Transcript
[Hi there! Just a friendly reminder that this is a critique. I will be discussing the game for those who have completed it. If you haven’t, perhaps you should stop this video now, unless of course you’re still interested in what I have to say, and don’t mind the risk of spoilers.]
In my first ever impressions video, I made a joke about how I could sum up the game I was discussing with one sentence, but that it would be unprofessional of me to do so. Assassin’s Creed Chronicles China could easily be described in one sentence as well; It’s Mark of the Ninja as an Assassin’s Creed game. Of course once again, stopping there would be unprofessional, even if that description was the reason I wanted to play through the game after spending thirty minutes with it.
Now one of the reasons I liken it to Mark of the Ninja is my approach to playing both games. To me, the goal is to remain unseen, and therefore if I actually am spotted by guards, I will reload the last checkpoint and try again until I can get through either as a ghost, or leaving a pile of bodies in my wake. What excited me about this approach in the Assassin’s Creed universe is that despite the name, the games don’t really allow you to play beholden to a particular creed. This game did, although choosing to play in this manner was not without its frustrations.
Like any game based on challenging the player, there is an escalation. New soldiers and new abilities are introduced, but they play counter to each other. If you’re choosing to play as I am, the new soldiers don’t pose the challenge they’re meant to because their challenge is in fighting them, while the new abilities allow you greater opportunities to skirt by unseen. Even the last boss is susceptible to an instant assassination kill if you come upon him while his attention is diverted. That’s one of the things I love incidentally; from start to finish you actually feel like an assassin rather than hammering on foes until they die or waiting for counters. You’re silent and deadly if you choose to be. The challenge lies in getting away with it.
Meanwhile the landscapes you inhabit feel like a brush painting out of a storybook. The gimmick of China as a 2D Assassin's Creed game if you want to call it a gimmick is its use of depth, where beams of wood or an overhang that you can attach your rope dart to, will allow you to travel into the foreground or further into the background. there were plenty of times I stopped playing momentarily to stare at the mountains, oceans and rice fields in the distance, and while deadly, the game’s use of fire is beautiful in its own destructive way.
Fire is used in three of the game’s levels where your slow, methodical movement is turned into a mad dash to flee for your life while the world burns around you. Before the first of these levels, I had wondered why I had unlocked sliding and jumping kill attacks, as they would leave bodies out in the open and seemed to be of no use. Then the game springs this escape scenario on you where you get to put these new skills to the test in an exhilarating outrunning of the flames. These levels were a nice change of pace, led to some spectacular moments, but they also highlighted one of the main problems I had during my time with the game.
I will call my issue ‘perceived inconsistency’ as I am unsure whether it was the game itself or simply my perspective of what was happening. In these chase levels, there would be times when I was consumed by the fire, and then on a reload, doing everything the exact same way, I would get through unscathed. This also happened in the other levels. A guard who never looked up at the ceiling would all of a sudden do so, or his cone of vision would be angled just that little bit higher in order to spot me. On my next reload, his vision is back at normal height. Even the way the noise darts or firecrackers worked would seemingly change from time to time. As I stated earlier, I am unsure whether I was just doing something wrong, or if the game was being inconsistent with its rules and structure, but it happened with such a frequency throughout my play that it left this doubt in my head. I would leave my play sessions frustrated instead of excited to return to the game.
And this likely is why even though China is rather short, it still feels like it overstayed its welcome. There are two other games in the chronicles series after China, but even though overall I did enjoy my time with this shift of the Assassin’s Creed formula, I don’t see myself seeking out either India or Russia anytime soon.
