Assassin's Creed: 10 Reasons Why Syndicate Is The Most Underrated Ever

10. Trimming The Fat

It might seem odd to be praising a game for the features that it doesn't have, but here we are.

A big reason for why Unity fell apart at the seams was because it tried to be all things for all people, to pack so much into the game and still hit the incredibly tight turnaround of Assassin's Creed's then-annual release schedule.

Syndicate sensibly chose instead to focus on making sure that it did the things that it did well, rather than do a lot of additional ones badly.

The decision to ditch all multiplayer elements feels like a particularly sensible one as this was never where Assassin's Creed shone anyway and the main thread of Syndicate loses nothing for not having the unremarkable co-op missions of Unity.

That multiplayer hasn't really been missed, and indeed allows for more development of a richer solo experience, is obvious in how it is yet to make a comeback in the later games of the series. In fact, it's also worth noting that Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is currently being talked up as "shorter" than its predecessors as a selling point against games becoming too flabby.

There are other elements, too, in which Syndicate displays a tauter focus than other parts of the series. The present-day frame story is trimmed back to a handful of cutscenes, which makes the game much more accessible as a jumping on point for people not already versed in the complex lore of Abstergo, Templars and precursor civilisations. And our heroes are already trained assassins ready for action without hours of prologue where you play them as children or as their father.