Assassin's Creed Bloodlines is a PSP exclusive spin off of the Assassin's Creed franchise developed by Gryptonite Games and released at the same time as Assassin's Creed 2 in 2009. What's most notable about this game is that it is a faithful translation of Assassin's Creed 1's gameplay and systems into PSP form with a bit of 2's mission design. You continue Altair's story 1 month after the events of AC1 in Cyprus. You have an open world (well, small segmented locations with missions separated by a loading screen but nonetheless impressive), the same combat, stealth and parkour AC1 is known for. The one major difference is the mission design. Instead of 1's rather repetitive information-gathering approach, Bloodlines opts for an approach closer to 2 where you go from linear mission to linear mission in the open world that progresses the story. Some elements from 1's information gathering missions are still translated into these missions, like having to eavesdrop which triggers a skippable cutscene or interrogations which are simple missions. So yeah, the best way to summarize this game is as "Assassin's Creed 1.5" and if you're a fan of AC1 or 2 and want to get a handheld version of it, Bloodlines is the way to go. That is the game's biggest praise but also its worst aspect.
The major issue with the game is that it inherits the issues of AC1 and 2 which is what makes it a tough recommendation nowadays, especially if you aren't a fan of the series or AC1 and 2 especially. For example, since combat is so broken in the player's favour, and the player can just parkour out of any trouble, there's no reason to ever stealth. Very few missions require the player to actually be sneaky so you can just bum rush through most of the game and be fine. Hell, it's actually the fastest and easiest way to play since stealth just isn't really that satisfying. Which is a shame because some of the level design in the linear castle areas is quite good. It gives the players many different routes and options which in another game would be satisfying to use, but there's no reason or incentive to.
Let's go through the mechanics of the game. Combat is mostly the same as AC1. You can attack, grab and throw enemies and counterattack. However, there are some tweaks. Bloodlines uses an idea AC3 would later use that all attacks, even if blocked, still do damage to regular enemies. So you don't have to stand around and wait for counters as you can just keep attacking (albeit with a bit of timing) to kill all enemies around you with very little trouble. In addition, you can instakill any downed enemy (and you can down any enemy with a simple grab or regular counter with a sword), something that 2 added. All this, while speeding up combat, completely removes any challenge or worthwhile choice. Back in AC1, yeah, you had to rely on counters which was boring but there was 1 somewhat interesting mechanic. If you use a sword you can sometimes strike a weakened enemy and block attacks but your counters weren't guaranteed to be lethal and enemies could sometimes break your block. While using the hidden blade meant you couldn't attack or block but your counters were guaranteed to be lethal. Granted, it wasn't a great system seeing as countering was too easy but at least the premise had something in a risk/reward system. Bloodlines removes all that. Yeah, you can still counter with the hidden blade for guaranteed lethal counters which can be faster, but using a sword and either striking or countering has no downsides. Enemies can't even break your block. The one positive about this combat system compared to 2 is at least you don't have health potions so any damage sustained can't be easily healed nor can you gain such an absurd amount of health that it would take longer to die than it would to play poorly.
Parkour is similar to AC1s. However there are 2 issues that make it less fun to use. Firstly, Vaulting is made less effective. Instead of being able to grasp or manually stick to something, vaulting is more of a coin flip since it's the game that has to decide if Altair will actually grab that beam he's next to or just fall down. The second issue is that Leap of Faiths doesn't happen when you Press R + X + Stick forward. If you try that you'll just jump off the building. Instead you have to get into a select position and press X to do it. While normally this isn't an issue, it makes the player's actions feel less interesting. Instead of seeing a haystack from above and dynamically picking a good spot to leap into it, you have to be in the perfect spot which means you might as well just drop down. Most buildings are also quite short so the value of parkour is also somewhat lessened.
Stealth is similar to AC1. You can hold X to "blend" so you pretend to be a scholar and make yourself less conspicuous at the cost of super slow speed. And that's it. There are no moving groups of scholars to blend with (then again, that's not a huge loss anyway). And unlike later AC games that would add more tools, abilities and moves to spice up stealth, Bloodlines (and by extension 1) is quite basic so stealth isn't even that interesting even if you choose to engage with it. Bloodlines even removes the air assassinate move from 1. So stealth is even less interesting. Ok, I lied, there is one new move Altair has. He can pull enemies off ledges kinda like in AC2. Unlike 2 though, Altair doesn't use his hidden blade when doing the move. He just pulls them down. Which means enemies can often survive the fall and be quite confused after the fact requiring you to awkwardly maneuver around to finish the enemy or avoid ledge assassinating them. The best part of the move is that enemies sometimes do a Willheim Scream when they fall. Also, you can pick up thrown knives and Eagle Vision is removed (not that you'd need it anyway given the minimap).
Now, I know all this seems harsh. After all, this is just a PSP spin-off. There's not a lot the platform can do and being able to translate such massive games is impressive. And fair, compared to the PSP's library, Bloodlines is quite the novelty and much more impressive. But I don't know, I feel the system is capable of more. Games like Tenchu and Splinter Cell show the PSP can do decent to good stealth. Games like GTA LCS and VCS and Gun show the PSP can do open world games well. I wonder how Bloodlines would have turned out if it took more cues from games like Altair Chronicles and Discovery and tried more to do its own thing or remix existing systems instead of try and replicate them so much. But then again, perhaps this alone is what most players wanted. Bloodlines being so close to AC1 was its main selling point which likely was much more impressive upon its release.
