There will be lots of spoilers, so consider that your first and last warning.
I won't include the Chronicles Series or smaller titles like Rebellion either.
The only non-main series game I'll give the tip of the hat here is Assassin's Creed Liberation since it mades it's way on main consoles eventually and has a lot of similarities with said main games.
But to climb to the top of the tower we'll have to start at the bottom and we'll do so with:
Assassin's Creed Unity
The first entry for the then new XBox One and PS4 was an infamously buggy mess of a game and even beyond technical difficulties it just wasn't much fun really.
The only real saving grace was the love story which was... fine?
Assassin's Creed - Origins
Despite the last of the "old" Assassin's Creed Games having been great it was an understandable decision on Ubisoft's part to rebuild the series from the ground up. And going in the direction of RPG's with a massive explorable world and more stat based combat was a sensible decision on paper.Now if only the story, the gameplay and the world had been nearly fun enough to sustain the change in direction but unfortunately it was far from there yet. Forcing Players to grind through sidequests in order to sell XP-Boosts if they wanted to continue playing the rather tedious campaign didn't help.
A lot of work and a bunch of good decisions went into this game but ultimately they couldn't save Origins from being a juggernaut that had no business being just that.
Assassin's Creed - Brotherhood
Recruiting NPC's and leveling them up to become your very own Assassin's Squad. That was what Brotherhood brought to the table and it was pretty fun for a bit.
But moving the game from densly populated areas to Rome and other places that weren't as filled to the brim with lots of buildings made this the first AC Game where a lot of what you did was just walking through a map that made you realize there was a reason why earlier games hadn't done more open maps just yet.
And the story just came down to "Here is other stuff Ezio did, you know, the guy you like from the better game that came before". There was a certain sense of laziness in the air of which the Devil was very much in the detail like how Ezio jus never removed his hood in cutscenes anymore and dialogue came mostly down to expository chat's that sent you on the way again immediately.
Also killing my girl Lucy for no other reason than her VA not signing on for further games without having a good idea why that twist would be a thing (I know they made up a reason which you only got to hear in a DLC when you stopped to listen and it was quite dumb) didn't sit well with me at all.
The Multiplayer was more fun than expected actually.
Assassin's Creed - Revelations
Same as Brotherhood but the maps and story were a tad better.
Assassin's Creed III
The game was more fun than people give it credit for. Ship Missions were exciting and new, the storyline revolving around the Assassin's House and the Missions that tied into it were great, playing the beginning of the game as templar, having two generations of Kenways fight side by side, everything about the final chase/ fight was actually pretty badass and emotional.
It is just that there were too many bits and pieces inbetween that were stale and boring and prevented all the good bits from coming together in a really satisfying way and the end of Desmond's story was all kinds of disappointing, really.
I mean maybe that was on me having some kind expectations at this point in the series.
Assassin's Creed
Back when the first entry in the series came out it was actually kind of mind blowing.
The graphics looked slick as fuck compared to what we were used to, climbing freely was amazing and we hadn't grown tired of combat that relied way too much on sytlish counter attacks.
Still even back then it was a bit jarring to return to every City 3 times and encountering more and more resistance with each kill, sucking the fun out of the late game.
Basically everything this game did, later entries in the series did better later on BUT at it's place in time this game absolutely rocked.
Assassin's Creed - Odyssey
A more beautiful world, more diverse missions, a much more fun main character in Kassandra (There is no other choice imo), mythical beasts and objects and places, romance options, Odyssey was in every conceivable way better than it's predecessor AC Origins.
And yet it still made you grind (apparently that was fixed later on after I finished it but I didn't go back to check) to play the main missions and tried to sell you exp boosts right there in the main menu so you could level faster like in some free to play online game despite having been a full price game to begin with.
Playing like a looter shooter with gear that you had to replace with higher level stuff every 5 fucking seconds didn't help either and lastly cutting the main story in 3 different ones that had 3 different purposes felt incredibly unfocused and weird.
Assassin's Creed Liberation
Assassin's Creed - Rogue
The titles for the old generation of consoles while the shiny new ones got Unity instead.
Yeah, it's incredibly ironic that the old consoles got a game that was better in each and every way.
Borrowing the ship combat focus from Black Flag was an onbvious choice given how popular it was but yet it felt different with it's very much non tropical environment, letting you deal with icebergs and the like while playing on the other side of the conflict for once as an Ex- Assassin turned Templar but not necessarily turned bad guy.
Not too many people had it on their radar from what I remember but whoever had had nothing but good things to say about it afterwards. Even now I'd suggest going back and giving it a chance if you haven't done so in the past already.
Yeah, it's incredibly ironic that the old consoles got a game that was better in each and every way.
Borrowing the ship combat focus from Black Flag was an onbvious choice given how popular it was but yet it felt different with it's very much non tropical environment, letting you deal with icebergs and the like while playing on the other side of the conflict for once as an Ex- Assassin turned Templar but not necessarily turned bad guy.
Not too many people had it on their radar from what I remember but whoever had had nothing but good things to say about it afterwards. Even now I'd suggest going back and giving it a chance if you haven't done so in the past already.
Assassin's Creed II
Sometimes a follow up just does everything better than it's predecessor and this is exactly what happened with Assassin's Creed II.
The main character suddenly had personality, the cutscenes were fun as hell and more elaborate, the gamplay was more fluid, the game had much more variety in enemies, maps, side quests and other activities.
