Over the past few years, the Assassin’s Creed brand has had a bit of an up and down cycle. AC III tended to turn many people off, while AC IV: Black Flag regained a lot of fans, but with the troublesome launch of AC: Unity last year, the gaming world was split on what would happen from here. This brings us to the newest annual installment to the historic cloak-and-blade franchise, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. Now bringing the player to Victorian London at the turn of the Industrial Revolution, circa 1868, the player follows Jacob and Evie Frye, twins born from an Assassin father, as they take back London from the control of the Templars. The setup is simple, serviceable, and this game is a damn good contender for the best game in the franchise.

Let’s start from the beginning and analyze the story. Jacob and Evie Frye are born and trained Assassins, and both are really good at what they do. They’ve been sticking to the edges of London at the advice of the Assassin Council and eliminating sparse Templar leaders from entering the great city. After killing a couple people and blowing up a Piece of Eden, Jacob and Evie have their own little quips to each other that any sibling would relate to. Their personal leader strongly urges them to remain on the outskirts of Britain and remove Templar forces from there, however Jacob has a better idea: head straight for the source of Templar control in Britain, London itself. Evie at first declines, but agrees that it’s a smarter move than picking off small fry forever, so the two set off to London without their leader. There, they meet up with fellow Indian Assassin, Henry Green, and he tells them that basically the three of them are the only force of Assassins present in London, as the gang the Blighters are controlled by Templars, along with manufacturing plants and even circulation of medicine. Among other people to meet are famous scientists like Charles Darwin, famous personas like Charles Dickens and Nurse Nightingale, and even the Queen herself at one point. Evie seeks to destroy the Templar control, while Jacob…well, he kinda just wants to create his own gang called the Rooks. Either way, the two embark to dismantle the Templar’s grip on London.

The story admittedly is a huge departure from typical Assassin’s Creed format. For one, the events in Syndicate are fueled by whim and simply dismantling Templar control, rather than revenge, freedom, or literally any other different reason that the past games have been driven by. While at first, the simplistic setup can be a bit jarring, just coming off the story of Unity that had complete philosophical questioning and reasoning, but soon you catch onto the game’s charm. The mere writing in this game is completely overhauled to match, getting rid of simple story-moving dialogue and putting in a good deal of humor. Jacob and Evie being siblings, they have to both be willing to stand beside each other in times of need, but also be at the cusp of punching each other in the face, and the game for the most part pulls it off. Almost every scene they’re in, they’re cracking jokes to each other and also poking fun at each other at the same time. Despite the story’s simplicity, it is actually relieving to have a story that isn’t bordering on destroying the world or misplaced righteousness or questioning vengeance as a good end, it simply is just stopping Templars from being naughty.

One end that the charm does pass onto is the other side of the coin, the Templars. While some of the Templars this time are forgettable, a select few are devious but charming, as a good villain should be. The game’s main villain, Crawford Starrick, is an embodiment of intimidation and charm, and may actually be my favorite Assassin’s Creed villain, despite how he isn’t in a whole lot of scenes. Rather than be just menacing and nothing else, like Rodrigo Borgia, and rather than a damn cartoon character, like Cesare was, Starrick is soft-spoken, and in most cases is speaking slowly and with deep diction. Very rarely does he ever lose his cool, and when he does it’s frightening.

However, a segment of the story that is both good and bad is the returning modern day segments. Much in the vein of Unity’s segments, you are in the body of an Initiate, aiding a woman called Bishop in locating the Piece of Eden that is hidden in London. This time, however, you aren’t only just watching clips of Bishop, as an actual story happens this time. Long-time fans of Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane will be happy to know that they make their return in Syndicate, them being the ground team to extract the Piece of Eden once they know where it is. Not only them, but Osto Berg and Violet De Costa, introduced in AC: Rogue, also return to be the Sigma team that keeps them from reaching it. While I still preferred walking around in modern day rather than being fed a story through clips, it’s a significant step up from Unity’s modern day segments, and has actual progress at the end. Not only that, the secret Helix mission allows more insight into the First Civilization, along with an expanded understanding of the Sages, introduced in AC IV. So all in all, despite its overall simple structure and somewhat lacking ending, the game’s story is well executed with likeable protagonists, intimidating antagonists, and a healthy expansion on Assassin’s Creed’s more intricate plots.

