Time to rank the Assassin’s Creed games, otherwise known as the famous stabby franchise that eventually became the template for all of Ubisoft’s games. Don’t expect this list to include popular spinoffs like Assassin’s Creed: Watch_Dogs, Assassin’s Creed: Blood Dragon, or Assassin’s Creed: Wildlands. This is for the Assassin’s Creed games where people wear white hoods and go around shanking people over ideological and religious differences.
#12 — Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
This one gets the worst spot because, objectively, the game is riddled with ridiculous amounts of bloat and, subjectively, suffers from the same problems as Valhalla but has shittier grass textures, I think it’s that much more annoying to look at for the same inflated duration.
The devs thought trapping you in a 40-hour-long game (if you rush) with, like, 500 miles of copy-pasted flat green textures was a good idea? wC’mon, dude. This is Greece. Every ancient Greek story tells of the gods having nasty sex in beautiful meadows with wind brushing against each individual blade of grass. There’s none of that here. Yuck.
#11 — Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
Despite AC Valhalla being one of the most bloated open-world games ever made, with tedium and blasé mission design around every corner to pad out the game’s 4,000-hour-long runtime, at least it looks nice. Snow is an easy way to make games look artificially pretty via particle effects and boot tracks, and AC Valhalla understands that.
Sure, vikings aren’t exactly a great fit for something called “Assassin’s Creed,” but Ubisoft gave up on the games actually fitting the series’ name a few entries prior.
#10 — Assassin’s Creed
Originally envisioned as a sequel to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the first entry in the franchise would naturally be the crudest of them all. Unrefined and unwashed as it was (and is, by today’s standards), it paved the way for streamlined, optimized, and superiorly monetized sequels that would help turn Ubisoft into the horrifying mass of billion-dollar blandness it is today. They even made a movie out of it! Just make sure you never watch it.
#9 — Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
This is the game that began the trend of bloated Assassin’s Creed sequels designed purely to milk some cash out of gamers’ supple, frothing teets. Not only is Brotherhood’s map design too big and barren for its own good, but it’s not even a properly numbered sequel. It’s just an AC romp designed to cling to Ezio’s jockstrap because he was the only real personality the franchise had at that point (to this day, Ezio remains the only franchise character of note). Plus, the stiff combat sucked, not improving nearly enough from AC2.
With that said, Brotherhood took a damn good first stab at the series’ bespoke, assination-oriented multiplayer component. Cheers to that, I guess.
#8 — Assassin’s Creed 2
For its time, AC2 was a strong sequel that built off the original game in all the right ways. The map was just big enough to be impressive without being daunting and the collectibles hadn’t gotten out of control like in contemporary AC games. Plus, the overarching narrative had an actual point and even a thin veil of cohesion. Ezio was a charismatic, relatable protagonist, and his musical theme (shout-out to composer Jesper Kyd) ended up becoming the entire franchise’s theme once Ubisoft realized they’d never do better. Good job, Assassin’s Creed 2!
#7 — Assassin’s Creed Rogue
This game shouldn’t be on the list. It was the last-gen consolation prize for 360 and PS3 owners who didn’t have a next-gen console when Unity came out — a mere afterthought of a spinoff masquerading as a full-fledged mainline entry. With that said…
Rogue had an interesting hook for its main character and integrated well with the smart parts of the franchise’s larger story. It contained a lot of refinements and quality-of-life items that helped it stand alongside earlier, more “inspired” entries in the franchise. Simply put, it was a good time that still holds up today.
#6 — Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
AC Syndicate is a Batman Arkham game where you can play as British Batman or British Girl Batman, complete with a punchy combat system and grapple hook. Plus, Syndicate has trains, and everyone knows train presence instantly bumps up games on all reputable score charts.
Sure, Syndicate’s narrative is meaningless and the lead characters are largely forgettable, but the world design is grand and appreciably detailed, the World War 1 digression is epic, and the game’s really fun if you have Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies’ soundtracks blasting in the background.
#5 — Assassin’s Creed Origins
This game more or less marked the beginning of the end for “old AC,” e.g., when the games were actually about assassins and weren’t excessively bloated RPGs. With that said, Origins is the best of the franchise’s contemporary titles.
Origins is the least drawn out of the new AC games, meaning you can actually complete it before it completely overstays its welcome. Furthermore, the Egypt setting is richly realized and visually engrossing. And to top it all off, the graphics are gorgeous, because having sand and particle effects everywhere is a really easy way to mask any shoddy texturework.
#4 — Assassin’s Creed 3
Ignoring AC3’s narrative’s off-putting, uneven pacing, the actual story within remains the boldest in franchise history. Between spending the first three hours of the game playing as someone besides the main character without the game telling you (surprise!) and a finale that highlights the futility of attempting to fight racism as a lone wolf, the storytellers behind AC3 didn’t hold back.
AC3 introduced the franchise’s boating system and streamlined the series’ parkour mechanics, with the latter improvement making for a more accessible experience against the franchise’s pervasive sense of jank. All in all, the game was a swing for the fences that showed what the franchise was narratively capable of, while also setting the stage for later entries (cough cough, Black Flag).
#3 — Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag
Black Flag is basically an epic, big-budget pirate simulator with some Assassin’s Creed stuff thrown in as salad dressing. If you like hoisting sails, singing sea shanties, firing cannons, and ramming ships while listening to the cries and screams of drowning enemy crewmates begging to see their families one last time, this game is an easy recommendation.
#2 — Assassin’s Creed Revelations
Not only was this game a touching, thoughtful ending to the Ezio trilogy (far more impactful than the filler of Brotherhood, in any event), but it had engaging world design that gave exploration a great flow. And, most importantly…
It had incredible multiplayer. Seriously, this game’s cat-and-mouse multiplayer iterated on Brotherhood’s to absolute perfection. Every PVP iteration after this (AC3, Black Flag) failed to stack up. Revelations’ MP maps, character abilities and customization options, and visual aesthetic were all sick as hell. Ubisoft needs to bring this component back, stat.
#1 — Assassin’s Creed Unity
Maybe it’s because Ubisoft is largely a French operation, but I’ve never seen the company pay so much care to authentically recreating a setting. Roaming through Ubisoft’s French Revolution version of Paris is, no joke, a perfectly fine primer for touring modern-day, real-life Paris. The landmarks, the streets, etcetera, are all done to perfection. One look through the Notre Dame cathedral’s stained-glass windows in this game is all you need to see to know Ubisoft put more heart and soul into Unity than any other AC entry. Despite its unfortunate technical hiccups at launch, this game remains the pinnacle of the franchise’s artistic and technological ambition.
Not to mention, the title’s pretty alright as an actual game. It makes parkour even smoother than previous AC installments, which is nice, and the game’s incredible technology means Unity’s unreal crowd density really makes you feel like you’re trapped alongside a city’s worth of people suffering through a monarchy in collapse. For a series all about immersive historical fiction, that’s a serious accomplishment.
