1666: Amsterdam Wows With Its World, Not Its Combat

Flying over 17th century Amsterdam on a broomstick with a black cat, looking down at oil-lit streetlamps glowing amber below you. That image, described across multiple hands-on previews published yesterday, captures exactly what Patrice Désilets' 1666: Amsterdam does best. It also highlights the gap between the game's world-building ambitions and the combat that's supposed to carry you through them, with early access launching August 25.

Désilets, the original creator of Assassin's Creed, has been fighting to make this game for over fifteen years. He sued Ubisoft for the rights to the project and is now developing it at his Montreal-based indie studio Panache Digital Games. The historical recreation is, by all accounts, extraordinary. Destructoid's preview called the world "incredibly realistic, dense, living, and breathing," while PC Gamer noted the map felt "impossibly big" even in the preview slice. Désilets' obsession with accuracy is the same instinct that made Assassin's Creed II's Florence feel like a real place you could navigate from memory.

But combat is where the concern sits. Multiple previews describe a system where Noa swings her broomstick-staff in basic combos, dodges, and waits for enemies who politely take turns attacking. Game Informer's Marcus Stewart wrote that "the melee combat doesn't pack much satisfying impact" and that enemies attacking in sequence "feels disappointingly dated." PC Gamer's hands-on was blunter, noting Noa was "limited to dodging and brawling like a street sweeper" with no difficulty settings currently in place. A roguelite ability system, where defeating bosses or searching houses grants randomised powers like vine shields and crow swarms, promises to add depth later. But that's later. What's playable now sounds thin, and August 25 is two weeks away.

I'm excited about what Désilets is building here. A historically meticulous open world with witchcraft, a cat containing a man's soul from 1999, and a multi-era narrative structure? That's a creative swing most AAA studios wouldn't dream of taking. But shipping into early access with combat this undercooked is a risk. The world might get people in the door; the fighting has to keep them there.