My own impressions with the game:
Pros:
Rainy London looks pretty cool.
The soundtrack sounds much more inspired than ACU. Wintory did a great job, especially with the more peaceful, ambient tracks and the reverent, church themes. Can't recommend it enough.
The rope dart is a great new feature.
Hopping around a moving train looks great (except for the pop in).
Cons:
The graphics are significantly weaker than Unity. Significantly. Because there isn't a static global lighting system or they're trying desperately to keep the frame rate consistent, who knows. Whatever the reason, the graphics have taken the hit. Lighting looks awful, streets are empty and London has none of what made Paris great. This city is as memorable as New York in AC3.
Jacob is horrendously, horrendously fucking unlikable. Every line that comes out of his mouth is an attempt by the writers to make him sound witty or cool. It ALWAYS falls flat. Always. How he comes up with the Rooks' name and keeps pushing the idea is supposed to be comedic and charming (?) but instead comes across as just stupid writing. This is straight to video stuff.
Did you know that Evie is the one who came up with the name for telephones!? :O Yeah...this shit is making a return. No shadows in the pages of history ala AC2, our main characters are constantly having CRUCIAL influence on historic people and historic events ala AC3. Again. So much for subtlety.
Carriages combat is ridiculous. You are going to hate the missions that require them.
Combat is ridiculous. Enemies still stand around, attacking one at a time, only now they are punch-sponges. They block and you press X, they attack and you counter with O and a giant FINISH text appears when they are at low life and you want to see a flashy animation. Combat animations don't really work and everybody moves like hyper-active puppets; instead of snappy combat we have something that is really odd looking and unnatural. And blood sprays looks so cartoony it's hilarious.
Every time you reach a point for a mission to begin and the game wants to portray some time has passed, it shows a really weird shot of Big Ben and time moving fast as clouds pass and people scatter about. The same shot, every time. It seems like a glitch but it was a design choice. What the hell were they thinking?
Henry walking around trying to say that he's keeping a low profile while dressed the way he is is hilarious. Hilarious.
The UI is CONSTANTLY crowded. The top left is CONSTANTLY telling you what your mission objectives are. The bottom right's context controls is still happening after 7 games in the franchise? They can't find a more natural way to do this like, say, all other games out now? The top right is constantly giving you updates about what level you should be and what percent you're done with an area. Hexagon markers with text of your destination are still all over the screen (I guess, like Unity, you either have to cripple yourself by turning them off or constantly have them buzzing like bugs on your screen). And the new Ring around your character is so out of place that most of the time, you are looking at white text and vectors in a game about emersion and atmosphere. This is incompetent game making. This is the most cluttered UI I've seen since...well, Unity :/
Missions are still stupid. Fix fuses, catch up to a child who took your money, escort the prime minister's wife through a dangerous area of London because she wants to see it (I'm not fucking kidding with any of these). Stuff an Assassin of an ancient and holy order with an urgent objective should be doing. And before you say "that's all games!" yeah keep the missions, but right better context for god's sake. Really?
The graphics are terrible when you get up high. Everything has a mist on it that I suppose is their way to cover the fact that they aren't rendering details but the mist just makes everything look like you're playing a PS2 games. Seriously, go look at a recent gameplay video of the characters on a higher perch. Count how many buildings are actually detailed. This game looks awful. And the river looks like something from N64 from a distance.
So remember the Notre Dame model that was in Unity and they reused it in Dead Kings? Well it's been reused again. You heard me right. Changed enough details that it doesn't look exactly like the Notre Dame but it's the same building model. And this isn't the only building they reused.
Glitches abound. The game cuts in and out of cutscenes, animations don't work, pop in is everywhere and the AI is still brain dead.
Microtransactions return! Hooray!
Parkour controls are no better. Not worse, but not better. Get ready for frustration at missed jumps, awkward "cinematic" moments and cheap deaths. Again.
Want to know how many bullets your gun has? Don't worry, there's a huge graphic that is always present on your screen showing you :)
The voice acting of the NPC's is terrible. I remember turning the voices to French in Unity and playing with subtitles. You may as well do that here too. You aren't missing anything with the dialogue, trust me.
The AI is a travesty. NPC's and enemies.
The same enemy models are used so repeatedly you are going to pull your hair out. Seriously, in the same gang you'll see the exact same model two, three or four times. Seeing three of the same woman henchman on a rooftop is just...
The facial animations are hit and miss. Sometimes they work really well. Most of the time (Evie smiling for example) look stunningly bad.
If modern day plays a big part of the game
There are plenty of you in here who will blindly eat whatever you're spoonfed but for anyone on the fence, Ubisoft has delivered another clunker. I'm not saying not to get the game. But definitely check out YouTube videos and reviews before you decide to fork over some money for this one. Unless Ubisoft has something up their sleeve, assassin's creed is dead in the water.