23 Best Assassin’s Creed Games, All Ranked

Since 2007, the Assassin’s Creed Games has had its ups and downs. Ubisoft has been attacked for putting out a new game every year instead of taking their time.

That makes sense, since a long-running story like this one needs to change all the time to stay interesting. But, in all honesty, Ubisoft hasn’t always made “bad” Assassin’s Creed games.

Even the ones that don’t live up to expectations are still great games on their own. Some are better than others, that’s all.

Even though this is a matter of opinion, players can still make rankings based on how they feel about the games and their quality.

For example, most people agree that some Assassin’s Creed games are the worst, while others are a lot of fun to play and have a place in the hearts of most fans.

There’s also never been a better time to play or go back to the best Assassin’s Creed games than right now. Ubisoft has said that they are working on a number of new Assassin’s Creed games.

These include Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which will come out this year and feature the assassin Basim, Assassin’s Creed Hexe, which seems to be about the witch trials of the 1600s, and Assassin’s Creed Red, which is set in Japan.

With so much to look forward to, it’s the right time to celebrate the best episodes of the series so far.

So come with us as we tell you which Assassin’s Creed games we think are the best.

Every Assassin’s Creed Game

Name	Release Year	Platforms
Assassin’s Creed	2007	Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3
Assassin’s Creed 2	2009	Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, OS X, and Nintendo Switch
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood	2010	Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, OS X, and Nintendo Switch
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations	2011	Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch
Assassin’s Creed 3	2012	Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Nintendo Switch
Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation	2012	Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Nintendo Switch
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag	2013	Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Nintendo Switch
Assassin’s Creed Rogue	2014	Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch
Assassin’s Creed Unity	2014	Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate	2015	Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China	2015	Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India	2016	Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: Russia	2016	Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita
Assassin’s Creed Origins	2017	Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey	2018	Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla	2020	Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5
Assassin’s Creed Mirage	2023	Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5

23. Coming Soon: Assassin’s Creed Mirage

After Assassin’s Creed Syndicate didn’t sell very well, Ubisoft chose to take a year off from the series while they figured out how to get people interested in the games again.

This came in the form of an RPG-heavy approach and the release of Assassin’s Creed Origins, which has a huge world full of secrets and many side quests.

This is a model that has been used in both Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

But Ubisoft has said that the next game in the series, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, will go back to the series’ roots with classic assassination and stealth gameplay instead of the RPG elements that have become more popular in the games.

In this game, which takes place in the city of Baghdad, players love the idea of taking on the role of Basim, a street thief who is forced to become an assassin.

Unfortunately, until more information about Assassin’s Creed Mirage is made public, there isn’t much we can guess about it.

22. Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry

Freedom Cry started out as downloadable content for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, but it had bigger goals and finally became its own game.

Even though its fighting and sidequests make it almost impossible to separate from Black Flag, its story alone is enough to put it at the top of this list.

Here, Adewale, a former slave, fights against the slavemasters of Haiti for freedom. This shows that the Assassins’ goal can take many important forms.

Freedom Cry puts you in the middle of a slave trade and doesn’t hold back from showing how cruel it is. You can’t miss the human sales or the runaway slaves who will be killed if you don’t help them.

This is especially true if you take part in the events instead of just watching. But perhaps most importantly, Freedom Cry shows that those slaves and the country’s freemen are involved in their own liberation.

They work with Adewale instead of just sitting around and waiting. In this way, Freedom Cry does something that is not only important but also almost totally unique, and that deserves a shout out.

21. Assassin’s Creed Altair’s Chronicles

Altair’s Chronicles came out before Ezio’s series was even a thought in the minds of the AC team.

In this mobile prequel to the first Assassin’s Creed game, Altair searches in a small 3D world for a magical object called The Chalice.

It’s a disaster from start to finish. The combat in Assassin’s Creed is so simple that it’s no longer interesting, the locations and missions are all the same, the story (with its forced romance) is boring, and the dialogue is always bad and sometimes goes into Darth Vader “Nooooo!” territory.

The only thing Altair’s Chronicles has going for it is that it looks nice. It has beautiful (but overdone) designs for the environments, which at least make it look good.

