Assassin’s Creed Ranked Worst to Best

What has happened to the Assassin’s Creed video game series should be considered a war crime.

At one stage this was comfortably my favourite video game series of all time, as I was gripped by its breath taking vision, storytelling, characters, philosophy and lore, as well as gameplay comprised of an assassin fantasy, open world elements and parkour all in one. At its peak I’d say all of the first 4 entries in this series were masterpieces, as was its 6th main entry. Even the 5th, which is a weak point, has many interesting elements to it.

Since then, this series I used to love has been bastardised and shelled out into a hollow, bloated, empty mess that is neither fun to play nor remotely even resembles the series I used to love. It’s now a gigantic, tedious RPG historical series with little involvement of anything Assassin about it.

So fair to say this ranking will be a tad/biased and lopsided in favour of the earlier entries as I try to emphasise how much this series has gone to hell. Keep in mind also that I have not yet played Assassin’s Creed: Shadows as I gave up on buying these newer games instantly upon release a long time ago. So from the first game up to Mirage (main series only).

13. ASSASSIN’S CREED: ODYSSEY (2018)

A.K.A. When Assassin’s Creed fully transitioned into a bad Witcher 3 rip off.

Like seriously this game is everyone wrong with modern gaming in a nutshell. Utterly soulless with absolutely no interesting or even coherent characters to play as or an attention grabbing story, a lot of over the top cartoonish nonsense with an over focus on graphics, a pointlessly gigantic and tedious map of side quests that make the game take up way too much of your time and genuinely don’t add anything at all and teeming with forced microtransactions.

Worse, even besides the fact that it’s an agonisingly dull bore of a game, it is just straight up not an Assassin’s Creed game. At all. Period. It’s a bloated, boring, attempt to make a Witcher 3 type RPG set in Ancient Greece, that has absolutely nothing to do with the Assassins, but with the Assassin’s Creed brand slapped on it to sell more. That’s what basically the entire franchise has been in recent years but it’s never so shameless as here, as at least the other games bother to try and resemble Assassin’s Creed in some way or another.

12. ASSASSIN’S CREED: MIRAGE (2023)

Another lazy Ubisoft cash-in but on the other end of the scale from Odyssey.

Rather than make any old historical game and just slap the Assassin’s Creed brand on it like Odyssey did, Mirage is recognisably an Assassin’s Creed game in the old school stealth and parkour variety, which at least automatically ranks it ahead of that travesty.

But all Mirage is at the end of the day is another cash-in, made to brainlessly and cynically pander to old school fans of the series like myself disenchanted with the direction of the newer games, while at the same time working on their next big soulless over caffeinated RPG with 2 main characters, endless combat and little actual stuff related to…uh…Assassin’s Creed which all signs point towards Shadows being.

Mirage is a dull, mind bogglingly forgettable game. Dull protagonist, nothing story, repetitive gameplay, uninteresting setting and world. Feels like a spin off that was thrown together at the last minute. Just because it tries to please old fans of the series doesn’t mean it captures what made the first 4 games so special.

11. ASSASSIN’S CREED: SYNDICATE (2015)

This was during that time when Ubisoft had clearly run out of ideas for what to do with the franchise having botched and then mainly got rid of modern day and already tried something new and different once with Black Flag, and yet were still pumping out a new game every single year without stopping.

This resulted in Unity, while having some brave new ideas, being a rushed botch job, and as a consequence of the backlash anything even good about Unity was totally discarded in this game, which much like Mirage represents the series just kinda…not even trying and coasting along.

Victorian London is of course a gorgeous setting but there’s nothing going on here. Really, nothing. The gameplay is really dull and samey, with probably the worst and most repetitive combat in the whole series, the story and characters (apart from Evie) are naff and the cameos by all the historical characters are embarrassingly bad.

10. ASSASSIN’S CREED: ROGUE (2014)

Ah yeah remember that one game where they randomly made the Templars the totally good, pure and reasonable ones while the Assassins were just all sociopathic reckless morons?

Yeah, seriously what was that?

