The Best & Worst Moment From Each Assassin’s Creed Game

The Assassin’s Creed franchise has served up a plethora of incredible moments over the years … but it’s also served up its fair share of duds too.

I’ll be choosing my personal favourite and least favourite moment from all twelve mainline AC games. These aren’t necessary the best / worst missions (though there may be some overlap), just scenes or moments that stood out for one reason or another. Beware of massive SPOILERS.

Before we begin, you can check out some of my related blog posts below:

Assassin’s Creed

BEST – The first leap of faith

We’ve come a long way since the first AC game – a lot of its shocking twists and incredible set-pieces have be topped a dozen times over since, but nothing can ever detract from that first leap of faith.

Sending Altair plummeting hundreds of metres into a small haystack is an exhilarating experience, at it set the tone for the series to come.

WORST – Altair can’t swim

This is less of a moment and more of an overall development blunder – any mission or parkour segment that involved a body of water ended up being way worse than it needed to be.

Altair not being able to swim might make sense in the historical context of his character, but it leads to some infuriating segments of gameplay.

Assassin’s Creed 2

BEST – “It is a good life we lead, brother”

More so than the first game, AC2 is jam-packed full of incredible moments that have stuck in my brain ever since I played it as a kid.

Though it comes right at the start of the game, the scene of Ezio racing his brother to the top of the tower – with the iconic dialogue exchange and the GOATed music playing – set an impossibly high bar for the rest of the series.

WORST – The ending

There are three reasons why AC2’s ending has always annoyed me. To summarise it: the before, during and after (though the final mission itself is admittedly badass).

Collecting every Codex Page sucked, the fist fight versus Rodrigo was a terrible boss (and Ezio sparing his life is baffling), and the climactic exposition dump from Juno is a complete buzzkill.

Brotherhood

BEST – Killing Cesare

Though Cesare isn’t necessarily the best antagonist in the series, you can be damn sure I was on a path of vengeance after Uncle Mario’s death.

Brotherhood’s final mission saves the best spectacle for last, and sending Cesare toppling to his death is one of the series’ great cathartic moments.

WORST – Transporting the money box

“This is the right way. This isn’t way I would’ve taken. Ah yes, this is the path. Are you really sure you’re going in the right direction?”

I don’t know who designed the infamous money-box-transportation level in Brotherhood, but I hope they got fired.

Revelations

BEST – Altair’s tomb

You’re going to see a lot of finales on this list, but I don’t think any have been as simultaneously impactful and badass as Revelations.

Ezio finding Altair’s resting place and actually meeting Desmond face to face is one of the most hype moments in the series, and they couldn’t have ended the Ezio Trilogy on a stronger note.

WORST – The final battle

I have nothing but praise for Revelations’ final cutscene … The last proper level, on the other hand, was pretty pants.

The paragliding section is one of the stupidest moments in any AC game, the slow-mo falling battle is also dumb, and the villain gets pushed off a cliff by a random dude. It may have looked flashy, but I wasn’t impressed.

Assassin’s Creed 3

BEST – The battle of Bunker Hill

When I was compiling this list, I got a little stuck for AC3. While the game itself is fine, I was surprised when no stand-out moments came to mind – a lot of the big moments from this game are tarnished by little details I’m not fond of.

Without a clear winner, I resorted to sheer spectacle. The battle of Bunker Hill is absolute chaos from the moment it begins, and I remember my heart racing as I ran through the cannon-riddled fields.

WORST – Chasing Charles Lee

I didn’t appreciate how they brought Brotherhood’s stupid money box level gimmick back in that horse riding segment, but I’m actually going to go for something completely different for AC3’s worst moment.

I thought the level where you have to chase Charles Lee was designed really poorly (as in I had no idea where to go through the burning ship, and the solution still seems unclear now), and one of the biggest villains in AC3 dies in a quick cutscene. Great.

Black Flag

BEST – Farewell, old friends

Unlike AC3, Black Flag is filled to the brim with so many fantastic scenes and missions that choosing a favourite felt borderline impossible.

I’ve chosen the cop-out option and gone for the tear-jerker ending. Edward seeing all of his fallen friends never fails to put a lump in my throat, and it’s up there with Revelations as the best ending in the series.

WORST – Tailing through a swamp

There aren’t many bad moments that come to mind (other than the numerous tailing missions …), but the stupidest part of Black Flag has to be the swamp mission – it’s also a tailing mission, so that’s a double whammy!

