Assassins Creed Syndicate takes the beloved format of prior AC Games and innovates upon mechanics, themes and characters inside a Victorian London setting. I myself went into this game with quite a bias because I was born and raised inside London so a lot of things were a lot more recognizable to me compared to others who weren’t raised here. To start off, the map and its landmarks are very recognisable even to those who haven’t been to London before: Parliament, Big Ben, St. Pauls Cathedral, Trafalgar Square all felt very familiar to me as I have been there numerous times in person which was honestly quite fun and engaging. The setting is also the closest to our modern day in the entire franchise too, so the buildings are also quite similar to how they look in real life, I loved the unique steampunk themes and gadgets which complemented the map extremely well. Considering the map isn’t great for parkour, as all the buildings are extremely high and very spaced out, the grappling hook couldn’t be implemented better with the time period and setting. The black box assassination missions from Unity also made a reappearance which was honestly one of my favourite things about Unity so I'm very glad to see it make a return. Speaking of Unity, the clunky cover system was replaced with a much more fluid one which was also great. Liberating London boroughs felt very similar to eliminating Borgia Influence in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood which was also one of my favourite parts however it isn’t just “Kill captain, burn tower” theres various other activities you can do to liberate each area of the borough. Once again the appearance and interpretations of real life historical figures were great. I particularly liked seeing: Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, Florence Nightingale, Charles Darwin, Frederick Abberline. The carriages also had a great feel to them and were also quite fun to drive around in. The skill tree in this game is also very expansive and I almost never waste any points into anything I didn’t want to get as there is always something cool and useful on the tree, same goes for the gang upgrades too.

Syndicate suffers the same cruel fate Unity does, an amazing experience hindered by major flaws. For one, the Frye twins just weren’t really that interesting, same goes with most other main characters inside this game, they really just didn’t feel all that interesting at all. Same goes with the main villain, Starrick, they generated so much interest in the beginning parts of the games like in the cutscene where he kills his henchmen for interrupting him whilst he was playing his piano, he really had potential to be one of the coolest Templars in the franchise but we only got a pretty mediocre boss fight from him in the final part. I also feel this game is much too lighthearted for its setting, Victorian England was a dark, gritty time, I think they should have had the same emphasis on grittiness Unity had on it’s game, they make light out of child labour and street gangs, even the combat looks and feels very cartoony. This game also is a massive graphical downgrade from Unity, I believe if this game had Unity’s graphics, it would be much better looking than any other game in the franchise so far. Also despite it being a graphical downgrade, it is much laggier which doesn’t make much sense at all. I also see a lot of frequently reused animations and character models which slightly makes the game feel more repetitive than it should be. I also think Jacob isn’t much of a likeable character in the initial sequences in the game too. I also think the spongy enemies with levels and health bars felt very out of place in this game too. This game is also ridiculously easy, and I'm notorious for playing games on the easiest difficulty, however there are times in combat where the enemy will have a stupidly short parry window and I’d die extremely quickly. The modern day sequences are also a massive downgrade from Unity, the entirety of them are just 30 second long cutscenes.

I feel the franchise is becoming quite formulaic and isn’t really doing much to innovate on their core gameplay mechanics which is why I'm going to be playing the Chronicles series next before I play the next mainline entry. I don’t hate this game but I can certainly understand why people would dislike this entry.

Final Score

7.2 / 10

underrated

No entiendo porque tanta critica online a este juego. Al principio si, me parecio muy minijuego, si. Las animaciones, los menus, pero si le das el tiempo necesario llegas a quererlo. Aclaracion: Me compra mucho la ambientacion en la Londres Victoriana. Asique estoy sesgado. Pero las mecanicas son muy parecidas a las de Unity. El realismo del mundo sigue siendo espectacular. Y el sigilo se siente muy copado como en Unity tambien. Si, hay bugs. Pero en su mayoria fueron cosas que me causaron gracia mas que frustrarme. Y si no. Era cuestion de poner restart una sola vez. No me parece que sea para tanto. Es el recordatorio de que mejor jugar las cosas uno que guiarse por las opiniones de internet.

PD: Evie te amo <3