The first 2 games really looked like they were building to an AC game set entirely in present day, and I was looking forward to it. When that never happened, I lost interest very quickly.

I wasn't, as the overarching Dan Brown meets Ancient Aliens plot was always my least favourite part of the entire series. Still, the way the second and third Ezio games kept faffing about with said plot and the way AC3 sloppily discarded the "Desmond Miles has to stop the 2012 Mayan apocalypse" thing all four previous games had been building up to and then seemingly promising endless AC sequels just solidified to me that Ubisoft didn't give a shit about the story at all and I just walked away

I tried Black Flag a couple years after it launched and was so annoyed at how bad the stealth was I gave up in an hour. Like man, If two guard are walking shoulder to shoulder and I snag one and the other doesn't even look, I'm out

I've been meaning to pirate AC4 because people said it was good and because the idea of a pirate game is really fun even if I have to suffer through the trappings of the AC universe