Sneaking Saturday's: Assassin's Creed Syndicate: The End of a Legacy

 Welcome to the first Sneaking Saturday. A new concept and banner to put my reviews of stealth focused titles from my backlog into. In here I'll review titles that have some element of stealth in the gameplay be it assassins, ninja, spies, or anything in between. Here to be the inaugural review is Assassin's Creed: Syndicate.

Image Credit: Image Abyss

Very few games can claim they were the reason a team completely changed genres but Assassin's Creed Syndicate can. Before Syndicate Assassin's Creed had been releasing annually since 2009 with the critically acclaimed Assassin's Creed II all the way to 2015's Assassin's Creed Syndicate which was the last of the "classic" Assassin's Creed games and in this review we will revisit the game and see what it is like through the modern lense.

Almost a decade later this game is still hard to describe it is definitely and Assassin's creed game but it feels like it doesn't have a lot of the charm as previous titles. The characters feel very different from what we usually get Jacob barely feels like a traditional assassin and feels like a gang leader pretending to be an assassin but has a heart of gold and Evie feels like an assassin scholar always researching Isu artifacts and trying t find them. The twins both feel kind of inexperienced like they don't understand the world as they are two kids from Crowley going on a London adventure. The villains are far from nuanced but are still enjoyable as they feel like villains of the week in a very dark carton/comic, Starrick the main villain is very much just a simple mustache twirling bad guy. Overall the characters are nowhere near as developed as the older Assassin's but there are some fun characters and the sibling dynamic between our protagonists is very fun.

The gameplay is very strange it is still like legacy Assassin's Creed games where you have a large mix of combat and exploration but there is also a few new complications. One of which is the scale of the world, I believe it is a near 1:1 recreation of London so the gaps between buildings are much larger and the streets are massive. This is why the devs gave us a grappling hook/zipline launcher is to keep it flowing. The buildings are much smoother making parkour harder to initiate without a grappling hook, sloped roofs cause you to slide towards ledges and make it harder to climb roofs. The other changes are due to the period as of now this is still the closest we have been to a modern day Assassin's game carriage's are all over the world and are a great way to traverse between districts quickly. Finally this is the first Assassin's creed game to have firearms that aren't muzzle loaded black powder pistols and rifles and instead have revolvers and in some portions a machinegun. Another smaller change is due t being in an industrial/modern society the carrying of swords was no longer common so all melee weapons are made to be concealable leaving us with a cane sword, brass knuckles, and a kukri. The only variety in melee combat is range and speed but it all felt the same towards the endgame. This game also brings forward more light RPG elements and a very basic leveling system preventing you from being effective in some areas till later in the game luckily it is nowhere near as restrictive as modern Ubisoft games such as the later Assassin's Creed titles. 

The combat really feels like regular Assassin's creed combat just with a combo meter added and stronger enemies. The weapons really don't change anything aside from the animations but they do make it break up the seeing the same sets of animations. The climbing and traversal was much more of the same just adding a larger world but introduced the carriages that were great. The sense of speed and the carriage combat has made a welcome addition to the gameplay. One feature that feels great is the way they expanded the black box assassination missions for the few that are in the game giving players three distinct opportunities a loud one, a stealth one, and a special mission specific option (side note I personally chose to do the special ones as they felt like what the characters would do in the circumstances.) like pretending to be a cadaver for a templar surgeon and jumping up from under the sheet to kill him. Overall the gameplay is still more of what we have since 2009 but with many improvements and quality of life improvements.

Finally before I fully dive into my favorite points of the game and listing the pros and cons I really want to speak on the quality of the map London is easily one of my favorite maps in Assassin's Creed it is so large, detailed, and just living. The Thames is always busy full of ships and the factories are always on producing their goods and the beautiful lighting of the early lightbulbs illuminating the streets. London is by far one of Ubisoft's best maps up there with Hope County and Paris.

Finally my absolute favorite part of the game was the soundtrack it just bled Victorian Elegance at every step. It truly sounds like music we use to represent the time and elevates the experience of being in old Victorian London. Something about the music elevates the simplest missions into feeling like your in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. 

Overall to conclude the game is not the most stellar must buy Assassin's Creed Experience but it is enjoyable. The game is constantly on sale and is an easy recommendation to those who may skipped over it when franchise fatigue began to set in as it did for me. The missions while short are enjoyable and range from simple to challenging especially when seeking the bonus objectives. The over abundance of collectables does make completion a bit tedious but thankfully are optional. Overall the game has earned a 3/5 star rating from me as it is held back by a few things; glitches, collectable overabundance, short story, repetitive combat, and odd pacing at times. The soundtrack, world, innovations (guns, carriages, and grappling hook), characters, and simpler story do vary the gameplay and make it very enjoyable and easy enough to recommend to anyone who may have passed it over.

Thank You!