Haytham’s story in AC III and the novel Forsaken is a much much better POV of the Templar perspective than this absolute mess.

09. ASSASSIN’S CREED: UNITY (2014)

It surely says a lot about how bad many of the recent games since this one have been when this absolute botch job gets rehabilitated by people as a really good game.

So…uh…no. It still isn’t good. Sorry. It’s still buggy and glitchy as anything after how rushed the thing was in development, Arno is a boring protagonist, the story has almost nothing interesting to say about Assassins, Templars or even the French Revolution itself, Co-Op mode is crap and they don’t even attempt to link it to anything bigger with a modern day after how badly they botched it in AC III and barely used it in Black Flag.

With all that said, yes, this game could have been good, nay, spectacular had they just taken their time with its development. It’s very obvious Ubisoft had a lot of big ideas and ambition with this game, with the introduction of the co-op system, the setting of the French Revolution, the really interesting attempts to recapture the stealth and atmosphere of the original game and its very detailed and challenging parkour system.

Sadly, Ubisoft chose to rush it all through development for a 2014 release, in just 1 year, culminating in a game with cardboard cut out characters and a staggering amount of bugs which made the gameplay and parkour system particularly very difficult to grapple with.

08. ASSASSIN’S CREED: VALHALLA (2020)

Once again like Odyssey and Origins we have an “Assassin’s Creed” game in this modern era which is essentially just an historical RPG, centred on the Vikings this time, and just like those games it largely misses the point of why the original games was so appealing, with this being yet another bloated, cartoonish, incredibly boring open world game with mainly flat characters and desperately trying to pander to every available demographic.

Compared to the games below it though? I’ll concede that Valhalla is mediocre rather than actively bad. Story wise, it’s a bit better than the games below it with Revelations and Black Flag writer Darby McDevitt returning to helm the narrative. There are some decent attempts at times at tackling the core of the Assassin ideology (even though I’m not a big fan of the antagonists being the Templar precursors) and some great pieces of additions to the lore. Also some aspects of the gameplay do bring us more back to the series’ roots, with some aspects of stealth and genuine assassinations that were completely absent in Odyssey. But it’s still far from being an Assassin’s Creed game made with its original fans in mind.

07. ASSASSIN’S CREED III (2012)

Assassin’s Creed III is my version of what wrestling legend and shoot interviewer extraordinaire Jim Cornette calls “the Ole Anderson principle”:

“Ole Anderson told me one time, this was one of the greatest things anybody ever told me, he said, “Cornette, at one time, I thought you were a dumb fuck. But so many other dumb fucks have come along who are worse than you that it’s moved you up the ladder without you doing anything.”

That about sums up how I feel about Assassin’s Creed III these days. What a gigantic disappointment this game was in 2012. After this series produced 4 straight up masterworks back to back to back to back, so satisfyingly linking the stories of Ezio, Altair and Desmond and really leaving us anticipating where the series was going with its fascinating levels of lore and huge stakes in the modern day storyline, what we got instead was a game where the modern day and historical storyline felt distinctly separate and conflicting with one another, and neither worked particularly well. It felt even worse after Black Flag came along and was yet another masterful entry from this series. But the games since have been so much worse, for the most part, that AC III has ended up somehow looking like a masterwork in comparison by how much it at least tries to be something big and interesting.

From a gameplay perspective, the game is a noticeable downgrade from its 4 predecessors in many ways. The combat is simplified and easy, the parkour is unbelievably bad and practically discourages going up to the rooftops altogether, the graphics are…odd, with way too many dramatic character redesigns, the missions are boring, and quite frankly the world of colonial America is just bland and uninteresting, with nothing standing out about any of the cities.

But it’s from a narrative perspective where this game hurts most, though it’s still managed to age better than I thought given how crap most of the last decade’s games stories have been. Indeed, for the first few sequences, Assassin’s Creed III is (even with the weaker gameplay and odd narrative choice for the historical setting) excellent and gripping stuff story wise.

