Assassin's Creed Syndicate | Review

After last year’s Assassins Creed, I was a bit apprehensive about getting this year’s game, especially as I had given the game a try at EGX and had found it to be rather glitchy and more of the same as I found in Unity.

I will be honest here and say that the full game I’m playing now and the Demo I played a month ago at EGX are completely different, I haven’t suffered any of the glitches I found in that version, and I know what you will say, that that was probably an old build which has been updated since, which is good, and I’m glad Ubisoft were able to notice that and get it sorted. That’s not to say that there are still some glitches within the game.

Characters not updating in cut scenes, and invisible people talking in a room, floating books that a character was holding and has walked away from, and the book has just stayed there.



Despite these very minor things, I have to say that I am very impressed with the game on a whole. The graphics and lighting are beautiful, the worlds are vibrant and full with responsive and reactive NPCs, and London has been done justice in this game!

The motions and movements of the characters within the game are also a lot more fluid and smoother when climbing and jumping across buildings and over obstacles, which makes for more fluid game play. An addition to this year’s game, which you unlock through the story is the grapple gun, which is attached to your wrist blade. It makes it so much easier to do some missions by being able to attach yourself to an opposite building and glide above the heads of your enemies. One good thing with this new toy you get is that as your flying above your enemies, if you fancy it you can just drop above them and do a drop assassination. Such sneaky fun!

Speaking of the game play the added assassination animations that have been added to the game to compliment the style of the main characters are amazing, disturbing but simply amazing! Just have a look at the video below!



The main characters within the game are twins Jacob and Evie Frye, who start in Croydon and make their way to London to find the city controlled by Templars. The twins vow to take the city back from the Templars. The characters have been written brilliantly and the story is that one that gets you from the beginning and pulls you in and gets you wanting to play more and more.

The side missions within the game are very well done in Syndicate, I feel that there more aligned with the story and have more of a reasoning to them than what Unity’s had. Kidnapping people for the police, ending child labour etc all fits in with the setting and time for the game, as well as helps liberate London from the Templars.

There is one thing that annoys me though, and that is the use of the same several character models for NPCs. Its rife throughout the world and very noticeable, I can’t understand why this is? Lazy development? You look at games like FIFA which in its crowd have so many different models used, and I know that it a different type, but it shows that it is possible to have a lot more models made available, and I hope that if there is another Assassins Creed game next year, this is something that Ubisoft look at and learn on.

Another thing that has annoyed me, and this has been when I’m in combat in a building, the camera angle if I’m too close to a wall will go outside the building and I’m unable to see what or who I’m fighting and it ends up a little bit of a button bash to try and finish the fight.

There is a skills tree and an upgrade system to the game which you can use on both of the main characters as well as your gang.

The upgrades to the characters are pretty standard with Combat, Stealth and Ecosystem the main categories where you can upgrade things like Health, Lock picking, and odds for better loot from crates. The gang upgrades are pretty similar, but on this one you can train and upgrade your gang, make them better fighters, as well as improve the swag that they can loot.



I have found that there is a noticeable absentee from last year’s game which is the online feature that was included in Unity.

I have to admit that I do miss that feature as it was nice to roam the city with friends doing quests, so it’s quite disappointing that it’s not included this year, the only thing I can think of is that Ubisoft didn’t see it a sustainable feature for future games based on how many people played it on Unity.

This is a brilliant step up from Unity with very little in terms of problems with it, I would recommend getting this as the setting and story is very strong and the game itself is very beautiful.

I’m going to give Assassin’s Creed Syndicate a 9.