General Gaming What is the Best Assassin's Creed Game?

[Moa]

The only redeeming quality of the franchise is the sea shanties, so black flag. 

 

 

[TwinIon]

So I decided to give Odyssey another shot, and got to the ~4.5 hour mark when you leave the starting island for the first time. Is the game really as big as it looks? I'm just figuring out the scale of the thing and it's shocking. After being introduced to the mechanics of your boat, the war, mercenaries, there really is an incredible amount of stuff to do. There's no way I do it all, but I'm quite enjoying it, it looks great in 4K, and it could easily take me away from the other games I've been meddling with. Even though I've barely gotten into it, I can already see why it's most people's favorite.

[AbsolutSurgen]

38 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

So I decided to give Odyssey another shot, and got to the ~4.5 hour mark when you leave the starting island for the first time. Is the game really as big as it looks? I'm just figuring out the scale of the thing and it's shocking. After being introduced to the mechanics of your boat, the war, mercenaries, there really is an incredible amount of stuff to do. There's no way I do it all, but I'm quite enjoying it, it looks great in 4K, and it could easily take me away from the other games I've been meddling with. Even though I've barely gotten into it, I can already see why it's most people's favorite.

Yes, it is pretty darn big.  Some areas are a lot more dense with things to do than others (the right side of the map has a number of islands that are scattered and only have a few quick side missions).

 

It took me about ~150 hours to complete the game (including the DLC), but I know some people put a lot more time than that into it.

[Brian]

1 hour ago, TwinIon said:

So I decided to give Odyssey another shot, and got to the ~4.5 hour mark when you leave the starting island for the first time. Is the game really as big as it looks? I'm just figuring out the scale of the thing and it's shocking. After being introduced to the mechanics of your boat, the war, mercenaries, there really is an incredible amount of stuff to do. There's no way I do it all, but I'm quite enjoying it, it looks great in 4K, and it could easily take me away from the other games I've been meddling with. Even though I've barely gotten into it, I can already see why it's most people's favorite.

It’s big but there is a lot of stuff you can skip since Ubisoft fixed the XP given.  

[Moa]

 

[Bataar]

AC 2 has the most memorable line from the entire franchise.

 

"It's a me, Mario!"

[SoberChef]

From pure gameplay & exploration, what Black Flag achieved was amazing ... just wish I had more love for the story & characters but the theme was fantastic. That being said however, it was Brotherhood that really blew up what this franchise came to be known for and evolved from the promise & commitment made by Ubisoft initially to really come to fruition. Not to diminish the last two entries in the series, which have completely reinvigorated my love for AC (Unity & Syndicate I did not play, the former getting my "Worst" vote as I had attempted it but it was so broken.)

[nublood]

Odyssey is easily my favorite. AC 2 is a close second though, loved that game. The rest of them I either lost interest or didn’t even bother.  

[Mercury33]

13 hours ago, SoberChef said:

From pure gameplay & exploration, what Black Flag achieved was amazing ... just wish I had more love for the story & characters but the theme was fantastic. That being said however, it was Brotherhood that really blew up what this franchise came to be known for and evolved from the promise & commitment made by Ubisoft initially to really come to fruition. Not to diminish the last two entries in the series, which have completely reinvigorated my love for AC (Unity & Syndicate I did not play, the former getting my "Worst" vote as I had attempted it but it was so broken.)

Yeah I wish the story had been a bit better. As an Assassins Creed game it’s not great. But as a Pirate game? It’s Phenomonal!! Also it has possibly my favorite ending in the series. The song playing while Edwards walks down from his house on his island and he sees all his friends both living and dead. Shit gets me haha

[TwinIon]

I picked up some of the old games I missed on sale and have started playing through them. I think playing things out of order makes it difficult to judge them, especially since it's hard to remember what, if anything, really stood out about each one on release.

 

Odyssey is really great, and after going through Black Flag it's easy to see why the RPG layer makes these games so much better. The collectibles in Black Flag are essentially just cosmetic. Even the weapons that do have stats don't really seem to matter. I went from the worst pistols in the game to the best and couldn't really tell the difference. The RPG elements also make the combat so much better by having variable abilities that you can change out and play around with. The combat in Black Flag is terrible.

 

When it comes to stealth, I feel like the series lost it's way a bit with 3/4/Rogue. The open nature of the levels, packed with enemies, and with pretty questionable mechanics, really makes it no fun. Black Flag has so many freaking "trail the target" missions that I nearly stopped playing. They're not hard, but they're long and boring and pointless. It's an incredibly clumsy way to deliver far too much exposition.

