- Best Level Ever:
- The Outrun the Fireball scenario that is China's Sequence 5. Jun runs through the burning Macau port, dropping the stealth of previous chapters to take down loads of enemies with the player's newly acquired Slide Assassinate and Jump Assassinate abilities in a spectacular escape sequence.
- Sequence 7 in Russia is a fast-paced mission where the player constantly switches control between Nikolai and Anastasia with the game rapidly switching between sniping and stealth that takes advantage of the game having two playable protagonists.
- First Installment Wins: China is often looked at as the best of the games due to being less strict than the other games.
- Informed Wrongness: The game keeps stating that Shao Jun's vengeance will consume her and Shao Jun blames her quest for revenge for her Mentor's death. Except at no time during the game did Shao Jun ever violate the creed or compromise her mission for personal vengeance, her master dies independently of any action she took, indeed she was performing a mission given to her by her Shifu, and yet she keeps blaming herself unfairly. Stating vengeance is bad without showing how the character is blindsided by it is a failing of this game.
- It's Hard, So It Sucks!: India and Russia are often considered worse than China due to the increase in difficulty that sometimes results in Trial-and-Error Gameplay.
- It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Critics have noted that the gameplay is clearly attempting to ape Mark of the Ninja, with many deducting points for it.
- Russia also clearly borrows heavily from The Last of Us. Not only is most of the game escorting a teenage girl to safety, with gameplay sometimes switching between the two and her capabilities being far more limited than the main character, but the ending twist is having to rescue her from former allies when they plan to dissect her brain, a process likely to leave her dead. If you swap "The Fireflies" out for "The Assassins," it's pretty much the same, beat-for-beat.
- Nintendo Hard: The final levels of India and especially Russia get extremely difficult with Russia's endgame in particular being fond of sections where it's either an instant fail if you're detected, situations where you're facing so many Elite Mooks that winning a fight or remaining undetected is incredibly difficult, a time limit or some mixture of all 3.
- Obvious Beta: Russia was released only a month after India and the messy hitboxes, underused mechanics and unbalanced sections make it obvious.
- Scrappy Mechanic:
- Getting upgrades requires getting a high score. This isn't too bad mostly in China and India but in Russia you often have to play a level perfectly/near-perfectly to get upgrades which makes getting them much harder. (While China and India often allow some combat in a level and still getting at least the first available upgrade, Russia's score requirements are sometimes high enough that getting caught once ends your chance of getting an upgrade.)
- Any sequence with a Puckle Gun in India as they fire somewhat randomly and instantly kill you.
- Plenty of the timed sequences in India and Russia are absurdly unforgiving to the point of being trial and error where you need a perfect/near-perfect run in order to get past them.
- Masters in India and Russia hide in hiding spots, instantly kill you if you walk by them and can only be flushed out with a smoke bomb, they aren't too bad in India as the brighter environments makes it easier to see them but the darker style of Russia makes it hard to see them if not using Eagle vision.
- Searchlights in Russia can detect you (which usually results in instant death) even if you're not in the actual visible light. (As the hitbox is more of a giant square rather than a circle.)
- So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus of the Chronicles spin-offs. They're seen as perfectly competent, if not wholly original, stealth games, shackled to a widely-hated DRM system and an episodic release schedule.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- Many people feel that Shao Jun's story and the overall setting and locations should have been a full 3D game and feel that Ubisoft wasted it on a side-game.
- A lot of readers of Assassin's Creed: Brahman wonder why Raza Soora isn't in the game and felt that he would have been a brilliant sidekick for Arbaaz to use during his missions.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- The Koh-I-Noor diamond in Brahman was a Mineral MacGuffin that hosted Durga and is cursed to torment any male wielder of the object. In the game the diamond is merely a general object with none of its powers and deeper mythology developed further in the game.
- In general, many feel that the Chronicles trilogy's 2D approach is missing the point of the entire series, i.e. the cool locations and monuments, famous events to participate and witness, and the architecture to climb and parkour around, all of which work better in 3D environments than the game's 2D. The settings of the three games in particular are regarded by many to be ideal for a full major release rather than 2D platform titles.
- Underused Game Mechanic:
- Radios are a cool idea in Russia where if the player takes out all the enemies in a room, guards will eventually be dispatched to check the situation...but this only applies to the first radio, the handful of radios later in the game are just an instant fail if guards don't radio in, changing what would be an interesting source of time pressure into just another instant fail condition.
- The Winch in Russia can electrify puddles and electrical outlets, this mechanic only shows up for 2 of the last levels in the game with the Winch instead basically being only for traversal in most of the game.
- Notably the Cheka Assault enemy is never actually encountered by Nikolai...despite the game listing them as having combat moves that would only been seen if encountered by Nikolai as well as a gas mask variant showing up despite the fact they can never interact with smoke grenades. (as Anastasia cannot attack enemies in combat nor use smoke grenades.)
- The Russia equivalent of the containers that contain items, supply caches, only appear once despite being the only game that explicitly gives them a tutorial page.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/AssassinsCreedChronicles
Go To
