if you misjudge a jump, or he randomly decides not to grab a ledge. This plus cut scenes and I felt bored way too often.
The story was nothing special. I mean I got the general idea of what was going on in the game, but I did not care for the assassin or real world aspects. Oh and I should mention that I hate that it isn't just a game about an assassin and instead is about some sort of memory flash back the entire time.
The types of assassin kills are always the same for example you can not assassinate with just a knife throw because you need to be close up to do that hand dagger to the neck and listen to dialogue that once again you can not skip, which doesn't make sense seeing how there are guards around you when it happened. I wish there were more ways to kill your target; more options would have made it something worth revisiting.
I would also like to add that I did not like the main character, he looked cool but that was about it.
Okay, now for the good...
The sandbox element was fun, I liked being able to scale the buildings and run along the roof tops. I wish there were more cities to do this in though.
I liked the counter combat system although it is slow and requires perfect timing it was fun, I just wish that it worked all the time instead of him either not countering or hitting the guy instead of killing him.
Some of the assassin kills are cool, I wish more of them ended up being actual stealth kills, but when they did it made me feel really good...until the cut scenes.
The visuals were great, along with the setting although it lacked color and look very bland.
...and that's about it as far as the things I actually enjoyed.
In the end it just ended up being an often frustrating, head scratching and far too repetitive game that has an interesting premise and some good moments but nothing I would play through more than once so I'm very glad I waited for the price to drop so low and I will be doing the same for the second game, if I even bother to get it which makes me especially hate the ending. This will probably disappoint some other gamers on here, especially those that liked the game but I would give it a 5/10, not the worst game I have ever played but not a good one either. ...I should of went with Bioshock instead. I think hype played a really big role in my dislike of the game.