Assassin's Creed Shadows is the next mainline entry into the long-running stealth-action franchise. We know that it's now set to launch on February 14, 2025, following a delay. There's dual protagonists this time, with Naoe a more traditional assassin, and Yasuke a hard-hitting samurai. We've now seen some gameplay, and it's looking very good indeed. We'll have to wait and see where it ends up ranking on this list after it launches.
The best Assassin’s Creed games offer some of the best historical action experiences you can get in video games. But they often offer much more than that too: A hero you can’t help but root for; lots of intrigue; a beautiful part of the world to discover; a choice of scale or intimate settings; and some of the best stealth or RPG combat going.
The long-running series continues to take us all around the world and with Ubisoft seemingly setting up its own Assassin’s Creed Interactive Universe with the launch of its Assassin’s Creed Infinity platform, it'll be easier than ever to jump between them, be they (hopefully) new multiplayer offerings, Assassin's Creed Shadows, or any of the other upcoming codenamed titles.
With almost all the series playable on basically every one of the main current-gen platforms, you should have a handful of the best Assassin's Creed games to potentially play, no matter what you play on. So if you haven’t played yet or want to give your favorite another go perhaps our list of the best Assassin’s Creed games will inspire you. We have painstakingly ranked every series entry available so far, and while they are all high-quality games, they are also long and life is short, so find out which ones we swear by and which ones we might skip. Let's get into it.
Best Assassin's Creed games to play in 2024
Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
While it may be the 'lowliest' entry on our list, we do love Rogue because, in Shay, it gives us one of the most interesting protagonists of the series, as well as one of the most interesting perspectives.
Alas, poor Rogue. There was plenty of potential in this much-maligned Assassin’s Creed game because it finally put the player in the shoes of an enemy Templar instead of a member of the Assassin’s guild. Expansion of the naval warfare from Black Flag was also hugely welcome, but some obstacles simply got in the way – namely, game-breaking bugs.
Rogue was truly the game Ubisoft’s annual release schedule got the better of, leading to a rushed game that launched with a huge amount of bugs and glitches, ruining immersion and leading plenty of players to ditch the story before it had really got underway (the campaign wasn’t overly long, anyway). It was also yet another game in the series running the same engine which was starting to jade fans.
However, Shay is definitely one of the most interesting main characters to grace the series, and the location of the wintry North East Atlantic coast made a nice change too. Still worth a pop in 2023 - and you can even play it on Nintendo Switch now.
The art styles used across the three adventures in Assassin's Creed Chronicles give each one superb character and identity. Each is slightly different from the last, they are painterly, have their own distinct aesthetic and are perfect matches for the setting of each tale, making brilliant background and styles for the games.
Often overlooked, but well worth their place in the whole Assassin's Creed series, the three games which make up the Assassin's Creed Chronicles trilogy are wonderful, bite-size adventures.
The trio of adventures are set across three time periods: 16th-century Imperial China, 19th-century India, during the Anglo-Sikh wars, and early 20th-century Soviet Russia, just after 1917's October Revolution.
While each is not a 'core' entry into the series, per se, they are still worthy of any fan's time and appreciation, with the time periods in particular making for gripping settings for adventures of the Creed. This is accentuated by the art style of each which is exquisite and painterly, each with a distinct style that relates to said setting.
Played out as 2.5D side-scrolling games, each intriguing hero has a limited but genuinely useful toolkit to deploy, from grappling hooks to smoke bombs, and from mechanical winches to firecrackers. You'll need to rely on all the tools at your disposal in each game to get through challenging memory sequences and levels.
Replayability and bettering yourself are encouraged in Chronicles too with each area and level being scored based on your performance. This is based on how many baddies you kill, how many times you're spotted, and side objectives too; this also helps to add some focus and extra content to every level instead of encouraging players to just race to the end.
There's some annoying checkpointing among all three which does frustrate at times, and the stories are easy to gloss over or flat-out forget, but these are robust adventures that provide great means to give relative-unknown Assassins their time to shine.
The games are still worth a go in 2024, nearly ten years after the release of the China installment, and they feature a nice change of pace when compared to the main entries in the series.
