y, play Black Flag, it’s a pretty good game and the sea mechanics are pretty cool; AC3 isn’t that good to be honest, just more of the same but you might enjoy it if u never played any before
In any case, Black Flag is definitely the better one of the two, and the last game (in Egypt) seems to be a pretty good action RPG, and i guess maybe the upcoming one will be too
AC IV is a good story starting point to at least introduce the world through the eyes of a morally dubious and mostly uninterested person. He kind of just bumps into the conflict, and tries to find out how he can get something out of it.
Origins is a pseudo-reboot, and the story for Unity/Syndicate is incredibly insignificant. Essentially, AC is a franchise that started with a story emphasis that fell apart as yearly installments continued. You know, kind of like modern Star Wars… (sigh)
I think the main problem is that they never rly knew where they were rly going with it, like they had no real plot for future games on where to take the overarching story, so they just kinda dropped most of it, lol
if those 2 are your only starting point, it doesn’t really matter “story wise” which you pick, since it all got utterly tossed around in the AC2 line of games anyway -ac3 “technically” being the “conclusion” of the “story line” 
(and i’m just gonna pretend the ac3 Desmond parts never happened)
i will say, imo, as someone that enjoyed the first AC games, that ac3 is just shite
really became the mark of the “ubisoft blend” of just tossing half-baked or futile features into their game to make it “more sandbox” “more openworld”, and just not being interesting
AC4 is good tho, not because of “superior” mechanics or story or that drivel, but because it took the good half-baking from ac3, the maritime venture, and “fully” expanded on it/decided to bake it “done” into a neat little muffin
it still has the regular ubi bs “openworld’ness” tho, where you are basically just grinding out pointless sht going from pt a-b, to “collect” xyz stuff that doesn’t really get too interesting and somewhat tedious in the long run, -but the seafaring really makes it all an endurable experience mostly, (and you do get the odd interesting sidestep here and there)
it does ofc have some of the “hallmark”/ubisoft iconic segments of “of god why is this still a thing”, like “escorting”/“stealth” mission -insta fail scenarios, and so on
but i suppose it just wouldn’t be an assassin’s creed game without those things sprinkled in it here and there 
it’s good tho, a lot better than ac3 for sure, imo, and maybe even among the best in the series (tho i haven’t played the last couple of installments after, -because samey ubisht “openworld” pointlessness to me), so not a bad place to start at all if you happen to not start from the “beginning” 
so if you don’t plan on going through the first couple of games for the story anyway, just start with AC4 Black Flag
Alright, so I brushed against this topic earlier with @CptMold and didn’t really have the time or energy to go indepth, still don’t really but I shall explain myself briefly. While I will remain a negative little nag in any conversation about Ubisoft I’m not really trying to convince anyone, I don’t have the arguments handy to do so. Rather at one time a long time ago I felt I had seen enough of Ubisoft being anti-consumer and engaging in other overall predatory business practices to convince myself that this is a company I do not wish to support and so I put them on my black list. I do not remember exactly everything that lead to that decision, but seeing every action taken by ubisoft over the years, it fills me with determination.
Mainly though it was about their stance on DRM. Ubisoft was one of the biggest and most vocal proponent of draconian DRM. They were happy, gleeful even, to use both securom and safedisc, they made huge statements about how PC gamers are all pirates and we have to be punished for their profit’s sake and a few wrecked computers is a price they’re willing for us to pay. While the RIIA and the MPAA were making huge racket about how piracy was ruining everything and claimed $billion “losses” Ubisoft was saying the same things about games. No apologies, corrections or retractions of these statements were ever made.
So while I can’t be arsed to dig up sources to support these claims at the moment, these are the reasons I have for saying what I do about Ubisoft and no matter how good a game they manage to crank out there’s plenty of excellent games being made every day that I’ll never have to look at anything made by the big evil 3 again. So I wont.
I will recommend to anyone they do the same, but I wont think less of you if you don’t.
I’ll quote part of my reply on https://206.81.1.216/t/spring-cleaning-revisiting-old-purchases/10984/20
I’ve only played up to Black Flag, which is a great one for experiencing all pirate related stuff, sailing and sea battles in that game is awesome! As for the story, only the ones I mentioned in the quote above is what really matters in my opinion, you don’t necessarily need to play the first one but it’s also good to understand the origin of the assassins and Ezio saga is what Assassin’s Creed is all about. While also there’s the modern world story that’s going on, it’s not a big deal, you can probably catch up with that stuff via youtube videos if you wish because it’s not the main part of the games.
this is one of the very fair gripes with ubisoft, even to this day (just look at the multi layer drm that hampered the ac origins on pc), to where pirated games actually were better to play sometimes
i recall my far cry 2 for instance, and it’s 5x activation limit, a limit they at the time refused to do anything about if you contacted support about your nth, legit, installment, -despite you having the fcn physical copy to display.
