Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China is awesome. It’s one of those games that we at X35 Earthwalker call a master piece. Very few games are master pieces by the way. All the effort and work that went into this game and it most definitely shows.

Assassin’s Creed: China (for short) is a 2.5D action adventure developed by ‘Climax Studios’. Assassin’s Creed: China is set in well… China… but in 1526 as the Ming dynasty starts to crumble. Players control Shao Jun who by the way is such a cool character. She is the last surviving assassin of the Chinese brotherhood. She has returned home and has come back with one serious desire for revenge. If you are wondering how skilled she is, well she was trained by Ezio Auditore who is legend among the creed. 

Straight away we loved Shao Jun. Her mobility has to be the best of all the assassins we have seen so far. Her shuffling, climbing, moving in and out of bushes, doors and cover is so graceful and clean looking. Her attitude and thoughts reveal her character. She is calm, thinks things through and quite honourable. Even when she feels like she messed up, we don’t blame her. She is strong, smart and does everything with style but comes from a hard beginning. 

The game its self is beautiful. Just take a look. The art style is definitely unique. It’s a fusion of the essence of Chinese 16th century traditional brush strokes with more contemporary, impressionistic styles. We have played through so much of the game and each level looks amazing. The graphics are excellent. The environments makes it clear that you are not in the UK or America. The buildings, the waters, the greenery and even the fog and clouds in the sky all look realistic and awesome. This game is setting some real standards right here. Don’t get us started on the music. The music is so authentic. When you hear it and instruments, it makes things quite peaceful and creates an experience for you as you play through the game. The music certainly ain’t no copy and paste from the internet. So visually and audibly Assassin’s Creed: China is outstanding.

The gameplay is also excellent, the controls are easy to understand and work very well. There are no problems controlling Shao Jun. You can hide behind pillars, hid in bushes and bushes, hide in doors and hide in hay (cause why not). The traditional ‘Leap of faith’ is here as well. Get to a high point and leap of, like in the original Assassin’s Creed, and land from an incredibly high height, safely in a small amount of hay. Don’t you just love physics in video games. You can assassinate your enemies, straight up brawl with them or sneak past them. The game rates your performance by three categories. Shadow. Assassin and brawler. Brawler is where you straight up fight the enemies you see in combat with heavy and light slashes and multiple techniques but this way is worth the least amount of points. Assassin is when you sneak around but assassinate your enemies, this is worth the second most points. Shadow is when you get through the areas without being detected and no killing at all; this awards the most points. We have a problem with this. The game is called assassins’s creed and assassinating enemies is what these character do yet the assassin’s don’t give the most points. Yeah we know that sneaking around without killing is harder to do but assassins assassinate. Whatever…

The game also gives you a map of the level. This map reveals where you are, special chests, anima shards (collectibles and objectives and more. The map is quite detailed and straight away displays what you need to know. You can hide the bodies of enemies you kill because if another enemy spots the body, they will call for reinforcements and be aware of you. Assassin’s Creed: China is very realistic in how the soldiers and guards operate and react to certain things. They will investigate noises and sounds. The only unrealistic feature is that when two guards are talking, they do not notice anything you are doing nearby. You can literally stand right next to them and they don’t notice. Still fun though. It must be the best conversation ever. Shao Jun is also armed with quite the equipment. She has throwing knives which can be used to cut ropes and even attack enemies. She has small fire crackers which stun enemies allowing you to assassinate or stun them for a while. Shao also got some sound knives which when thrown emit a noise where it landed which causes enemies to go towards it to check it out. Lastly Shao can whistle to distract enemies and get their attention. Your equipment can be used in different ways to accomplish what you need for all three styles: Shadow assassin and brawler.

There are many factors in this game: Dogs will bark if you come near, giving away your location to enemies, Birds in cages which will give away your position if you run past them, Bells which will ring very loudly if you knock into them and water which makes noise as you move through it. The enemies are different as well. Some enemies just have a sword. Others have a Bisento like weapon so knowing when to block changes. Some have throwing knives so watch out. Others carry crossbows for long range shots. Some have shields to block frontal attacks. Some carry lanterns, meaning they can see into dark areas and pull out whoever tries to hide there. Many guards tend to patrol around but have patterns so watch them for a while to know what’s up. Some guards peep over edges and out of windows so watch where you are climbing and hanging as you may still get caught. This isn’t everything. As you can see, there are so many factors in this game which when they all combine and work together create some very puzzling areas where thinking becomes a necessity. It is all great fun though. The cutscenes are done very well and works with the style of the game. You can see the paint and artwork in this.

Overall we have had so much fun with Assassins Creed Chronicles: China. So much awesome work has gone into this game. This is definitely worth playing.