The Assassin's Creed games, ranked
Nothing is true, everything is permitted
If there's one thing you should know about me it's that I bloody love Assassin's Creed.
With the eagerly awaited latest iteration, Shadows, launching imminently, I wanted to revisit the games in this collection, how I feel about them and where I think they sit in the pantheon of the series as a whole.
Some caveats before we begin: there will be a noticeable omission of Rogue and Revelations in this list by virtue of the fact that I have not played them, and I will not be including any of the spin off games, otherwise this article would be the size of a dissertation.
With those two things in mind, here are the Assassin's Creed games, ranked by me:
11: Assassin's Creed Syndicate
One might argue this is an unusual entry for last place. Truth be told, I bear no ill will to this particular experience, only that for whatever reason I found it to be completely unmemorable. The dual protagonist setup was an idea that was executed a bit too safely to be truly interesting, and there was a noticeable lack of density in the game world that made it feel a bit flabby.
The train base was cool, if underbaked, and it had some good performance capture from its leads, so it wasn’t all duff, but when you think of Assassin’s Creed you’re hardly picturing the Frye twins, are you?
10: Assassin's Creed III
A few genuinely great ideas save this from the bottom of the pile. Its setting, and how it delivers an incredible bait and switch in its first act, are aspects that make it stand strong with an identity of its own. Having more of a rural lilt to proceedings allow the developers to play around with the language set of the game, lots of stalking from trees instead of rooftops and playing around with the non-uniformity of that kind of landscape.
Unfortunately these don’t quite make up for a game full of terribly designed missions, endless walk and talk sequences, and a central protagonist who despite the uniqueness of his background, is a bit of a bad hang.
9: Assassin's Creed
I’ve not played this in 15 years. I imagine returning to the font from which all this emerged in 2025 would be a bit of a baptism of fire. The simplicity and the general lack of quality of life adjustments from later entries likely haunt this experience. It didn’t even have subtitle options at launch!
But there is something to be said for the art direction of this first foray into a faux historical setting, a surprisingly detailed and immersive world to explore. I still have fond memories of buggering about in the environment, hunting down templar flags and hanging out with my good buddies who always conveniently dress a bit like me and walk together in a cross formation (the lads!).
After so many of these games, the simplicity of the original’s design must feel almost merciful at this point.
8: Assassin's Creed Mirage
A game I want to like more than I actually do, but also one that I appreciate came out at exactly the right time for the series. A smaller, more focused, back to basics Assassins Creed following those three enormous entries that were basically full RPGs, allowed the series to reconvene on what are to be considered its most fundamental tenets.
In execution, its gameplay is a little dog-eared. The parkour in particular feels worse than even the first game, and it takes way too long to unlock all the tools that actually make the game’s challenges interesting to engage with. Once I got into the weeds with it, though, that familiar loop felt like a welcome hug from an old friend (DaVinci), and the setting, story and characters have kept me engaged throughout.
It's also bloody nice to look at. I spend a lot of my time in the game just trotting about cooing at all the nice environmental art. If you like ornate rugs, you’re in luck with this entry!
7: Assassin's Creed Origins
Open world games have always been playing the sport of one upmanship, often to each title's detriment as the bigger the space the more work that has to go into making that space interesting. Origins, as a first attempt at a much larger, more RPG-like experience for this series, came out of the gate swinging, and resulted in an experience that was really engaging from start to finish.
While stealth was still the focus for a lot of it, the switch to a more robust and tactical combat system was a welcome change, and the world was really exciting to explore. A lot should be said about the central performance of Abubakar Salim as Bayek, bolstered by a story that remained quite small scale and personal, contrasting nicely with the vast scope of the world.
It did make me laugh when Julius Caesar appeared towards the end though. ‘Wonder what’s going to happen to him?’ said no one, ever.
6: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
The second entry in the Ezio trilogy, Brotherhood is an interesting evolution of ideas, expanding beyond the one man army escapades of the previous games into this greater sense of camaraderie. Pinpointing a guard and siccing your assassin’s on them is the ultimate dudes rock moment, and made for a really fun central loop.