 

Really Black Flag stands out only for the sailing, which is great. It's fun, there's enough to do, and there's a great sense of progression. Boat steal can go to hell, but overall it's the saving grace of the game.

 

I just started Rogue, and I'm thinking I might have to play something else as a buffer. It starts out exactly like 4, and while I liked some of 4, I'm not sure I'm excited to do it all again. These yearly release cycles where not good to the series. I also completely forgot that Rogue and Unity came out the same freaking day. Talk about a bad way to treat a franchise.

[XxEvil AshxX]

It's unfortunate that Syndicate came out right around the time the series was getting stale, because it's actually really good and the combat was one of my favorites of the entire series.

 

Evie wrecked shit with that cane.

[Kal-El814]

Of the “old style” games, it’s probably a toss up between 2 and Bro. 2 felt like such a huge step forward after 1, and while Bro was iterative, you could recruit an all female gang of assassins who pop out of doors / bushes and off rooftops to shank your target and then disperse, all while you’re slow walking down the street, which never got old. Ezio’s story is still the most interesting in the series (it helps that the games “made sense” back then) and while Revelations is probably a bit too long, it’s a really lovely coda for Ezio as a character. I remember his speech at the end of that game felt well earned and I with the exception of one moment in Odyssey, I don’t think any of the other games have hit the mystery / conspiracy / past / present / future balance anywhere near as well as the Ezio trilogy.
 

Of the “new” style, I love Odyssey. 
 

For worst...
 

III is... weird. I feel like if Connor’s actor got better direction, the whole thing would have gone over differently. He’s just SO stiff. I liked III better than Unity, which always felt like a frankengame to me for reasons I cannot really articulate. It’s my least favorite in the series, I think I’d rather revisit moments from I than I would Unity. 

[Dre801]

Origins is the only one I finished, so it wins by default.  I keep picking up Odyssey and putting it down; I don't find it to be better than Origins, just bigger.

[TwinIon]

I finished both Rogue and Unity.

 

Rogue is a streamlined version of Black Flag, but without the pretense of needing to last sufficiently long. Gone are most of the terrible trail the target missions, as are many of the more linear platforming sequences. There’s still a full sailing experience, and a few additional variations on territory control that I enjoy. I love a game that allows you to build passive income, and I found that renovations were much less effort and more profitable than the fleet building.

 

Overall, I’d say I prefer Rogue to Black Flag. It’s the full experience of what made Black Flag enjoyable, but stripped of the extra padding and junk. I even enjoyed the story more.

 

I suppose it’s fitting for a game about glitches to have a few of it’s own. I experienced more instability in playing Rogue for a few hours than I did playing through full AC games both newer and older. 

 

I had forgotten how poorly the old AC games handle nature. Even after they added more natural environments in 3, you’re still more easily foiled by a mild incline than a enormous tower. The stark contrast in your ability to climb the highest building and yet unable to grab hold of most rocks isn’t rectified until later games. With all the shorelines you're encouraged to visit in Rogue, I somehow felt this more here than in 4.

 

Something that Rogue suffers from, and the later games still struggle with, is your interactions with NPCs that you’ve just helped out. In Rogue that means I can capture a fort or settlement for the British, who will immediately shoot me on site for running on some rooftops of that same settlement, or pass a death sentence for bumping into the troops I just freed from their captors. In Odyssey at least there was the idea that you’re a third party, so capturing a location for one nation or another doesn’t guarantee loyalty, but in Rogue you’re pretty well aligned most of the game, so the hostility was frustrating.

 

 

Unity was quite different, and it's striking these game out at the same time.

 

The graphics mostly look really good, a very dramatic update from the previous games, but even now on a powerful PC, it doesn’t run entirely smooth or without issues. The framerate seems to randomly suffer irrespective of what’s on screen and the pop in is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. Buildings, characters, textures (often more than once on the same object) all pop in randomly and quite close. Also, while the lighting is a huge step up from previous games, with all the stained glass, I wish there was a lighting engine that could take advantage of it. Standing in the Sainte-Chapelle was not nearly dramatic enough.

 

Still, there’s a lot to be admired about this engine six years hence. The detail in the architecture seems to often surpass later games, as does the density of the crowd, something that I’d really like to see make a come back. I wouldn't say that Paris seems alive, but it does feel like an actual city, with the population you'd expect. It seems that this was the first game built on AnvilNext 2.0, which remains the engine for Valhalla, so I’m not sure why we lost the density of crowds, if nothing else.

