Nothing is true; everything is permitted… but you can trust this list ranking Assassin’s Creed games from worst to best.
The basic conceits established by the very first Assassin’s Creed have remained relatively unchanged. Take historical places and people and bring them into a large open world. Relive the lives of ancestors past via science and DNA samples. How does it work!? Stop asking questions and start climbing towers.
While the basic format has remained similar, a lot has changed. The series started with Desmond Miles and a group of friends trying to take down the evil Templars in the modern-day by turning to the past. But the modern-day stuff fell to the wayside until returning in the most recent games. And the series has often experimented in weird and sometimes successful ways.
Ubisoft has a habit of trying anything and everything in these games. One of them contained a tower defense mode. Some of them feature naval warfare. Some have multiple characters. And nearly every type of hacking and puzzle mini-game you can think of has appeared in over 14 games across nearly every platform released since the Xbox 360.
Through it all, the ups and downs, the series has been a favorite of many Kotaku staffers, so we all got together and yelled at each other and put together this list. In the end, we all mostly agreed with the ranking. (Some who don’t like Assassin’s Creed III were angry. Some who liked Unity were mad too.)
Something to note! Not every game in the franchise is on this list. We omitted phone games and browser games. We also didn’t count the Ezio Trilogy as a separate game and we aren’t ranking or taking into consideration DLC. The movie isn’t on here either. (If it was, it would be last.) Let us proceed.
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