Also available on PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, and Windows Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India is the second part of the AC Chronicles trilogy taking place in the mid-19th Century, a little over 300 years following the events of AC Chronicles: China. Mechanically, it's pretty much identical (as one would probably expect), but there are some key differences with regards to how stealth and combat are carried out. The biggest difference is that instead of throwing knives, you've got one of the circle blade thingies like Xena had. It serves the same purpose as the throwing knives in China, but unlike those knives, this can ricochet, allowing for some added possibilities for puzzles and strategy. The only other really noteworthy difference - with regards to design, at least - is the increased difficulty; it's pretty apparent early on that, as the second game in the trilogy, Ubisoft expects that you've played through China first. The story is...kind of dumb, frankly. You're an Indian assassin obviously, and you're trying to prevent the Templars from using some magic diamond to activate Ezio's Precursor box from the previous game. Oh, and your girlfriend is apparently a princess. The entire first level is sneaking into the palace to have a spiritual study of the Kama Sutra. And you can't kill anyone. It all has to be done non-lethal. Not a great way to make a first impression. The characters, at least, are likable enough, and it's cool that the British East India Company was the front for the Templars in this game, so you'll be killing a lot of Redcoats. There's one more big difference, and this is one that I highly doubt Ubisoft intended; it's pretty buggy. There were a couple instances of guards spawning abruptly, disappearing, and - most hilariously/annoying - one instance where I clipped straight through the level and had to reload the previous checkpoint. Once or twice, okay, that's one thing. Games have bugs. But this was more of a "poor QA" situation. Granted, it wasn't NEARLY as bad as Unity, but it was still pretty bad. Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India kept the same gameplay from China for the most part, but unfortunately, it doesn't live up to the quality of its predecessor. It's still a really fun game for fans of 2.5D action platformers, but the story is less interesting, the protagonist a bit is less likable, and performance took a serious hit with some pretty noticeable bugs. If you played China and enjoyed it, then it's definitely worth playing, but India definitely felt like a bit of a step back. My Rating - C |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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