If Assassin's Creed was the blueprint for the series, AC II was the entire first floor and basement, fully decorated and everything. Much like Rogue I can still totally see myself going back and giving the whole thing another go even many years and many titles in the series later.
Lastly it was the one time where I really looked forward to every real world sequence outside the Animus.
Desmond grew on me fairly quickly here and I greatly enjoyed his blooming relationship with Lucy and I'm normally absolutely not the most romantic of people but damn, it, beating up bad guys together while the credits role is my idea of a date,
Probably why I am single.
Assassin's Creed - Valhalla
Sometimes a follow up just does everything better than it's predecessor and this is exactly what happened in Assassin's Creed II ...I mean Valhalla.
Well maybe not fully so, I can absolutely see how someone would prefer Kassandra over either version of Eivor but beyond that I wouldn't trade in anything for the previous game really.
The grinding has completely disappeared, in fact around the end I was ridiculously overpowered even just because this world sucked me in so so so fully and quickly that I did a lot of side-quests and activities all the time.
The Map, England especially is, I think, my absolute favourite world map since probably TES V: Skyrim with which I mean it perfectly marries immersion with environmental storytelling and the best possible sandbox experience.
I spent so many hours just wandering around, jumping off cliffs, climbing mountains and stopping just to look around and take in that postcard-worthy landscape with it's amazing lighting system and I say that as someone who played this on a lest-gen console.
And that's is just the start really. Gone is the the endless cycling through new higher level gear, gone are the mictrotransactions, gone is the endless grind to artificially pro-long the amount of time spent with the game when you don't buy exp-boosts, gone is the weird story that comes in three parts.
Instead activities are more diverse , more fun, more rewarding, building your settlement is a thing, you liked fighting a minotaur in the last game and see atlantis in the distance?
Well then how would you like to straight up go to Asgaard and fight frost giants and gigantic wolves?
How would you like to eat mushrooms and get high as fuck to solve riddles? How would you like to blow your horn and raid whatever monastery you come across? How would you like to wield Mjolnir?
And how would you like to engage in medieval rap battles called flyting to raise your charisma?
Tired of all of that? Well how about you sail over to America and hang with some native americans for a couple of hours inbetween? Entirely optional of course.
There are some downsides to this game: Some bugs (nothing even remotely on the level of Unity or Cyberpunk), the present day backstory finally lost me completely, a bit of a missing consistency in Eivor's characterisation and an Ending that probably could have felt bigger and more important and not like an open end to an Invsaion we all know can't have ended all the well given how the series follows actual historic events but it's a rather small price to pay all thing considered.
For the first time since the series "rebooted" the positives to me far far faaaar outweighed the negatives and I never found anything frustrating with the exception of having to win one of these dice games in order to finish the Order Quests.
A more than worthy way to say goodbye to the old kind of Assassin's Creed games before they became huge RPG's, Syndicate is easily the best pure Assasin's Creed Game despite not really reinventing the wheel in any meaningful way or maybe exactly because it didn't do so, focussing instead on enhancing what's already been done before.
The two big new things were two main character, namely the Frye siblings and a grappling hook that spiced up parkouring enough to make it even more fun without going all out Batman Arkham City on us.
London was also just a perfect fit for an Assassin's Creed game with it's narrow streets and high buildings.
Hell even the river had enough traffic to traverse ship by ship by ship.
All the activities were hell of a lot of fun and it's one of the only games ever wehre I just felt compelled to clear the entire map (not counting collectibles).
And if all that wsn't enough there was an entire optional section that saw us following another Assassin who worked in London during one of the World Wars.
Lastly: Evie and Jacob Frye are just easily my favourite protagonists and the way one chapter always put it into Jacob's shoes to do something reckless in the name of good and putting us in those of Evie to do some damage control because other than her brother she actually thinks things through was unique and refreshing and when Jacob had one more chapter at the end of the day it didn't feel unfair it felt like he finally had to fix his own mess because Evie had been right all along.
Still being Siblings there endless quarrels were much more fun that jarring to me at least.
And hey: The Assassin's HQ was a train that was on the move all the time, I mean how can you argue with that, huh?
Assassin's Creed IV - Black Flag
Hardly a real Assassin's game Black Flag was just easily the best pirate game I've ever played:
The On foot-sections are solid but really when you think back what is it you remember?
If you are anything like me it is sailing around, finding diving spots to get upgrades, sinking and entering ships left and right, getting absolutely obliterated by legendary ships in the very corners of the map until I fully upgraded the jackdaw now bringing incredible thrilling fights to them, catching sharks and whales, listening to all the shanties I found on repeat and just generally doing anything that wasn't related to the main quest.
And when I finally cleared the map (again without non-shanty collectibles because fuck em) and finished the main questline it turned out it was great actually and instead of the typical cliff-hanger or underwhelming ending I got to sail out into the sunset with Ann Bonney singing "the partying glass" in what's probably my favourite version of an already great song simply because this game sucked me in so fully and completely that I am not lying when I say it's probably one of my favourite games of all time.
Oh but the out-of-animus stuff sucked hard this time but it really doesn't diminish anything.
Conclusion:
You'll disagree. I know I ranked fan favourites like Brotherhood and Odyssey much further down than the general consensus would and I know that not many people fell hard or Syndicate like I did to which I say:Great. The world would be boring if we all had the same opinion. Like all media it comes down to subjective opinions no matter what internet neckbeards would have you believe in their youtube videos: "Why X was objectively terrible part 87 of 132".
Peace.
PS: Formatting on this site is an absolute nightmare, ngl.
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