The past few years have no doubt been bumpier than Ubisoft would like when it comes to its flagship franchise, thanks to the embarrassingly well-publicised issues with last year’s Assassin’s Creed Unity. Coupled with the ever-present spectre of franchise fatigue, it’s safe to say this year’s instalment of Assassin’s Creed has a lot to prove. Thankfully, a long-overdue shake-up to the game’s fighting means it feels more viscerally brutal than ever, just in the nick of time.

Though Jacob’s kukri knife will feel vaguely familiar to any veteran Assassin’s Creed player, the manner in which he uses it isn’t. Compared to the measured movement employed by Altair or the skilful slashes of Edward Kenway, Jacob is a force of nature. His attacks clearly value frenzy over form, as he doesn’t care whether he wins cleanly or dirtily, only that he gets up while his foes don’t. Every part of his body is a weapon, not just fists and skull but knees and feet too. It’s a refreshing difference, one that makes the use of a bladed weapon feel different to how it has before thanks to this whirlwind of force you’re controlling.

Loading

Evie, on the other hand, has far more finesse. She’s lithe, athletic and ruthlessly efficient. Her sword cane furiously rains down blows without respite, forcing foes to their knees before she impales them, swiftly following this up with a backhanded blow that allows her hidden blade to effortlessly slit their throats. She may initially have a prediliction for a stealthier approach, but it’s easy to see why many players may be tempted to forgo that route altogether.

“ We were going for something more brutal; trying to make it feel like a street fight.

“We were going for something more brutal; trying to make it feel like a street fight,” explains game director Marc-Alexis Côté. “We want to make it feel like a brutal dance between you and your enemies, so they won’t wait their turn to attack. Instead, they’re going to come at you simultaneously, making the combat feel more dangerous and dynamic, especially as more and more people attack you. That’s why you now have a stun attack. You’ll move between enemies, you’ll stun one, move to another who’s about to attack and stun him, then take care of one who isn’t stunned and try to finish him off. We really wanted players to be able to bounce from one enemy to another in this lethal dance.”

Helping the game design in this respect is Assassin’s Creed Syndicate’s audio, which emphasises the action by bringing the different weapons available to life. While the sound of wood hitting flesh or steel slowly penetrating skin may have been created in a Canadian studio via a perfectly humane series of assaults on fruit and vegetables, it’s especially important all the sounds were right this time around given the vast array of offensive tools on offer, from throwing knives to knuckledusters.

Loading

“A simple thing we changed recently was with the knuckledusters,” explains audio directior Lydia Andrew. “The guy who was working on it was really trying to give the differentiation of the feeling that you’re using a knuckleduster, and he’d done a really great job but some of the punches had more of the metallic sound rather than the impact. And one of the other guys on the team who makes the game kept saying to me there was just something not right. The combat was great but there were moments where he didn’t feel the weight behind the hits. And so we listened and eventually figured out there were times where you’d get the ‘clink’ but wouldn’t get the ‘crack’ behind the blows. So I went to our sound guy and he confirmed it, so we went it and fixed it. It sounds like such a tiny thing, but instantly it made a huge difference.”

“ We really wanted players to be able to bounce from one enemy to another in this lethal dance.

I have to admit, I was enjoying fighting as Evie so much I spent an inappropriate amount of my game time deliberately wandering into harm’s way. Though there are a select few skills at the bottom of each of the game’s three skill trees that are only available to Jacob or Evie, the majority of the trees are open to either of them. So while Evie starts with more points spent in Stealth, where power-ups include the ability to lockpick, kidnap enemies and enjoy silent landings, you could just as easily decide to focus on the health boosts, combo bonuses and multiple execution finishers of the Combat tree if you’d prefer.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a special satisfaction that can be derived from reining in the sadism and instead opting for a stealth approach. At the end of my gameplay session I was tasked with assassinating a Templar called Harold Drake, who’d been supplying the nefarious Blighters with dynamite, with bonus experience available for causing him to blow himself up. After quite a few trial and error moments involving rather unsubtle infiltration attempts resulting in pain and death, I finally got close enough to ignite a crate without being seen. I was feeling pretty vindictive by this stage, so got quite the thrill from the explosion coming mere seconds after my target quipped that there could be “no mishaps.”

Loading

But there’s more to an Assassin’s Creed game than combat alone, and it remains to be seen if Syndicate will provide enough varied content to justify the purchase, but it certainly feels to me like there’s a renewed sense of energy brought to proceedings by Evie and Jacob. Templar-controlled London won’t know what’s hit it.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK News Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter.