Assassin's Creed Syndicate: 8 Years Later

8 years? Fuck.

syndicate is my second fav ac game, unity is close competition, this is a super fun time in history, love the two character system gave you a better rp experience, only thing I didn't like was lack of content( although that's true of ALOT of ac games and other games lately)

Only just discovered Syndicate this year, great game. Grew up with the original AC games up to Black Flag.

The string of games after this just came a time in my life when I was leaving Uni and had bigger stuff going on. I never got a PS4 etc.

I don’t regret focusing on me and my career. It paid off. I’m enjoying playing through them now.

I lived and worked in the city (i.e. London) for some time and I really got to know the map area in real life over lockdown. The map in this game is surprisingly accurate and I pretty much knew where I was going a lot of the time.

Would highly recommend even if you just want to use it to visit London virtually!

Synidicate for me is unity that grew up in poverty

i don't know if i zoned out for a second but did you mention the world war 1 bit?

So people start to appreciate old trash because the new trash is trashier?

Syndicate is my personal favorite out of all them🤷🏾

syndicate is garbage. what are you talking bout? lol

I don't think the game was bad, but black flag was so good that it overshadowed the 2 titles that came after it hence the revamp in the title, I might've not enjoyed it as much as unity but its still was a decent game that got overshadowed by black flag and got ruined because of how buggy unity came out

simply amazing such and easy and quick fix thank you

Why is it almost every time its "oh,well a mod makes this better."

The only things I didn't like was the combat. Felt so weird to have everyone be a damage sponge and them just swaying back and forth stunned. Looked goofy at times.

Templars are just Your generic bad guys they want the pieces of Eden to control the world so the fact that Crawford Starrick wanted that isn’t all that Surprising to me

This game is set in the same era as The Order 1886. I wish there would have been some sort of crossover between the two games but its only fan fiction right now. The Order 1886 is also a great game.

I thought syndicate was a great game, but origins is my favorite

Let's not forget that the boss fight, the guy is wearing the shroud draped over his shoulders while engaging in hand to hand combat.

Proof that nobody who worked on this game and story has ever trained hand to hand combat.

Most grappling starts with hand fighting to get grips. You get grips on the person, but more usefully, if the opponent is wearing clothes, you grab things like lapels, sleeves and belts.

It is painfully obvious that an assassin who knows how to handle themselves in a fight should see that shroud and not just reach out and take grips. Or if they can't touch the shroud itself, grab the other clothing and start mussing shit up. It would fall to the ground in seconds. It's not tied on to him. It's not under his jacket. It's just over his shoulders.

Landing blow after blow on his person, but not grabbing the shroud is just fucking stupid fight choreography.

More SJW shit writing because they fundamentally do not understand how things work.

On the note of feminism in this game, notice how they added it in the most empty way possible.

Twins, which are supposed to share DNA (which works for identical twins, not fraternal twins, which a brother and sister must be) already breaks the lore of the animus.

But she is brought in to replace a more compelling protagonist in Samuel Fay. And she isn't more compelling, but she's more interesting than Jake.

And of course management dialed her back because apparently the customer base doesn't like female protagonists (tomb raider anyone? Metroid? Bla bla bla).

So they force you to use Jake more, but people still prefer to use Evie because she plays more like an assassin.

Perfect example of SJW writers not understanding the purpose and function of lore.

And then you have the villain.

It is inescapable that the villain always makes the story.

In AC 1, the villain is Altair's ego and his master. And it works. Much better than if the enemy were the Templar who bitchslaps you st the beginning.

In AC 2, the enemy was not as clear, but the act that made them the enemy was, and it worked. But in Brotherhood, the enemy was one of the most villainous people in human history, Cesare Borgia. Killed his dad, fucked his sister, had his face placed in artwork to depict Jesus. Dude was about as close as you can get to a cartoon villain without leaving the bounds of actual history. Revelations, the enemy was less well defined and although the game was better in some gameplay aspects, it was less memorable. Ironically, the enemy had once again returned to internal as it was also showing the enemy of Time. And mortality.

AC 3, the enemy was Charles Lee. Which worked OK. And Connor's father Haytham... Which worked very well.

Black flag wasn't really AC.

Unity fumbled this a bit, but when the story shone, was the moments when the villain became clear, be it the Brotherhood council, Arno's despair and drink, or Templars. Still, where unity failed, it failed most with its villains. Bellec had tons of potential but was so poorly handled, it was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

In syndicate, the female villain was better than the male villain.

But I guess we couldn't have worked that in to the plot because management is made up of morons. And we couldn't have Starrick and a female villain working together only to reveal that Starrick was pushed by a sociopathic woman because that wouldn't make women look good and isn't good feminism. And of course they don't like too much heterosexuality happening either.

