3/5 ★ – Caljb03's review of Assassin's Creed: Syndicate.

This wasn't great.  I went into syndicate hoping I would love it. London is one of my favourite cities in the world and having dual protagonists really peaked my interest. However I found that this game really stumbled in its execution in many aspects of its design. From making parkour unimportant to making a combat scheme which was dull to say the least. So let's take a look at the highs and lows as I review Assassin's Creed Syndicate. First off, let me discuss what I liked from this game. London. I really came to love London in this game, it's nowhere near my favourite open world in gaming but it's definitely up there. The architecture and design of the many buildings and landmarks that made up this grand city was astounding. Being able to climb Big Ben or sneak into Buckingham palace was incredibly fun. At times I even liked to just stand outside of some of these buildings and look at the detail that went into them. You can even tell the difference between poorer areas of the city like Whitechapel compared to areas of higher class like Westminster. Taking into account how the people act around these areas. In areas of poverty you can see people working in dangerous environments and children playing in dingy alleyways which is a stark contrast to people shopping at markets and going to illustrious parties in higher class locales. This is exactly how I pictured the city when I had to read Dickens in school. That wasn't the only thing I enjoyed. The soundtrack in this game is amazing. It isn't on the same level as others in the series like black flag and assassin's creed 2, but it's still so good. Austin Wintory did an excellent job of creating a soundtrack which incorporates the Victorian London aesthetic with the stealth and action of the game series. It even managed to turn the dull combat into something that I didn't mind doing because listening to the music was worth the hastle. I just wish that the rest of the game had the care that these aspects had. Unfortunately there are many aspects of this game which feel very rushed, almost like all of the attention went into the world instead of some of the more important aspects like the story and the gameplay. What I mean by this is that the writing in this game is incredibly lackluster. I am writing this after the revelation that ubisoft wanted Quebec to work less on Evie as a character and focus on Jacob. And it shows. Jacob is a really annoying character, his personality is that he's the funny one out of the twins but he was never funny. I guess you can say that he is supposed to be unfunny, but it doesn't make up for how much of a nothing character Evie was. She was the usual by the book character you see in most fiction but it doesn't work when she has nothing interesting happening. Poor writing for the characters really dragged down the overall story quality as nothing that happened had any weight to it. Added on a villain which has no personality to speak off. You get a boring experience in which I wish I was playing something else. Onto the gameplay, arguably the most important aspect of a video game. And it isn't great. Nearly every mechanic added to syndicate took 1 step forward and 3 steps back. For example they added a rope launcher which acted as a grappling hook to traverse the tall buildings in London. Though the issue with this is that it simplifies the traversal to a point where parkour is essentially pointless. For a game where parkour is the main way to get around, making said parkour pointless is a bad move. Although I understand that if they wanted to do an accurate London they would need to add the rope launcher, to which I say "if the location is going to limit the players abilities, choose a different location". Gameplay limitations are also seen in the game's combat. For some reason the world is level gated which means that some areas require a higher level to be able to fight the enemies there. This leads to spongey enemies which take too much time to kill which turns every fight from an enjoyable thing to partake in, to a drag which is never something I looked forward to. The animations for this combat however are really great. Listening to the combat soundtrack and watching your character gracefully move through the air made fighting slightly less unbearable. There are other features which don't seem like a big deal but over time make a massive impact, just like how you need to go through the start menu to access skills, buy weapons, upgrade armour. This manages to take you out of the world every hour or so which adds up. They could've added more shops to the game which would let you upgrade but you need to do it in a blinding white menu which wasn't ever something you would want to do. This isn't an awful game by any means. It isn't even bad. It has enough positives to make it an enjoyable time for some people, but to me the negatives outweigh the positives and it made for a time I didn't enjoy.