The controls are done well for a PSP game, even without a second analogue stick or fewer buttons. The camera is controlled with the L+Face buttons. Double tapping L centers the camera behind you. With this system, you can move and control the camera at the same time which is neat. I never had any major issues here. The remaining buttons aren't a problem. Sure, you no longer have a "zoom out camera" button or first person camera since buttons for that are gone but it's not an issue.
As for the open world, it consists of multiple districts separated by a loading screen. Each District is quite small and compact. Honestly, I kinda prefer it this way. It means more content can be packed much more closely and there is less filler. There are the odd side quests in districts which consist of killing targets or delivering an item and these are ok. I feel more could have done like needing to do races across the district or killing many targets in a time limit. Funnily, I feel it's AC Brotherhood's VR missions where this basic style of gameplay really shines. Like, yeah it is easy to get to a target and kill them, so challenge the player on doing it fast and planning a route and suddenly it all works a lot better.
The mission design, like I said earlier, is closer to 2's where you do a linear story mission one after the other instead of a non-linear set of investigation missions like in 1. Now, while 1's approach to this was quite boring (and somewhat not valuable given the other mechanics), it was somewhat novel. Doing investigations actually gave you relevant info on your target and you could act on it during the Assassination. Like learning where guards were posted or where were easy places to sneak into to get closer to the target. Bloodlines, and by extension 2, drop this approach so while the individual missions themselves may be less boring, they lose that sense of being an Assassin since you're just doing tasks for other people that don't necessarily correlate to getting better at taking on a target. Granted, I don't think Bloodlines would have benefitted much from this approach anyway seeing as target's castles are quite the linear affair with alternate paths to sneak around that are quite easy to spot and that targets have boss fights rather than be stealthily assassinated. So perhaps it was the right move in retrospect. Though, ironically, AC1's repetitive mission design is more common on handheld games anyway.
Speaking of which, Bloodlines is the first AC game to really focus on boss fights. Each of the 5 major bosses are somewhat built up beforehand and cannot be stealth killed. Even the game's manual lists them out which suggests they are major players. And they kinda are. They are mostly disconnected from the events of the story so fighting them feels like a bit of a detour for the plot. They're given a varying amount of buildup before the fight so investment in them is mixed. Actually fighting them isn't really exciting given the game's combat system. Granted you can't counter-attack some of them so the fight is more dodging their attacks and getting hits on them which can be somewhat fun. The best part of these bosses is more the spectacle the game tries to present. Like fighting an 8ft tall Sumo Wrestler with a chain, or 2 twins that flip around, or an oracle that uses a fog to hide herself and try to ambush the player. These can be cool to see but have little more than that.
Completing objectives and killing enemies awards the player coins they can use to buy upgrades in between sequences. The upgrades are mostly useless. Stuff like increased damage and health aren't ever necessary given how easy the game is already. Decreased detection time doesn't really help either since losing enemies is quite easy. The only worthwhile upgrades I found were increasing throwing knife capacity since those could kill enemies faster and from a distance and recovering lost knives during normal play isn't really feasible.
If you connect Bloodlines to a PS3 running Assassin's Creed 2 you get goodies in both games. In 2 you get all the weapons of Bloodline's bosses at once plus money from Bloodlines. In Bloodlines, you get special armour that lets you block with the hidden blade like in 2, and a Hidden Gun prototype that shoots knives as ammo. The rewards are underwhelming. In 2's case, the weapons aren't really useful because countering is so broken, you can beat the game with starting gear with no issue. So even though these new weapons have stats comparable to late game gear and you can get them by sequence 3, it hardly matters. Getting extra money isn't useful because 2's money economy is already skewed in the player's favour. On Bloodlines' side it's slightly more interesting. Yeah, like I said in the combat section, this removes what little challenge is left. But while the novelty itself is cool, it doesn't really change how the game is played. In any other game I expect being given armour that lets you block attacks when you normally couldn't and a ranged attack would be quite the significant change. Here in Bloodlines, it's business as usual.
I feel AC3 and Liberation did this concept a lot better. In those games, 3 gets extra money which is actually somewhat useful given that there's no passive income and some really expensive purchases. Liberation gets an entire extra mission with Connor which really adds that to that crossover feel.
Also, there's a weird aspect of the game. Altair doesn't have a sheath for the short blade like he did in 1, yet can still use a short blade. It just disappears when Altair sheaths it. It's quite odd. This game marks the last time Altair would actually have a Short blade to use seeing as 2 and Revelations just give him an empty sheath.