At the time it was more incremental given the leaps and bounds between the first two games, but when I look back at it, I appreciate greatly how it took the task of following up something so universally beloved with an escalation of ideas, not scope, a means of offering a new setting and new mechanics with an already established protagonist.
It's a really cool series entry.
5: Assassin's Creed Black Flag
One of the highlights of Assassin’s Creed III was its brief forays into high seas adventuring, something that was sprawled out into a full experience in this piratical sequel. Black Flag is wicked, there’s no other way to put it.
Packed full of great ideas, instantly gratifying ship combat and a wonderfully different setting to the urban encounters that had come to define the series up to this point, in many ways it was answering all of the gripes about the previous entry.
Fewer insta fail missions, less walking-and-talking, and thanks to how definitively the modern day elements of the third game ended, less sci fi nonsense for those of you who never liked that stuff.
I couldn’t tell you a thing about the story, mind you, it’s been far too long since I last played this, but I do know that Edward Kenway was a much better hang than some of the other protagonists in this series.
4: Assassin's Creed II
The Glow Up to end all Glow Ups. Assassin’s Creed II is one of the all time sequel success stories, taking every promising sapling of an idea from its flawed but imaginative predecessor and spreading its branches into something that felt way more substantial.
A brilliant setting. A compelling narrative. A charming protagonist. An engaging set of core gameplay mechanics, including fun new tools to fuck with your enemies, and a really unmatched base building system.
People bitch about collecting feathers in this game, but it wasn’t a big deal. You can give Leonardo Da Vinci a hug AND fist fight with the pope! What more could you want?
3: Assassin's Creed Odyssey
As with the transition from Assassin’s Creed II to Brotherhood, Odyssey feels like the same story of evolution over revolution, in that it approaches the vast open world and rpg mechanics of Origins, and expands upon them in a myriad of ways.
I like Odyssey a lot, and part of what works so well about it is that the developers recognised the unique opportunity to create a more segmented and episodic format for its narrative through the topography of its landscape.
A mix of big picture ideas and more small-scale one-shot stories, island to island, coupled with this overarching mechanic of investigating and hunting down the members of this ancient order, meant that the game had many paths to pursue, with little risk of stagnation.
It never got boring kicking dudes off cliffs. A triumphant effort.
2: Assassin's Creed Unity
A perfect example of how a bad first impression will poison a game’s reputation, regardless of how it eventually turns out. Unity is a phenomenally ambitious game, an early entry in the eighth generation that fell afoul of significant performance issues and nakedly cynical design decisions that soured fans significantly.
So why is it so high on my list? Because once those issues got ironed out, the resulting experience was incredible. As someone who has studied the French Revolution at an academic level, I am a little biased, sure, but this representation of such a volatile and fascinating era of history is so beautifully realized that it’s hard not to be charmed by it.
The city feels vast and suffocating, making navigation all the more engaging. More interior locations, more intricate mission design, and a varied roster of customisation options. The parkour animations in this game are sexy!
It’s a game of huge swings and tolerable misses. They deserve to have another pop at this one, because there’s at least two thirds of an all timer here.
1: Assassin's Creed Valhalla
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a better RPG than The Witcher. No I will not elaborate. Ok, maybe I will.
Valhalla is an incredible effort that feels like the culmination of what this particular RPG trilogy was doing: Understanding how to use an open world in its narrative, and reconciling big ideas with smaller scale moments.
The writing is brilliant, a maze of great narrative beats and genuinely memorable characters, difficult choices and tense emotional moments throughout, and the galaxy-brained ideas in the game’s concluding hours more than justify my love for the weird sci-fi nonsense.
But what Valhalla does so brilliantly, that I’ve not really seen in any other game before, is that it gifts you the kernal of a narrative idea right at the beginning of the game, that you are destined to betray your sibling, then does nothing with that idea for 30+ hours, leaving it to fester in the back of your head.
What this does is paint every interaction you have with that character, making you second guess the wider plot beats of the story, and then when it finally delivers on that promise, its not in the way you think.
I can’t think of a finer entry for the number one spot.