Assassin’s Creed: Unity - New wine old bottle

After the disastrous launch of Assassin’s Creed: Unity, many were skeptical of how Ubisoft will release another game in this series that match the standards set by the Ezio trilogy and Black Flag.

Parts of that resulted in AC Syndicate being far less ambitious than Unity as the game looks worse, has depleted customisation options and a lot less NPCs on screen. But that has also made it free of any of the technical issues that Unity faced. Characters are also well written and interesting, as compared to the rather boring and forgettable cast of Unity.

This year, AC is set in Victorian era London and players control dual protagonists for the first time.

Evie and Jacob are twins who move to London to fulfill their own agendas. Jacob wants to just have fun liberating the city from templar control, while Evie is more concerned with finding a particular Piece of Eden before the templars get their hands on it. Except for story missions, you are free to play as any of the two characters. The present day storyline has not been forgotten but you are still limited to cutscenes featuring Shawn and Rebecca.

Syndicate has three main pillars of content — story missions, side activities and London stories. Story missions follow the twins as they try to reach their goals while London stories are based on famous historical figures. Side activities consist of assassinating or kidnapping targets, eliminating enemy presence at a hideout or freeing children who are forced to work in factories. Once all of the side activities have been completed in a borough, players can initiate a gang war and take control of that borough.

Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate almost feels like a sequel to the Ezio games that came out a few years too late. It takes the best parts of the previous games and tries to hide a lot of the problems that have plagued the series. But it also feels very old. It is still a genuinely great AC game, but your enjoyment will depend on how much you wanted the series to change.