I have to be honest here. This is the only mainline entry in the series I haven't played. It was the first AC game to be released on the Xbox One, which I didn't yet have but was considering buying to play this. Then...it came out. The internet lit up with screenshots of absurd bugs and graphical errors and the general consensus of the reviewers was that even without the technical issues it was a weak game, with shoddy gameplay and poor use of the French Revolution setting. I couldn't quite bring myself to buy the Xbox One for something like this (it was Rock Band 4 that eventually compelled me to do it).
The game also got in some trouble for the fact that there were four different playable characters and they were all men. After the backlash that, frankly, everyone should have seen coming, the developers said it was too hard to animate a woman's hair. That did little to soothe the Twitter masses. After all, they were able to painstakingly restore Colonial-era Paris but long hair was too difficult?
Years later, I have the console but I don't think I'll go back and try it. One issue with this series as a whole is that the games tend to become outdated quickly. This is especially true with...
The one that started it all. This one came out so long ago that there must be a decent percentage of the fanbase that has never tried it out. If they do, they're in for a shock. Compared to even the first sequel, this was a borderline tech demo. But it's the story that made it work just well enough to start a series.
During the Crusades, we're given our first introduction to the centuries long war between the Assassin Brotherhood, which values freedom and transparency, and the Templars, who seek control over the populace. A grouchy assassin named Altair is assigned to take out a series of highly ranked Templars in three different Middle East cities - Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus. There was also the storyline taking place in the present - a bartender named Desmond Miles is recruited by the Templars to relive the memories of his ancestor Altair using a device called the Animus. Things ended with a wild cliffhanger that did wonders to get me excited for the next game.
The bones were there - the sneaking, the climbing, the exploring. It just needed a LOT of work.
This one is fairly well-regarded so it may come as a surprise to see it so low, but it just didn't work for me. The main characters are twins Jacob and Evie Frye, who work to build up a criminal enterprise in Victorian-era London. The developers found a solution to the "female hair" problem - Evie's is always tied back. London is a fine location (climbing Big Ben was delightful) but I think the setting was too close to the present. Too many guns, too many factories, too many vehicles. It just didn't feel right.
It didn't help that the combat was just dreadful. Unlike other games where your assassin can fight off a small army with enough skill, in Syndicate you're screwed if you encounter more than two or three enemies. Maybe that was supposed to encourage stealth, but that didn't seem to work very well either.
When the premise for this game was announced, people were stoked. A Native American assassin hunting down colonists during the American Revolution? Yes please! Unfortunately, the final product was weighed down by bloat. Feature creep was definitely an issue.
You can tell things are a little off right away. A prologue featuring the main character's father went on for some three hours before we met the real protagonist, Ratonhnhakekon (nicknamed "Connor" to make it easier for the other characters). There are also a ton of gameplay mechanics and many of them are totally unnecessary. There's a crafting system that is utterly incomprehensible and the management of overseas Assassin campaigns used in previous games was ruined by a baffling interface. Other mini-games sneak in for one or two appearances and are never used again. The combat is glitchy as hell. The most successful addition to the series gameplay were naval battles that proved to be so popular the series has used them in several games since.
While the plot itself is messy and Connor is mostly a one-note character, the thematic side of the storyline is masterful. The final scene is just brilliant - Connor wanders over to Boston harbor, where the British ships are leaving while the newly independent colonists brag about the virtues of freedom. Then Connor looks over and sees slaves being sold on an auction block. He shakes his head in disgust. Roll credits. It took some serious stones for a huge commercial game to call out the hypocrisy of the American Revolution, but there's another side to it. There's an ongoing sidequest where Connor acquires a homestead and begins to recruit people from all different backgrounds with various specialties. By the end of the game, it's a thriving little community, contrasting what America could be against the reality of what America too often is. It's borderline tragic that this game didn't turn out better as a whole.
Eligibility is iffy in this case. Liberation was originally released on Playstation Vita, but since it eventually got an HD makeover and a release on the major consoles, I'm going to count it. Because of that, it's definitely a smaller game than all the others on the list but still worth playing.
Aveline de Grandpre was the first female protagonist of the series, working to reduce the Templar presence in colonial New Orleans. It can sometimes feel like a detective game as Aveline can access different parts of the city depending on how she's dressed. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it may be a commentary on what is sometimes referred to as "code switching." On the other hand, there were several times when I was stuck walking around in a fancy dress to advance the plot when I wanted to be running around and climbing buildings.
Thankfully, the setting is delightful, especially when you get out of the city and start exploring the bayou. I was also quite pleasantly surprised by a visit to the Chichen Itza site in Mexico.