Unity, for all its flaws and bugs, still has one of the best settings and city locations in the series. Revolutionary Paris is breathtaking in its detail, lighting, density - and for its ability to offer some of the finest parkour in the series too.
Set during the French Revolution, with the story largely taking place in Paris, Assassin's Creed Unity brought AC firmly back to Europe after many a year in the American colonies or on the Caribbean seas.
Like Rogue – which launched the same year – Unity was plagued by bugs, which was particularly disappointing at the time as it launched with the then-new generation of consoles. As a result, it's had a reputation that's been hard to shake, even if all the patches did largely fix the game afterward. Revisiting it now is as smooth an experience as you'd expect - and it still definitely marks the moment at which the AC games changed their aesthetics. It's a looker alright, and the lighting is sublime.
It also deserves some marks for its introduction of cooperative gameplay, though, allowing up to four players to complete missions together. Now that’s unity. And it also fits in nicely with the series on a wider scale, making a neat connection between itself and Rogue.
One of Revelations' best elements is how well it rounds off Ezio's main storyline. There's an exciting adventure, companionship, a new location, and friends, throwbacks to previous heroes, and we get to enjoy how Ezio processes it as a middle-aged man.
Released just one year after 2010’s Brotherhood, Revelations was the first time Ubisoft appeared to be rushing things. It certainly felt familiar, with players filling the shoes of 21st-century protagonist Desmond, the original game’s Altaïr avatar, and Ezio from Assassin’s Creed II and Brotherhood – and it showed the franchise was in need of a refresh.
One notable addition, though, was the ‘hookblade’ – a grappling hook attachment to your iconic assassin’s blade – that helped elevate the game’s verticality and roof-jumping to a whole new (roof) level. It could also be thrown into enemies to pull them in for some good ol’ assassinating.
Still, it ties up Ezio's trilogy brilliantly even if he was a Very Middle-Aged Man by this point and the city of Constantinople got the typically-excellent Ubisoft treatment too.
AC 3's setting and its use of the American Revolution as a backdrop is great, while some of its characters also set it apart. The game also begins a series of interesting connections between several games, and in Haytham it has a brilliant double-edged character, who comes complete with an early-game twist.
Ubisoft needed a new setting for the AC game after Revelations, and it certainly made one. Assassin’s Creed 3 jumps in time to the American Revolution in the 18th century. Players take on the mantle of Connor, as a half-English, half-Mohawk character navigating colonial America.
With a new Anvil engine, the graphics really got an upgrade, while the American Frontier was a wonderful change from the largely European settings of the previous games that pushed the limits of the open-world franchise even further – with an increase in the use of natural foliage for sneaking and hiding, rather than the largely urban structures we’d grown used to.
Some less-than-inspiring mission design, though, let down what could have been one of the best Assassin's Creed games.
Playing as two Assassin's in Jacob and Evie in Syndicate was a breath of fresh air at the time, and still represents a great feature of Syndicate. Being able to swap between the two makes for different encounters, varied combat, and keeps things interesting throughout the story too.
An Assassin’s Creed game set in Old Blighty? Count us in! Syndicate took the action to Victorian London, with all of the cockney accents, wood-paneled pubs, and silly hats you’d hope for. Syndicate also, for the first time, allowed players to pick their avatar’s gender, playing as either Jacob or Evie Frye (twin assassins) as they sought to free London from the cruel grip of the Templars – a welcome addition after half-hearted protestations from one Ubisoft developer who offered the brave hypothesis that women were too costly to animate.
Players also got to use a dedicated grappling hook for quickly speeding up multi-story buildings, brass knuckles for brawling in the city’s cobbled streets, and horse-drawn carriages for navigating the Victorian-era world. A brilliant and imaginative setting, in a game that – despite its historical nature – showed that Ubisoft was catching up with modern day. As ever, though, some technical glitches held it back from greatness.
As well as having the unique selling point of starting the whole series and introducing all the major points to us, the first Assassin's Creed game has a brilliant setting in the 12th century Holy Land, and also shows the roots of our favourite stealthy action to boot.
