Jack the Ripper is a 17 GB expansion to Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. It is independent from the main sequence, allowing you to explore only Whitechapel and the City of London, and is set 20 years after the main story. Progress made in the main sequence does not get carried over to the expansion, however, Evie Frye starts out at level 10 and can still earn experience points to acquire new skills.
Although combat is mostly unchanged, the expansion does introduce a new mechanic: Fear. Fear encourages the player to abandon the stealthy approach typical of Assassin’s Creed games, encouraging a “guns blazing” style of combat instead. New craftable items such as the fear bomb and spikes are also interesting additions to the arsenal.
The main story lasts about 3-4 hours. Missions have a vibe reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes, as you play as Evie investigating crime scenes and interacting with evidence. Although only Whitechapel and the City of London are open world and fully explorable, there are new areas in story missions, such as a prison island and snowy mansion, that offer a chance to collect chests (even golden ones).
I enjoyed the Jack the Ripper expansion more so than the original Syndicate game. The story is more engaging, Jack the Ripper himself is a playable character in some missions, and the boss fight is incredibly challenging. Along the main story line, Evie gets acquainted with new associates and unlocks other side quests, rewards, gears, and perks. Although The Rooks no longer roam the streets of London, Evie can now recruit prostitutes to distract enemies. This is very useful because one of the most significant changes of the expansion is that there is a sea of enemies, and a divide and conquer strategy is most wise.
I estimate at least 10 hours of play are needed to complete every side quest and to get 100% synced. Overall, Jack the Ripper is a solid expansion for an already excellent game. While there are still some performance issues and little bugs, they are few and far between.
The only significant issues I encountered were found in the camera controls, which became jammed in some areas. Rebooting the game fixed that. During a certain mission the game began to crash over and over. Additionally, when performing some air assassinations I plummeted straight through buildings and walls, falling through the world entirely. This reminded me of Assassin’s Creed Unity when I fell through the map just trying to talk to an NPC.
Summary
My only major complaint is that the the expansion offers little weapon variety, forcing you to take out enemies in very limited ways. Nonetheless, I absolutely loved the new story, characters, and quests. If you own Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, the Jack the Ripper expansion is well worth your while.
Xian was a regular ICXM contributor between 2015–2017, publishing 162 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.