Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India Review

How do you define an Assassin’s Creed game? Is it the open world? Is it assassinations? Climbing towers? Stealth? Combat? Climax Studios attempts to expand the definition again with Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India, the second of the Chronicles trilogy. You’ll quickly find this game has everything necessary to call it an Assassin’s Creed game, but it lacks the awe the 3D adaptations inspire.

Video Review

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India

Barely got the Assassin part right. Whiffed on the Chronicle.

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Chronicles: India is set in India during the 1800s. The art style and buildings make it clear but it’s not alive. After playing Assassin’s Creed, AC 2, and Brotherhood, I wanted to visit their locations (I actually visited Florence and Rome) but India never arouses that feeling. The location is just a setpiece providing a space for you to execute lots of soldiers.

You don’t explore. There are no side missions. The game is basically a concentrated version of restricted areas from the 3D games. You’re either rescuing, assassinating, following, or escaping in 2.5 dimensional side-scrolling levels. You’re able to see the vision cones of your enemy as you make your way through each mission. They can hear you run. They can hear the screams of your victim. And it’s all represented by Mark of the Ninja-style sound circles. If whatever you do is outside their range, nothing is off limits.

Sneaking past guards is tricky

Enemies can be manipulated with four tools you have. A Chakra, which is a disc blade that can bounce off surfaces, smoke bombs, sound bombs, and whistling. The cool thing about whistling is you can increase and decrease how loud you are by making your circle bigger or smaller. It’s a small touch that gives you more control over your environment.

Unfortunately, your command of the environment is limited. Unlike Mark of the Ninja or the 3D versions of Assassin’s Creed, you’re forced to move in mostly linear paths. You might be able to move through a higher level versus going low but that kind of deviation feels superficial. It funnels you into tough scenarios where combat has the impression it’s the only solution.

Just like the 3D games, you can counter during combat. From the counter you can attack or roll over an enemy to get behind them for an assassination, but later on, you’ll want to stay still and rely on countering and counter attacking. Countering is lame, though. You can just tap-tap-tap-tap-tap and block or dodge anything. I understand the 3D games can get button-mashy, but you are punished for poorly timed counters. Not so in Chronicles: India. Just keep tapping that button and you’ll dodge every bullet (which is ridiculous) and block every strike. When enemies attack back, or when you attack is when you start taking damage if you mis-time your attacks. It’s the easiest part of the game.

The paintings are beautiful but the cutscenes are awful

Sneaking past enemies is the hardest part. Even though you can see their vision cones and figure out their patterns, if they spot you, they will search every hiding spot and peer over every ledge looking for you unless they noticed you for less than a second. They are thorough. These guys do a much better job than the soldiers and Templars in the 3D games.

The unfortunate aspect of Chronicles: India is why you’re doing what you’re doing. I still don’t fully understand what was the point of it all. You play as Arbaaz Mir, with the story being about the Templars stealing a valuable jewel from the Assassin Order. A Piece of Eden, apparently; one that belonged to Ezio who he gave to Shao Jun from Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China. Apparently, she lost it. Arbaaz investigates what the Templars are planning and why they’re doing it. What’s told is a tale of “I’m going to stop you” but we don’t know what the Assassin’s are stopping the Templars from doing. Then there’s a love story thrown in half-heartedly, which extends the game longer than it needs to be.

Cutscenes are told through beautiful imagery drawn with an Indian style, but they hardly convey emotion. Neither does the voice acting or the cheesy dialogue.

Once you’re finished with the campaign, you can play New Game Plus or you can try the challenges. Or you could try Collect, where you must collect a number of Animus shards by a set time. There’s also Contracts, which lets you sneak past enemies to grab a contract, then assassinate the specified target all within a specified time. You can also play Assassinations, where you kill every character by a certain time. The challenges are difficult but how you unlock them is baffling.

Yes, the Animus still exists in some form or fashion

Each challenge has Assassin Marks (not the official term) you earn by meeting requirements. If you meet the requirement, when you finish the level that mark is added to your total. However, challenges open in a certain order. So, you could finish a Collect challenge and open more challenges in Assassinations. It’s forcing you to play different challenges and that’s not cool in my book.

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India is an adequate stealth game that has sufficient challenge but it misses the mark as an Assassin’s Creed game. It’s missing the wow factor the 3D games have in nearly every way, although it is challenging and if that’s what you’re looking for, you will be fairly compensated for your time and money.