The game that took years to make!! 

 What a wasted opportunity - although I haven't finished this game and to be honest I cannot be bothered to anymore, started off fantastic and such a breath of frest air to other games i've played recently but after several fob offs and nothing more exciting than now go and repeat what you've just done it just now bores me.  They could have had the victims friends, men, family coming to avenge their death  and you have to hunt them down while their hunting you and more varied tasks.  To me this game is a classic example of style over quantity and i'm really disapointed.

 I'm up to the point where the targets have been notifed i'm coming and one of thems on a ship - is it worth continuing for the sake of the story line or not?

Strangest thing- I bought Assassin's Creed back in November, and have yet to play one level of it. Not only that, I have no desire to play it. I love Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia, and yet here I am. After reading your opinion, it seems that I'm not missing much. I'll keep reading your thread. If the members convince you to continue, I'll probably start the game today..........................or tomorrow......................definitely the next day.......

@ d21

Yeah, I have only played the first level, I'm just not compelled to play it. I've played ME and RB and played through most of them, and now I'm playing Marvel: Ultimate alliance, rather than this game. I have no drive to play it.

AC looks like a hate it or love it game, so if you didn't liked until now, you better ball out. But the story was great.

 Unless you consider copy and pasting end of the world theories from wikipedia into e-mails and blood strewn messages good story telling, no. The ending is basically “Buy Assassin’s Creed 2!” as the first one is apparently an elaborate overdrawn prologue. =P

IMO they took so long getting the engine to work, getting the climbing to work, getting the core mechanics they'd identified to work (hiding with monks, vigilanties will fight with you, etc.) they ran out of time (or money) to take it all and wrap it up in an actual finished game.

i say this noting that at no time did I need to actually use these mechanics - they were just there. I never needed the monks or the vigilanties.

I did finish it and while it impoved a little you could really tell they were desperately stringing out the story with the bulk of the game missing.

However, I now expet great things from AC2 as the engine, etc. is now there and this time they can actually make a game with it.

One thing I do wonder about this, though, is who lead the game. They always had Jade Redmond front and cenre as producer but who was the Cliffy B on this - who came up with the game concept and story and should have been driving those elements to completion? Was AC lacking such an individual? Perhaps that's why it comes across as the teaser for something but not the finished article.

I think Assassins Creed problem is that you they repeat the same stuff too many time...
Assassins Creed by the numbers

90+ Towers that need climbing
100+ Citizens need savings
20+ pockets need pick pocketing
20+ eavesdropping
10+ Shouting people who need a beating and then a fatal stabbing
500+ flags need collecting

Thats way too much crap to do over and over again... They should of cut those numbers in half, sure it would of made the game shorter, but I would of enjoyed all of it instead of hating something that was enjoyable.

That's my point exactly.  The game itself isn't there... so they took the mechanics they'd come up with and tried to fill it out with them.

I note that if you take the minimum route (i.e. only 2 or 3 investigations needed to go after each target rather than all 6) and if you ignore the flags (which serve as a pretty poor justification to root around every nook and cranny as they give you no actual reward for finding them) then the 'game' is actually very short with little content.

Without spoiling anything (I hope) the ending - or prolonged run-up to the ending, also betrays that other filler that yells 'no time to finish game properly' in that it suddenly goes combat heavy and forces you to wade through a heap of combat to stretch out the finish and give some sense of climax.

Pity - as I love the engine and the setting.  But with the sales so far the next one better be a full game and not a tech demo or I'll stick with tech demo 1 and leave it at that.

Totally agree gebx - I think my problem is I started really wanting to complete every side mission which lasted for first 4 kills then I thought you know what i'm only gonna do the minimum missions now I've just got nothing left to compell me to continue.

The reason I wanted to finish it is because I want to know the story line for the second as I expect that'll be amazing.

I was waiting to play COD4 until I completed this and yesterday thought i'm gonna have a go - it's only then I realised just how tedious I was finding this game.

assassins creed is a game that you either like it alot or you hate it