 

The map is cool (fully 3D and very detailed), but also terrible to manipulate and packed with icons to the point it’s often difficult to even select a fast travel point, which are oddly enough not one of the filters available.

 

I very much appreciate having a way to easily descend. I’m not sure why that didn’t stick around, it’s incredibly useful, and far more graceful than simply removing fall damage.

 

The stealth model is revamped, but remains questionable, largely due to it’s inconsistency, especially with crowds. At times I was able to believably walk through a crowd, rousing no suspicion. Especially when the crowd is essentially a riot, that felt right. However, even replaying the same mission, walking through the same crowd and in roughly the same path, I’d often find myself the target of multiple enemies, many without an obvious line of sight.

 

When noticed, there was also a huge variation on how many guards would react. At times it only the one that saw me would react, even if there was another guard in the room. Sometimes I'd have a short sword fight with a guard that noticed me, and no one else would notice. Other times a quick sighting and I’d pull aggro from every guard within a 100m radius, regardless of what floor they were on, line of sight, or any audio cue. I replayed a number of the assassination missions and these inconsistencies were the sources of most of my frustration. 

 

The assassination missions were quite excellent though, easily the best in the series so far, and a much more polished version of what we got in the first game. I enjoyed that there were optional side objectives, but I wish there were multiple optional paths. It felt like the best strategy was always to beeline for the optional objectives, see what they do, and follow that lead. I suppose it would have been too much to turn each of these into a full on Hitman level. Still, they were very well done, and were the highlights of the game.

 

Overall, I think there’s a lot to like about Unity. Revolution Paris was a great setting, and they really captured the architectural detail in magnificent fashion. However, the trappings of the game like the social clubs, equipment, and abilities were all rather lackluster. There’s no real sense of progression that matches with upgrading your ship in AC4/Rogue, or taking over enemy forts. This was a “back to basics” AC game, and it still didn’t entirely nail the basics.

 

Time to take a break from AC for a bit.

[TwinIon]

Returned to AC and burned through Syndicate.

 

The map is much better, far easier to navigate. I really wish marked points would not become unmarked after fast traveling. I’d often look at the map, select the mission I wanted to do next, fast travel to the nearest point, then have to re-open the map to reselect the mission.

 

The climbing system might be the best in AC. You have to at least look for things that seem mildly climbable, but you don’t have to work too hard at it. The free run up and down system remains, which I really like. The addition of the grappling hook is excellent, effectively turning the game into a Victorian Batman game. However, it was inconsistent for me. It very often wouldn’t work when I expected it to, the indicator would often not show up, even when it was available. It was difficult to guess when and where it would work. Sometimes it would go very long distances, other times it wouldn’t let me close a small gap. After the Batman games and Spider-man PS4, where those mechanics were rather automatic, this felt clunky and difficult to rely on.

 

The train based hideout is nifty, if only because it allows you to get pretty close to other fast travel points. In the early game I’d look to see where the train was after every mission, if it was near a fast travel point or something else I was interested in, I’d fast travel to the train, and cut out a good bit of travel time. On the other hand, some missions originate on the train, requiring you to travel to a random point on the map, and no fast travel is allowed during missions. The only missions I straight up quit were those that I started from the train but required me to cross the entire map to get to the first checkpoint. It also was a bit of an annoyance to find it at times. There really should have been a “fast travel to train” button on the map view.

 

The train can also be annoying to get off. Your view is very limited and you can’t see what is coming, so there were a number of times I leapt off the train to a quick death. I’m also not sure why they got rid of the timer on the safe where you pick up your income. 

 

London is a fine city, but it’s not nearly as impressive as Paris. There are fewer real landmarks, it doesn’t seem quite as lively, with fewer large crowds, and it’s just less interesting to explore. As much as I am glad for the grappling hook, it doesn’t seem like it should nearly always be the fastest way to get anywhere. There are also far fewer fast travel points, which I find frustrating.

 

The dual character progression seems like a good idea, but it’s poorly executed. At first I enjoyed being able to spec out one character to fight and one for stealth. Unfortunately, due to some missions requiring a specific character, a lack of knowledge as to what any given mission will entail, and because the leveling system requires points spent in multiple trees, you’re forced into duplicating most of your skill choices, so the characters never really felt that different from one another.

The item progression remains rather unexciting. Especially since you now have twice as much gear to potentially acquire. The gear never seems to matter enough to bother with.

