Assassin's Creed: Syndicate

Hey, this game actually isn't too bad.

Except for the crashes. Lots and lots of crashes.

I started the Assassin's Creed series back with Assassin's Creed 2 - the start of Ezio's story. I loved the game and happily pumped hours into it as I improved my ability to fight, parkour, and go around, well, removing opposition.

Brotherhood was another great game, though the tower defense minigames were annoying. Revelations was another great game, though bittersweet as it was the end of Ezio's story.

Assassin's Creed 3. Oh, dear. Certainly, the game had several good things. I really liked the movement through the trees. I thought the hunting was enjoyable, at least for the first couple of times the game makes you participate. The place in history was very interesting. Finally, the hatchet was a really fun weapon. Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into the story.

Many AC players have their favorite character. Mine is Ezio. I was surprised to learn that there are people who actually liked Connor. I enjoyed the beginning of the game were I played as a Templar more than the bulk of the game as an Assassin.

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. This game has taken a lot of heat for not being a true AC game because "Kenway isn't really an Assassin", but it was a very refreshing break after AC3. Black Flag was a really fun pirate game, but also a very decent Assassin's Creed game. Kenway was an enjoyable character, I liked the dual-wielding combat, it had the wilderness parkour additions from AC3, and the level design was visually stunning with large ancient buildings, dense forests, and huge rogue waves in powerful ocean storms. The crafting system was good enough and meeting characters from pirate fiction kept the game interesting. While Connor came off as ... whinny, Kenway was a man who wanted a good life. Being an Assassin was more of a side mission for him, not his primary focus like Ezio. Overall, a very good game.

I skipped Unity entirely because of how it barely ran on PC.

Now, Syndicate.

First off, I bought it for $30 off of a Winter sale, so my "value for cost" is based off of that, not the game's full price.

UPlay is still annoying, even though it's not as bad as it was over a year ago. I experienced a handful of crash-to-desktops in the first hour of the game, along with getting stuck on top of a chest and having to wait for some thugs to finish me off so I could restart the level section. A few Internet searches recommended that I disable the UPlay game overlay and run the game as Administrator, which, so far, have prevented any further crashes.

The gameplay itself is pretty standard Assassin's Creed, and the game has been said to be a return to the AC and AC2 styles. The projectile grappling hook is a pleasant addition to the game, as the London streets are too wide to jump across like we've seen in previous AC installments. It makes navigating the rooftops fairly enjoyable.

Combat is a bit faster than previous games and it is, at times, difficult to see when an enemy is about to attack - there are no visual indicators (other than the person bringing their arm back to swing) that notify the player to press the block button, which means that players have to pay a bit more attention to combat.

The crafting system is more of a "get materials to upgrade items" system instead of an actual crafting system, but that doesn't really bother me. What does annoy me is how the game gates content based on level.

From what I can see, there are two ratings for a character's effectiveness in combat: their "level", which is determined by how many skill points that character has spent, and what I'll call "equipment level", which is how many resources have been put into upgrading the character's equipment. These many well be the same number, or the "equipment level" might not even be a mechanic, but that's what I'm lead to believe based off of what the game tells the player when the player navigates into an area where the game doesn't want them to go yet.

There are several problems with this style of area-gating. First, these areas aren't on just one side of the map or one region - they're placed around the lower level areas without any sort of pattern that I've yet seen. Second, the enemies inside are drastically stronger than "random" enemies out on the streets and in "level-appropriate" missions - getting into combat with more than three almost means death unless you have excellent reactions, but even then, I don't find that style of combat enjoyable. Punishing a character for entering an area that will have content for later in the game is poor design. I don't mind if the area is un- or underpopulated at this point in the game and some people "move in" later, but having this easily accessible but nearly impossible area seemingly randomly come up while running around the map doesn't make me thing "wow, I can't wait to get better to come back here later!" but instead "wow, these enemies are artificially made so much better than me to show that this place will be used later in the game". We could talk about how combat in this game is unrealistic, but ... it's a game. Combat levels in a game like Assassin's Creed, however, is poor, or, at least, lazy, design. If there are thugs that much more powerful than trained Assassins, then I really have no hope for London.

Nonetheless, I'm enjoying the game and its return to AC roots. I'm taking the game slowly, only playing for a bit at a time - though I'm excited to play another good AC game, I haven't yet really been pulled into the game.