My Assassin's Creed Franchise Review...so far.

[Zorander]

AC1 is a frightfully boring and tedious game with dull story and wooden characters. You're not missing anything if you don't play it. Unless you care about Desmond's storyline, which nobody does.

AC2 as it's follow up completely blows the original out of the water. Ezio is a fantastic character that you can actual care about and relate to. Story is top notch. Gameplay is great and there's lots to do. Lastly Renaissance Italy looks just gorgeous. Just a fantastic, well polished game. Most people consider it the best in the series.

AC: Brotherhood expands on AC2's perfection. It's not quite as good, but still offers a solid story with strong characters. Exploring Renaissance Rome is a great gaming experience.

AC: Revelations drops off a bit. It's still a good game but has a much weaker story and felt a bit too short. Ties up the Ezio storyline.

ACIII was a bit too ambitious, and as a result is all over the place in style and tone. It also takes a LONG time to get into. When it's good, it's really good, but a lot of the game is a tedious slog. Connor is a return to more wooden, less relatable characters. Though he does get through by being the classic fish out of water. He does suffer a bit from Forest Gump syndrome, in that he's at too many major historical events to be plausible. Kinda strips suspension of disbelief.

ACIV is a return to the form of AC2. It expands on the best parts of ACIII without pretentiousness of its predecessor. It's arguably one of the finest pirate themed game ever made. Great ship to ship combat mechanic. Edward Kenway is a lovable jerk. Missions are fun and varied, there's lots to do. Just a great game.

I haven't played Unity yet. Hopefully it's fixed by the time it ends up in the bargain bin. It's unfortunate its severe technical flaws overshadowed the game. It shouldn't have been released when it was. As Miyamoto once said, a delayed game is eventually good.

Agreed very much. This has been my experience as well. AC4 gave me as much fun and excitement as AC2 when it first came out.

 

[Skel]

AC1: I enjoyed it well enough. I liked the storyline a bit more than most people. I was ok with the future twist of Desmond except it just stopped everything to a halt and didn't add too much. Would have been much better as a cut scene. I was OK with Altaïr, but to me he was like Agent 47 in Hitman. I'm not expecting an Assassin to be a playboy. The rest of the story was rough around the edges like the gameplay. You can tell it was a first draft.

AC2: I enjoyed the game alright but far from my favorite. I didn't care for Ezio and his cast. I'm not sure why every game in Italy has to have Da Vinci in it. This also added the most pointless buy stuff for a house, or change the color of your robes.. it doesn't do anything like lower your wanted level, but it sure looks pretty.. while you're there make sure you chase after those feathers! The controls did work a lot better so it def had that.

AC2 other titles: Should have been expansions as all they did was off a lot more of the same crap AC2 had. It was really simple if you'd like this game.. if you liked AC2 and wanted to see more Da Vinci makes crap for Ezio than these games are for you. It was a clear here that Ubisoft was going Call of Duty with AC with yearly updates. The Desmond stuff went from pointless to really stupid.

AC3: I'm not a fan of Revolution stuff so this one was wasted on me. It had that tacked on crap AC2 had plus a even more pointless convoy crap to be able to afford to buy the pointless crap AC now keeps in all of them. The storyline had a moment of interest when you're playing the father and learn his spoiler, but Connor is as uninteresting as they come. It also suffered from the stupidity that was already mentioned of Connor being the key player in all our important battles and places.

AC4: Should have been two games. The navel stuff was good but was out of place with the rest of the game to me. If you didn't have to do it so much I'd chalk it up to a side thing, but you end up doing a lot more than I would have thought. I did think the story was much better than the other games. I played it on the X1 so the graphics were really colorful. Not that it mattered on the game itself, but it was the main thing I remember about it.

AC5: Haven't played it. I'm starting to think no one has from this tread. It's on my to do list but I spent the past 3 months in the hospital so my backlog of games is high and AC just doesn't rate enough to jump the pack.

 

[cbrunny]

I've played unity. It has its strengths and weaknesses. For all of its similarities it does have a bit of a different feel to it than its predecessors.

 

[Anomaly1964]

I really like the boat adventures but this game is ALL over the place and it does not LEAD you very well in the story...

 

[mmntech]

AC5: Haven't played it. I'm starting to think no one has from this tread. It's on my to do list but I spent the past 3 months in the hospital so my backlog of games is high and AC just doesn't rate enough to jump the pack.

Unity still has a lot of issues with glitching and slowdowns on all platforms. It's still in beta for all intents and purposes. I wouldn't even bother until Ubisoft patches everything up. From what I've heard about the game itself, it's decent enough. Though a lot of people who have played it say it's definitely a far cry from AC IV.

Here's what I'd like to see them do for the next game.
-Ninja theme set in feudal Japan. A lot of AC fans have wanted something like that for a long time.
-Strip out the modern day stuff. Nobody's ever liked that part of the game. It's like watching a really good movie on TV and then being interrupted by an annoying commercial.
-For the love of Christ make sure it's done and polished before releasing it. Delay it if you have to.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Unity is honestly pretty good if you're into slightly less handholding on missions and a little more stealth. Objectives tend to be a little more nebulous and the game guides you less often than previous AC games with explicit waypoints. The stealth system is also much less overpowered than in 3/4, and gives you much fewer options to kill mindlessly. Plus eagle vision takes a huge (and IMO necessary) downgrade.The fighting also makes me feel much less overpowered. You can easily beat any one guy, but especially in the latter half of the game, it's just impractical to fight your way through a huge group of enemies that easily kill you.

I think at the very least, Ubisoft balanced this game much better than previous ones (especially 3, which had probably dozens of ways to go on killing sprees). The performance issues are very distracting and occasionally frustrating, but when the game works, it's quite fun.

 

[cbrunny]

I really like the boat adventures but this game is ALL over the place and it does not LEAD you very well in the story...

Thinking back, I would say this is extremely fair. But, I still did enjoy the main story quite a lot.

 

[Dannar26]

First game was repitive as all hell, but I enjoyed the story and atmosphere.

AC2 seemed like a huge jump in terms of game play with an even bigger increase in cheese. Cheesy characters, cheesy music...

But-a-ezio, you are-a an assasin! Mama mia! Ugh.

 

[mmntech]

First game was repitive as all hell, but I enjoyed the story and atmosphere.

AC2 seemed like a huge jump in terms of game play with an even bigger increase in cheese. Cheesy characters, cheesy music...

But-a-ezio, you are-a an assasin! Mama mia! Ugh.

Bull you didn't laugh when his uncle says "Ezio, don't you recognize me? It's a me, Mario!"