Assassin's Creed Syndicate (2015) by Ubisoft

Oh, my.

I never thought I'd enjoy an Assassin's Creed game this much ever again after playing the utter disaster that was Assassin's Creed Unity. I'm having so much fun with this game I literally just paused it right now and Alt+Tabbed into Steam to write this review.

To sum everything up really quickly: Combine the amazing ambiance and atmosphere of Assassin's Creed II with the sheer fun and satisfaction of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and you get this game. It's that good. If you're a fan of the series, buy it right now and don't look back. Trust me.

For a bit more detail, read on.

Some background on me: I'm a monumental, long-time fan of this series. A history major in college, I reserved the first game on Xbox 360 and played it the day it came out in 2007, eager to see what a video game rendering of the Crusades would be like. Assassin's Creed II came along and struck me like Cupid's Arrow; the unrepentant love I have for that game still exists to this day and even motivated me to visit Florence and Venice multiple times in the past few years. I played AC3, didn't like it much, played Black Flag, and did like it much.

Then Assassin's Creed Unity happened, and pretty much drove a rusty dagger through the heart of my love for this series. What an absolute disaster. I hated every bit of it. It caused me to all but abandon the series... Until now, almost a year after Syndicate's release, when I decided to give it a try despite my hatred for Ubisoft and all of the bad will I still hold from being burned by Unity, which still doesn't run on my PC.

And boy, am I glad I tried Syndicate. I have almost no complaints about this game. In fact, it's the best Assassin's Creed game I've played since Brotherhood, and maybe even better than that. It stands up there with Assassin's Creed II as one of the best game of the series. Yes, better than Black Flag. It's that good.

The game is drop dead gorgeous. Ambient occlusion and bloom make the lighting utterly beautiful, and the rain and water effects are jaw-dropping. The character textures are good but not great, but the environment textures are wonderful. Graphical prowess is nothing new for this game, though. What is strikingly better than recent efforts is the sheer immersion of Victorian London. I haven't felt so immersed in an Assassin's Creed setting since Florence and Venice in Assassin's Creed II. The NPC interactions on the street, ambient noise, and weather effects are all amazing. Drunks will sing, people will get into fights, there will be random shakedowns in alleys. There are evocative bills posted everywhere outside and indoor areas have Holmesian decorations like old couches and oil lamps. It's just fantastic the way that good film sets are fantastic; it adds so much atmosphere without you ever really noticing where it comes from unless you stop and serious examine your surroundings. There's so much to talk about that I can't possibly touch it all, but it all combines to a sum greater than its parts and transports you straight into the era in a way that few others games have. Maybe just Dishonored -- And that game was a fantasy only inspired by Victorian London.

The Frye twins

Black Flag was a great game, but to me it didn't really feel like an Assassin's Creed game. It was more of a pirate game inspired by Assassin's Creed. Edward doesn't even become an assassin until the very end! Yet people still loved it, myself included. Arno was admittedly dull in Unity (a somewhat lesser rehash of Ezio Auditore but without the motivating factor of vengeance and half the charm), so to solve the problem of where to go with this protagonist, the developers give us two playable characters: Evie, the quintessential no-nonsense assassin who is completely dedicated to the creed (a la Altair in the first game), and Jacob, the loose cannon, troublemaking, bar brawling Englishman who isn't a serious assassin, only joining because his parents raised him to be one (a la Edward Kenway from Black Flag). And the system works perfectly. The two characters, between whom you can switch at any time, are the most well fleshed out playable characters to appear in this game in a long time. They each have chemistry, their dialogue is written well, and their voice actors are excellent. Motion capture serves well as they each have unique mannerisms. The skill trees can be individualized between them both, creating a drive to continue on playing and customizing to your liking. And gang upgrades and skill trees ensure that you'll spend hours just gathering money and items, staying up until 2:00 AM because "I just want to unlock one more thing", something I haven't felt about these games since the Apprentice missions in Brotherhood.

The gameplay itself provides ample opportunity to play it as either a brawler, a pure stealth venture, or something in between. Whatever you want, it's here, and they blend seamlessly into one another. Past Creed games have overloaded the player with too many tools, effectively eliminating any challenge the game poses. This game fixes that by giving you just enough to keep it interesting, but not so much that you're easily able to breeze through everything once you have all of the unlocks. The stealth sequences give you just enough tools to remain challenging, and the combat is less Assassin's Creed, more Batman Arkham, which is a good thing in that it provides depth to the experience. And traversal is easier and more satisfying than ever thanks to the hookshot. This game is so. Much. Fun.

The soundtrack is also noticeably better than recent entries into the series thanks to Austin Wintory's superb score of both subtle ambient tracks and crashing woodwinds and strings for the battle scenes. Again, the best score in an Assassin's Creed game since Jesper Kyd's watermark score in Assassin's Creed II.

If I do have one complaint about this game, it's the control. The improved traversal from Unity is here, but for some reason the Frye twins seem to respond to change of direction a bit more slowly, and deciding when to free run up is sometimes clunky. Everything feels more muddy than in previous titles, which can adversely affect some stealth sequences.

In order to assuage any worried about Ubisoft's bad PC ports in the past, I will say that this game runs superbly on my rig. This is the best running Assassin's Creed game I've played since Brotherhood. Even Black Flag was a bit more shaky. Unity ran around 50 FPS on high settings on my machine, this game is locked at 60 FPS with all settings maxed and I've seen very few bugs outside of normal fare for open world games.

Another plus is that, while they're still there (unfortunately), Ubisoft has greatly toned down the in-game microtransactions from Unity. Instead of popping up all over the map like in Unity, now they are relegated to being only an option in the menu, easily ignored. As a completionist I still get pissed off thinking about how annoying those microtransaction icons were in Unity. Despicable.

This is a great game. It absolutely breaks my heart that this title was completely overlooked and did poorly financially upon release all due to Ubisoft's screwing the pooch and releasing Unity as a broken mess when it honestly could have been a good game with another year of development.

If you're a fan of the series and you're in the mood for some face and neck stabbing then you have to purchase this immediately. Don't wait like I did. It's worth an immediate buy. If you aren't a huge fan of the Assassin's Creed series and you just like open world action games like the Batman Arkham series, give Syndicate a whirl. I bet you'll like it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