7. Assassin's Creed: Revelations
The final appearance of everyone's favorite assassin, Ezio Auditore. Now an elder statesman in the order, he journeys to the Turkish city of Constantinople (now called Istanbul) to shore up the Assassin presence there. Ezio takes on something of a protege with the younger Yusuf, who gives him a new toy - a blade with a hook at the end that adds all sorts of fun quirks to the climbing. You'll want to explore in this one, the art direction is often magnificent.
The gameplay is not as successful. You're tasked with driving out the Templars in one district of the city at the time, an element that has been used in many of the games since but is very rough at this point. To that end, you're encouraged to purchase property but it's really expensive and I mostly gave up on it without seeing any consequences. The tower defense mini-game that pops up at the end of these power struggles is a baffling departure from the typical formula that's totally out of place.
One subplot I didn't see coming was the numerous flashbacks to the later days of Altair from the first game. These scenes are not always gracefully integrated, but the way they ultimately dovetail with the main story to conclude the arcs of both these characters is satisfying.
This game was the start of a major change in the series, both in terms of story and gameplay. Ancient Egypt is a setting that you couldn't go wrong with, but it required the overarching lore to go much farther back in time than any previous game, to an era where the Assassins and Templars as we know them didn't exist. The protagonist is Bayek, who serves the people of Siwa as a "medjay," which is basically an ancient constable. However, he's also nursing a serious grudge against a group of masked cultists who tore his family apart. By the end of the story, the seeds of the rivalry that will echo throughout history have been planted.
As the player explores the absolutely vast recreation of Egypt, they have to get used to several gameplay elements that borrow primarily from RPGs - equipping various pieces of armor and weapons, skill trees, and a combat system intended to be more precise than the often unbalanced fights in the previous games. It takes some getting used to and is pretty rough around the edges, which is expected for when a long-running series tries to innovate.
The setting is very well fleshed out - you really get a sense of the tensions resulting from Greece's occupation of Egypt, further complicated by the involvement of the burgeoning Roman Empire. The player gets to interact with the likes of Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. The one character the game doesn't know what to do with is Aya, Bayek's estranged wife. She shows up intermittently and becomes a playable character, but since you don't get any opportunity to level her up, it becomes more of a nuisance than anything.
As of this writing, the most recent Assassin's Creed game I have played and certainly the biggest. During the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece, the grandchild of King Leonidas strikes out as a mercenary before coming into conflict with a sort of proto-Templar organization called The Cult of Kosmos. The main characters are once again siblings, Alexios and Kassandra, although in this case you pick one at the beginning and stick with them. It seems like most players have picked Kassandra and with good reason - with the Greek accent this game often feels like a Wonder Woman simulator.
The developers borrow a lot from open-world RPGs like Dragon Age, introducing the concept of choosing dialogue responses, which gives some control over the main character's personality. The new combat introduced in Origins is more polished this time but the real draw of this game is exploring Greece. The series has never had an open-world that was so huge and so beautiful - it's one of the most visually beautiful games I've played, period. There's plenty for the player to do, whether it's getting involved with the ongoing fights between Athens and Sparta, sailing from one gorgeous island to another, or (if you're alone in the house) kicking bad guys off cliffs while shouting "This is SPARTA!"
This game does so much right, so why isn't it ranked higher? Well, it really duffs the ending. Or I should say...endings. The conclusion of the Cult storyline and a major revelation tying the past to the present are relegated to sidequests, which is a strange choice considering the implications for the overall lore of the series. As for the main ending involving Kassandra's family, it can go several ways depending on the player's choices and the game is absolutely ruthless about this. You can get everything "right" except for a single line of dialogue and wind up with a brutally depressing ending. In other words, if the next game is like this, I'm reading the fuckin' walkthrough.
This game was actually released at the same time as Unity, based on the smart assumption that many players (like me) weren't quite ready to move into the next console generation and might enjoy one more adventure on the Xbox 360. Ubisoft probably didn't anticipate that, due to Unity's many issues, this one would end up with a far better reputation. It's best described as an expansion of Black Flag with some precise tweaks, but that's no problem given that Black Flag has the best interface in the whole series (more on that in a bit).
The protagonist is a cocky Irishman named Shay Cormac, an Assassin serving during the Seven Years War. Reckless decisions made by the leaders of the brotherhood alienate Shay to the point where he leaves the group to pursue his own goals, eventually encountering Haytham Kenway, the charismatic Templar from Assassin's Creed III who just might convince him to turn. Not only is it a powerful character arc, it forces the player to re-evaluate the entire morality of the series.
