Assassin's Creed Mirage

Assassin's Creed Mirage was originally going to be DLC for AC Valhalla but ended up being released as a standalone title -- Valhalla was definitely massive enough already without yet another addition. Mirage takes place before Valhalla, in the second half of the 800s in Baghdad, focusing on young Basim ibn Ishaq. At the beginning of Valhalla, Sigurd brought the Hidden Ones Basim and Hytham to Norway where Valhalla's protagonist Eivor met them the first time.

Assassin's Creed Unity

I remember Assassin's Creed Unity being mired in technical issues at release. One vivid memory is of character face textures not loading but eyes and mouth still being there -- the stuff of nightmares. I think in general people didn't like the game back then but the perception of Unity seems to have curiously turned around: you see a lot of positive comments these days. Playing it now for the first time, I personally found the game to be one of the worst in the series.

Assassin's Creed Rogue

Assassin's Creed Rogue and Unity were released on the same day back in 2014. That seems quite unusual but the reasoning was to have a release on the older gen consoles too (Xbox 360 and PS3) that never got Unity. Rogue was released few months later on PC too and years later as a remastered version for Xbox One and PS4. Rogue was pretty much like a consolidation price for the older gen: its development even helmed by kind of a secondary studio, Ubisoft Sofia, whose previous work for the series had been mainly AC Liberation.

Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag (& Freedom Cry)

My playthrough of Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag coincided with the release of Skull and Bones. The latter's development was troubled and costly -- and the end result was not something people thought worth the time it took for the game to come out. A common sentiment I saw: Ubisoft had already made one good pirate game: all they had to do was to build upon it. However, I'm not certain if Black Flag's single player campaign would have lent itself into a multiplayer live service format that easily. There's a multiplayer mode too in Black Flag but it doesn't involve naval combat, which is what Skull and Bones is about.

Assassin's Creed Liberation Remastered

Assassin's Creed III: Liberation (2012) was originally a PlayStation Vita game. A year and a half later it was re-released on more powerful platforms as a beautified version, titled Assassin's Creed Liberation HD. And then, years later the game was included in Assassin's Creed III Remastered likewise as a Remastered version. I have a feeling the HD and Remastered versions are identical apart from online features having been removed from the latter.

Assassin's Creed III Remastered

I finally got back to continuing my Assassin's Creed franchise run. The next game on the list was Assassin's Creed III (2012) and specifically its 7 years newer Remastered version. I was previously perplexed why Ubisoft had remastered this particular one but the reason really is obvious. It's the same as always: money. They had a good window to sell the same game again on a newer console generation.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Post-Release Content Updates

Ubisoft+ subscription was again 1€ for a month and it was time for me to return to Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which had finally gotten the last of its story updates at the end of last year. And there sure was a whole lot of content added in the two years the game was actively supported post launch. In total, Valhalla got three paid expansions and about five free additions that could be considered as separate bigger features. I was finished with the full game at 270 hours played.

Assassin's Creed Revelations

Unlike previously in the series, Assassin's Creed Revelations' (almost) whole open world is unlocked very early on. I did right away pretty much everything that didn't progress the main memory sequence and thus had an unusually story-focused playthrough after sequence 3. That may have had a slight effect but I think that even without beelining the story, Revelations' ending is a very satisfying and conclusive finale for the Ezio trilogy.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

I started Assassin's Creed Brotherhood expecting a quick and cheap standalone expansion kind of deal. To my surprise, it instead polished and added enough to stand on its own as a separate game.

Assassin's Creed II

It's like I had skipped a game in the series. The first one truly was like a tech demo, a proof of concept, so much does Assassin's Creed II improve from it. The potential was claimed and the result is a well-rounded game that is surprisingly close to the newer end of the series, at least feature-wise -- there's still room for polishing.

Assassin's Creed

My Assassin's Creed franchise run (of the pre-Syndicate games) started earlier than intended when Ubisoft in July (I think it was) announced that on September 1st they would again decommission online services (i.e. anything that requires an online connection, including the redeeming of unlocked Ubisoft Connect rewards) of a selection of their older titles. At the end of August, Ubisoft postponed the decommissioning by a month, allowing me to finish all of the affected AC titles in time.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla

I didn't expect to be back on Ubisoft+ so quickly but another month for 1€ was too great an offer to pass. During the month I played Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which I had previously dismissed because:

1. I hadn't played AC Origins yet,
2. I expected it to barely even run on my PC (the game's performance turned out to be about the same as AC Odyssey's though, meaning just about playable 45 FPS with a mix of medium and high settings), and
3. The game's not fully done yet, still receiving updates and DLC.

One title update during the month even introduced an immensely annoying bug with the constantly appearing player avenge quests, making every interaction with any world object to constantly re-accept the quest (show the text and play the associated sound effect). 

Assassin's Creed Origins

To get more value out of my 6€ Ubisoft+ month, I decided to play Assassin's Creed Origins as well. Origins is not quite as content-bloated as AC Odyssey which came after it but I still barely managed to complete it before the month was up. You really start feeling Ubisoft Open World fatigue when you finish two of such games at 100% completion back to back.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Perhaps due to the success of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) and desiring a piece of that success too, has Ubisoft introduced more roleplaying elements to their Assassin's Creed franchise. Perk trees, equipment, and combat was made more complex than before, and dialogue choices and story branching were added. Assassin's Creed Origins (2016) had some already, I believe, but it was Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018) that took it even further. What really got me interested in the series again however, was seeing Odyssey's The Fate of Atlantis DLC. It appeared Ubisoft Quebec had gone full fantasy action RPG with the game.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate

The Assassin's Creed series has not really interested me in the past. I am not sure why but I think the sheer number of games might have had something to do with. How good can they be if Ubisoft releases one every year on average? Even more if you include the games for handheld devices.