Don't listen to this ^^ This person has no knowledge whatsoever. Even people with high-end rigs are experiencing huge performance issues.
The truth is that the game is poorly optimized and that shouldn't be a surprise since it is a Ubisoft game. The other thing that plays a great role with the game being resource hog is the fact that it uses two-layer DRM (Denuvo + VMprotect) and this duo causes that your CPU spikes up to 100% most of the times even on lower settings.
Is it possible for this game to be playable in the current state. The answer is yes but it all depends on your hardware configuration. Because yes it is important. See you can't just put some random parts from different eras and expect your rig to play all games flawlessly. You could ask the question why then some demanding game like Witcher 3 or GTAV are playing great on your PC? Oh well as a software dev I can give you that answer... The quality of code and implementation. Also the lack of testing under the various configuration of hardware.
So to contradict this kinda noobish person talking about people playing this game on "crappy old computers" I must say that my rig is kinda old. I've built it a couple of years ago in 2014. It has i7-4790K, GTX-970 (gaming edition from Gigabyte), 16GB of RAM and Corsair H100i cooling in it. I have my games on HDD WD Black and main OS and software are on SSD.
I've bought this game straight from Uplay shop with 20% discount and I've managed to tweak it to run in 1080p with stable 60FPS most of the times (sometimes it drops in the cities to 50-ish) the CPU issue is still there but I've managed to lower this down to like up to 70% of usage in High-Medium and another tweaking. But yes at the cutscenes and some parts in cities it still spikes to 90-100%. The temperatures are sometimes up to 71 degrees but mostly are like 60-ish with no fans running on max. I can play that way for a couple of hours straight and nothing bad is happening and I can enjoy the game.
As for the gameplay? It is kinda meh, and for me not worth getting it for full price. I play AC since the first game came out and I must say it definitely not the best AC game. AC 2 and 3 was great for me. I really liked Syndicate but this, oh well it is a matter of taste.
Graphics are beautiful tho, the world is nicely put together. Story-wise it is a big NO for me.
So to sum it up it is really up to you if you want to get it. If you can sacrifice the settings because it will be hard for you to play on top-max settings even if you have a top-end rig. But please don't listen to people like this^^ guy... Be smart.
To directly quote: don't listen to this ^^ This person has no knowledge whatsoever.
I am a person with a *current* high-end rig, this person thinks they have a high-end rig, sure, from 3 years ago trying to play a modern game. My rig played this game perfectly smoothly @ 1440p Ultra settings, and only crashed once.
I'm also a huge AC fan, I own them all, have finished them all, and this is the best one so far IMO.
People without high-end rigs (aka those with 3+ year old hardware or i5's and 970's and less) thinking they can play most Ubisoft games on Ultra are delusional. If you want Ultra, you own i7's and 1080Ti's. Temper your expectations, most Ubisoft games in general are not well optimized, Watch Dogs 2 is another prime example, but my rig handles that just fine on Ultra, too.