This review contains spoilers
This review will be QUITE LONG, since I documented my time with the game instead of just writing at the end.
Syndicate does feel as both an evolution and a step back from its predecessor, Unity.
The game has beautiful graphics and great lighting and having less crowds makes sure Syndicate runs better than Unity.The character design for the twins is very good, especially for Evie, who quickly became my favourite one.
The parkour was very reminiscing of Unity with some animations (even ones for combat or kills) were straight up pulled from Unity but it feels choppier and not as fluid as when I parkoured as Arno.
I'm really enjoying seeing a modern world and running around it as an assassin, but I do feel the weight of the scale. The city is so big, maybe a bit too much; I didn't feel that with Unity's Paris.
The rope launcher makes traversal easier, but it just highlights the problem with the scale of the city.The city is stunning and when you start to get used to the rope launcher it's an ok experience to traverse it, although the rope launcher itself is not as fast and full of momentum like in the Batman Arkham games, which makes me like it even less. There's a specific tailing mission in Sequence 6 where you have to follow a moving carriage and the city is so big and not created for the parkour that it became infuriating.
I really enjoy the stealth, especially with Evie; I do however have gripes with one of the mechanics for the liberation of the neighborhoods, the kidnapping. I hate when they make you kidnap someone in an open space, where your options are a lot more limited; also even if you are sneaky the moment you put the person in a carriage to take them away suddenly everyone knows who you are and a carriage assault happens, which I despise (the mechanics for the carriadges are honestly not that good or interesting).
Your gang, the Rooks, can also intervene during kidnappings and WILL even if you said nothing to the AI, meaning your target will run away and you will have to chase it.
Small thing that I thought, Evie can have Shao Jun's robes which honestly just makes me angry that Ubisoft only gave Ezio's successor (since she was briefly trained by him) ONLY a 2.5D platformer.
The combat is a mix of the older combat and Unity's, you can and will get jumped by too many enemies for you to kill but you are not as defenceless as in Unity. Some enemies, however, can feel spongy at times, mainly because of the leveling system. Quite interesting how Unity and Syndicate had a lot of leveling and RPG mechanics, showing Assassin's Creed did not transform into an RPG series, but it evolved into it gradually.
The side quests are nothing to write home about either, with most activities being quite boring and repetitive; after a while liberating neighborhoods stops being interesting and you are only doing it for the XP; the fact that this game's base is a moving train is a cool idea that actually fumbles the idea of a base, since what I loved about the bases in other games like Black Flag or Unity was upgrading the base.
The only side things that are overall interesting are the historic characters, which give you missions; I cannot explain the idiotic grin I had while helping Karl Marx.
The story is not the game's strong point, with the twins dividing the city and the objectives in two: While Evie is a more Assassin focuses protagonist (which is the main reason I like her more) and is focused in finding the piece of Eden before the Templars, Jacob is fixated in controlling the city through his gang called "the Rooks". The side characters are interesting, both invented like Green and real people like Karl Marx of Charles Darwin, but the main antagonist, Crawford, feels like a stereotypical "moustache twirling" villain; a step down from Unity's Germain, who felt interesting to me as he goes crazy while trying to understand his role as a Sage.
I'm not a fan of how Jacob, the male assassin, gets to have Crawford as his nemesis, while after sequence 5 it's obvious Evie, the female twin, will get only to kill the villain's helper, Lady Thorne. While the rivalry between Evie and Thorne is actually quite entertaining, Ubisoft could have easily just made London ruled by TWO templars instead of one and have one boss for each assassin.
This only gets worse as the Sequences continue with Sequence 8 being ENTIRELY dedicated to Jacob with no such sequence for Evie; a real shame Ubisoft seems to be afraid of female protagonists, they could easily make the new Lara Croft is they were not so afraid of a woman on the cover.
By the end, after both twins kill Starrick together, they
understand they are better as a duo and make up but there could have been such a better build up to their falling out and then reunification that just was not there.
What I did appreciate, though, is the World War One section with Jacob's Granddaguther,
Lydia Frye; getting to meet a young Churchill and helping during the Great War was interesting and just made me want a WW1 Assassin's Creed.
tl;dr a game that makes up for Unity's problems but has problems of it's own with a mid story, great graphics and good parkour that unfortunately gets overshadowed by how utterly big the city is.
