Assassins Creed Ranked by Setting / World Map

The second-largest world map in the series so far, “Valhalla” could be said to be a little divisive in that regard. It was praised by historians and academics for being so accurate, but its accuracy isn’t really the problem. The problem is that, accurate or not, Viking-age England isn’t the most interesting place to ride around. It’s got intrigues and curiosities dotted about the map and many famous landmarks, like Stonehenge, but most of the world is huge, open hills and fields. Maybe in a shorter game this would be fine, but “Valhalla” demands such a big time investment that you’ll be spending dozens of hours in England’s emerald pastures, getting more and more bored of everything being so similar AND so bleak.

The true black sheep of the franchise, “Revelations”, more than most, suffered from Ubisoft trying to rush it out of the door as quickly as possible. It’s impressive that Constantinople came together as well as it did, but this still isn’t the most interesting city to explore here. Sure, it’s got all the landmarks you’d expect; the Hagia Sophia, Galata Tower, and Topkapı Palace, but you can’t shake how rushed the game feels. This is one of the shortest games in the entire franchise, and we think this world-famous city, the seat of numerous powerful empires for thousands of years, would certainly have benefited from some more time to gestate – though, we’re sure that’s the fault of Ubisoft’s higher-ups.

After “Revelations”, the scope of “Assassin’s Creed III” was unprecedented – but it definitely didn’t land every hit. The simple fact is that, while it pushed the graphics of the series to far greater heights than they reached with Ezio, colonial-era Boston and New York don’t look or feel particularly different. There are landmarks that separate them, like Faneuil Hall in Boston and the burned ruins of Trinity Church in New York, but otherwise they don’t feel meaningfully different. The Frontier was interesting, but the series hadn’t yet mastered fast travel, and getting around on slow horses through the wilderness takes far more time than it should.

Fans will always have a soft spot for the first game, but its world just doesn’t hold up today as much as some of the others. Getting through the Kingdom is tedious, to say the least, especially if you’re a completionist trying to get all those flags and Templars. But some of the big landmarks in the three major cities are still spectacular enough that it ranks a little higher on our list. There’s the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Acre to climb and study – though, very little is known about the real cathedral the Holy Cross is based on, which was destroyed hundreds of years ago.

The oft-forgotten Vita release was, thankfully, remastered in HD and put on consoles, making its ambitious open world accessible to far more people than it ever was on handheld. “Liberation” is set concurrently with “Assassin’s Creed III”, focusing on the beleaguered French colony of New Orleans, decades before Louisiana became a US state. Aveline gets to explore New Orleans’ famous architecture, including the original St. Louis Cathedral. But it’s got various additional maps to explore, including one heading into the depths of the bayou and, incredibly, the ruins of Chichen Itza down in Mexico. Hidden away in “Liberation” is a fantastic map worthy of further exploration.

The strange, middle child between “Black Flag” and “Unity”, at times, “Rogue” clearly didn’t know what it wanted to be. But its map remains laudable. Just a year after “Blag Flag”, “Rogue” took us far away from the Caribbean to the New York River Valley and the North Atlantic – not to mention New York itself, which we get to see here in “Rogue” BEFORE the 1776 Great Fire, that has left the city ravaged by the time Connor visits. But few feelings compare to sailing through the Arctic Ocean, off the coast of what would one day be Canada, exploring frozen ships, hunting polar bears, and shattering icebergs.

This was the first time the series gave us a full open world that was also trying to encompass an entire country. Previously, the large regions of the Holy Land or Italy were separated by loading screens, while the fluid open worlds occupied just one city. Not the case for “Origins”, which encompassed a huge swathe of Egypt, including parts of Roman Libya – though, it locked the ancient city of Thebes and the Valley of the Kings behind paid DLC. “Origins’” map also features TWO wonders of the ancient world, the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. While you can see the pyramids today, the famous lighthouse was destroyed by the 15th century.

After years of rumors, finally, the series went to the French Revolution, giving us a stunning recreation of 18th century Paris. Though it was hard to get a good look at the city at launch with all those frame-rate issues, “Unity’s” landmarks were so detailed that, when Notre Dame Cathedral suffered a major fire in 2019, Ubisoft’s research was offered to the French government to help restore it. As well as Notre Dame, it’s got plenty more major landmarks to explore – including the Eiffel Tower through one of the Helix Rifts, AND the Statue of Liberty before it was shipped to the US. “Unity’s” Paris was undoubtedly a triumph.

This was the first game in the series that was set almost entirely in one city, with a few missions that went out into the surrounding countryside. “Brotherhood” took us to Renaissance Rome, a city in turmoil under the misrule of the Spanish Borgias, with its ancient ruins decaying. But those ruins are phenomenally reconstructed. Not only is there the Colosseum, long before its underground tunnels were excavated, but there’s the aqueduct Ezio can restore, the Roman Forum, and, of course, more recent structures like the Castel Sant’Angelo and St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Buying major landmarks is actually an in-game feature, giving you an incentive to explore them even more.

Where “Unity” gave us Revolutionary Paris, “Syndicate” hit back only a year later with Victorian London. Central London here is huge, and many of the major landmarks already existed by the time of the Frye twins in the 1860s. You’ve got Big Ben, Nelson’s Column, and Buckingham Palace in the main map, while one mission takes you to a mini-level further south at the Tower of London. “Syndicate” even added the World War I missions JUST to give players a way to see Tower Bridge, which wouldn’t be built until the 1890s. It also gave us better, faster ways to get around than before, with the carriage driving system and grappling hook.

Still the biggest map in the series to date, even if you exclude the sea from the total mass you’re looking at, “Odyssey” set the bar extremely high. It gave us the entirety of Ancient Greece and a ship to sail around in, harkening back to the earlier, pirate games. Seeing ancient Athens and ancient Sparta in their prime is incredible, especially as most of Sparta is ruins today. But “Odyssey” perhaps shines best when it leaves the Greek mainland to explore the archipelago. Recreating every single Greek island would have been next to impossible, as there are actually thousands of them, but many of the major ones, including Lesbos and Crete, are recreated. It certainly lived up to its title.

Easily one of the greatest video game sequels ever made, “Assassin’s Creed II” improved on the first game tenfold, while building on its structure. “II” also features various large cities separated by smaller maps, as Ezio travels from Florence – the birthplace of the Renaissance – through Tuscany, Forlì, Venice, and finally to Rome for the climax. Venice still stands tall as a fan-favorite “Assassin’s Creed” city, and one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and is the main reason fans are so desperate for Ubisoft to remake the game properly. When will they let us explore the Piazza San Marco with true, next-gen graphics!

Could it have ever been anything else? When “Black Flag” launched in 2013, we were given one of the greatest open worlds in any video game ever. Ubisoft put most of the Caribbean into this game – from Tulum in the west to Haiti in the east, Jamaica in the south and the Bahamas in the north, and Cuba dead-center. “Black Flag” was also the first game to have fast travel between synchronized viewpoints, AND was the apex of the series’ famous naval combat. As soon as Edward gets the Jackdaw, he’s free to go to any corner of the map he wants – provided you’re able to fight off high-level enemies. It was also a graphical masterpiece, particularly when you consider it initially released on 360 and PS3.