 

The gameplay is pretty standard Assassin’s Creed, with few real surprises outside the grappling hook. The stealth system is generous and the AI is oblivious, but I’ve had surprisingly few complaints. Maybe that’s just having played a whole lot of AC this year and getting used to the oddities, but an AC game where I’m not actively angry with the stealth is a marked improvement. The signature assassination missions were less impressive or exciting than those in Unity. It hardly felt like I had any choices to make, and they were never that interesting or challenging.

 

The new kidnapping missions take the place as my most hated missions in the game. They’re slow, the mechanic doesn’t make any sense, and just weren’t fun to play. They’re far from the worst mission types in AC history though, especially since they’re partially broken. Kidnapping targets scare easily, so scaring them into running away from their protection was usually easy enough.

 

Unlike Unity, I’ve had virtually no technical issues or framerate troubles. If anything it’s a less impressive game graphically, but at least it works.

Where I found Rouge to a better Black Flag, with all of 4’s ambition but streamlined and with fewer of its faults, Syndicate is a lesser Unity, stripped of Unity’s ambition failing to advance what made it such an intriguing reboot.

 

Not sure if I'll try to get through Origins before Valhalla comes out.

[Mercury33]

19 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

Returned to AC and burned through Syndicate.

 

The map is much better, far easier to navigate. I really wish marked points would not become unmarked after fast traveling. I’d often look at the map, select the mission I wanted to do next, fast travel to the nearest point, then have to re-open the map to reselect the mission.

 

The climbing system might be the best in AC. You have to at least look for things that seem mildly climbable, but you don’t have to work too hard at it. The free run up and down system remains, which I really like. The addition of the grappling hook is excellent, effectively turning the game into a Victorian Batman game. However, it was inconsistent for me. It very often wouldn’t work when I expected it to, the indicator would often not show up, even when it was available. It was difficult to guess when and where it would work. Sometimes it would go very long distances, other times it wouldn’t let me close a small gap. After the Batman games and Spider-man PS4, where those mechanics were rather automatic, this felt clunky and difficult to rely on.

 

The train based hideout is nifty, if only because it allows you to get pretty close to other fast travel points. In the early game I’d look to see where the train was after every mission, if it was near a fast travel point or something else I was interested in, I’d fast travel to the train, and cut out a good bit of travel time. On the other hand, some missions originate on the train, requiring you to travel to a random point on the map, and no fast travel is allowed during missions. The only missions I straight up quit were those that I started from the train but required me to cross the entire map to get to the first checkpoint. It also was a bit of an annoyance to find it at times. There really should have been a “fast travel to train” button on the map view.

 

The train can also be annoying to get off. Your view is very limited and you can’t see what is coming, so there were a number of times I leapt off the train to a quick death. I’m also not sure why they got rid of the timer on the safe where you pick up your income. 

 

London is a fine city, but it’s not nearly as impressive as Paris. There are fewer real landmarks, it doesn’t seem quite as lively, with fewer large crowds, and it’s just less interesting to explore. As much as I am glad for the grappling hook, it doesn’t seem like it should nearly always be the fastest way to get anywhere. There are also far fewer fast travel points, which I find frustrating.

 

The dual character progression seems like a good idea, but it’s poorly executed. At first I enjoyed being able to spec out one character to fight and one for stealth. Unfortunately, due to some missions requiring a specific character, a lack of knowledge as to what any given mission will entail, and because the leveling system requires points spent in multiple trees, you’re forced into duplicating most of your skill choices, so the characters never really felt that different from one another.

The item progression remains rather unexciting. Especially since you now have twice as much gear to potentially acquire. The gear never seems to matter enough to bother with.

 

The gameplay is pretty standard Assassin’s Creed, with few real surprises outside the grappling hook. The stealth system is generous and the AI is oblivious, but I’ve had surprisingly few complaints. Maybe that’s just having played a whole lot of AC this year and getting used to the oddities, but an AC game where I’m not actively angry with the stealth is a marked improvement. The signature assassination missions were less impressive or exciting than those in Unity. It hardly felt like I had any choices to make, and they were never that interesting or challenging.

 

The new kidnapping missions take the place as my most hated missions in the game. They’re slow, the mechanic doesn’t make any sense, and just weren’t fun to play. They’re far from the worst mission types in AC history though, especially since they’re partially broken. Kidnapping targets scare easily, so scaring them into running away from their protection was usually easy enough.

