Fun with friends

Easy to recommend. Old school fun with newer upgrade/customization elements. More games should be this smart.

As a huge Assassin's Creed fan, I'm one of the few people that not only have played almost every single entry multiple times, but I would even say Syndicate was my #3 or #2 favorite entry, so with that in mind, I'll say I liked this game but with some problems:

-I like that they changed up the gameplay & the combat dramatically, but I do miss having your fighting/attacks lock onto an opponent. This is more free swinging like Skyrim or Dark Souls. I guess there's nothing wrong with it, but I wasn't in the group of people that was clamoring for change to the gameplay.

-The map is too big. If it was only half the size with half the quests, it would still be absolutely huge. It's nice to say "Look at how big of a map we can make" but ultimately, you're doing the same things over & over in each area just with different level of enemies.

-The story started out great, but by the end, it started to feel like fan fiction of previous Assassin's Creed games. I recall at one point the bad guys were reciting Haytham Kenway lines & it was really cheesy. The concept of the targets/bosses being based off of Egyptian gods (The Ram, The Hyena, The Scarab, The Jackal, etc) was cool, but half of them really had no involvement in anything that would really catch anyone's attention or weren't given any real development or purpose (The Crocodile wasn't given a single word of dialogue until their death scene). That being said, while I did enjoy the twists & the overall story, I would say it was one of the weaker entries along side the stories of Revelations or Unity. I probably also got fatigued with the game for how utterly long & big it is. The thing with these Assassins Creed games is the stories usually involve loss of family members (brothers/father, mother, wife, father/father figure, father, son), I'd like to see something different there.

I'm pretty fatigued from the game after 60-70 hours, and it's pretty disappointing that Oddysey looks exactly the same as this game, so much that it's basically an expansion or season pass with more of the same. I'd like to see more innovation, smaller maps, more focused stories, the return of Brotherhood/allies, less story/twists involving family. I'd also like another game from the Templars perspective like Rogue & would rather they go farther into the future than deeper in the past.

Why do I have to do 3 card shuffle? Give me a choice.

As a generic first person shooter where you kill nazis (and later on, zombie nazis) it was really good. Where it lacks though, I don't care about the story, the voice acting was almostn on-existent, there were no cinematics (except in between levels which really don't even count if you see them) and the combat is never broken up by anything else other than more combat. No puzzles, no exploration, an almost worthless upgrade element and very linear overall.

But I liked it. It's got a little bit of modern edge to it for a classic style FPS.

They need to get rid of quicktime events in these "games". Other than that, a solid 9.5/10 for what it aims to be.

Bring back easy mode.

Pros:

-New upgrades to mechanically great gameplay
-Bat mobile is fun most of the time
-Awesome story, I really loved it & can't overstate that I loved the voice acting & story to the game.
-The gameplay has always been fun

Cons:

-Bat mobile gets over used sometimes
-Too many drone fights
-Some of the boss fights are too long, especially any involving the Bat mobile
-Robin and Batgirl get married? Where did that come from? Very unnecessary.


-I thought the DLC would take too long, but it's actually really easy. Yeah, you have to get 21 stars with the extra characters, but there's a ton of maps to do it on so you don't have to touch the predator maps. Half of the car related DLC achievements you can do on the 1 lap maps, one of them is an easy sub 30 seconds I did 7 times.
-Story related DLC was okay, not great but okay. I'd really only recommend the season pass if you absolutely know you're a diehard Batman fan and loved the previous Arkham games. The Catwoman DLC really sucked though.

I was very critical of Unity. The story was unfocused, Arno had very little character development and just felt like an Ezio copy. The gameplay was changed for the worse, I only remember 3 characters (including the main playable) and it was too crowded.

Syndicate feels like a true AC game, better than the Ezio trilogy. The best part is having two characters makes for more to go off of for them. Jacob is a fighter & takes the most action, but his weakness is that he causes the most chaos. Evie is the stealth character that is much smarter & applies critical thinking to situations, but at times doesn't take enough action to help out. Having the character flaws isn't bad, they both make up for it with a yin/yang mix as twins.

The villains this time are FAR more memorable. Each character got so much more development and much better blue screen deaths than in the past. Having each character's role outlined (ie: the banker, the scientist, the doctor, the transporter, etc) makes their missions, motives, character traits far more memorable.

The actual assassination missions were the best. Not since AC1 have I looked forward to actual Templar assassinations, but that was because AC1 had ♥♥♥♥♥♥ gameplay elsewhere other than the assassinations.

The music is incredible, by far the best since AC2 & Brotherhood's soundtrack but actually I'd say even better.

Here are my complaints:

-At the beginning, the Mentor named George lectures the twins about staying away from London. They disobey him and he's never heard from again. I was expecting him to show up in sequence 4 or 5 with his monacle broken & jowels flapping. I was disappointed.

-The main villain, Crawford Starrick, is a really good presence & very well acted. However, literally every scene but the final sequence has him in his office assigning other people to do dirty work. He never does any actual fieldwork or has any interaction with them face to face. Granted, you can say "Well, London was completely under his control so he didn't need to leave his office", but tha'ts weak.

-The sidequests have very little payoff. I only did them for fun. Hell, I cleared out a huge chunk of chests & collectibles for fun, but that was just me enjoying the game. There really is no actual payoff to it unless if I was achievement hunting, which I'm not on Ubiplay garbage.

Anyway, great game, worth the $20 I spent it on. Hope the one in 2017 is even better.

You know, I was having fun.

But the game kept crashing and crashing. I'd google things and the most I found was that other people had the same problem, tried a bunch of different things, but Ubisoft apparently has never fixed the core of the problem. And it's weird, because I literally just bought a new gaming PC for next-gen games like this, so it can't be that I don't have a good enough PC. I tried moving my settings down to the bare minimum, and it wouldn't work.

Even when things weren't crashing, to be honest I was actually getting bored of the game. The Shangri La mission pissed me off, then the game crashed & I had to do it again. Then I was doing some retarded stealth mission and the game crashed again. That's enough.

I wouldn't enjoyed conquering the later fortresses & outposts, dealing with harder enemies, maybe even getting see the end of hte game's story. But I'm not going to put up with a problem that I can't fix.

♥♥♥♥ you Ubisoft.