But that’s not nearly enough to make up for its many problems, and since new AC games for mobile devices look better, it’s best to pass on this one.

20. Assassin’s Creed Identity

When it came out on iOS, Assassin’s Creed Identity was meant to be more like the full-fledged computer games, but with an RPG twist.

Identity is set in the Italian Renaissance and tries to bring back the series’ signature sneaking and stabbing gameplay by making it smaller and faster.

Ezio has been replaced by people whose names were made up by using a wonderful Italian name generator.

Sad to say, you’ll probably waste more time playing with that than you will playing the game.

It’s a free-to-play game that sends you back and forth to kill this guy, get this treasure, or take this person somewhere in exchange for skill points that you can spend on clothes, weapons, and ways to move.

The controls aren’t very good, so you’ll often run into walls instead of up them, but at least you won’t have to avoid the normal crowds of people.

There aren’t many people on the streets, so the flat textures and boxy buildings are what give the game its atmosphere.

19. Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: Russia

Chronicles Russia is the last side-scrolling sneaky spin-off from Ubi and Climax Studios. It is beautifully drawn in the colors of propaganda from the 20th century, but it is very hard.

This is the most modern Creed journey to date. It is about Nikolai Orelov’s sneaky quest in Russia in 1918.

Orelov is still an assassin with a secret blade, but he also has a rifle for killing enemies from a distance and a winch for pulling doors off grates so he can get through.

There are a lot of fun things to do as an assassin in this game, but Chronicles: Russia is the worst of the arty trilogy because it gets really hard if you do anything other than, well, quietly spike your enemies.

When you add in some annoying timed levels, the interesting Assassin’s story and new characters get lost in a game that just doesn’t feel like it’s been thought through enough.

Unlike Chronicles China or India, which are both fun sneaky side scrollers in their own right, this one is only for fans of the Brotherhood.

18. Assassin’s Creed 2: Discovery

If you only played the Assassin’s Creed mobile games, you might think that the main feature of the series is side-scrolling past guards/bodies-to-be who don’t notice you.

Assassin’s Creed 2: Discovery won’t do much to change that. You play as Ezio and carry out assassination tasks for a series of clients who are all boring and don’t matter much in the end.

They are just ways to get you into a 2D game that has some elements of an infinite runner, if you want to charge full speed and kill every guard who isn’t very good at his job.

It’s a simple game that doesn’t have as much detail as most Assassin’s Creed games, but it gets the job done.

Discovery, which came out in 2009, was the first 2D Creed game to be faster and more interesting than the mobile games that came with it.

It has since been overtaken by the better Chronicles: China, but you might still want to play it if you can find a copy for the DS, since Ubisoft has taken down all information about the mobile version.

17. Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines

Bloodlines on PSP follows Altair’s story after the events of the first game. It came out at the same time as Assassin’s Creed 2 and Discovery in an attempt to get everyone’s money.

Bloodlines is different from other handheld and mobile games in the series because it tries to mimic the 3D look and free-for-all gameplay of platform games.

In the first case, it does a decent job, with sharp graphics that make it look like a real AC game.

However, when it comes to gameplay, Bloodlines misses the haystack: small environments force you into battles all the time, and the combat system makes fights feel as awkward as hand-stitching in oven mitts.

Also, Bloodlines has a story that isn’t as bad as Altair’s Chronicles, but it often goes flat and isn’t good enough to make up for the boring fighting.

The only good thing about the game is Maria, Altair’s sharp-tongued friend who fans may remember from a dream scene.

Maria’s interactions with Altair give the story life and depth. Even she can’t save the show, which is a shame.

16. Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India is part two of the three-part Assassin’s Creed Chronicles miniseries. It is the first game in the series to take place in India, which was the crown jewel of the British Empire at the time.

Unfortunately, you won’t get to see much of it because the main character, Arbaaz, moves in a linear, 2.5D way that doesn’t give much room to explore.

It helps a little that the game has beautiful backgrounds and a good sense of movement, but that’s not enough to fix the game’s other major problems.