Here we move onto the core of the game, and boy are things different. The setting being in London at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the hustle and bustle of city-life brings a new-found look to Assassin’s Creed not quite captured before. Rather than a couple 2-story buildings and the occasional tower, buildings in certain districts are as tall as they can be, and they didn’t cut corners on the size of the city. Rather than previous games where you just wandered into a new district and didn’t notice, each district has its own feel, ranging from the huge buildings of the City of London, the magnificent waterway the Thames, and the regal appearance of Westminster. But of course, the bigger the city gets, the more annoying it gets to traverse everywhere, or it would’ve been if the team didn’t develop multiple modes of transportation. First is the carriage system, making the huge city more accessible at the speed of the reigns rather than on foot. Surprisingly, the use of carriages is moderately encouraged most of the time, as you’ll be hopping into them without really thinking about it. Omnibuses are my personal favorite, as you can hijack them and ram into things as passengers are oddly complacent about it. Secondly is your home base of operations, the train system, which runs through all of London.

Thirdly is this game’s major addition, which is the Rope Launcher. While climbing buildings was fun before in the franchise, climbing increasingly huge buildings gets a bit tiresome. However, in this game traversal on rooftops and even from the street are a non-issue. After Sequence 3 and meeting Alexander Graham Bell, he fashions you the device to scale buildings and cross streets in next to no time. Basically the device works as a primitive Bat Grappling Hook, allowing you to zip up buildings and even set up ziplines to perform an aerial assassination if a target is a bit too far away. At first, the thing seems a bit gimmicky, but once you get used to it, it’s an integral part of navigation, allowing you to zip across town at a much faster rate than going to street level and going back up a building by hand. The thing is a bit finicky sometimes, as it’ll stay locked on one corner unless you force it to unlock and relock it to the corner you want, but you are able to use it while running, so it helps keep the pace up. Traversal the old fashioned way works as well, but as more buildings have less edges to grab hold to, in most cases you’ll stick to the Rope Launcher.

Now that traversal’s out of the way, we move onto the game’s second major core gameplay, combat. Now Assassin’s Creed for a while has been stealth-focused and encouraged everyone to play it in the shadows to progress easier. The problem was that in some cases, people went full force anyway and let the Gods decide whether they lived or not. This time, the game encourages neither way, but lets the player really do what they want, as combat has been completely revamped. Stealth works just as well as it did last time, with crouching, hiding behind corners, and lodging throwing knives into skulls, but combat isn’t stripped for the sake of making the player keep it stealthy. In fact, combat is not necessarily complex, but just simply a good deal of fun. Instead of fancy sword swings and waiting for strikes to come, facing off against enemies has been sped up tremendously. Throwing punches and countering happen at a quicker pace, which makes the fighting slightly more difficult, but exponentially more fun. Rather than something to avoid, the sheer number of fights you get in on purpose to just have a good bout is higher than you expect. Maybe half of the reason is to watch some of the outright brutal finishers that Jacob and Evie have. Watching Jacob or Evie break a man’s limbs piece by piece and THEN throw him into a train is both sickening and delightful to watch. They also have multiple finishers, so it’s fun to try to find each and every finisher that they can do.