Along with the beginning still promising grand stuff for the conclusion to the Desmond saga, the first 3 sequences focused on protagonist Connor’s father, Haytham Kenway, are brilliant, especially with the further context given to his life story through the brilliant novel Forsaken. Haytham is just such a brilliant character across the game, possibly my favourite in the entire franchise actually, and the twist at the end of Sequence 3 that you’ve been playing as a Templar the whole time is really perfect, really throwing your expectations and general view of the Templar order right in your face.

The next two sequences playing as his Native American son (later named Connor) as he suffers a horrific tragedy of losing his mother in his childhood (to an supposed Templar attack) and grows up to join the Assassins are also well done. But after that? Ugh. The game falls off a cliff narrative wise as it becomes nothing but a tedious story of the annoyingly naïve and monotone Connor’s never ending quest to kill Charles Lee (the sheer amount of times he says Charles Lee’s name or asks where he is in the exact same tone of voice even became a meme). Connor is quite frankly just a boring protagonist who never seems to learn any lessons from the complexity of his Templar foes or the failings of his revolutionary allies. He’s just an annoying stubborn teenager and remains that way. Therefore the game’s attempt to return to the complexity of the Templars as characters largely fails as it just ends up inadvertently making them look good and the Assassins as reckless morons.

The modern day is also a gargantuan disappointment, with you finally getting do actual “missions” in the world as Desmond but all of them being really underwhelming, the return and death of Vidic and Daniel Cross’s entire introduction to the game series being rushed beyond belief and the ending is quite frankly as bad as Mass Effect 3’s in terms of cocking up a long running story. And after since the general modern day story and AC lore in general has become more and more and more useless and convoluted game by game. Even as a kid I was let down by just how much it failed to live up the build from the previous 4 games.

And yet with everything I’ve written above, it is still better than the piles of nothing below it. Mainly that’s thanks to the brilliance of Haytham as a character and especially the sequences playing as him, though also really worth praise are the really good soundtrack, the ship combat missions (that would inspire Black Flag), a lot of enjoyable and deep side quests to do that actually make Connor more likable away from the main story and at least some attempts at real complexity in the narrative even if it’s not always executed all that well.

But it’s this game that largely began Assassin’s Creed’s downfall into becoming a shallow RPG series in any old random historical location and little much thought put into it otherwise.

06. ASSASSIN’S CREED: ORIGINS (2017)

After Ubisoft received a lot of criticism for their rushed development and releases of their previous 2 entries which resulted in Unity and Syndicate both feeling like hollow, cash-in prototypes, they thankfully took a break for a couple years before coming back with a fresh approach for the series.

This was both a good and a bad thing, as unfortunately the lessons they took from the flops of Unity and Syndicate weren’t that they should put more effort into their narratives and identity but that they should take the series in a completely new direction, feeling that the format had gone stale. Classic response of a desperate company innit.

To be fair though, I do have to give Origins its due. It’s the only post-Ezio game besides Black Flag I’d consider good, though it is also responsible for taking the series in a direction I hate. Bayek is comfortably one of the best protagonists in the series along with Ezio, Edward and Altair and his story and voice acting performance are truly engaging, significantly more so than any character in Unity, Rogue and Syndicate.

The setting of Ancient Egypt itself is also astonishingly gorgeous and the strongest and most well fleshed out setting we’d gotten at the time since Rome in Brotherhood, and the gameplay is strongly competent and refreshing in many areas from the exciting and well executed combat system down to the different choices of weapons.

But Origins also falters in quite a big number of areas too, in ways similar to Odyssey and Valhalla. While the story itself on its own merits is quite strong, it fundamentally misunderstands and even re-writes Assassin’s Creed lore in trying to provide a gimmicky “origin” story for the Assassin order while also not really having anything interesting to say. Beyond some basic bits and pieces here and there about where the traditions of the order came from, it neither goes deeper on where the actual tenets and ideology of the creed come from nor does it line up with previous games which imply the order began as it did historically, in the 11th century Holy Land, before it was reformed by Altair.

So along with beginning the annoying and shallow additions to lore which make everything more boring and convoluted, the game also began the series new obsession with being a bloated RPG with everything being focused on XP points for completing the most mundane of side quests across an enormous map, which gave us the travesty of Odyssey in particular where the series just got whittled down to appeal to anyone but the actual fans of the series.

