Asklemmy

I liked Unity. I liked Origins. I also liked Valhalla, but it didn't feel like an Assassin's Creed game. But I liked it nonetheless.

I liked Unity...

Imo the movement and flow of animations in Unity was the peak of the series. Getting to climb down the Notre Dame in like 10 seconds with all the spins and flips felt really nice. And the crowds were pretty great too. And the customization was pretty sweet, too; so many different armor pieces so you could make a truly unique assassin. And the co-op stuff was awesome.

"Why has Assassin's creed lost its identity?"

They're churned out year on year with tens or possibly hundreds of hours worth of completely shallow, boring, meaningless busywork gameplay. Forgettable characters, bad voice acting, badly written stories, etc. They're quantity over quality games these days. Everything feels so generic and formulaic.

For me, killing off Desmond in AC3 was the beginning of the series' narrative decline. We got one more great game in Black Flag, but after that, it began to go downhill rapidly.

They're just not fun anymore, and I especially hate the RPG elements they shoehorned into Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla.

That's just my opinion on the series, feel free to disagree.

As someone who has áctually played since the start, I actually like the newer games more. The old ones had missions that were not just challenging but straight up impossible even if you were a good player. They also had terrible and few accessibility features.

The new games are probably better then the old ones

But nostalgia and the fact that it was something new at the time...

By today's ac, ac1 is sub par

Oh man, I get it, but I loved Unity for the co-op features! Trying to sneak around an apartment with your friend only to get discovered, sudden panic and hauling ass out of a window, was hilarious. I really missed that in the other AC games.

The series died when they killed desmond in favor of keeping the story open for endless sequels.

This is interesting. I had never played one before, was looking for a new game and downloaded Mirage. I love the sneaking/killing games so I figured I’d love it. It bored me. The story was convoluted and the characters were soulless. I just didn’t even find it that much fun. Maybe it was meant to be a lot of stuff from other AC games where you know a base level background/game tricks. But I just felt like it wasn’t for me, the animation was bad, the mechanics seemed stupid, the story progress seemed pointless…it was just kind of a bad game. I wish some of the old ones came out more recently so I could play them and they wouldn’t be super dated. I had usually heard good things. But it was just so meh.

Money.

There's only so much content you can milk out of a single franchise. After a while it becomes tired and repetitive, or strays in bad direction. Very few franchises continue for so long for a reason.

Unless Ubisoft is trying to create Coronation Street equivalent of video games.

Honestly killing off Desmond started the fall in my opinion. They had us invested and just killed him off suddenly. I personally think they should remove the assassins creed title at this point. It's open world combat barely any sneaking assassin stuff. The new Japan one is wasted at this point. It's what everyone wanted back when the start setting it up with ezios short movie. They shot themselves releasing it as a crappy side scroller....

I get the sentiment, even though I wasn't too much a fan of the original series. That said, while sales don't equal quality, nor does sticking to the same thing. Changing style, direction or genre doesn't equal lack of quality. I was quite a fan of Origins and Oddysey.

The real risk is losing the original fanbase, which did happen quite a bit, probably.

Couldn’t agree more, currently rotating between Unity, Syndicate, Origins and Odyssey and the difference between the first two and the last two is massive. By the time you reach Odyssey it truly stopped feeling like an AC game. Still really like Origins though, vaguely felt true to the spirit of the rest of the series while introducing really nuanced and interesting changes.

My biggest complaint for all of them is how mtx is interwoven with in-game progression. Played them all on PS4 and they felt like a real slog to get through. Now on PC where I indulged and unlocked those features for free they feel accurately balanced. That’s the real problem with Ubi’s games. At some point features are hacked out to be monetized and squeeze out some extra dollars.

Not to mention how predatory the helix credit system is/was, haven’t played Valhalla nor Mirage.