Welcome to our CHEATfactor Game Review of Assassin's Creed Chronicles:India. We review the game and then factor in how the available cheats affect the overall game experience. For better or worse, our reviews will help you decide whether or not to use cheats when playing the game.
If Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India were a physical action it would be a shoulder shrug. While it continues the mechanics from last year's surprisingly well done Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China, it rarely tries to do anything new and the result is an experience that feels awfully familiar and awfully unoriginal. What's worse is that when it does try something new it somehow manages to slow down the experience. It's a good enough platform in general, but if you're looking for any more than your standard fair you may want to look elsewhere.
Chronicles: India is set during the early years of India's Colonial period and follows the exploits of Kashmiri assassin Arbaaz Mir as he tries to hunt down the Koh-Noor diamond. What's interesting is that Mir is an established character in the Assassin's Creed lore and a direct relative to a character in last year's Assassin's Creed: Syndicate but you wouldn't know that unless you really wanted to dig deep. Chronicles: India is almost absurdly light on story for a game seemingly so connected to a bigger franchise. There are hints here and there that the tale is connected but it's clear that this is meant as more of a quick peek into the world of the assassins, rather than an integral one.
Much like last year's Chronicles title, India takes the open world action of the Assassin's Creed series and scrunches it down into a 2.5D world where you'll still be doing Assassin's Creed type stuff like sneaking past guards, jumping off high platforms and yes, assassinating enemies. Stealth is much more important here but the game is less about improvising a way to complete missions and more about perfecting the one path you've been given. Repetition is key and you're given a quick rundown of the mechanics, which you'll be ultimately familiar with if you've played Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China or Klei Entertainment's superb Mark of the Ninja.
There's little room for failure in Chronicles: India. Sure, if you're spotted by a guard you can shuffle them loose from this mortal coil but your upgrades and weapon unlocks are tied directly into the game's rating system so if you choose to play a bit more violent or had some trouble with a section and ended up having to resort to violence you're pretty much forced to do an entire level over again because later sections of the game require a good number of these unlocks. The game really isn't all that difficult and you'll likely rarely run into much trouble until those later portions of the game when the difficulty suddenly spikes up for no apparent reason. It's still satisfying to move past the puzzles and guard formations but I couldn't help but get the feeling that I've already done all of this.
Chronicles best moments are when it seemingly throws caution to the wind and asks you to move quickly, basing your performance on your time over everything else. It's pretty evident throughout the Chronicles series so far that the game seems intent on slowing down your progress through the game by making you wait until the only path in the game is clear or introducing a series of tedious puzzles but these times missions feel like a great change, allowing you to move with reckless abandon and really get the feeling of free-running that the series is known for.
Much like the previous game, Chronicles: India uses a pretty gorgeous art design that makes the game seem more like a story book. The use of water colors is remarkable and when they're the backdrop for some of the game's superb animations, it all comes together quite nicely. It isn't the best looking game and I still do prefer the art style of Chronicles: China over this one (slightly), India is no slouch, plus, there's elephants so there's that.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India isn't a bad game, it's just not a very inspired one. Having thoroughly enjoyed last year's Chronicles: China, I was excited for this one but to my dismay when I sat the controller down I couldn't help but be dissapointed. Everything it does well has already been done and done better multiple times before. Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India is the second game in a planned trilogy and it's unquestionably the weaker of the two, here's hoping the series is able to rebound when Chronicles: Russia comes out.