05. ASSASSIN’S CREED II (2009)

I’m surprising myself putting this game as “low” as number 5, but I just don’t particularly think it has aged all that well compared to the top 4. It does not have the complex narrative or much real pure Assassin fantasy as the game that preceded it (with the villains being the most generic bad guys possible and most assassinations being uninteresting and rushed aspects of bigger story missions) and Brotherhood and Revelations have significantly better side content, character development and much slicker gameplay building on some aspects this game introduced. The combat is also……..ughhh……really dull.

Does all this mean Assassin’s Creed II isn’t a great game? Hell no. Most of it still holds up superbly, though not all of it. The enjoyability of playing as the charismatic Ezio Auditore as he grows from a boy to a man over the years (even if it takes a long time to get there amidst an at times shallow narrative). The epic and long awaited opening escape from Abstergo. The atmospheric and at times disturbing glyph puzzles of Subject 16. The joy of traversing deep, beautiful cities from Florence to Venice. The ability to upgrade yourself and the Villa constantly through Blacksmiths, Art Merchants, Tailors and Doctors across the open world. New slick additions to your repertoire such as the Hidden Gun, Double Hidden Blade and assassinations from ledges, hiding places and the air. The long side quest of renovating your home town of Monterigionni. The dedication to retaining and expanding on the first game’s fascinating philosophy and lore through Altair’s Codex, the class conflicts of Renaissance Italy and the transformed, more underground Assassin brotherhood focused on freedom from oppression. THE greatest video game soundtrack of all time, courtesy of Jesper Kyd. And of course THAT ending, from the battle with Rodrigo in the Vatican Vault to the chilling and game changing meeting with Minerva.

04. ASSASSIN’S CREED IV: BLACK FLAG (2013)

It’s amazing given just how low the expectations were for this before it released how good this ended up being and how good it still is today. After how much they ballsed up Assassin’s Creed III, Ubisoft announcing that the next AC game would be focused on pirates was met with eyebrows. Was this pure desperation by Ubisoft and a total betrayal of what Assassin’s Creed is? Well, no. As it turned out. That would come later, with Odyssey.

No, not only would Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag turn out to be comfortably the best Pirate game of all time, but manages to balance both the pirate and assassin fantasies perfectly in one game, with a magnificent story about Edward Kenway’s journey into finding a home in the creed. The story here is just magnificent, really expressing the creed of the Assassins itself and how people like Edward can find belonging and a purpose there, more so than any game since the first. And it also handles the ideology and complexities of the Templar order better than any game since the first also.

In terms of the gameplay, Black Flag most excels when it comes to the open world pirate aspects, with its thrilling sea battles and constant encouragement to explore the interesting open world in a way that also doesn’t feel lacking in purpose like later entries.

Negatives? Only a couple, and it doesn’t prevent it from being right up there with the original 4 entries in terms of brilliance and near masterpiece status. The hand to hand combat is…lame, with clearly more focus going on the ship battles than any of that. There are way too many tailing missions, even by AC standards. And the modern day is a throwaway, though that isn’t the game’s fault, more the series’ for botching things so badly in III.

03. ASSASSIN’S CREED: REVELATIONS (2011)

Revelations more than any other entry on this list soars so highly on the strength of its story. As much as AC1 and Black Flag have deep and complex narratives, Revelations completes the stories of both Ezio and Altair simultaneously while also brilliantly tying them to Desmond’s in the present, as he is trapped in the Animus while in a coma. It works so well at tying the 3 together thematically, as Desmond reflects on his life and accepts his position as an Assassin properly at last, right as he sees Ezio and Altair reach their own places of contentment and acceptance with their roles in events late in their lives. Altair passing away in his library with it emptied of its secrets, and Ezio deciding he’d seen “enough for one life” after this latest discovery. The ending is so moving, so powerful, and it still holds up after all these years as masterful storytelling. The character growth of all 3 of our central characters in these first 4 games is masterful to see, particularly Ezio as we see him fully into his old age and role as mentor of the Assassins, and finds himself falling out of love with the creed and his life of battle as he falls in love with the wonderful Sofia Sartor. But it’s also a treat seeing more of Altair’s long life than we did even in the Secret Crusade novel, and ultimately his final days.