The boring stealth “option” is basically required because it makes you go through tasks that are poorly made and don’t give you what you want.

Chronicles India punishes you if you try to make things more interesting through combat by giving you automatic low marks or outright failure.

And in a game where points are directly linked to important changes, that just feels like bullying.

Unsuccessful attempts to make the game more exciting, like making Arbaaz run slower than he did five minutes ago for no reason, make things even worse, and the game drags horribly because the pace is all wrong.

This entry isn’t as good as its predecessor, Chronicles China, in almost every way, so you can skip over it.

15. Assassin’s Creed Pirates

It takes a lot of confidence to take a small part of one of your past games and release it as a separate game.

But Ubisoft was riding high on Black Flag’s success in late 2013, so they made Assassin’s Creed Pirates, a mobile game that is just the ship fighting from Black Flag that you can play on the go.

Pirates tries to be a real Assassin’s Creed game with a story about Assassins, Templars, and magic DNA time machines, but that’s just for show.

You spend 99% of your time just shooting cannonballs at other ships for no reason. But the people who made the game knew that, so they made sure to put battle first and make it easy and natural to control ships with touch features.

Pirates is low on this list because it’s just a part of another Assassin’s Creed game, but that part is so well made that it deserves to be noticed.

14. Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation

Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation is a sequel to Assassin’s Creed 3 and takes place during the same time. At first, the game was only available for the PlayStation Vita.

But the HD re-release brought it to PlayStation 3, PC, and Xbox 360. Then, as part of Assassin’s Creed 3 updated, it was updated for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Fans of the Assassin’s Creed series know Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation for having one of the best and most developed main characters.

However, the game doesn’t have much else to offer players today, when there are so many other Assassin’s Creed games to choose from.

13. Assassin’s Creed

The game that started it all doesn’t look as good as it did eight years ago, but it’s also not coming apart yet. The first Assassin’s Creed was basically a tech test for what the series could become.

You had one thing to do (assassinate, if you hadn’t guessed) and had to do it ten times, with only the most repetitive sidequests to break up the monotony.

A lot of what made it popular when it came out has also lost its appeal because graphics have gotten better and Ubisoft has tweaked the controls for Assassin’s Creed games so you don’t run into walls as often.

But the original Assassin’s Creed has something that is important to the series as a whole: you learn as much as you can about your target, plan the murder, and then carry it out.

In this way, the high-profile missions are more interesting because each target acts in a different way that calls for a different method. It’s not very good, and it’s been done better since then, but the game is still fun.

12. Assassin’s Creed 3

Fans have to give credit for this one. Assassin’s Creed 3 was risky and ambitious, but it was mostly a bad sequel.

The game’s unique story framework shows that Ubisoft wanted it to stand out. But as a video game, the pace was bad.

After all of the great advertising, players couldn’t wait to put themselves in Connor’s shoes. Once they got the game, they had to wait even longer.

Connor didn’t become a real killer until a third of the game had passed. Even with all of that, Assassin’s Creed 3 still plays well and has a special place in the hearts of fans.

11. Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China continues the good side-scrolling AC tradition. It takes the best parts of those games and makes them even better by taking ideas from one of the best stealth games of all time (hint: it’s the one with the ninjas).

Stealth features are built right into the game and give it a lot more flavor. Real free-running segments add a lot of action and are a welcome addition.

Chronicles: China is by far the best of Assassin’s Creed’s not-quite-2D games. Its beautiful art style hides the fact that it was made on a smaller budget.

On the other hand, the game’s short length and simple setup make it hard to explore like a great Assassin’s Creed, and the lack of different settings means that the world quickly gets boring.

Plus, the revenge plan of the main character, Shao Jun, isn’t very emotional. Instead, it’s a direct copy of that of her mentor, Ezio Auditore.

But it’s a fun and difficult game that makes the smaller games in the series better and saves the genre.

10. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue

Assassin’s Creed: Rogue didn’t get nearly as much press as it should have. It came out in 2014 with Unity, but it was only for Xbox 360 and PS3, which made it look like a lesser product.

