Playtime

The rain fell in steady sheets over Kyoto, the kind of downpour that made the world feel small and muffled. I was crouched on a slippery tiled roof, Naoe’s hood soaked through, watching a patrol of guards march below. My mission was simple: infiltrate the heavily guarded merchant house, retrieve a ledger, and leave unseen. Simple, in theory. In practice, I was outnumbered, out-positioned, and one wrong move away from a swift, digital death. That’s when I remembered my ace in the hole—or rather, my seven aces. I’d been experimenting, you see, with what I’ve come to call the "Ace Super 777" approach, a set of seven proven strategies to maximize your winning potential in this beautiful, chaotic world of shadows and steel. It wasn’t just about Naoe’s blade or Yasuke’s brute strength anymore; it was about building a network, a not-quite-but-basically Assassin Bureau right here in Japan.

I tapped a button, and from the shadows, my grenade-throwing shinobi emerged. A well-aimed explosive scattered the patrol, creating the perfect diversion. It was a small victory, but it underscored the first and most crucial strategy: always have a specialist on standby. I learned this the hard way. Early on, I tried to be a lone wolf, believing my own skills were enough. They weren't. The game humbled me, repeatedly. So I started recruiting. The firearm-wielding shinobi became my go-to for when a fight was turning sour, his volleys of gunfire providing a brutal, noisy reset button. For more delicate work, I’d rotate in the would-be Assassin who could, with terrifying efficiency, silently eliminate two targets at a time. Or the pirate, whose ability to put a single target to sleep was a godsend for preventing reinforcements. That night in the rain, using my league member felt less like a game mechanic and more like a genuine tactical decision, a whisper in the dark that changed the entire board.

In terms of pure gameplay, the League is nothing short of fantastic. They transform Naoe from a singular instrument of death into a conductor of a deadly orchestra. Each character is a different tool, a different sound. The powerful monk can draw aggro like a champ, the deadly ronin can cleave through armored foes, and the charismatic thief… well, she’s just cool to watch. But here’s the catch, the part that stings a little. Their respective stories begin and end rather quickly. After their initial recruitment quest, which is often a compelling little vignette, they just… stand there. Returning to my hub-like hideout to check on them became a ritual of diminishing returns. They’d spout a line or two of dialogue, maybe a recycled comment on the weather. A few can be flirted with and subsequently smooched, a feature that feels more like a checkbox than a meaningful interaction. It all feels so shallow, so tragically undercooked.

This, I’ve realized, has consistently been an issue with Assassin’s Creed’s optional recruitable companions. It’s par for the course, as they say, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing. You meet these fascinating figures—a disillusioned monk, a rogue pirate with a heart of gold—and for that one hour of their questline, they are vibrant and real. Then they get reduced to nothing more than a face for a cool combat mechanic, a portrait on a menu screen. It creates a strange dissonance. I’m employing these strategies from my "Ace Super 777" playbook, using their unique abilities to master the game’s challenges, yet I feel a growing distance from the very characters enabling that mastery. I have the powerful monk on speed-dial for a tough fight, but I couldn’t tell you what he’s thinking about, what he fears, or what he dreams of once this war is over. He’s a weapon, not a person.

So, how do you truly maximize your potential with this system? You have to embrace the mechanics and mourn the missed narrative opportunities simultaneously. My fourth strategy is to specialize your team for specific mission types. Don’t just pick a favorite and stick with them. Scouting a dense castle? That’s a job for the double-assassin. Expecting a massive, open-field brawl? That’s the ronin’s time to shine. My fifth tactic is to always, always have a "panic button" companion ready, which for me was almost always the grenadier. The sixth is to not get emotionally attached, as cynical as that sounds. Enjoy their stories while they last, but understand their primary function in the endgame is utilitarian. And the seventh and final strategy in my "Ace Super 777" framework is to acknowledge this flaw and play around it. Focus on the sheer, unadulterated fun of deploying the right tool for the right job. The thrill of calling in a perfectly timed sleep dart from the pirate to bypass a key guard, or watching the monk hold the line against a dozen soldiers so I can slip past unseen—that’s where the real winning potential lies. It’s in those moments of seamless, strategic synergy that the shallow characterization fades into the background, and you feel like a true master of the hidden arts, commanding your own bureau of ghosts. The stories they came with may be brief, but the stories you create with them on the battlefield are anything but.