However, you still have to be weary of enemies, as they’ve gotten a power boost too. In each of the districts is a Templar controlled area, where you complete Conquest Missions to regain control. Once all Templar Conquest missions are complete, you face off against the District Gang Leader in a Gang War to gain final control. Outside of the Conquest Missions are Memory missions, which pertain to a famous person living in that time period, and side missions such as competitions at Fight Clubs, Carriage Racing, and even pulling off Cargo Robberies and Train Robberies. With the money you earn from these missions, you can purchase or craft new weapons, such as cane swords or brass knuckles, and while the customization is no where near as expansive as Unity's, it still serves its purpose to provide the player with the style they need to break necks. The thing is that each district has its own level of difficulty, and rather than having Unity’s 5-star system, the ranking system has been boosted to a max of 10. Not only that, if you’re not careful, sometimes a higher level enemy will be in an area that is lower leveled, so open conflict is not as encouraged as some of the more blunt fights. For these situations, you can swap between Jacob and Evie at any time and complete any mission as either character except for the Main Story missions, where they have their own missions.

At the beginning of the game, you can use Jacob for brute force and open conflict, while Evie has more sneaking ability and is harder to detect. The more you play the game, the more XP you get which can then be used to purchase upgrades to make your Assassin of choice more deadly. While it was possible before to just level up and wreak havoc, now it’s suggested to not play a mission that’s a higher level than you currently are, as your weapons are less effective against higher levels unless you upgraded properly. You can even upgrade your gang to influence London itself, such as a returning bank system modeled as Monteriggioni was, and even upgrading to have enemies not start fights with you unless you fight them. The upgrading system in this incarnation is much more expansive in just how many upgrades you get and their actual influence on gameplay, like a counter-shot and even turning invisible for Evie. So the gameplay of Syndicate is a bit the same in terms of base structure, but the new traversal system, combat, and upgrading system flesh out the game as a new experience all together to not get something complex, but something that is just wholly a damn good time.

Now for the thing everyone’s curious about, which is the overall presentation. Graphics this time aren’t too different from last year’s outing, but the most different thing is a vibrant color change. Rather than Unity’s more realistic pales, Syndicate goes for more colorful contrasts, such as moss growing on brick housing, and in general a lot more greenery and reds. The smoke billowing out of chimneys and into the air is cool looking, and the Global Illumination is still just as good. Clothing and models haven’t changed much, outside of general enhancements, but hair and face capture have been improved noticeably, and the frame rate doesn’t drop as much, however it still does when a whole lot is on screen. Syndicate does actually have a day-night cycle, and weather effects like rain are amazing to look at during the nighttime, especially with the soft glow of the gas lights bouncing off rain drops. So graphical performance has been made more stable than prettier, but it still has improvements that make the game look good nonetheless.

The real star of the show is the sound design. Sound design in Assassin’s Creed has always been weird, with the low-quality Arabic shouts in the first game with non-existent sounds in later installments. But in this game, they have their wits about them. Sound effects of running and jumping aren’t any different, but fighting is made all the more brutal by the more appropriate sounds of crunching bones. Hearing each bone snap with different sounds brings the game a sense of realism, along with a sense of pain. As if you already didn’t have a reason to just start a random fight. Secondly is the soundtrack, which I will declare hands-down is the best soundtrack in the series (sorry Jesper Kyd). Composed by the Grammy-nominated composer of Journey, Austin Wintory, the game is peppered with magnificent music. Not only the usual background songs for fighting, but the soundtrack also includes vocal songs that are composed in the style of a bar song, each written for each of the game’s antagonists, my personal favorite vocal track being “Underground.” There’s also a nice treat in the song “Family.” It seems finally the sound design is completely fantastic without a problem to note.

AC: Syndicate provides multiple improvements to the Assassin’s Creed formula without taking much. With only some finicky controls, a lackluster ending, and not too much of a graphical enhancement working against it, the game’s good portions shine magnificently. The simple, yet light-hearted and comedic story is charming and a good break from the serious stuff. The gameplay is fluffed with all the good stuff, including multiple traversal options, the rope launcher making navigation by foot much faster and fluid, and the combat being downright a blast. The graphics, while not too improved, have their moments and the sound design is far improved over previous installments. Syndicate is a complete healthy step forward for the franchise, and while not perfect, will probably be debated to be the best game in the franchise. Syndicate is simply, a bloody good time.

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