 

Unlike Unity, I’ve had virtually no technical issues or framerate troubles. If anything it’s a less impressive game graphically, but at least it works.

Where I found Rouge to a better Black Flag, with all of 4’s ambition but streamlined and with fewer of its faults, Syndicate is a lesser Unity, stripped of Unity’s ambition failing to advance what made it such an intriguing reboot.

 

Not sure if I'll try to get through Origins before Valhalla comes out.

Id say def at least try Origins before Valhalla comes out. Origins is such a big departure and jump forward for the series. I think itll Help you appreciate Valhalla more if you at least get a taste of the beginning of the “reboot” 

[Bloodporne]

The last one I had tried was Assassin's Creed II admittedly. My question would be if all of them are sprawling open worlds? Black Flag sounds kind of cool and fun on paper actually but is it a massive open world type deal? Don't know much about these games.

[Keyser_Soze]

20 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

The last one I had tried was Assassin's Creed II admittedly. My question would be if all of them are sprawling open worlds? Black Flag sounds kind of cool and fun on paper actually but is it a massive open world type deal? Don't know much about these games.

 

They are all sprawling open worlds except for the 2D spinoffs. Black Flag is mostly ocean but when you get on land it's more of a big sprawling open world.

[JPDunks4]

I am currently getting through Odyssey.

 

I sped through Origins the prior few weeks.  They are huge games, but if you stick to the main story, it seems you can finish them in 25ish hours. 

 

I think I've played pretty much every single Assassins Creed.  They were all okay, but never were like an all time favorite of mine.  I honestly can't differentiate AC1-AC:Syndicate, which I think was the last one before the reboot in Origins.  Some are better than others, some try some new things, but at the end of the day, the core gameplay, combat, ect were pretty much always identical.  The one exception being Black Flag, because the ship gameplay was such a core component of that one, and it felt drastically different, and one of my favorites in the series.

 

Origins and Odyssey feel more like a Witcher 3 game than the older AC games, and that's a good thing.  I'm still early into Odyssey, but I am loving a lot of the decisions they made with the game.  It has me far more hyped for Valhalla than I was.

 

 

[TwinIon]

2 hours ago, Bloodporne said:

The last one I had tried was Assassin's Creed II admittedly. My question would be if all of them are sprawling open worlds? Black Flag sounds kind of cool and fun on paper actually but is it a massive open world type deal? Don't know much about these games.

Black Flag and Rogue are open world, but not to the same degree as Odyssey. In Odyssey (and Origins?) you can climb over the mountains, basically going anywhere on the map. In Black Flag / Rogue, you have a huge map of islands, but there are dedicated cutouts where you can land. You can't simply run across an entire landmass.

 

Unity and Syndicate are more like 2, with large open cities, but not huge maps of countryside.

[legend]

On 7/15/2020 at 12:28 AM, Kal-El814 said:

Of the “old style” games, it’s probably a toss up between 2 and Bro. 2 felt like such a huge step forward after 1, and while Bro was iterative, you could recruit an all female gang of assassins who pop out of doors / bushes and off rooftops to shank your target and then disperse, all while you’re slow walking down the street, which never got old. Ezio’s story is still the most interesting in the series (it helps that the games “made sense” back then) and while Revelations is probably a bit too long, it’s a really lovely coda for Ezio as a character. I remember his speech at the end of that game felt well earned and I with the exception of one moment in Odyssey, I don’t think any of the other games have hit the mystery / conspiracy / past / present / future balance anywhere near as well as the Ezio trilogy.
 

Of the “new” style, I love Odyssey. 
 

For worst...
 

III is... weird. I feel like if Connor’s actor got better direction, the whole thing would have gone over differently. He’s just SO stiff. I liked III better than Unity, which always felt like a frankengame to me for reasons I cannot really articulate. It’s my least favorite in the series, I think I’d rather revisit moments from I than I would Unity. 

 

Since this thread got bumped, I just saw your response here and agree a lot with it.

 

My favorite existential moment is the end of AC2 subverting expectations.

Spoiler

For a lot of the game, Ezio is just out on revenge, then gets more broad/mature in his scope, then learns he's the chosen "prophet." And after all that build up the end reveals to him that he's so unimportant that the "gods" won't even bother explaining to him what's going on. What a glorious mind fuck. I really feel for the guy, since otherwise his life would be one of the most significant lives in history.

 

I also love how that builds into Ezio's character in subsequent games and how he responds to it and his place at the very end of Revelations.

 

Living through his whole life was such a great trip.