Another reason this one is a personal favorite is that it takes place in a region where I've traveled extensively - the Atlantic Provinces of Canada. The familiarity brings pluses and minuses. On the one hand, I'm quite sure Prince Edward Island doesn't have any sheer marble cliffs to climb. On the other hand, sailing towards the Gaspe Peninsula and seeing Perce Rock, a famous natural arch that I've visited in real life, was a great thrill.
3. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
After the runaway success of Assassin's Creed II, Ubisoft wanted another game pronto to take advantage. However, the game designers knew that it would take a decent chunk of time to produce what would become Assassin's Creed III. So they came to a compromise that has been a mixed blessing - Brotherhood is the continuing story of Ezio Auditore as he takes his battle against the evil Borgia family into the city of Rome. This game is great but the corporate pressure to release games on a yearly schedule caused some major issues for the series.
The scope of the game is wisely limited to an excellent recreation of Renaissance-era Rome and Ezio concentrates his efforts in the city on growing the ranks of the Assassin brotherhood. In a really brilliant mechanic, the player encounters various people in distress and offers them the chance to join. They train during their own off-screen missions and also can join you in combat. I felt real pride watching my first recruit, a young woman dealing with corrupt city guards, grow into a lethal fighter who had my back during the big endgame confrontations.
There are also more of the spooky puzzles that illustrate the influence of the Templars on other eras, including the present. In a particularly cheeky move, this game had a sequence where a photo of Chief Justice John Roberts revealed a Templar ring on his finger. This was shortly after the horrendous Citizens United ruling. Check out his entry on the Assassin's Creed wiki, it's hilarious.
2. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
The issues that came with Assassin's Creed III clearly shook the developers, as they worked aggressively to deal with them in the next game. They took note of the popularity of the naval segments and made those central to the storyline about piracy on the high seas. Seeking fortune in the Caribbean, Edward Kenway leaves Britain and adopts the life of a scoundrel. His first mate, a Haitian named Adewale, often acts as his conscience and when the crew encounters the Assassin brotherhood, he finds a lot of appeal in their ethos. Edward's not interested, however, at least not until the British colonizers begin to clamp down on piracy.
Once you have a ship and are free to explore the open sea, it's clear just how much the game's various systems have improved. The crafting system was streamlined and simple and upgrading the ship was nice and straightforward. In the older games, trying to get all the various collectibles was a fool's errand since you could barely keep track of your progress. This time, however, you can simply press a button in any area to get a list of what there is to find and track it on your map accordingly. It's actually feasible to 100% this one and given how much fun it is to explore, you might actually want to try.
What really makes this one so special is that was the first AC game to nail the "open world" concept. You can spend hours just sailing across the gorgeous teal water, exploring islands, looking for treasure, swimming underwater among shipwrecks, creeping around old Mayan temples and eventually getting back to the main story whenever you feel like it. Your crew will even sing authentic (and delightful) sea shanties if you're sailing for a while. Grab a bottle of rum and get lost in this one for a while.
1. Assassin's Creed II
The reason this series is still putting out huge games all these years later is because of Assassin's Creed II. After the rough first game, the team had to nail this one...and boy, did they.
The secret to its success was in large part due to its setting and the lead character. Ezio Auditore (voiced by Roger Craig Smith) is still the best protagonist of the series, a carefree young man from a wealthy family in Florence whose life is turned upside down by the evil Borgia dynasty. Upon discovering that his family was linked to the Assassin brotherhood, he begins a satisfying arc from an impulsive and angry young man into a calculating, lethal assassin. The story takes the player all around Florence and later, to the canals of Venice and the beautiful countryside of Tuscany. I've seen a lot of Italy and was pretty impressed with how well they captured it.
Most of the varied gameplay and story elements that make these games fun were introduced here. You can go on hair-raising climbing adventures in old catacombs to find treasure. You can laugh as Ezio calls Leonardo da Vinci's flying machine a "pezzo di merde." You can stumble on mysterious glyphs that lead to spooky puzzles revealing the influence of the Templars over the course of history. You can climb famous buildings before jumping off and landing in a hay cart, miraculously uninjured. And of course, you can smite your enemies before delivering Ezio's catchphrase, "requiescat in pace." It's all here and the success of all the subsequent games has depended in large part of how well they could recapture the thrill of this one.
Assassin's Creed: Valhalla has been out for about a month at the time of this writing, but I have yet to play it. I've learned that you need to allow some time for Ubisoft to do some bug fixing and sure enough, they just put out a patch to fix issues like the player's horse getting its head stuck inside boulders. I kid Ubisoft, these games are still a reliably fun experience and a way to engage with history that's truly unique to this medium. I hope to be playing new ones for many years to come.
