Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China review: red ink

Ubisoft has experimented with spinoffs of the series before, but they often end up like Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation — awkward attempts to create exact clones of the bigger games but on a much smaller budget. Chronicles: China finds its own path, transforming the series into a mostly-2D, level-driven test of stealth skills seemingly inspired by the roots of Ubisoft's less successful action-adventure franchise, Prince of Persia.

At its best moments — which are most of them — Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China is the most fun the series has felt in years. And even its few missteps aren't from straying too far from the formula; it only stumbles when it actively tries to emulate its predecessors.

Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China follows a Chinese assassin named Shao Jun who, we discover through flashbacks, was trained by Assassin Creed 2's Ezio. (You may have already met Shao Jun and be familiar with this plot point if you've seen Ubisoft's 2011 short film, Assassin's Creed: Embers.) Shao Jun returns to China to find that a group of evil Templar have all but wiped out the other assassins in the area. While seeking vengeance, she's also trying to track down a mysterious artifact that has fallen into the hands of the Templar.

And that's about the most I can remember about the plot. Shao Jun looks cool but doesn't have much character development, and story movement is largely kept to short cutscenes in between each level. It's unobtrusive, which is great, although if you're someone who cares about the overall fiction of the Asssassin's Creed universe, don't expect any major revelations here.

I was also urged to take in my surroundings carefully due to how beautiful they are. Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China employs a style that looks like classic brush paintings in motion. Splashes of color streak across the screen and are used in subtle ways to help you identify usable objects in the environment. And the traditional violence of the series is toned down to almost tasteful slashes of red whenever you take an enemy down.

Of course, ideally you won't have to take down many enemies at all. Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China provides Shao Jun with a nice list of tools to help her find her way past foes. Firecrackers can briefly stun guards, knives can snap ropes to open passageways or drop boxes, and in a pinch, Shao can simply whistle to get a foe's attention where she wants it.

The key to the design of the tools (and the game as a whole) is that it never goes overboard. You're given more or less everything you'll have to work with for the whole game by the end of the third level, around an hour in. Chronicles: China fleshes things out by introducing challenging new enemy layouts and clever level design twists, rather than by flooding the player with dozens of options in how to approach each situation.