The game that started it all. The original Assassin’s Creed was truly impressive when it was first released, we hadn't quite seen scope or ambition like it in a video game before. And while the graphics and combat may not hold up today – enemies being incredibly easy to defeat simply by running around them until your health regenerated – it’s certainly worthy of its place on this list.
The first Assassin's Creed set up the curious sci-fi framing device of the Animus: a machine for hacking into genetic memories held in the protagonist’s (a kidnapped bartender named Desmond) DNA. Its open-world setting in the 12th century Holy Land, with the action jumping between Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus during the Third Crusade.
Players take on the mantle of Altaïr, an assassin tasked with furthering the cause of their secret order, while gradually learning more about a mysterious artifact called the Apple of Eden, that recurs throughout the franchise.
Other games refined its formula, and others broke it, but 2007's Assassin’s Creed is what began our collective fixation with a pickpocketing, parkour, shadow-slinking assassin, and is one of the best Assassin's Creed games for it.
Valhalla's brilliant open world setting of 9th-century Britain is a joy to behold, explore, and soak up. There are beautiful landscapes in every direction, and you can also find some excellent settlements, landmarks, and mini-stories in every corner of it.
Much like Origins and Odyssey, 2020's Assassin's Creed: Valhalla saw Ubisoft taking a step away from the explicitly stealthy nature of the earlier games in the series, instead putting you in the well-trodden shoes of a Viking raider intent on pillaging their way through England.
Like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Valhalla sees you picking between two protagonists, but it’s difficult to have a distinct favorite this time around. The open world leaves a strong impression, however, and you’ve likely never seen the British Isles look quite this beautiful.
Unfortunately, while Valhalla made use of a longer development period than the previous Assassin’s Creed games, it did not revolutionize the series. Due to a somewhat lackluster story, it wasn't able to keep up with the very best Assassin’s Creed games, despite balancing the line between familiar and innovative new features well. However, it spent a long time on our best PS5 games and best Xbox Series X games lists, and acted as many's PS5 or XSX launch game of choice, too.
Origins gives us the, well, origin story of the Creed itself, and we love it for it. Ubisoft's first foray into the RPG-ifying of the series worked well too, but seeing the beginnings of the Creed through Bayek's experience is one of the best things about Origins.
After a sensible year off from releasing games – one of Ubisoft’s favorite hobbies – players were treated to Assassin’s Creed: Origins in 2017.
Playing as a desert nomad in ancient Egypt, under the reign of Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII, you’re tasked with pursuing peace and safety for the population around you as its kingdom crumbles – with a truly epic origin story for the first-ever assassins (so don’t expect to see any AC entries set before this).
With Cleopatra and Julius Caesar appearing, and lots of historical easter eggs to satisfy anthropological hobbyists, Origins was a brilliant entry that's now earned a spot as a bit of an underrated gem in the series, and the one that started the shift to RPG-style entries too. A brilliant game.
Snooping about and finding each clue in a restricted area, tracing each lead, and cracking each case to work toward the climax of each investigation is gripping. Making you feel like part-assassin, part-spy, is one of Mirage's greatest successes.
Assassin's Creed Mirage is the AC game that many fans have been willing into existence over the past 5 years or so. Taking the series back to its stealth-action roots with a focused experience, intriguing protagonist, and densely-filled city, Mirage and the tale of Basim Ibn Is'Haq is a triumph in all that makes Assassin's Creed games brilliant.
Encouraging you to be patient and quiet, deliberate and clever, the missions in Mirage are some of the best assassinations-come-detective cases the series has ever graced us with. Each is gripping and gets more and more mysterious with each clue you discover until the opportune moment to strike at one of Baghdad's members of the Order of the Ancients arises.
The game bucks the trend of the few that came before it by ditching the open-world and going for a focused single-city setting (plus city environs), and it pays off. The city of Baghdad is a superb setting and is brilliantly realized and beautiful, crammed with things to do and discover, and making for a brilliant playground for parkour.
Basim is also one of the most interesting assassin's we've had a in a few games too, blending some of the best traits of some of the most beloved and underrated protagonists from the series. Assassin's Creed Mirage is a fabulous entry in the series and one of the best in years.
