With the new Assassin’s Creed game upon us, it is time to visit this long-running and powerhouse franchise to put up what we think are the high points of the series. We have considered only mainline releases, and considered gameplay, story, and lore addition as key deciding factors to put forth this list. We have also looked at the reception these games have had at the time of the launch and their current standing in the gaming community as well to arrive at the ranking. So, let’s get started!
12. Assassin’s Creed
We start the list with the game that started it all. The first game was a bet that Ubisoft took, and while it gets bonus marks for kicking off the franchise and setting up the lore, doing a ranking after a series of other games that have built and improved upon the foundations makes this game come in only at the 12th spot on our list of best Assassin’s Creed games.
11. Assassin’s Creed 3
A bold move by Ubisoft to ditch the franchise protagonist that led to the series becoming famous and known, and featuring one of the best twist prologues across all Assassin’s Creed games earn bonus points for Assassin’s Creed 3. Other than that, however, there is nothing to set this game apart, plus Connor as the main hero sadly does not stand tall among the AC roster. Still, the basic mechanics are executed solidly, enough for the game to get into the 11th spot of our best Assassin’s Creed games list.
10. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
The 12th mainline game in the franchise takes on a potentially great setting of 800 AD England with the fight against Vikings as they attempt to establish themselves. On the plus side, the game has great graphics, adds a lot to the overall lore for the game, has a decent story, and has a likable protagonist in Eivor. But all this gets lost in an unintuitive skill tree, lackluster loot, repetitive and tedious grind through several episodic arcs that add nothing to the game, and an empty, boring open-world. If 30-40 hours were chopped off from this, the game would probably have been a serious contender for one of the best entries in the franchise.
9. Assassin’s Creed Mirage
After the RPG-focused trilogy of Origins / Odyssey / Valhalla, this was Ubisoft’s attempt to go back to the roots, so to speak. With a tighter experience focusing on assassinations, stealth and parkour; the game traces the origins of Basim – who we come across in AC Valhalla. The game was originally supposed to be a DLC for Valhalla before Ubisoft decided to launch it as a stand-alone entry. Yes, the game does deliver the essential AC experience, and there are some fun and well-charted missions with multiple ways to carry them out; but the main story is pretty standard fare and uninteresting, and without the main villain clearly identified until the very end, it lacks the incentive to keep pushing past other minor villains as they get introduced and assassinated in quick succession.
8. Assassin’s Creed Revelations
The final game of the Ezio trilogy sees him travel to Constantinople, and connects back to the protagonist of the first Assassin’s Creed, in that he has to acquire keys to a library built by Altair Ibn-La’Ahad. The game also has certain memory sequences that have you playing as Altair from the first game. Assassin’s Creed Revelations gets bonus marks purely on account of the fact that it gives closure to the protagonist’s stories from all the games before, and while it is a solid entry – it was by this time that the familiar mechanics and yearly releases just started getting pointed out as minor concerns for now.
7. Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
Syndicate launched a year after the not-so-great launch of Unity the year before, and this game kind of made up for that bad experience for AC fans. Syndicate introduced two protagonists, the brother-sister duo of Jacob &Evie Frye: one more suited to melee attacks and combat, the other to stealth and assassinations (something that we see in AC Shadows with its two protagonists). The setting is London during the time of the Industrial Revolution. The visuals and the way London of that era has been recreated are the highlights, with the design, lightning and overall look and feel impressive even now, all these years after the game released back in 2015. Assassinations, stealth and traversal are fun, though here we do see signs of a bloated open world with repetitive activities that bring down the overall experience, and the ranking for this game in the best Assassin’s Creed games of all time.
6. Assassin’s Creed Unity
If this list had come out in 2014 or so, Unity would not have ranked this high. The launch was actually a disaster, with bugs and issues making the game almost unplayable. However, over the years, these have been ironed out, and the experience the game gives today is one of the best stealth/parkour/assassination combinations across all AC games. The game is set in Paris during the French Revolution and was one of the first games in the series to give a certain degree of freedom to carry out a mission, rather than in the one linear way as was the case in previous games. The story is not the best, but the faithful recreation of the city, the design and visuals, and a much-improved combat + freerun system make this game one of the best AC games of all time.
5. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
The game is a continuation of the story in Assassin’s Creed 2, and is set in Rome. The game expanded on all things that made the second game brilliant and also introduced subtle changes to make the gameplay better: the tools and utilities were expanded, combat allowed for players to attack first rather than wait for an enemy attack, the ability to recruit and command other Assassins into the Brotherhood. New modes were introduced like Wanted, Assassinate, Alliance, and so on. The game was received quite well, and currently sits at a score of 81 on Metacritic.
4. Assassin’s Creed: Origins
After Unity and Syndicate did not get the kind of success Ubisoft was looking for, the franchise veered strongly into the RPG territory from the somewhat tentative RPG-like elements introduced in Syndicate. The world was that much more expansive, side quests and NPCs played an even more prominent role in the game, weapon variety was increased, XP and a leveling system were introduced and the skill tree was significantly enhanced. The setting and the way the world of Egypt in 50 BC was recreated was again a highlight, and the story added strongly to the lore, as it talked about the origins of the Assassins – the Hidden Ones, and their fight against the Order of the Ancients – the eventual Templars. The main protagonists Bayek of Siwa and her wife Aya also were also pretty likable and strong main characters.
3. Assassin’s Creed 2
The game that made the franchise, Assassin’s Creed II took up the core strong gameplay mechanic of the first game, and then upped everything about it to deliver one of the best entries in the franchise. The story introduces us to Ezio as the protagonist and is set during the Renaissance period in Italy. The cities of Florence & Venice among others provide the perfect ground for Ubisoft to do that one consistent thing they have done for almost all subsequent games: a fantastic and highly accurate recreation of the city/region that the games are based in. Everything that have now come to define the Assassin’s Creed franchise owe the impact to this game, and while graphics with gameplay do appear a bit dated after all these years, it is hard not to see what makes the game so special to continuously feature among the top games of the series even 16 years after launch.
2. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
Ubisoft perfected the RPG and open-world experience with Odyssey, and it strikes the right balance: it took the strong foundation of Origins and expanded, improved all of it; without bloating it beyond a point as it was the case with the next entry Valhalla. The protagonist- especially Kassandra is one of the stronger ones for Ubisoft. Combat was that much more fun, the world design as strong as always, naval combat that was perfected in Black Flag was back here, and a pretty good storyline that also added much to the overall AC lore. The game is set during the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta in 430 BC, and continues the story of Layla Hassan in present-day, first introduced in Origins. The DLCs of the game also significantly contribute to the complex world-building of Assassins & Templars, and are a must-play if you want to get more on this long, ever-present conflict between the two factions in the AC universe.
1. Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag
The best AC game is most well known for nailing naval combat and giving gamers an opportunity to live the life of the pirate, selling high seas, and not giving two hoots to the whole Assassin-Templar world-building. The game is set in the West Indies in the early 1700s and will have you exploring islands, boarding enemy ships, singing sea shanties and upgrading your very own ‘Jackdaw’ into a sea-faring beast of a pirate ship. The story is also quite good, and the protagonist plays a key role in shaping up both the Brotherhood and the Templars, as he is tied to the main hero and villain of Assassin’s Creed III.
And that completes our list of the 12 best Assassin’s Creed games of all time.
