I'm not that big of an AC fan but after playing Mirage and kind of warming up to Ubisoft open world games these past few months, I decided to buy and play Syndicate. I played Unity almost a decade ago and strongly disliked the game but Syndicate was enjoyable time. I don't think this game is great, I don't think any of these games are but they are decently enjoyable games as long as you don't go in expecting too much. In general, AC Syndicate is what everyone praises Unity for and if this was the game that came out in 2014 instead of Unity, I would've probably never have gotten into my anti AC phase for the longest time, still not a big fan of the series as a whole, but as far as being a "stealth game" that the series supposedly was before the RPG games, Syndicate does a competent job.
I'll start off with what I dislike. The story was not particularly good, at it's best, you just turn your brain off and not question it too much, at it's worst, it's just badly told. The cutscenes are well produced, acted, and directed enough that it's not off putting in the moment but then there are things like, why does Jaccob do all the work while Evie is mostly there in the background, Jaccob does mostly everything, he does most of the main assassinations, and gets all the missions while Evie gets a few by comparison and this starts to stand out when they are both playable characters and are supposed to be on equal standing. You learn about the backstory of sibling's parents towards the end of the game when it has a mission with little at stake and one late game "betrayal" with Jaccob's story involving children was enough to make me zone out for good. The last sequence in general lacks any build up to the final mission and it just kind of well happens. I also dislike AC's overarching modern day plot in general since in the Animus, the heroes will be defeating the villains and that is contrasted with, "well that didn't mean much in the end" since the Assassins in the modern day are on the losing side.
There were some bugs and glitches here and there all though on PS5, it is prone to crashing so be warned if you want to play the game using backwards compatablity. Luckily, the game autosaves frequently and also during missions which is really helpful.
The parkour still isn't as accurate and precise as you would want it to be. There are times where the player character will climb up walls and then when anything involves moving diagonally and just moments where you are in a pinch and you just want them to climb something, either they will climb up or they won't, since climbing is a contextual action like many in the game, either they will do what the button you press tells them to do or they will do something else entirely. For example, I want to press circle to ride the carriage but instead when attacked by enemies, they will be grabbed instead. Sometimes, I press parkour down, and the player character will not do it and the magnetized wall grabbing means that they will move to places I never wanted them to. It's a system to this day, I'm not big on despite having slightly more control in Syndicate and Unity.
Finally the dual skill tree system is pointless, you could have Jaccob and Evie share the same skills and it would lead to the same thing. They both play too similarly to even justify having two different skill trees plus the skills exclusive to each character are usless, big culprit here being Evie's invisiblity cloak since it takes too long to activate and stealth requires you to be moving away from sight lines not staying in place.
I might sound like I have been complaining a lot but I do like this game. One thing I like about is that while the AI is dumb as bricks when it comes to moment to moment stealthing, the AI at the very least has a stupidity about them that is consistently exploitable. For example, their sightlines, as well as the detection system is forgiving enough to the point where consistent stealth is possible and if you are seen and since most of the missions don't have a instant fail state when detected, you can break line of sight and then go back to sneaking again, it's not "immersive" per say but I come to accept that stealth games have their dumb quirks about them. The AI isn't Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Blacklist but not a lot of games can be measured up to them. It's easy to take multiple enemies out from the same corner and you can kill multiple enemies on a high vantage point with throwing knives in ACS.
The stealth is actually reinforced somewhat here since combat feels awful and enemies are super spongey even with a mostly maxed out skill tree but this is good since this is an AC where stealth feels mandatory outside of immediate fail states when seen.
I criticized the parkour before, but I like it a bit more here with parkour up and down, it gives me slightly more control over my moments, and I like that there is even descend options at all. Making going down building somewhat quicker, and the animations do look very nice which is good since a lot of the game is climbing up buildings. The grapple hook while automated did do a good job at making climbing feel a bit faster, it did make crossing the gaps between buildings a lot easier to do all though I did wish the moving down zipline speed was faster since one moment, player character is descending quickly and another moment they are moving slowly.
The Black Box Assassinations which got introduced in Unity is something I appreciate much more here since the AI is more consistent, I love how big densely populated these missions are and how it feels like you are solving one big epic puzzle to get to the kill. It feels rewarding when I get to them and these missions give me enough hand holding but not too much compared to say playing the modern Hitman games on normal do. It's surprising when a game like this allows me to figure things out for myself.
Another thing I like is how dynamic the open world the open world can be. For example, the Templars, gangs and the policeman are you enemies but you can also have them fight each other and this shines during the enemy outpost missions, where you can lure enemies out of the outpost with your how fast you can move and either have them fight policemen or just run back to the objective and complete it after getting alerted, it isn't game over if you get spotted even with the combat in this game not being as good as it is. You could use stealth to kill everyone or get spotted and lure everyone out or use tools. It's rather impressive.
Overall, for being a game in a series that I feel out of favor for a decade ago, I can say I got enjoyment out of Syndicate, which I even I am surprised that I enjoyed. It's not an amazing game, but for a game I got a reduced price, it was a good time.
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