Incorporating assassin recruitment and organising them to take on missions in a mini-game in Brotherhood is enormously fun - but not quite as fun as calling on your reinforcements in tricky encounters to see them rush enemies and get you out of holes is truly excellent.
Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood was a direct sequel to Assassin’s Creed 2, set in the same Renaissance era in Italy, but it felt considerably less fresh than the previous entry – hence we're not ranking quite as highly. However, the way Brotherhood picked up the baton and sprinted with it still makes it one of the best Assassin’s Creed games in the series.
The name Brotherhood reveals this game’s main selling point: the ability to recruit other assassins and send them on missions to further the Assassins’ cause – or summon them into battle to fight alongside you. Who said assassination had to be lonely?
Notably, Brotherhood also introduced the first online multiplayer mode for the series, seeing players sprint and parkour their way across rooftops to try and take each other out.
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood was a first glimpse at the tempo at which Ubisoft could produce great games, but revisiting the same world so soon after seeing it the first time only made sense if you were an Ezio fan through and through. Team Techradar is Team Ezio for good reason, so we say on the whole you shouldn’t miss it.
It'd be tempting to leave it here as 'being a pirate' for Black Flag, but what we really love about the game is the bombastic, thunderous naval combat. There's a skill to it, but knocking out powerful ships and robust forts is incredibly satisfying once you've got it.
Pirates! Assassins! Pirate assassins! Black Flag was a hugely exciting departure for the series, taking the action onto the high seas in the 18th century – playing the grandfather of the protagonist in Assassin’s Creed 3.
As a swarthy pirate, you end up sailing as much as you do sneaking, but there’s still plenty of land-based action that the series is known for – along with ship-based warfare, coastal fortification invasion, deep-sea diving and whale harpooning, and even encounters with Blackbeard himself - along with a host of other famous names from the Golden Age of Piracy.
Truly one of the best Assassin's Creed games, not least thanks to the charming Edward Kenway.
The scope and ambition of Odyssey, in terms of its setting, explorable environments, and narratives and story branches means it offers so much to get your teeth into and enjoy. Kassandra, in particular, is immensely likeable and is one of the series' best protagonists too.
Taking the action to Ancient Greece, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey offered a massive open world, bringing together some of the best aspects of the series while hewing closer to a full-on action RPG. What comes out is probably the best Assassin's Creed game of the current RPG trio.
As a mercenary caught up in a war between Athens and Sparta, you end up traveling to some of the world’s most iconic landmarks – while an emphasis on story, branching dialogue options, and multiple endings make this one of the most engaging AC games of the franchise. You get to fight some mythological creatures like the Minotaur, too.
The combat in this action-heavy entry isn’t necessarily what AC does best, but the scope of this game was huge, and the gorgeous open-world environment provides endless hours of joyful exploration. It’s a big AC game, and some may find it too big to finish, but it offers freedom suitable for any assassin – which is why was featured on our best PS4 games and best Xbox One games lists for a long time.
It's Ezio, isn't it. Yes, Assassin's Creed II's best feature, among many to be fair, is the introduction of the series' most-loved and best protagonist. Ezio is likeable, charming, witty, emotional, and feels like an extension of yourself once you get to the end of the adventure.
The second game in the Assassin's Creed series is also, it turns out, the Assassin’s Creed game the closest to the TechRadar team’s hearts. Launched two years after the first game, it amped up the action and intrigue with a move to Renaissance Italy and a suave protagonist known as Ezio Auditore da Firenze.
This next adventure made the first game look like a proof of concept, so dramatic is the shift. Stealth assassinations would become one of the most popular ways to dispatch foes, and the alternate-history world of assassins and templars really came into its own with Ezio Auditore’s story of revenge.
There’s plenty of brilliant nonsense here too, including an in-game Leonardo da Vinci who builds the player new weapons and items, including a flying machine (which the real Leonardo da Vinci actually designed). But other gameplay developments are what make this game shine, with dual hidden blades and a new disarm mechanic.
