Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China (Xbox ONE)

Due to the fast moving nature of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, I wasn’t really that surprised to see another title on the marketplace shortly after the release of Unity and Rogue, however I was surprised it was this close and also surprised at the different nature of gameplay.

Chronicles China is a 2D side-scrolling assassin adventure that follows the story of Shao Jun, the last of the Chinese order of assassins who was trained by none other than the Italian master Ezio Auditore da Firenze. After the destruction of her order at the hands of a Templar Faction known as the Tigers, she goes on a revenge mission, side-scrolling her way through China, killing all Templars that come across her path. Or not, depending on how you play.

The story is encapsulated by cut scenes featuring still images and text summaries before each mission which are totally optional.

The music and graphics are really good and it does feel like Ubisoft put a lot of effort into getting the fine details right and this is also reflected in the gameplay. I came across next to no glitches during my time playing the game and all of the fuck-ups were down to my own ineptitude at playing.

The aim of the game is to get through a variety of different areas getting past guards to assassinate your target. There are three ways you can go about doing this. The easiest way (in my opinion) is to assassinate your way to the target. Killing people without being seen means that you get around the strangely difficult combat and dead people cannot see you. Another way would be to hack and slash your way through the guards but not only does this mean you will die a lot but it also scores the lowest in terms of getting to your goal.

Despite the two ways being the most fun, they are not the way the game wants you to play. The highest scoring way of playing the game involves getting past all the guards without being seen and not killing anyone. You are given four tools to use as distraction tactics to achieve this.

Other than sneaking past guards and killing people, there are a few levels that require you to run through them as fast as possible and you are scored on your time. Thankfully, these levels allow you to kill people without incurring any penalties.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 18 Achievements

A good game it may be but is it completable? Well, yes otherwise there wouldn’t be a review. The nature of the game means that there is a set way of getting through it so practice makes perfect in this regard.

There are several cumulative achievements which make it a requirement to play the game in its three different ways. There is an achievement for assassinations and slide assassinations. You have to get past 30 patrols without being seen and without killing anybody and you have to escape alerts after being seen 30 times. The most frustrating of these ones involves getting crossbow guards to shoot each other by using evade to move out of the way when they shoot. You have to do this 50 times. Luckily there is an area in sequence 8 where you can spam this out in about half an hour.

There are two collectible achievements; one for collecting all the animus shards (standard) and another for collecting all chests. There are also three level specific ones for clearing sequence 5 in under 5 minutes, completing the optional objective in sequence 9 and clearing sequence 11 without being seen. This last one is tricky but factors in to the last achievements I will mention.

As I mentioned above, if you go through each level without being seen or killing anyone, and completing all optional objectives, you will get the highest score possible. Of course, there is an achievement for doing every level like this. Despite the fact that video guides exist, this still requires a lot of patience and you can always find better ways of doing some sections.

After completing the game, there is the option, and two achievements, for playing the game through on New Game Plus Mode, however after you do the achievement for getting through the game without being seen, New Game Plus doesn’t offer any additional challenge and it is actually a breeze. You only have to make sure that you get 100 helix kills with the ability only available in New Game Plus and the 100% shouldn’t be too far away.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Overall it is a very well executed game. It doesn’t have a lot of diversity in controls but this is a good thing in my opinion. Chronicles China has a set game plan and it executes it very well.