Putting together an Assassin’s Creed games ranked list depends quite a bit on what you like. The long-running stealth game series from Ubisoft followed an erratic path over the years, shedding stealth entirely, embracing change and refusing change simultaneously, and opting for a “bigger is better” approach that often made playing a chore. Every peak came with a valley – Assassin’s Creed 3’s generally odd design, Syndicate’s lack of innovation, even Odyssey and its heft. There’s a reason it stuck around through even the toughest moments, though. When it worked as it does in Black Flag and Brotherhood, it worked so well, blending action, historical fiction, stealth, and creative world design in a way that no other series can.
Syndicate carried on in the tradition of Rogue and Revelations – adding too few new ideas to an overly familiar formula. Victorian London is an interesting setting, and it lends itself to some of the more memorable missions in the series – ghost hunting with Charles Dickens, for example. It feels weirdly stale, though, in part thanks to Syndicate’s stilted parkour that limits your movement more than ever. Switching between dual protagonists Evie and Jacob theoretically offered freedom between stealth and action, but in practice, it only highlighted how much the series needed to change.
The first Assassin’s Creed is pretty much what you’d expect from a first effort. There’s a set of solid ideas here, but the execution is janky. AC’s map is a bit dull, the combat is definitely dull, and the camera and general movement are often atrocious. Ironically, the seed of the series’ biggest problem is here as well – sameness. What you do changes very little from beginning to end in Altair’s big adventure.
Rogue is an unfortunate sequel. It has the bad luck of centering on Shay, one of the most interesting protagonists in the series, and actually working hard to develop his character. The problem is that most of this gets lost in the mess that is the rest of the game. Missions are short and bland, Shay’s interactions with other characters seem surprisingly shallow, given the depth of his own personality and journey, and Rogue is just a shade too ridiculous at times – like when Benjamin Franklin gifts our hero with a grenade launcher.
AC3 is such a weird game – ambitious and even bold at times, but mired in bizarre design choices as well. Connor’s quest touches on serious issues, including the clash of people groups in colonial America and the oppression of indigenous societies, and it’s unafraid to peer at the dark side of the American origin story. It also tries a bit too much without innovating on the fundamentals. Stealth and combat feel stale, crafting is bloated, and some of the other extra features – naval battles, for instance – just seem rushed.
Improving on high quality is not an easy task, so Ubisoft decided to basically do more Brotherhood in Revelations. The final chapter in Ezio and Altair’s saga is grander in scope, but unlike Brotherhood, it doesn’t try doing anything different or better. Whether that’s a problem depends on your expectations, though the pattern of sameness is something Ubisoft fell into rather too often after this point – like in AC3.
Unity now is a much different game than it was at launch. It shipped with too many technical issues to overlook and had some serious performance issues. Most of those are gone now, and while the Assassin’s Creed that remains is still a bit rough around the edges, Ubisoft did something special here. The French Revolution is a woefully underused setting, one where easy to suspend your belief about secret societies and grandiose conspiracies.
The well-developed story and more thoughtful missions were refreshing after Rogue’s weak points, and combat actually felt fresh for the first time in years. The downside was the auto-parkour, which made precise movement – a series cornerstone – more of a challenge than it should’ve been.
Origins is a tough one to revisit. It was a dramatic change of direction when it launched in 2017 and pivoted the series toward action-RPG territory instead of stealth. Objectives let you take open-ended approaches, exploration finally felt worthwhile, and there was even a decent educational component alongside all the usual Templars and Assassins guff. Odyssey and Valhalla do all of that, but better, though there’s still a sense of charm and wonder in the setting that other Assassin’s Creed games haven’t matched since.
How much you enjoy Odyssey likely depends on how invested you are in Greek history and mythology. It uses Origins’ foundation and builds something substantially bigger, which is a blessing – Odyssey has some lovely environments and excellent stories nestled in the open world – and a curse because it’s just so big. Exhausting as Odyssey can be, the DLC is a real treasure, a more focused set of adventures that leans heavily into mythology.
Assassin’s Creed 2 did away with the forgettable Altair as the lead and introduced Ezio, a fresh young assassin-in-training. It puts him through the wringer and follows him as he grows into a capable, if slightly damaged hero with a vested interest in righting the wrongs of the corrupt city he calls home. Sure, iAC2 might follow fairly standard storytelling conventions, but it’s easy to like Ezio and get caught up in his journey. Pretty much everything else is better in AC2 as well – mission structure, world design, and especially the big combat setpieces. It’s not every game that lets you start a fistfight with a corrupt pope.
Valhalla loses some of Odyssey’s magic and swaps out one interesting protagonist for two dull ones, but it’s also the best of the modern Assassin’s Creed games. Ubisoft’s vision of Saxon England is beautiful, combat is better – though still a bit stale – and while the scope is even more overwhelming than Odyssey, the volume of secrets and thoughtful stories tucked away across the land means you less often feel like you’re trudging through empty space just for the sake of it.
Pirates are cool. That’s essentially the guiding philosophy behind Black Flag, and it works so well. It might be traditional Assassin’s Creed, but you’ll find quite a bit of what Ubisoft turned into Origins and the modern series as well. Black Flag is at its best when you’re sailing around the Caribbean and finding some rewarding side quest or other in the open world.
You had more freedom than ever in completing objectives, and the stealth was better than it had been in years. Black Flag occasionally suffered under its own weight, as Odyssey did later, but the naval combat and pirate antics keep it entertaining even when you’re not keen on yet another long journey across the waves.
Brotherhood is where Assassin’s Creed realized its potential. It plunges Ezio into the mire of Renaissance Italy and all the glamor and underhanded politics of the period, with some of the series’ strongest narrative moments. Brotherhood makes the best use of any setting in Assassin’s Creed, and it builds on its predecessors’ mission structure to deliver something fresh and exciting. Stealth, strategy, and action blend seamlessly together in a way that the series hasn’t quite managed to achieve since, and the story even managed to transcend most of the modern-day silliness.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