The actual story is....something. Here's a summary of it:
The quickest thing to talk about is Desmond. Technically, the game takes place in the animus sometime after the events of AC1 but before 2. But Desmond himself is never seen, only mentioned as Subject 17 in the tutorial. This is odd because 1- Desmond doesn't really have reason to poke around Altair's memories after the events of AC1 even if he has a bit of free reign of his room. Seeing as, well the Templars are done with him and prepared to kill him. And 2- Desmond doesn't initially recognize Maria in AC2. Which makes sense if we ignore Bloodlines since he'd have only seen Maria briefly in AC1. But Seeing as Maria is a major character in Bloodlines, well it's odd to say the least. But seeing as this game is looking to be a translation of AC1 onto the PSP, it seems fair to include the animus even if it kinda doesn't make sense for it. I won't knock off any points here.
However, the actual story in the animus of Altair is.......there. It's not bad but there's not really anything standout or notable about it. It reminds me of like a cheap 2 hour DLC or one of those promotional comics games sometimes have that show a small self contained story that may have some things that tie into a wider story but are otherwise nothing special. I'm not going to say Bloodline's story is worthless or anything. It gets the job done in providing context to the missions and has some progression and twists, but lacks any strong driving force or investment or strong arcs nor any reason to go out of your way to experience it if you haven't already.
Altair's a stoic wise guy now. There are some entertaining moments like his philosophical musings and him pretending to be drunk to get info out of a sailor but he has no major arc or anything. At least back in AC1, his arc was learning not to be a dick and the targets he killed steered him there as he saw the same negative qualities he had reflected in them. The targets in Bloodlines rarely have a beef with Altair or much focus on the plot. You can remove them and very little would change. Other enemies like Fake Barnabas and Bouchard are absent from the game so long that when they came back I legitimately forgot about them. Bouchard is the main antagonist of the game but is even more generic and absent than Rodrigo from 2.
The only character that has something quite interesting going on is Maria. Her whole arc from no longer being able to be promoted in the Templar order because De Sable is dead, to being captured by Altair and taken to Cyprus as a prisoner, to frequently escaping to try and get back to the Templars only to find the Templars have all but abandoned and consider her to be helping the Assassins, to her taking matters into her own hands and using disguises to investigate her former allies and finding out they are practically enslaving people instead of protecting people, to her trying to take out her former allies and eventually teaming up with Altair is interesting. Honestly, the story of Bloodlines kinda feels like Altair is the side character who is doing odd jobs in the background while Maria is the main character progressing the main story.
If you have read my past reviews, especially on Altair's Chronicles and Discovery, you'll know that I would normally propose a fix or rewrite that would maintain the unique or interesting aspects of the original story while highlighting its positives and minimizing negatives while still being reasonable for the budget of the game. But I can't really do that here because there's not really much to play with or improve. Like, initially I was thinking Altair should be more like his Fan Novelization version by Mirror and Image, an anxious 25 year old who just became the head of the Assassins and learning to be a leader, but that wouldn't really be interesting seeing as there aren't even Assassins on Cyprus. The local resistance are just a local resistance who are opposing the Templars rather than Assassins so Altair isn't their boss so much as an ally they don't have to trust or listen to. The story even highlights this as local leaders tell Altair that he's become distrusted by the resistance (which doesn't really make a difference anyway as Altair rarely interacts with regular Resistance members). So the story is more that Altair co-exists with this resistance that he occasionally helps in optional side quests. The targets don't really complement this aspect like they did with Altair being a dick in AC1. You probably could focus the story more on Altair liberating parts of Cyprus he's in on his own but that doesn't really support this leadership theme plus the game has no real way of showing that like later AC games would implement. Even if it's changed that the resistance are actually Assassins, the story is too short to really tell a story of Altair coming into his own as a leader on a small scale nor is there anything in the gameplay to represent that. You can't have sections where the player plays as Maria as the stealth systems the game has aren't that interesting on their own. Maybe if Bloodlines ever gets a remake that's bigger and is able to incorporate aspects from newer AC games, there's more of a potentially interesting story possible.
So there you have it. While Bloodlines isn't a bad game, especially by PSP standards, there's very little reason to go out of this way to play this game unless you're curious or a massive AC1 and 2 fan. The story isn't anything that will hook you and the gameplay is something just about every other AC game already does if not better. And ignoring that, its gameplay is quite flawed. There's no reason to ever stealth or fully engage with any aspect of the game. Even if you self-impose challenges on yourself, it lacks challenge. If you self impose yourself to stealth through areas, it isn't satisfying as the stealth is so basic. If you self impose yourself to fight instead of running away, you'd win every fight easily due to the broken combat. If you self impose yourself to hide instead of fighting, it's easy to break line of sight and hide.
Even the novelty of having a portable Assassin's Creed game is no longer special as the Switch and iOS platforms have their own titles now. I'd personally recommend playing the DS AC games before this one since they are somewhat novel in their execution so the experience is somewhat different, or any of the other AC games over this first since you'd get a better experience. And it hurts me to be so negative on the game. I was hyped when it first came out and still enjoyed it then but was somewhat disappointed with it. I played it a ton when I was younger and it is quite the nostalgic experience but going back to it now is a sad reminder of how much the franchise has progressed in the years since. That's Bloodlines for you, it accomplishes its goal of replicating its source material to a fault. But those are some pretty big faults it has to replicate.
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