The problem with Syndicate isn't that it doesn't do anything right but rather that the things it fucks up are deal breakers.

Not being able to jump and the parkour being reduced to its shallowest form, combat being one button for attack, one for dodge and one to break guard and the enemies taking forever to die. A lighthearted story with a whole lot of cringey jokes doesn't work too well with a setting this grim and depressing. They scaled down on the side content but that doesnt mean quality over quantity but rather the same 4 copy pasted missions in every district, sometimes more than once, the average collectables and the fight club thingy that's fine but not memorable.

But oh well it does some things right, for starters it gets the stealth right. Being able to crouch is thankfully back though having 2 equippable items isnt back so your options are once again more limited. You can use the rope launcher to get yourself from point to point and it makes stealth more dynamic even if otherwise the rope launcher amounts to nothing but press R to skip the parkour.

And it has a few decent missions ig? The blackbox missions are cool yet very easy and feel like a downgrade from Unity since the parkour and combat aren’t as good even if the unique kills and the opportunities are arguably more consistently useful. Besides those there’s the carriage chases which are silly fun and...that’s it tbh.

I want to like Syndicate, I really do, it was one of the first AC games I ever played and the 2nd I finished, I loved it back in early 2017 when I first finished it but going back, it doesn’t hold up to me.

I get why it’s fun to some but idk I found most of it rather boring.

Likable protagonists and good allies but poor antagonists that get little time to do anything, usual poor use of history with the your characters helping out people like the Queen of England. Side missions are better than main, the main missions usually have you doing fairly dull by the numbers things, side missions can have you doing things like ghost hunting with Charles Dickens. The rope launcher is a great addition for travel and stealth though the world. London looks good and the soundtrack fits well, though it doesn't give you much variety, even side activities that take place in WWI take place in the same city. Having a train base that travels around the city is a cool feature. The game doesn't always control well, it fights you when you want to climb down and counters and multi-finishers just don't want to work sometimes. Adding a levels makes it even more unbalanced than before but with how easy the past games are it isn't that big of a deal. Combat looks good but the long finishers that make you invincible to enemy attacks during the animation always looks strange. A poor finale with a ridiculous boss fight that seemingly had the antagonist teleport to a different location so you could fight him is a disappointing end to the main story.

More than makes up for the mistakes of Unity. This is the first time the actual time-period itself affected the feel of the gameplay for me. Syndicate sees the return of a more traditional Assassin's Creed style of gameplay. The changes to the established formula made in its most direct predecessor are still present, only now much better implemented. I still think it's kind of dumb to have a leveling up system in an AC game (why should I have to buy abilities I started off with in the other games?), but it too won me over by the end. There's a real feeling of growing more powerful and capable as you progress through Syndicate's many activities.

This entry in the series takes some notes from the playbooks of gaming's other biggest open-world franchises. Most notably Rocksteady's Arkham games. The open environments the missions take place in, as well as the wide variety of items and abilities at your disposal, encourage experimentation and allow you to find your own solutions and playstyles like never before. Even the fluid combat system that has you juggling multiple foes brought back memories of taking out thugs as The Dark Knight. The inclusion of multiple paths to your target and various opportunities that can lead to unique kills reinvigorate the series' big assassinations. Things like the new zip-line tool and the implementation of carriages make navigating the open-world more exciting than ever. The latter giving the game something of a Grand Theft Auto vibe.

The story is where things take a slight hit. You'll meet cool characters and the protagonists are great. Kudos to Ubisoft for finally having making an entry in the main series with a playable female character (even if she does have to share the spotlight with a male counterpart). I'll even forgive them for the fact that she isn't the more likable of two leads. The events themselves just aren't that interesting. Some bland villain is taking over London, is after some precursor artifact, and blah, blah, blah. We've all seen it before. Only never with such a dorky final boss fight. The modern day story continues going nowhere. Only now there's some stuff about cloning! We just watch Rebecca and Shaun do some stuff in the occasional cutscene because the people at Ubisoft think we like them for some reason. While killing off Desmond was a pretty gutsy and unexpected move, it's clear they haven't had any idea what to do with this part of the universe for some time now as a result. They've even removed it from the gameplay side of things.

Narrative shortcomings aside, this is a phenomenal return to form for Assassin's Creed. One that even brings some much needed change to things. It's brimming with content to the point where you won't even care about the lack of multiplayer. This some of the smoothest gameplay the series has seen and one of its best settings. Syndicate makes the franchise worth returning to after it reached it's lowest point with Unity. Let me tell you, it's one heck of a comeback.

9/10