Navigating the Jackdaw through the thin swamps is as slow as it is unfeasible – how did nobody spot a massive pirate ship in the middle of a bloody swamp?!? The on-foot section afterwards is quite underrated in fairness, but that doesn’t stop the ship tailing part from being laughable.

Rogue

BEST – Lisbon collapses

Rogue’s plot is one of the most underrated in the series, and I was fairly invested in Shay Cormac’s story up until his turn to Templar (it gets a bit by-the-book after that).

One of the major highlights in his “origin story” has to be Lisbon’s cataclysmic collapse. It feels like parkouring through the apocalypse, and the level designers could’ve have made it much cooler.

WORST – Storm Fortress

Rogue didn’t have many stand-out moments in any regard, let alone good or bad, so I defaulted to an optional boss that is universally loathed.

Storm Fortress has waaaay too much health to be a fun boss, and the developers had the nerve to throw two more mini bosses in the mix at the halfway point!

Unity

BEST – Fighting Bellec

It’s quite a tried and tested formula to have the protagonist’s mentor die by the end of the story, but I wish the “protagonist has to kill their mentor” trope was done more often.

Arno fighting Bellec is full of as much melodrama and monologuing as you could ever hope for, and the setting was cool too.

WORST – Elise’s death

Other than my personal gripe with AC2’s final moments, the Assassins Creed franchise has had some incredible endings across the board. Unity is not one of them.

The final boss felt too ridiculous compared to how grounded the rest of Unity was, and Elise’s death was as unnecessary as it was forgettable.

Syndicate

BEST – Roth’s theatre burns

Syndicate boasted some incredible Black Box assassination missions across the board, but the one set in Roth’s theatre has to be the best.

Roth himself gloriously rants like a madman while burning his own theatre down, and the various options for assassination make it one of Syndicate’s most replayable missions.

WORST – The gang fights

For as good as the Black Box missions were, the rest of Syndicate’s gameplay was pretty mediocre.

The worst offenders have to be the gang fights – after mindlessly slogging through the district missions, you have to fight a single wave of enemies in open combat. In other words, the furthest possible gameplay I want from an Assassins Creed title.

Origins

BEST – Bayek & Aya create the Brotherhood

Bayek and Aya’s quest for revenge is easily one of the most compelling in the series, and a handful of moments in the main story could’ve taken this spot.

In the end I went for the end itself – Bayek and Aya creating the Brotherhood after completing their vengeful path was a great way to end the story, and Bayek gives one of the most rousing speeches in the series.

WORST – Fighting Septimius in the Coliseum

All of the Aya missions are good on paper, but none of them pan out in quite the way I wanted.

The worst of these is definitely the final mission where you have to fight Septimius in the Coliseum. Aya’s weapons aren’t suited for this kind of beefy boss battle at all, and Septimius has way too much health.

Odyssey

BEST – Meeting the Cult of Kosmos

Contrary to popular opinion, I really like Odyssey for its light-hearted writing and expansive open world … but its story is not something to write home about.

The one exception I can remember from the main story is the scene where you meet Deimos and the Cult of Kosmos. I always like secret society stories, and Deimos ruthlessly killing a random Cult member was shocking.

WORST – Medusa

This is one of Odyssey’s aspects that has soured for me in the years since I first played it. The various mythological bosses were cool on first playthrough, but these days they feel so out of place in the franchise.

Lots of the mythological bosses are passable at best, but Medusa is way too ridiculous and damage-spongey for me to take the game seriously. It’s no wonder people think Odyssey is the “jumping the shark” moment for AC.

Valhalla

BEST – Dag’s challenge

Valhalla’s story is far too drawn out for me to connect to any of it, but the one shining moment in an otherwise bogged-down plot is Dag’s open challenge for leadership on Eivor.

What follows is a dramatic fight to the death, and the option to either send Dag to Valhalla or prohibit his axe can shape the ending of the story.

WORST – Eivor’s hidden blade

Since “all of the mindless padding” was a bit vague for this spot, I went for Eivor’s hidden blade instead.

Basim gifting it to her at the start of the game feels very contrived, and other than the fact she wears it wrong she’s also not an assassin to begin with! If you can’t find a plausible reason to have the hidden blade in your AC game, maybe you shouldn’t make it in the first place …

Aaaand that’s my list! You can check out some of my latest blog posts below: