Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Overly Dramatic Review in One Sentence

A set of super annoying twins disregard their leader and remove the Templars from London, but ultimately lead them to the Shroud because plot.

The Actual Review

Game time:

PC: 22 hours
Xbox: 25 hours (There is a 6-month gap in my achievements from where I stopped about halfway through this game)

Gameplay

I really enjoyed this game. The previous complaint about fighting being delayed is gone. There are plenty of vehicles to move about the expansive city, and a zip line which is helpful for quick accretion.

The fighting was a lot of fun. I think they also knew it was fun because they created these fighting pits and I just loved doing those trying to pull off these multi-kills. The mini cutscene they did for the multi-kills did get old quick when it happens a lot, but it was still cool to watch. Mainly I just appreciate that the environment you were in played a part. The different fighting styles between the twins was also fun. There is a brutality Jacob and a fluidity to Evie that makes them feel distinct.

There upgrade system for the gang was nice mainly because it gave you new ways to win. Explosions, environmental kills, or just more distractions to use to sneak in makes it a very fun upgrade system. I can’t say the same for the RPG element of the game.

Each of the twins has the same skills with 2 of them being only allowed for one twin or the other. If I remember correctly, the game was supposed to have only one protagonist, but later turned into two which required them to make this change. I don’t think it really played out well. You spend so much time doing all the things to get full level, and they have the same XP. Just felt like an appeasement rather than giving them truly unique skills.

While the delay from Assassin's Creed Unity is gone in the fighting, with it went the ultra fluid parkour. It is still smooth, but you don’t flow like water up and down the buildings like you did previously, which means I spent a lot of time looking for jump off points.

The armor that is supposed to be found, the collectibles for that are too numerous (32 with no map marker) and I had an audio bug with them so it was super annoying. In general 32 is way to many to find in a 20-25 hour game. I think I could spend at least another 5 (20-25% of my total time played) to find them and that seems wild.

I did clear the map of all the major events except the side missions or the random errands. I never felt so attached to the side characters to help them out, but getting rid of the red on the map and the gang wars were fun.

Graphics and Sound

I enjoyed the graphics on this so much more than Unity. There isn’t this haze everywhere, and you can see from one side of the map to the other on some sync points. They had great fires on buildings, in face I saw a random fire at one point where fire trucks pulled up too.

The sound was cool and terrible. The cool was the song that came in when climbing the sync points. The terrible was the fighting music that was just a copy cat of Sherlock Holmes and kept going long after the fight was over. Combine that with a bug that played the assassin plate bells every time I loaded in an area from mission completion or fast travel means that I didn’t search for those things very quickly.

Story and Characters

I like this historical story more than I like Unity’s. The characters are fine, the twins being what they are, but I felt like they were more involved in the events that took place rather than just a leaf in the breeze as we saw previous.

The mission separation between the twins makes me feel like I never got to know either one of them. We go from friendly Evie to stern Evie to friendly Evie in 5 missions. I understand why the changes, but I don’t think the weight of the lesson she learns bits because we spend so much time destroying London with Jacob who just randomly has an epiphany during the last mission.

The London story is straight forward. Templars took over and are making corruption look normal, assassins want to fix that. The shroud is kind of just there but isn’t really important or used like the others.

For the modern day, we are back to these cutscenes telling stories, but they are better than Assassin's Creed Unity’s without much thought. They are very well done, and we get to understand a bit more about what is going on. I think technically you are the same modern day person between the 2, but it doesn’t feel like that. And modern day doesn’t matter.

My Rating

This is a game where I wish I had a point value system. The game is so much more than worth a playthrough, but not a Get this game rating. I think in the 2nd section of AC games, it is the best story, and best fighting if you don’t count the remake of Assassin's Creed Black Flag. The characters are lackluster, but the gameplay is really fun. I never felt like I needed to skip anything because I didn’t enjoy the play. This game is for sure worth a playthrough.

I did have a couple funny issues and those videos are below.

Parental Rating

Lots of language and violence, obviously. Zero sex or sexual content anywhere either. I think the heavy English accents might make it feel more acceptable to my parents if I were playing on the screen, but I still think they’d have preferred me to play something else. To show some of the violence, you can see the video below.

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