Evie obviously ends up with Henry (thank the goshes he's brown!) and Jake is kinda bi.

Ugh. SJW writing is so fucking bad.

Alexander Bell was wasted - as was basically everything else that had potential in this game).

But given that there is a slight steam punk vibe in the game, it would have been cool to have seen him say something like, "I'm not that kind of engineer" when asked to make something like the rope launcher, which is clearly adapted from the phantom blade wrist crossbows of Unity.

Instead, it might be cool if you had a wrist launcher for a stun dart that might act like a taser. Wind it up and start a countdown. Or wind it up and then engage it with a countdown. Could be useful for a ghost run, a non-lethal option for the phantom blade or even wrist blade. Maybe add in some hog-tie and gag mechanics for stealth entry to buildings..

Now that would have been fun... And immersive.

Wow. This is the first I've heard of Samuel Fay.

And the fact that it was removed because of bullshit SJW reasons, which also made the tone wonk, well it all just fits...

That is why this entry in the franchise failed. It got hijacked by idiot SJWs.

I've been saying this for years... The problem with SJW writers is that they fundamentally do not understand the purpose and function of lore.

This is because they do not understand how things work.

And this is because they lack curiosity.

"write about what you know" is a formula that falls apart when the writer doesn't know anything, but just has a bunch of fanciful ideas about how things work in their made up fantasy land.

The rope launcher is an example of this too.

It works in Batman games because Batman is a superhero from a superhero comic book where people have magical powers.

AC didn't start out with a universe of magic. It started off with a tiny bit of something unusual because Desmond and maybe a few others had a particular ability to see in a different spectrum of light, which can be explained naturally, since this is an actual condition. There are actually some people who can see into the uv spectrum, just like many animals and insects can.

It's grounded in reality, although ultimately fictional. In writing, this is called verisimilitude. When you break that, you have to set rules to try to preserve the verisimilitude.

Dragonlance for example is a universe with magic. But it doesn't do away with consequence and turn Raistlin the mage into an invincible powerhouse.

But the rope launcher is essentially a magic bauble.

Even with today's technology, we can get about 30 feet, although it's much more bulky. And it winches up, very slowly... And requires significant external power.

SJW writers don't know this because they are incurious.

There is a great deal more that they don't know and understand because of this lack of curiosity and the whole thing becomes superficial and lacks depth...

And that becomes the game.

It's no different from any other situation where SJW writers ruin a franchise with their shitty work.

Unity needed another 1.5 years. And firing their entire writing team for the abysmal plot.

Syndicate needed another 2-3 years. And public execution of their entire writing and character staff.

Atrocious. Ubisoft management has absolutely destroyed something that started with potential to be the best games ever made.

Just paid 6$ for unity deluxe on steam sale. It was only ac game on sale, I was told it's because mirage uses same systems so it kinda promotional. I don't dig on the games after syndicate but on a sale I'd pay 5$ for it.

Syndicate is my 2nd favorite AC game, and having played and completely 100% every AC game, I think it and Unity are my personal golden era of AC just barely surpassing the Ezio trilogy. Then again, My top 5 AC games are some of the least popular ones compared to the likes of AC II, Brotherhood, and Black Flag.
My Top 5 for context:
1. Unity
2. Syndicate
3. AC 3
4. Origins
5. Revelations

Underrated as fuck. It only lacks manual jumping to be almost perfect.

Just bought it after this video, downloading now

Logically, why would a phatom blade and a knife kill you in one shot anywhere but the head? If someone threw at someone in real life, it wouldn't immediately kill them unless it's a head shot.

I didn't think it's the worst. I think it's my fourth favorite. The other three are Black Flag, Origins, and Valhalla.

honestly syndicate is painfully easy other than the combat which is mindnumbingly boring hate the tone too but parkour can be fun honestly i think the best part of syndicate is that its a bootleg version of unity that doesnt have bogus lod everything just works you dont have to jump through a million hoops to make it play correct

While people are allowed to have their own opinions, I disagree with a lot of critique involving Ubisoft should have done this/that with syndicate in my humble opinion, we have to remember these are still actual people behind these games working on it so from a psychological sense, they probably felt the need to downscale things a bit and choose a more risk free approach to syndicate since it inevitably would be the dark horse of the AC franchise no matter how good or bad it is, after going all out for AC Unity and it flopping due to technical issues, they probably felt the need to downscale things for their next game before taking a bit of a break and releasing another AC game, we are only able to have these opinions about AC Unity and Syndicate after years of being humbled by how much the AC formula has changed, but at the time we would still have our pitchforks up against Ubisoft regardless of what they did for Syndicate, again I'm not saying it's wrong to critique these games, everyone is allowed to have their own opinion, I just find the whole argument about "Ubisoft could have done this/that better" rather silly given the times it was released in, only circumstance they would have done better for Syndicate would be a world where they released Unity in a more whole state instead of a technical mess.

