I’m finally ready to review Assassin’s Creed Syndicate! I say finally because I am finally at a point where I have finished the main story and achieved a completion percentage higher than I’ve ever had in any previous game in the franchise. As always, I like to start my reviews off by portraying the overall sentiment: Syndicate was a phenomenal game, and one of the best in this franchise.

Story, Setting, and Overall Presentation (No story spoilers)

I’m a huge fan of the Assassin’s Creed story arch. You either love it or you hate it, and I think it drives these games forward and allows Unisoft to create relatively similar titles one after the other without them being too stale. Unlike Unity, which had absolutely no connection to the modern day world, Syndicate at least uses cutscenes between sequences to progress a story.

You’re once again the nameless “player” in the “game” working to uncover a secret from the past that will help the present-day Assassin’s uncover information about a relic. At the end of the game, these sequences finally tie back to the overall story we last saw back from Black Flag. I really liked the revelations in the end.

The setting of London is fantastic, and Ubisoft’s presentation of the city and its boroughs has set the bar so dang high I can’t help but worry that the next game’s city-play will disappoint. London is undergoing its industrial revolution. Gangs, child labor, and socioeconomic disparities abound. This time and place, despite the horrific atrocities, make for an awesome setting that (hard for me to say) beats even the great pirates of the caribbean motif from Black Flag.

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London is divided into boroughs that each do a great job of telling the story of what’s happening in the city. Taking over the boroughs requires you to complete a variety of missions like killing a named templar, defeating a stronghold, kidnapping someone (cool new feature), or rescuing orphans. Side missions also play a huge role in defining the setting too. Marx, Dickens, Darwin, etc., all make appearances and have missions throughout the city.

Oh, and your base of operations is a friggin personal train that actually moves around the entire city. ’nuff said there! (more…)