Released back in 2007, the first Assassin’s Creed took the world by storm and kicked off a large and still ongoing franchise, one of Ubisoft’s most successful, too. While every fan of the franchise no doubt has their favourite (and least favourite) entries, we aren’t here to rank them all. I mean, we did that already. You can read that list here. Instead, for this list, we are looking at all the main entries and picking out the best and worst aspects of each.
Some come, hop off a building, and crash into all these words like a wannabe assassin. Here are all the best and worst parts of every main Assassin’s Creed game in order of release.
Assassin’s Creed
Best: Laying The Foundation: This is the game that started it all, and even if it’s a bit rough around the edges, the basic setup is still cool and fresh in 2022. Mixing modern-day storytelling with ancient history and stealth action was a brilliant move, and it’s still the best bit from the first game in the series.
Worst: Sort of everything else? It feels mean to pick on Assassin’s Creed, but so much of the first game feels empty and repetitive. There’s not much to do in the game and what’s there feels copied and pasted. And the ending really sucked, too.
Assassin’s Creed II
Best: Ezio And His Story: While this beloved sequel is great for a lot of reasons, including its parkour improvements and more varied side content, what really stands out is protagonist Ezio’s journey from troublemaker to famed assassin. In many ways, it became a blueprint for future games, to a fault even. But here, it works well thanks to the solid writing and performances.
Worst: Bloat Begins: Assassin’s Creed II added more side content to the formula which was all (mostly) welcomed by fans. But this is also where the series starts messing around with managing a homestead, business, and other side hustles. Some of this stuff would end up clogging up future entries in the franchise moving forward.
Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
Best: Commanding Other Assassins: In the next entry in the Ezio trilogy, players get to help start their own chapter of assassins. Sure, this involves some busywork, but it also means you eventually get the ability to command assassins with a simple button press. And it rules! Walking through an area and using your assassins to take out guards one by one, without having to lift a sword, is still one of my favourite video game memories.
Worst: Sequel Onslaught: Assassin’s Creed II was released on November 17, 2009. Brotherhood was released basically a year later, on November 16, 2010. This was the start of yearly installments of the franchise, and that’s not even counting spin-offs, mobile games, DLC, and ports. The final game in the Ezio Trilogy, Revelations, would release almost a year after Brotherhood, cementing this pattern and leading to some becoming burned out with the series.
Assassin’s Creed Revelations
Best: Wrapping Up A Trilogy: In many ways, the Ezio trilogy is unique for the franchise as it followed one single historic character through almost their entire life. With Revelations, Ubisoft ends Ezio’s storyline in a fairly satisfactory way, while also delivering a new city to explore using the simple but effective and extendable hook blade. It was also cool to play through one of these games as an older man, something you don’t see very often in open-world games.
Worst: Tower Defence: As is tradition with each new entry, Ubisoft included a new mini-game or side activity for players to mess around with between all the stabbin’ and missions. However, this time around things went horribly wrong as someone decided to make that new gameplay element a terrible, boring, and frustrating tower defence activity. Luckily, you can mostly avoid it. But still, why even include something so bad?
Assassin’s Creed III
Best: The World: Assassin’s Creed III has its list of flaws, and we will get to a big one in a moment, but its cities and forests aren’t on that list. Unlike previous games in the series, ACIII’s wilderness actually felt like a living world, with animals to hunt and more organic-looking trees and cliffs to climb. And the cities, while not as big as some of the previous urban locations, were jam-packed with detail and felt more alive thanks to having more NPCs bustling around.
Worst: The Start: A lot of people never got to the good parts of Assassin’s Creed III mainly because it takes forever to get through the opening chapters and overly long tutorials. Yes, the very start of the game is cool and pulls off one of my favourite twists in the franchise, but the rest of the beginning is a slog that feels like it could have been condensed into something more enjoyable.
Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag
Best: Being A Pirate: Sailing the open seas in Black Flag is so good, Ubisoft decided to turn it into its own game. (That…didn’t go very well.) But I get it. Black Flag nails the experience of being a pirate captain, complete with your own boat and crew. While boat combat had appeared in Assassin’s Creed III, Black Flag refines it, expands it, and creates a damn good open-world pirate game in the process.
Worst: The Cities And Islands: While I know Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is many fans’ favourite and saying anything negative about it might get me stabbed in a dark alley by some hooded assassin, I have to be honest: the islands and cities suck in Black Flag. They aren’t very big, they’re not much fun to explore, and I don’t even remember them without looking them up online. A big step back from previous games which contained incredibly detailed and large cities to climb about.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue
Best: Shay Cormac And His Story: Assassin’s Creed Rogue can sometimes feel a lot like a reskin of Black Flag, and that’s because from a tech standpoint…it kind of is. But its main character, Shay Cormac, is so interesting, and his storyline involving Templars and Assassins is unlike anything seen in the franchise up until that point. I don’t want to spoil it, but needless to say, it has some fantastic twists that kept me hooked until the very end.