A bit old but syndicate does have murder mysteries, it for some odd reason at launch was made a platform exclusive for PS and then later made accessible to pc(i think) and does missions was damn fun to do

Just started this one because it was so cheap on steam. I've only played Odyssey and Origins to this point and I find this game really frustrating to control. I don't understand why they made it a requirement to pull the right trigger button to run. This seems so stupid to me. Plus the camera controls are way too fast. It's like I barely touch the right toggle stick and the camera is all of sudden pointing to the sky or in some weird direction.. Hand to hand combat is completely uninspiring. I also hate the kidnap missions... it's just too much work trying to sneak behind without getting caught. I almost always get caught. I guess it would be thumbs down at full price but for $7 I do like running around Victorian London. So thumbs up at 7 bucks.

You forget that the reason Evie and by extension Aya in Origins is because of the sexist higher ups who said and I quote “Women don’t sell”

Syndicate is my favourite in the franchise after the Ezio trilogy, then liberation, 3. Dont like the RPGs and hate black flag and rogue, hate the boat missions with a passion.

I found it buggy as hell and the optimization is horrific....Unity is a prince compared to this thing..........

For me, Syndicate was my favorite Creed game, next to the amazing Ezio Trilogy, (which for me is my favorite storyline of the franchise, so good!), this game had fast paced combat, a brilliant storyline, and the world and characters in it made it feel so alive, haven't gotten to play through it fully, but, an planning on doing a platinum play through soon. 💯😃

Worst ac ever

The main problem with Ubi doing AC games is, that they are extremely lazy and everything is surface level. Like duo protags in Syndicate, but they are basically the same with minor exceptions, or Valhalla with minigames, but you stack rocks or tap button to drink ale in a contest, in AC Rogue you play as Templar, but the story is so basic that if you change factions, it wouldnt change much. In Unity you can play the coop mode, but it gets repetetive after 4 runs. Like, they always advertise this variety and new things, but they are all so basic. If they tried to do just a little bit more in every aspect, the games would be bangers. They always copy the successful game for few years, but completely miss the point what made it succsesful and just copy paste it with surface level gameplay and bloat. Dont get me wrong, the games are enjoyable and i played every single on of them, but they could be so much more if they tried little bit harder.

The only two games, that significantly change the formula and offered something refreshing was Black Flag and Origins, which are the two most loved entries besides Ezio saga. I really hope Mirage would be another refreshing innovative entry with engaging gameplay and story.

Victorian GTA!.

I very much enjoy this game, but i am also a person that can lose himself in 1800rds London for a whole sunday afternoon, and i guess that is a skill you need in order to enjoy this game in a way that it can be considered great. The enjoyment of these game very much depends on how you can get lost in the world they provide.

They really need to make these games 60 frames on ps5

Wasn't sure on this when I played it on release. However I picked it up again in a PS Store sale. Going to give it another go before Mirage releases.

My favorite game in the series

idk why i thought syndicate was the best one they made

Can you do a video about the chronicles games ?

It’s my favourite

I loved the black box and WW1 missions, but the world wasn't the best (I'm actually English as well so this isn't a preference of setting), the story and characters were dreadful, the combat and especially the driving felt clunky at times, the AI is poor (I once ran with a hostage directly in front of a soldier while escaping and he didn't do anything about it), and the lack of weapon variety also bugged me a bit (wasn't a fan of the canes either). I'd say it's my least favourite after Odyssey.

no "fans" complained at a lack of female playable characters, it was the same people that always complain about that sort of thing, activists pretending to be journalists, RIP Victory

My personal issue with Syndicate is the lack of investment the chsractors and writers seem to have in the plot. Evie and Jacob have no personal connection to stearic or London and they don't seem to really care too much about being assassins. It all seems like the plot is on autopilot and has no real stakes to it.

I personally really liked Syndicate alot but I do think it taking a step back with the parkour compared to Unity as well as the story being a bit too light-hearted hurt it a bit. Although I did really like the combat, felt very reminiscent of the Arkham games.

The black box missions were absolutely the best of the franchise although I hated that most of them made you play it as Jacob who honestly was the weakest part of tge game.

In a perfect world Evie would've been the only protagonist with some of Jacob's traits for her to grow out of and develop into a more mature person.

I love Bear Mccreary but I feel Austin Wintory did a really good job here, I really like the soundtrack and I definitely think it’s memorable and fits the setting. The guy who did the Journey OST personally does not miss

Such an underrated AC game, probably my second favourite.