It’s too bad, because Rogue has what might be the best story in the whole series.

Shay is also one of the most interesting main characters because he leaves the Assassin Order to join the Templers.

Players really understand why Shay is torn and what drives him. It’s not very different from Black Flag in terms of how it’s played.

9. Assassin’s Creed Revelations

If you pick a famous game, the main character is probably between 15 and 35 years old.

After that, they might as well be dead, because you’re more likely to see a horse in the game than a main character with silver hair.

Ezio Auditore is not only an exception to that rule, but also the best. This is because Assassin’s Creed Revelations has a great story at its center.

Revelations set the bar for future Assassin’s Creed stories because it had one of the most thought-out and grown-up stories in the series.

Even so, this greatness doesn’t shine through in every part of the game. Constantinople is pretty boring and easy to forget, and the mini-game with the tower defense is pretty much the worst thing ever.

But that just shows how good the story of Revelations is. It’s about sacrifice and loss in a painfully honest way that breaks your heart and fills it at the same time.

Both Ezio and Altair get the loving endings they deserve because Revelations knows that there is strength in telling a different kind of story.

8. Assassin’s Creed: Unity

Since Unity’s release in 2014 was a mess, it may surprise you to see it so high on the list. The truth is that Unity is great!

Yes, it came out with a lot of bugs, but it’s much better to play it now in 2020. Unity is still the best looking Assassin’s Creed game, even though it had a rough start.

The missions and world planning are what make Unity one of the best Assassin’s Creed games. Like in Hitman, there are different ways to do each job.

Unity also has the smoothest parkour action to date, which seems to have gotten worse in the games that came after.

7. Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

In a world where steampunk is pretty much its own genre, Victorian London has pretty much been done to death.

But when Assassin’s Creed Syndicate came a little late to the party in 2015, it explored the city with such unbridled fun and passion that it was hard not to like it, and it made us want more like sad movie orphans.

Those who forgot to have fun remained stiff-lipped. Unity forgot (which is funny, since keeping a stiff upper lip is kind of an English thing), but Syndicate makes sure that its many distractions are worthwhile.

No matter if you’re using a hidden blade to zip across an impromptu zipline or solving ghostly puzzles with Charles Dickens, Victorian London is always fun, big, and beautiful.

Charming twin main characters, Evie and Jacob Frye, who you can play at your own pace, add to the fun with their snarky dialogue that never feels mean or rude.

These seem like real people you’d want to have a beer with. Just maybe don’t make jokes about the Knights Templar.

Syndicate takes the best parts of the whole Assassin’s Creed series and puts them all under one fancy name.

You can play with everything and even ride carriages through the city, causing total chaos. This shows what the series is capable of when it tries.

6. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

It shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, but it did. It seemed like a “side-sequel” to Assassin’s Creed 2.

This couldn’t have been more wrong, because Brotherhood is a full-fledged open-world game that improved on everything its predecessor did.

It starts right after the second game and gives players another chance to go on a trip with Ezio.

In 2010, the recreation of Rome during the Renaissance was a sight to behold. People tend to forget that PvP multiplayer, which Brotherhood added, was much better than people remember.

5. Assassin’s Creed Origins

The Assassin’s Creed Origins journey through Ancient Egypt doesn’t just tell the story of how the Brotherhood got started.

It also takes you through a beautiful, vast world where every step could lead to a new hidden treasure or a lion that wants to eat your head.

Bayek of Siwa, our new proto-Assassin, and his equally murderous wife, Aya, are a new kind of hero for the series.

Even though they kill people on their way to get payback across Egypt, they are strangely easy to relate to.

And Egypt, what a place. The country is the real star of AC Origins, and you’ll climb to the top of the largest towers not just to help Senu, your eagle, see better (yes, true eagle vision), but also to take in this beautiful world. A photo mode has never been so welcome.

Your button to take a picture won’t know what hit it. But Origins is more than just a pretty face. The big reset button has been hit hard and fast on Assassin’s Creed.

Combat has been completely changed. You can now use light and heavy attacks with the buttons on your right arm.