From a gameplay perspective, the game has a lot of the same to offer as the previous 3 entries in the series, Brotherhood most of all, though not exactly having the depth of Brotherhood. A lot of the quests to “rebuild” Constantinople feel a bit pointless as the city has no reason to be in the same state of disrepair as Rome was. But the gameplay is still excellent for the same reason as the prior 3 games, from a strong open world, variety of weapons to choose from, slick combat, strong tomb missions and breath-taking parkour. It’s its narrative that pushes it up to 3rd.

02. ASSASSIN’S CREED: BROTHERHOOD (2010)

The top 2 entries on here both rank in my top 10 all time favourite video games list so were extremely difficult to separate. I guess I understand why out of the Ezio games Assassin’s Creed 2 gets all the love since it was his debut and such a big departure in a lot of ways from the original game, but for me Brotherhood stands head and shoulders above that game.

It retains all of the better qualities of AC2, namely the variety in different types of weapons and skills, the thrilling tomb missions, the side quests of renovation, the soundtrack, the wonderful detailed setting, etc. but also brings with it many of the great aspects of AC1 that were missing from 2. Namely, a city with a somewhat hostile presence to Ezio as it is totally under Borgia rule with its shops and buildings broken down and citizens depressed and a wider purpose to many of the activities you do in the open world, as every side quest you undertake, from renovating Rome to taking out Templar Agents and Borgia Towers, destroying Leonardo’s machines, recruiting Assassins and even the tomb missions (centred around the Borgia-controlled Followers of Romulus), are all centred around the main quest of undermining Borgia rule in Rome. Doing all of these makes the game’s (if still shallow villain-wise) narrative feel all the more sweeter when you finally take down Cesare and with how it ties to Ezio’s growth into the eventual Mentor of the modern Assassin Order.

The modern day is also the best here outside of the first game, as you get to do a lot more gameplay as Desmond than in the previous 2 entries, getting to leave the animus at will not just to read emails (though these are really really interesting in terms of adding to the story) but also to free-roam around modern day Monterrigioni at night. The ending is also a game changing shocker that tops even the previous 2 endings (that unfortunately ended up being followed up on extremely badly).

It’s also worth mentioning the absolutely superb online multiplayer that debuted with this game. Give me the multiplayer from Brotherhood, Revelations and AC3 over Call of Duty and Battlefield anyday. Incredibly addictive and challenging.

01. ASSASSIN’S CREED (2007)

I realise it’s definitely heresy to put this at number 1. A lot of people seem to consider the original game dated, stiff and repetitive, and leave it at that. Frankly, I couldn’t disagree more.

No other game in the series beyond the first one is as perfectly crafted, captivating and pulls you so deep into the Assassin fantasy and the various mysteries, philosophy and deep lore that became the early series hallmark. As much as I love the Ezio trilogy and Black Flag, it’s the first game that is easily the most pure, enjoyable and coherent for me still to this day and represents everything that got me into the series to begin with.

Very rarely is there a game where everything feels like some purpose and weight to it as this one, from the depth and fascinating storytelling and ideas in the storylines of both Altair and Desmond, to the differing atmospheres in each historical location and the Abstergo lab, the sheer detail in each assassination investigation, the utterly beautiful middle eastern inspired soundtrack from the GOAT Jesper Kyd, a combat system with depth and how the game almost makes you feel like you are performing the assassination yourself with the discoveries about each target, the thick atmosphere as you try to discreetly kill them and trying to escape to the bureau while the city is on high alert.

Quite frankly the level of depth in this game is amazing, and no other entry does as good of a job of plunging you into the Assassin fantasy, while also having some astounding depth and complexity with each man Altair assassinates, as the core of the complex conflict between the Assassins and Templars that started back here is set in stone.