There's not really that much of the AC games that you HAVE to play stealth. I mostly went through them killing everyone - the earlier games had a very specific pattern for enemy attacks where if you were surrounded only 1 would attack at once, and then dodge+counterattack would always land.
I don't remember much from AC3 when I played it as a kid (not that you need to to know that one is turbo-pozzed) but I also remember *really* liking Haytham Kenway. Dude's design was downright dapper and I remember being crestfallen to find out that you only get to play as him for that first little introductory segment before being relegated to playing as Yavapai Jones for the rest of the game.