3. A Much Deeper Economy
As mentioned, in AC III, you're given a manor and basically the entire surrounding wilderness in which to establish a fledgeling settlement. Pretty cool, right? Well, as you establish your budding village, you'll eventually be given access to the Accounting Book, which allows you to buy raw material from those in your homestead, have others craft them into products, and ship said products off to sell in AC III's cities.Pretty wicked, right? Assassin's Creed has featured an economic system since early on in the franchise, but its depth here is completely unprecedented, astonishingly deep and correct usage of it can genuinely affect the way you progress through the game (for example, Ship upgrades are so expensive, you'll literally have to play the Economic System if you're to kit your vessel out fully). Again, previous AC games didn't necessarily feature bad economic systems, they just seemed to have been added as an admirable afterthought. In III though, it's clear that Ubisoft spent a lot of time and effort in offering up something of much greater substance.