More than anything else, Assassin’s Creed 2 showed how easy it was to continue the AC franchise in a whole new setting, and paved the template for the globetrotting, century-jumping entries to come. Even many years after its release, it should still sit on top of every list of the best Assassin's Creed games.
How we made our best Assassin's Creed games list
Assassin's Creed is one of the TechRadar Gaming team's most favorite series ever in video games. As a result, we have a genuine passion for the games, the characters, the lore, and everything in between. This means that you can trust our verdicts on all the games in the series as we know what makes a great AC game stand out over a good one.
For some of our editorial team, the interest and fondness really is intense: TRG's Managing Editor, Rob, played all the games between Assassin's Creed III Remastered and Odyssey (inclusive), including all DLCs and standalone spin-offs, back to back in 2019 and has formed a near-year-long sequence of memories and analysis of all those games in his mind forever more. He's also 'platinummed' many of the games too, got all the art books (even the obscure ones), been to the Symphony concert, and got most of the novel series.
Individual 'keenness' aside, what this level of interest and passion points to is the fact that our knowledge of the Assassin's Creed game is such that you can trust what we say in our best Assassin's Creed list. We've played all of them for hundreds of hours, across all platforms, and over the span of many years - not just when they were released - and have the right expertise to be able to recommend them to you.
Best Assassin's Creed games 2024 - FAQs
Which Assassin's Creed is best?
We, like many, to be fair, think the best Assassin's Creed game is Assassin's Creed 2. It has the best story, arguably the best characters, probably the best Assassin protagonist, wonderful city settings and playground, and features a rich historical background to get your teeth into. It really is one of the best games of the last 20 years, and there's no surprise that it sits atop many of the internet's AC game lists.
Which assassin is the best in the Assassin's Creed game?
Now this is question that has raged, and continues to do so whenever the best Assassin's Creed games are brought up in conversation. With there being several 'iconic' protagonists throughout the series there's some healthy subjectivity around it too with lots of fans having their favourites.
On the whole though, Ezio Auditore di Firenze is widely considered the best - and certainly most popular. He is charming, likeable, suave, goes on a complete journey through the games, and is, well, so damn cool. However, there are plenty of others that folks speak highly of. Kassandra from Odyssey is one of those in particular, while leftfield favourites include Shay from Rogue, Altaïr Ibn-LaʼAhad (the protagonist from the first game), and also Bayek from Origins all have their fans.
Which Assassin's Creed has the best story?
This is a tough question as all the Assassin's Creed games have memorable stories with their own twists, settings, journeys, and multifaceted adventures that make them unique and stand out.
For example, the story of the whole series wouldn't exist without the intrigue and setup of the very first game; the stories of ACIII and Rogue where you get a Templar perspective shake things up enjoyable; and the sprawling story of Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a gripping saga.
However, personally, having spent so much time with the series, the standouts are Assassin's Creed II, Origins, and Odyssey. Though I constantly change my mind!
Which Assassin's Creed game has the best open world?
Many of the best Assassin's Creed games have open worlds varying in scale that you're free to explore and wander about at your own leisure. This element of the series really exploded when the RPG-style games came along with Origins too, with subsequent games offering huge worlds.
However, not all were created equal, and not all are as enjoyable, or as action-packed. Overall though, if you're looking for the best Assassin's Creed open-world in terms of the big factors - beauty, filled with stuff to do, engaging side quests, and hidden secrets to find then we'd have to recommend Assassin's Creed Valhalla, with Odyssey a really close second.
Which Assassin's Creed game is the most fun?
This is a great question and one which will largely revolve around your playstyle and game type preferences. Across the series there's now sprawling open-world RPGs, tightly-focused linear stealth adventures, and even 2.5D platform-heavy games. As a result, you mileage will differ based on what you prefer. We recommend trying out Assassin's Creed Odyssey, due to its sheer scale and variety of things to do.
However, if you're a 'general' AC fan then one answer we can probably stand by is that the first game, when trying to be played in 2024, is not going to be as fun as the others in the series. It hasn't aged well, and is the jankiest of the lot.
You Might Also Like...
- The best crossplay games to play right now
- The best RPGs to play on Game Pass
- Here's when to expect the next season of Fortnite
