Beat Jack the Ripper 93% during free trial of Ubisoft +. I liked the creepy text that flashed on screen telling Jack to kill, and did not like the QTEs for his brutal takedown. Evie’s brutal takedowns just required repeat clicks of the mouse button, which was fine. I did things in order of proximity, picking up collectibles that were along the way. I beat the main story before finishing all side objectives, and did not get all collectables. Back when the played the base game I hardly used any tools other than the gun and throwing knife, so I was not much impressed with the new fear tools. They did make some large fights slightly easier, though I would have preferred if the fear bomb was a thrown grenade rather than point blank. The brutal takedowns were useful though; a great way to open a fight. I did find it a little odd that Evie never killed during takedowns and combat. I found myself finishing off most downed enemies because it was faster to get the auto loot from killing rather than manually loot.
I gave 5 stars to the intricate assassination missions. They were by far the best part of the original game, reminding me of Hitman, and I am glad they returned here. The crime scene investigation missions were interesting as well. The final fight with Jack was not the best, with him being too powerful to fight at all outside of sneak attacks, and the QTEs to finish him off. The side activities were mixed. The ones that involved killing and stealth were good, like raiding brothels. Hijacking cargo and rescuing prostitutes were ok, though 1 mission reset a couple of times right after I accepted it for some reason. Tailing and kidnapping were not particularly fun, nor were the new slow suspect deliveries. That is just what I want to do in an open world game; drive slowly and sensible without crashing into stuff/running people over. Overall this dlc was just about as good as the main game.
Then I rushed through the main game until I could access the Last Maharaja missions. It was interesting planning how to spend the limited money for low level play, as they were only level 4 by the end. I upgraded a level 3 kukri, level 4 gun, level 3 gauntlet, level 3 armor, vampire outfit for Evie (for the sweet defense and bonus kukri damage), and Edward’s outfit for Jacob. Evie’s outfit was better so I played as her whenever possible. The missions were nothing special and I actually gave 2 of them 1 star; the one where you had to get the guy out of the bank before he bled out (I hate time limits), and the train attack. I tried chasing the train in a carriage, then got out to climb a bridge and just missed it. But the train was going slower than running speed, so I just ran after it for a few minutes. Such riveting gameplay. By this time I was underleveled and had difficulty fighting enemies, so I took too long to kill the enemies on the train, and killed the ones on the enemy train first. The mission then bugged out and I had to reload the checkpoint, which had me kill all the enemies on the other train again. I took too long at that and my train left without me. God damn, another few minutes of chasing it on foot. The final missions were incredibly difficult as I was fighting level 7 and 8 enemies at only level 4. I had to play full on stealth, using every trick I could to avoid direct combat. I could take 1 enemy in a fight but had to slow down and wait for their attacks to make sure I dodged. It took over 20 hits to kill a single enemy. I had to restart a couple times due to dying, but it was fun playing at this high of difficulty. This dlc was nothing special. The highlights were the carriage chase shooting (though I was using the piece of crap starting gun that only held 2 shots), and the diamond heist where Jacob and Evie were both involved at the same time. I would have liked to see more of them working together like that in the base game.
I really enjoyed this game back when I beat it on xbox, and it was fun to experience it again now that I have played many of its predecessors. The better parkour controls, more difficult combat, more emphasis on stealth, more intricate missions, grappling hook and driving really made it stand above the earlier games. Though it lacked the great naval content and introduced a few annoying new mission types. It was particularly fun to get easier headshots on PC. I could see myself beating the game again, but I am not going to waste the limited free trial on that.
