To be honest, when I first downloaded the series I had no idea it was as, well, educational as it was. I wasn't expecting much out of it, but hey, it was on sale. It didn't take long to realize what I had gotten into, with Assassin's Creed 1. And it pleasantly surprised me. I'm the academic type that is literally about to write an essay about a pop song, so if you make your games smart, you're gonna make me happy.
I didn't even finish the first mission of one before I tried two. And finished two. And Brotherhood. And Revelations. The series had me so hooked, I didn't even have a chance to finish it, if that makes sense. I still intend to finish One, some day.
So, with that in mind, let's talk specifics.
Assassin's Creed I: Since I haven't really played much of it, I won't say much, except that it feels a bit too hand-holdy when I've played all the other games before the first.
Assassin's Creed II: This is the height of the series. If you intend to only get one Assassin's Creed game, this is it. There's several good reasons for this. First: the setting: Italy during the renaissance. Not only do we get to meet great, and real people during this time, but we get to see great and real buildings. Let's touch on a few of these:
Leonardo DaVinci exists in-story, and is fairly historically accurate. The story uses one of the inventions he actually tried to make as a plot point. They don't shy away from the possibility that he took on a male lover. Caterina Sforza, the woman who tells the people who kidnapped her kids she has the ability to make more, is not only a real person, but someone who actually said that. As for locations, the Colosseum gets seen in two different time periods, and the Sistine Chapel is where the final battle takes place.
Ezio is loveable, relatable, and his story is enjoyable. It's no wonder we have followed Ezio longer than any of the other historical assassins.
I feel Assassin's Creed II was the 'perfect storm' so-to-speak. The plot was great. The environment had lots of tall buildings, with minimal guards improbably placed on roofs. On the other hand, there was minimal-to-no 'assassin training' and investing and microtransactions. It would have been better if those things were non-existent, of course. It's funny how, in a game called "Assassin's Creed" I largely wanted to assassinate people.
There was one mission that I really, really hated in Assassin's Creed II. You're to assassinate a man on a boat, and if any of the guards catch you, you fail. You have to take out the guards one by one, and it's really, really fucking hard.
With Brotherhood and Revelations, it immediately becomes inferior to II because the programmers mistakenly believed we actually really loved the investing part of AsCred and really wanted more banal stuff like that. They seemed to just be throwing shit in and calling it 'progress' when it was really a regression.
Things get worse with III. III was, in my opinion, so bad, I gave up on the series. They pulled out one of the best parts of AsCred simply by changing the era: the towering, various buildings. And they added more guards to the roofs. And they included more 'insta-fail' missions. This was before I got a chance to finish the insanely long prologue. I didn't even get to see Conner, or some of the awesome things said about him, because the game frustrated me too much, too early. It's like they completely ignored the standard difficulty curve, and just decided 'fuck it and fuck you.'
IV is out now, but I'm done caring. Assassin's Creed has shown me it will never get better than II, so what's the point?
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