REVIEW – I have never been an Assassin’s Creed-buff (BadSector is, but that’s another story), so it was interesting to dive into the second chapter in the Chronicles trilogy featuring India. I knew what to expect, yet I didn’t exactly get what I was waiting for. Instead, the game itself is barely worthy of the name Assassin’s Creed…

I say this because nomen est omen does not apply here: there’s not much of assassination here. You’re going to stealth. A lot. If we took out the Animus-assassin duo out of the ACC:I, the game would be easily reskinned into something entirely different.

Noisy

I’d start with the audiovisuals for once. While it’s a fact that Assassin’s Creed Chronicles is a 2,5-dimensional game, you can point out two things quickly: one, it’s not a full-fledged AC title, and two, the gameplay should get much more focus. Visually, India looks okay. It’s authentic and alright to look at.

The visuals are torn down by the audio, though. It doesn’t have that effect. It’s not good. I’d go as far and say it sounds forced entirely. The same applies to the music, too: it feels out of place. That’s disappointing: AC games always had a great soundtrack, but not Chronicles India. Not even the mildly animated story cutscenes help the situation.

Arbaaz

As an Assassin, you’d think that you would have to take care of quite a few bad guys. Not here. You’ll mostly rely on stealth gameplay. This is also shown in the in-game rating system – if you want to be unseen, you must aim for Shadow (Gold). At least, the game helps by showing you what the guards are looking at and how far you can be from them to not be seen.

Sometimes you have to get their attention to progress, though – one well-performed whistle and Arbaaz can proceed without being spotted. Hiding behind statues, climbing walls, everything is given to have that distinct parkour element. However, the gameplay quickly turns into a chore. You mess up, reload checkpoint. You mess up, reload checkpoint. „Damnit, I was just about to hide, and the guard spotted me anyway”, reload checkpoint.

Too difficult too early

And I didn’t even talk about the beginning of the game! We have an Assassin… who initially ISN’T EVEN ABLE TO FIGHT. What, the, hell?! It can be quite frustrating, to say the least – in fact, it refutes the name of the franchise. Sure, you will learn to fight later on in a distinct, India-related style, but you have to get there first… and even if you get the skills, the game will feel like flicking the lights on and off.

You’ll have a fast-paced combat scene in one moment, only to be followed by another tedious stealth section (reload checkpoint). This keeps going on and on. Wtf? We have an Assassin, who’s limited by the game, yet he would be able to do so much more than this!

Pushing dAIsies

What happened to the AI? How did I manage to be in sight of a guard once and just not get spotted? Even if it was possibly a one-time bug, there’s still problems with the artificial intelligence. One time I had two guards about two feet away from me and they never saw me. A little bit later, I was about to reach the next checkpoint, only to get spotted out of nowhere. Reload checkpoint.

No, thanks

While Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India works in its basics, it’s more like a frustrating game not worthy of having this franchise name on it. If the final part of the trilogy (Russia) will continue this downfall tendency, I have no idea what the result of that game will be. In my opinion, Arbaaz Mir’s story is a quickly slapped together, too slowly paced game. I can only hope that the Russian finale will bounce back. The Chinese part was good, this one is just mediocre.

-V-

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Climax

Genre: 2.5D action, adventure

Relase date: 12 January 2016