Only a year or so later did they lift the activation restriction, for you to be able to play your purchased copy without “pirating”…
While i’m not hardball black listing ubisoft as such in same sense like Fraggles, (i do still “wishlist” their games and get curious about some of their titles), -but it’s not exactly often i actually go through with it/get interested enough and end up getting them, usually they just sit there on the wishlist 
Not just for their business practices, but their main staple of games just got so vapid and uninteresting there was no real reason to actually get them beyond as a minor curiosity object.
ffs they down right copy pasted entire map/areas/stuff from one yearly game into the next, if that doesn’t speak volumes of not giving a sht about creating their content, or how hollow a product is, i don’t know.
and while it’s been a while since i’ve actually used uplay, even years after it’s release they kept having these platform/drm connectivity issues that could make your play completely unstable, -in a single player game
add to that their complete lack of support for “legacy” titles or software compatibility meaning you could buy a “new’ish” or old game(working for your system), but ubisoft would cut off uplay from being compatible, so fck you if you were one of those that wanted to play an xp/vista game on that os, (because whatever reason you still had that os), or just wanted to play in “os compatibility”
at least steam lets you run your client and then be up to the game, if it will function in your os/compatibility mode,
-and you never know when those darn compatibility “updates” screws up so you still could get a uplay compatibility error despite being on win 7 (or even win 10 i hear) that you then have to troubleshoot
Origin mighy have it’s EA “flaws”, but ubisoft and uplay is straight up garbage compared to even them
+few companies have willfully shat on or spited their customers more, and they bloody revel in it sometimes too with their pc userbase
all of this before we even get into the “regular” scummy aaa practices of carving out content, dlc, downgrades & fake advertising, corporate lies(which no one seems to bother address when they get outright caught in them), etc etc
i’ve said it before, i know EA gets a bad rap, and by no means are they the good guys. But for the light of me i can never understand why Ubisoft and Activision always seem to skirt their sleaze, and EA gets the spotlight as the “biggest baddie”, despite Ubisoft having a pretty sordid company history too under their belts 
Yeah, I suppose that sums it up a lot better. They had two games that knew what they were doing, followed by two spinoffs, then a big finale in time for 2012 (because they tied it into the whole Mayan Doomsday thing, because why not… doesn’t make the game super dated at all).
They probably would have taken a little longer to wrap things up had they known they would be making a new game every year for the next eight years.
I got Black Flag, hated the story, and I’m sorry to say it, the sailing. So I just went on the biggest island and started stabbing everyone 
I never finished the story, I also found a glitch to destroy any ship no matter it’s size. And eventually stabbing everyone, got kinda boring. Because the pvp is so fregin easy.
So in conclusion, I didn’t like Black Flag. And will probably never play a assasins creed game again.
dont start it, it was so boring that i quit after 5 mins. the idea is ok, graphics are great, it all seems good on paper, but the game is 
I’ve played a great deal of Ubisoft games, mainly because I share my account with a friend that LOVES Ubisoft games (I know, I have weird friends, but are good friends still). I can see where Fraggles is coming from, many high profile games from Ubisoft feels like they’re all from the same universe, in fact they more or less all share the same layout, from a game design prospective.
That said, there are many lesser known games from Ubisoft that aren’t bad at all, like Child of light, Valiant hearts, Trials Fusion,Trackmania Turbo, Star Trek: bridge crew (if you have a VR headset), South Park: the stick of truth, Mario + Rabbids: kingdom battle, etc.
To answer @TR3NT, you should probably play Assassin’s Creed 4: black flag and Assassin’s Creed: rogue, because they’re connected in some way. Plus, you’re gonna be a pirate, ARRRGH!
Start at The Sands of Time 
You should play AC 1 because it has an accurate depiction of the Chrono community:
edit:
also Unity
As someone who has been with the series from the beginning, my suggestions would be as follows:
If you care about playing through the story line to get the lore, play 1, 2 (and the rest of the Ezio series), skip 3, and if you want to keep going play Black Flag and Rogue - the seafaring ones are some of the best game play in the series. Unity and Syndicate are on the “meh” side, as far as keeping up with the modern side of the story, so I’d say only play them if you’re going for the completionist side of things. They’ve essentially done a soft reboot with Origins, and it’s worth a play.
If you don’t care about playing through the story, go watch Lets Plays of everything up to Black Flag and Rogue, play BF, maybe play Rogue if you’re wanting more seafaring stuff, watch plays of Unity and Syndicate, and then pick it back up with Origins.
Edit: Sidebar note on the 2.5-D side-scrolling games - they’re fun, especially for their past lore on the assassins in other countries (the China one slightly ties in with the Ezio story, and I dig the Russia one for its tie-in to the revolution), but they’re not really a requirement for the modern part of the story line. If you can pick them up on sale in a multi-pack they’re worth a look, but don’t go out of your way to get them.
Couldn’t agree more …
nop…
nope, nope, nope, stop making me want to replay old games 
What actually makes it inferior to the preceding games?
I guess everybody just hates Connor, lol
I think that everybody was just burned out with the games as the story just imploded and they failed to rly bring anything new to the series, in addition to the fact that everybody rly loved Ezio so much and Connor had to follow him
I personally do like Connor somewhat, and his father a lot more, and I rly dislike young Ezio’s personality, but i love old Ezio
I remember this! Ubisoft games usually have the best glitches. If this would happen to my game, I’d probably freak out and seek an exorcist XD