I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
AC3 was my breaking point, but it was primarily the online play. One night while grinding I realized that this was my third outing of going through the exact same progression system with little to no improvements, innovations, or worthwhile incentives. I closed the game and never opened it again. Funnily enough, my favorite aspect of AC3 was the ship combat and remembered saying that I would gladly pay for a standalone pirate game with the same mechanics so long as they didn’t slap the Assassin’s Creed logo on it.
Suffice it to say, I have never played Black Flag, and I will never play Black Flag on principle. I don’t care how “good” it is.