Assassin's Creed Syndicate Reviews
Perhaps the series is better off this way, since the franchise is to history as Indiana Jones is to archeology. It's meant to be entertaining. And it is. But while others hope for graphical and mechanical innovation in future installments, I'll be the awkwardly shirtless gentleman suggesting that Ubisoft continues to improve and expand its narrative.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a massive step-up from its predecessor last year. Featuring a vast London set during the Industrial Revolution that players can discover, with eccentric characters you want to learn about, and superb gameplay, Syndicate truly sets the bar for what this series is about.
Overall the story is okay, the present day parts are really starting to drag the game down though. I liked the present day sections in the earlier Assassin's Creed games, but recently they have started to become boring and uninteresting. It just takes you out of the game when these parts play throughout the main story. They really need to make the present day storyline interesting again.
As a trade-off for the improved framerate the streets are never quite as busy in London as they were in Assassin's Creed Unity's Paris and there aren't as many explorable interiors, but it's a price well worth paying
Rather than following in the footsteps of AC Unity, Assassin's Creed Syndicate is an unambitious entry that mostly shuffles in place. There's still fun to be had here, but this sophomore next-gen effort doesn't excel.
Head and shoulders above last year's version, Syndicate has refined the Assassin's Creed experience, but essentially it's another familiar entry to the series with several polished elements.
Ubisoft took considerable flak from last year's release of 'Assassin's Creed: Unity', which had some good ideas but suffered from a collection of design and testing problems. To their credit, they appear to have taken it as a learning experience, as 'Syndicate' emerges as one of the strongest 'Assassin's Creeds' in recent memory.
So while Assassin's Creed Syndicate is light on novelty, it feels like enough fat has been trimmed that this is a more enjoyable experience than any in the series before it. Traversal is once more a joy; the world is massive and believable; the cast of characters roguish and likeable; and for the first time in an age, Assassin's Creed feels like it has some genuine personality to it.
All in all, Assassin's Creed Syndicate is welcome iteration in a series of open-world games that really should have overstayed its welcome by now. Improvements in the core gameplay and traversal, along with a host of great characters and compelling narrative offset its historical backdrop and technical concerns. It's not perfect, but its good enough to warrant a purchase.
The Rope Launcher feels like it should have always been in the game and horse drawn carriages are fun to drive and cause mayhem with. It's still Assassin's Creed, but these new options are a welcome addition to what was already dubbed a stale franchise. It will be interesting to see where the series goes now, as it can't go back and remove these new features.
The best parts of Assassin's Creed Syndicate are the things it does differently from other entries in the series, and its greatest frustrations are what it has in common with them. The series' heroes have been fighting the same battle against the same enemy for countless generations without success partly because they've always got one foot in the past. If Assassin's Creed never changes, it'll stay as stuck as its own stars.
This game was reviewed on a physical copy provided by the publisher.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate gets more right than it gets wrong, but in trying to amend some of the sins of the series, it exacerbates the issues instead of offering a cure. Despite that rather lengthy list of cons at the bottom of my review, one thing's for sure: Assassin's Creed Syndicate is still a hell of a lot of fun.
Amazing setting, entertaining protagonists, well-written dialogue and some truly fun new gameplay mechanics make Syndicate shine above the rest. It may not match the excitement of being a pirate assassin on the open seas of the Caribbean, but Syndicate proves that perhaps this eight year old franchise still has some new tricks up its sleeve.
With every release, the same issues that Ubisoft has been rolling over year over year seem to have compounded themselves to a point where the entire package winds up suffering. Sure, this isn't the broken mess that Assassin's Creed Unity was, but in some ways it's more of a blemish than its predecessor. After all, this is a functional game that simply isn't all that fun to play, which is far more damning than any technical glitch could ever be.
The bugs still remain but Syndicate is saved by a wonderfully vivid London, despite everything else feeling dated.
A shoutout to the days before games tried to grind coin out of their players
Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a "return to form," but maybe a change would do the series some good.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a solid and good-looking, if decidedly traditional, release in the series' annual cycle. It's worth a look but if you have an enormous backlog, then don't worry - the Frye twins can wait.
I'm so happy that Ubisoft remembered to put the fun back in Assassin's Creed. The series just turns out so much better with witty protagonists and lots of room for creativity. If you enjoyed Assassin's Creed II/Brotherhood and Black Flag, Syndicate will be right up your alley. It doesn't deviate enough from the formula to pull in players who don't enjoy the series in general, but it does evolve and polish the base systems considerably. The fun times greatly outweigh the occasional frustrations, and I can only hope that Ubisoft can be convinced to spread out series entries a bit more so that every Assassin's Creed game can be as good as Syndicate.