Dodging is key, and you’ll have to fight to the death to stay alive. With the new leveling system, you’ll have to be careful if you want to get to the next fight.

With an RPG game system, you can play in a lot of different ways. Origins gets rid of everything that was annoying about the other Creed games and makes it all about you.

You can kill however you want, ride where you want, climb every wall, and find every loot chest full of silly bows and arrows and fun weapons.

There are no rules here, and there are no more orders to follow people. This is a new Creed, a perfect evolution of everything that has come before. It also has a new modern feature that might make you care what happens next.

4. Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag

Before it came out, Black Flag wasn’t greeted with open arms. Fans were disappointed with Assassin’s Creed 3, and they didn’t like that Ubisoft kept making new games in the series every year.

Boy, did everyone get that wrong! Black Flag is probably the most fun game in the Assassin’s Creed series.

Black Flag took AC3’s great naval gameplay and turned it into a big pirate game. Exploring the Caribbean was always fun because there was always something new to find on land or in the water.

Edward Kenway was also a good main character, even though he wasn’t a hero like Altair, Ezio, or Connor.

3. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

People can be divided into two groups. Those who have taken antihistamines and like to climb into piles of hay to wait for bad guys, and those who would rather use flaming battering rams to break down castle walls.

The good news is that everyone can play Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. With a new focus on the Brotherhood’s stealthy side and a real “Hidden Ones” hut in your Ravensthorpe village, it brings back the series’ heart.

But somehow, Eivor’s tales do this without taking away anything we like about the new Creeds.

Story is important in this huge, beautiful world, and it feels like everything you do here matters.

You can do this by experiencing the wonderful mini-world events, choosing an Ealdorman for a county, or crashing your longship onto a beach, blowing your horn, and then pillaging to your heart’s satisfaction.

This game is also a true saga, with characters who will make their way into your heart whether you want them to or not.

This makes every region and adventure a real risk. Taking a break to look at the scenery is a great way to use the screenshot button, enjoy the amazing world-building, and get ready for the next emotional beatdown in the story.

Then there are the mythical lands and all the other countries, as well as the new ways to fight that are fun and the large skill tree. Finding his feet in England is Eivor’s real rise to fame, and there’s almost too much to do.

But that’s what makes Assassin’s Creed Valhalla so much fun. This is a place where you can fish, ride a wolf and look at the scenery, hunt for Thor’s armor or even Excalibur, or just about anything else.

Choose your tools and targets, go after them, and then do something completely different tomorrow. Valhalla is scary and amazing all the time.

2. Assassin’s Creed 2

Assassin’s Creed 2 is still the best AC game, even though it came out in 2009.

Yes, it didn’t have all the cool new game features that later games did, but it laid the groundwork for what the series is like now.

Still, Ezio Auditore is the best killer in the series.

Both the way you can run and how you fight have been improved. Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries was a nice change from the first game, which was dark and dirty.

They were given more things to play with, like a secret gun. The plot was driven by Ezio’s story of revenge, but the modern-day storyline got a lot of attention.

This led to a mind-blowing finish that the series hasn’t been able to top yet.

1. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Welcome to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, fellow roofers! It takes players back to a time before the Order even existed and tells a story through Kassandra and Alexios, two new main characters.

At the beginning of the game, you get to choose who you want to play as. The rest of the game is based on your choices. And boy, will you have to make a lot of decisions. This game is really big.

But not so big that you feel like there’s too much or too little to do. This is a world with a lot of side tasks and other things to do.

Each one is handled with the same care and skill. My friends, there’s no boring fetch quest in sight. Just hours of beautiful cutscenes, personalities that are easy to remember, and a lot of romance.

The gameplay has also been changed a lot, smoothing out some of Origins’ quirks in favor of an extensive abilities tree and upgradeable/moddable armor and weapons that might just give Destiny 2 Forsaken a run for its money.

This is the most customizable Creed ever, and the time you spend tweaking your gear in menus will pay off right away in battle, so you won’t feel bad about it.

Since The Witcher 3, no one has made an open-world RPG with this much depth and brilliance. This is the best Creed there is.