Syndicate does feel as both an evolution and a step back from its predecessor, Unity.
The game has beautiful graphics and great lighting and having less crowds makes sure Syndicate runs better than Unity.The character design for the twins is very good, especially for Evie, who quickly became my favourite one.
The parkour was very reminiscing of Unity with some animations (even ones for combat or kills) were straight up pulled from Unity but it feels choppier and not as fluid as when I parkoured as Arno.
I'm really enjoying seeing a modern world and running around it as an assassin, but I do feel the weight of the scale. The city is so big, maybe a bit too much; I didn't feel that with Unity's Paris.
The rope launcher makes traversal easier, but it just highlights the problem with the scale of the city.The city is stunning and when you start to get used to the rope launcher it's an ok experience to traverse it, although the rope launcher itself is not as fast and full of momentum like in the Batman Arkham games, which makes me like it even less. There's a specific tailing mission in Sequence 6 where you have to follow a moving carriage and the city is so big and not created for the parkour that it became infuriating.
I really enjoy the stealth, especially with Evie; I do however have gripes with one of the mechanics for the liberation of the neighborhoods, the kidnapping. I hate when they make you kidnap someone in an open space, where your options are a lot more limited; also even if you are sneaky the moment you put the person in a carriage to take them away suddenly everyone knows who you are and a carriage assault happens, which I despise (the mechanics for the carriadges are honestly not that good or interesting).
Your gang, the Rooks, can also intervene during kidnappings and WILL even if you said nothing to the AI, meaning your target will run away and you will have to chase it.
Small thing that I thought, Evie can have Shao Jun's robes which honestly just makes me angry that Ubisoft only gave Ezio's successor (since she was briefly trained by him) ONLY a 2.5D platformer.
The combat is a mix of the older combat and Unity's, you can and will get jumped by too many enemies for you to kill but you are not as defenceless as in Unity. Some enemies, however, can feel spongy at times, mainly because of the leveling system. Quite interesting how Unity and Syndicate had a lot of leveling and RPG mechanics, showing Assassin's Creed did not transform into an RPG series, but it evolved into it gradually.
The side quests are nothing to write home about either, with most activities being quite boring and repetitive; after a while liberating neighborhoods stops being interesting and you are only doing it for the XP; the fact that this game's base is a moving train is a cool idea that actually fumbles the idea of a base, since what I loved about the bases in other games like Black Flag or Unity was upgrading the base.
The only side things that are overall interesting are the historic characters, which give you missions; I cannot explain the idiotic grin I had while helping Karl Marx.
The story is not the game's strong point, with the twins dividing the city and the objectives in two: While Evie is a more Assassin focuses protagonist (which is the main reason I like her more) and is focused in finding the piece of Eden before the Templars, Jacob is fixated in controlling the city through his gang called "the Rooks". The side characters are interesting, both invented like Green and real people like Karl Marx of Charles Darwin, but the main antagonist, Crawford, feels like a stereotypical "moustache twirling" villain; a step down from Unity's Germain, who felt interesting to me as he goes crazy while trying to understand his role as a Sage.
I'm not a fan of how Jacob, the male assassin, gets to have Crawford as his nemesis, while after sequence 5 it's obvious Evie, the female twin, will get only to kill the villain's helper, Lady Thorne. While the rivalry between Evie and Thorne is actually quite entertaining, Ubisoft could have easily just made London ruled by TWO templars instead of one and have one boss for each assassin.
This only gets worse as the Sequences continue with Sequence 8 being ENTIRELY dedicated to Jacob with no such sequence for Evie; a real shame Ubisoft seems to be afraid of female protagonists, they could easily make the new Lara Croft is they were not so afraid of a woman on the cover.
By the end, after both twins kill Starrick together, they
understand they are better as a duo and make up but there could have been such a better build up to their falling out and then reunification that just was not there.
What I did appreciate, though, is the World War One section with Jacob's Granddaguther,
Lydia Frye; getting to meet a young Churchill and helping during the Great War was interesting and just made me want a WW1 Assassin's Creed.
tl;dr a game that makes up for Unity's problems but has problems of it's own with a mid story, great graphics and good parkour that unfortunately gets overshadowed by how utterly big the city is.