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Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection is available on the Nintendo Switch, and it's been an absolute blast from the past. The Ezio trilogy of games is often heralded as a significant high point in the franchise, with players being able to live the entire life of Ezio Auditore from life to death in this trilogy.
The Switch collection also comes with a pair of films, Assassin's Creed Lineage and Assassin's Creed Embers, to help fill in some blanks of the assassin's life. While the game was optimized for the Nintendo Switch and featured several excellent quality-of-life features, some negatives were discussed.
Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection was accessible even to a new assassin
I truthfully have not played much of the Assassin's Creed franchise, but I genuinely enjoyed my time in Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection. All of these games are represented nicely on the Nintendo Switch, and there was a nice, steady framerate in both handheld and ported modes.
A steady 30 FPS is nice, and while 60 FPS is always preferred, the 30 is stable and doesn’t stutter or chug anywhere. The Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection has many useful new features and updates to the game, making it much easier to play.
The UI saw a bit of an overall, and the font seemed to be bigger, making it easier to read in both handheld and ported modes. The HUD looks much better and is easy to take in. Players can also use touch screen compatibility in the menus, which is neat.
Unnecessary, but neat. I would rather have that time gone into a bit more optimization in the game itself, but it’s nice to maneuver the menus that way in handheld mode.
The biggest problem in Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection - Input Lag
While the actual gameplay is exactly what I remember seeing when my friends would play these games, there's a pretty serious amount of input lag in the games. The amount of input lag does vary across the games.
In my opinion, it felt more bearable in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, which was also the best game of the trilogy. It was a game I enjoyed the most out of the three, partially because of less input lag. There were moments in combat or even looting objects that immediately became frustrating thanks to input lag.
Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection's games themselves played pretty well for the most part, but the lag in input commands was quite frustrating. This would make certain moments of the game frustrating. I would say that I enjoyed exploring these cities as Ezio - the gameplay experience is precisely what I imagined it would feel like.
The ancient world of assassins faithfully was ported to the Nintendo Switch
There were some minor graphical bugs and weirdness in Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection, but overall, they looked again, as I remember seeing in my youth. Though I don't have any real emotional attachment to the franchise, that quickly changed.
Watching Ezio age, as well as seeing his combat skills improve, was just fantastic. I was delighted to climb to the highest point of the city and be able to see the whole area sprawled out in front of me. Fans of the franchise will get the same game they had originally, visually and mechanically. That is, except for the multiplayer. Sorry, that didn't get ported in.
It even has single-player DLC content and cosmetic/equipable items. You do have to log in to Uplay Connect to get them. This is all very positive and, unfortunately, negative. Assassin’s Creed II has not aged well at all.
The game itself was fun, but it didn’t feel as exciting as the other two games or look quite as pretty. Exploring the world of assassins wound up quite stimulating, and playing in both handheld and ported mode felt solid.
In Conclusion
While Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection on the Nintendo Switch isn't perfect, it's an enjoyable experience to access all three games on the Switch. If you want to get a trio of classic games on the go, this is an excellent way to do it.
The player has to have quite a bit of space set aside, around 35 GB. When downloading the game, it only downloads Assassin's Creed II. Other games have to be downloaded separately, so be aware. I had to ask myself who the game was for.
If players have either never played these or don't have access to the original games anymore, it's going to be for them. The gameplay is consistent and enjoyable. While the input lag can get frustrating, the games are still quite good, and it's nice to see massive, open-world games finding a home on the Nintendo Switch.
Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection
Reviewed On: Nintendo Switch (Early access provided by Ubisoft)
Platform: Nintendo Switch (Previously launched on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One)
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release Date: February 17, 2022
