Noirit Mustapha

Ubisoft had faced a rather rocky year after 2014, following the inane launch of Assassin’s Creed: Unity, a game that they hyped up about forever, only for it to be marred by all sorts of bugs and glitches. It did not help either that fixing even some of the said issues needed a huge patch. Thanks to all of that, expectations for the following game, Syndicate, were wilder. Perhaps because of those lower expectations or learning from their mistakes, Syndicate is a a far better game in a lot of ways.
The game takes place during the Victorian era, in the year 1868. This marks the first time in the series’ history where we control not one, but two distinct characters. Twins Jacob and Evie Frye set forth for London where they find the city overtaken not just by gangs, but also their longtime nemeses, the Templars. With the help of strategist Henry Green and many other familiar historical names, Jacob and Evie will take London by storm as they form their own local gang and fight to take back the city.
The biggest changes within the gameplay are in the exploration and the combat. Just like in Unity and before 3, Syndicate takes place entirely on land, so there is no naval exploration like in 4 or Rogue. However, every feature on land has been refined to its fullest yet, especially with the combat. Before, one could easily counter every attack and defeat all enemies. Here however, countering is only a defensive feature, and players must throw their punches carefully in order to defeat huge crowds of enemies. Parkour is slightly less smooth than Unity, but this is compensated with the addition of a grappling hook. This tool, once unlocked, can be used to traverse long distances both vertical and horizontal. Rather than any new feature becoming too strong in its own way, they added perfectly onto the already existing gameplay foundation of the franchise. It also helps that the game is technically far superior to Unity, so it runs even better with far fewer glitches and crashes.
However, the storyline is where Syndicate suffers slightly. The characters are all full of life and humorous and varied in their own way, but the main plot of the game leaves little to be excited for. Not to say that the story is bad in any way, there are indeed some moments impressively written. But being capable of grander and more thought-provoking stories like with Rogue, a little more was expected from Ubisoft after Unity. The game once again lets you go about the world as freely as you wish, though that might mean putting off the story until much later. Alongside that are the twins themselves. They have great and distinct personalities, but because of sharing a similar skill tree, they ultimately end up being almost the same kind of assassin during gameplay, despite the original hype that they’d both be radically different. Nevertheless, Syndicate manages to hold its own as an extremely solid and engaging game to play through, and probably the best assassin game in terms of pure character gameplay. If the year-long break they’re taking actually shows signs of improvement in future games, then we can definitely hope to see far better refinement in the series.