Worst: Budget Release: Rogue wasn’t considered a “big” Assassin’s Creed game upon its release. While the then-next-gen consoles got Assassin’s Creed Unity, Rogue was released only for Xbox 360 and PS3 as a way for Ubisoft to still give fans on the old machines a new game, without breaking the bank. And you can sort of feel that. A lot of this game feels recycled from Black Flag, and it has a smaller world overall. Though for some, that’s probably not a bad thing at all!
Assassin’s Creed Unity
Best: Paris, France: Can a lovely looking city filled to the brim with amazingly detailed buildings and cool places to climb save an Assassin’s Creed game from mediocrity? No. But it’s still nice. Paris in Unity is one of the best cities featured in the series and even to this day, I think it holds up thanks in large part to some spectacular lighting and art design. And Unity’s improved parkour system shines as you slide and climb around all these lovely-looking structures.
Worst: Boring Story: It’s a shame that such a gorgeous-looking city and such fun-to-use movement controls are wasted on such a dull, boring story. Arno’s tale is very similar to Ezio’s but lacks a lot of the same flair and excitement found in Assassin’s Creed II. By the end of the game, I’d mostly forgotten what had just happened. But Paris still looks nice.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
Best: The Twins: For the first time ever in the series, London-based Syndicate introduced two playable assassins that you can swap between whenever you want. These two, Evie and Jacob Frye, are easily the best part of a very good game. The way they bicker but also work together felt genuine (as someone with a sibling myself) and Ubisoft’s decision to use them together in the final mission was smart, creating one of the best endings in the franchise’s history.
Worst: Vehicles: Syndicate added horse-drawn carriages to the franchise. You could grab one off the streets and drive around London. The problem? They are awful to drive and are very buggy. (No pun intended.) I lost count of the number of times I rammed my poor horses into other carriages or walls. And unlike some other bad parts of previous games, you can’t avoid the carriages as they are integrated into many side missions and main quests.
Assassin’s Creed Origins
Best: Open-World Ancient Egypt: Technically, all of the past games in the series were open-world. But with Origins, Ubisoft really opened things up, turning the franchise into a large-scale RPG. Now some fans hated this shift, but even if you despise the RPG features, you can’t deny how cool ancient Egypt was in Origins. It was a location people had long wanted in the series and Origins does a perfect job creating an Egypt that is both familiar and fresh. And yes, you can slide down a pyramid.
Worst: The End Of Assassins: Origins is a prequel to the entire franchise, showing players how the ancient order of Assassins was formed. That’s cool, but it also means that technically Bayek, the main character of the game, isn’t an Assassin. And this trend has continued with the protagonists of all the recent games. While some don’t mind, it is starting to get weird that all these Assassin’s Creed games don’t include uh… official assassins. Luckily future titles appear to be shifting away from this pattern.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Best: Kassandra: I mean, do I have to say more? Oh, my editor is telling me I do… ok! Kassandra is just the best. A powerful warrior who is also always down to fool around, she’s arguably one of the most interesting and fun protagonists the series has produced. And she’s very important, playing a part in later sections of the franchise’s complicated timeline for reasons I can’t spoil here. Oh, and kicking people in this game is great, too.
Worst: The Loot And RPG Features: Origins started shifting the series in an RPG-like direction, and with Odyssey, that shift becomes complete. Combat becomes more about stats and straight-up fighting people as opposed to stealth and cool one-shot blade kills. And the loot system really gets in the way in Odyssey. Just ask my former boss, Stephen Totilo, about how many times you end up getting the same loot over and over again. This ended up being so bad that Ubisoft thankfully cut weapon and armour loot from the next game in the series.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
Best: The Side Quests: With Valhalla, an Assassin’s Creed game felt for the first time like it had a ton of great and diverse side content to play. The way you discovered this content by just finding it out in the world, plus how organically many of the quests were built around people and their unique stories, really improved upon how boring past games could feel when you stopped doing main quests and poked at the filler content. I still remember many of the side quests in Valhalla, like Axe Head, the guy covered in poop, and the deadly war nuns you help save.
Worst: Too Damn Big: While I loved much of the side content in Valhalla, I’ll be the first to admit that the game is too damn big. And with multiple paid expansions adding dozens and dozens of hours to the already massive title, it’s hard to see anybody complaining about Valhalla being too short. In fact, most people, myself included, would prefer the next game in the series to be much, much smaller. I don’t need every future Assassin’s Creed game to be 200+ hours long.
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