The 10 WORST Assassin's Creed Side Activities
Naval Combat
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“Assassin’s Creed III” (2012) While this was undeniably a highlight in Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, the naval combat was still finding its sea legs in AC3. The naval missions themselves are fairly straightforward and not overly complicated compared to some of the game’s normal story based missions, but the unwieldy nature of the controls and some of the insane damage the opposing ships can dish out makes more than a few of these a chore to sail through. In addition to normal ship combat, players can board an enemy vessel and engage the crew in the series’ trademark hand-to-hand combat. These missions are required for 100% synchronization but for many casual players, they were simply a means to an end until Edward Kenway showed the Assassins the right way to steer the ship.
Gang Wars
The Greatest Gang In Gaming History?
“Assassin’s Creed Syndicate” (2015) The whole of London is overrun with gangs and it's up to you to put a stop to them and replace them with your… gang. The streets of Victorian London are an unsafe place for normal citizens, let alone an Assassin, so to make things a little easier for you to complete your missions, you’re going to have to clean up the streets. Unfortunately, that involves a number of separate missions that eventually culminate in an all out brawl between your Rooks and whatever rival gang happens to stand in your way. Thankfully, once the district is yours it can’t be lost again, and completing these missions will lead into better unlocks later in the game, but the steps to simply even begin the gang war itself take far too long and if you’re able to eliminate the rival gang leader before the battle, the whole thing basically ends anticlimactically.
Homestead
“Assassin’s Creed III” (2012) This is undoubtedly one of the longest side activities in any Assassin’s Creed game and can take the majority of the entire game's runtime to complete, along with an additional add-on we'll get to in a bit. The Homestead missions see you recruiting a myriad of tradesmen and women to come live in your community and provide you with various resources for your Assassin activities. While some of these are truly beneficial to some of your missions, such as new weapons, many end up feeling like busy work and of the typical RPG fare where only you can solve these civilians’ problems. These missions will take you all over the map and while none of them are especially long, the sheer amount of them, at well over 30 missions, feels like a precursor to the now standardized Ubisoft formula of objective oversaturation.
Fort Takeovers
“Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” (2018) Fort takeovers have been a staple of the Ubisoft playbook for multiple console generations at this point, but with Odyssey they reached a whole new level of frustration. Beyond the fact that the game doesn’t really favor stealth as its main approach to combat, these areas are absolutely teeming with not only level scaled enemies but also some OP ones as well just waiting to wreck your plan of attack. No, what really makes these especially annoying is another mission type that directly interferes with Fort Takeovers, the Conquest Battles. These events can reset any progress you’ve made in the forts in your surrounding area. Enemies and all. And while this does make for some easy loot farming, it's just a slap in the face to witness your methodically planned takeover become undone simply by completing another objective built into the game.
Eavesdropping
“Assassin’s Creed” Series (2007-) Every gamer’s favorite open world activity has to be tailing missions, right? Where you need to follow an NPC and maintain a certain distance without losing them or letting them catch you following. I mean, those are some of the best parts of open world games, right? That has to be why they’ve appeared in every Assassin’s Creed game in one form or another. And because these are gamers’ favorite activities instead of stabbing people with your hidden blade, Ubisoft decided to include yet another variation of this mechanic in the form of (xref) pickpocketing. The Assassins must once again tail their target until they can get close enough to “bump” into them and take them for all they’re worth. While this latter mechanic is good for grabbing some much needed cash, forcing players to perform one of the most hated mission types in gaming is a definite desynchronization for us.
Races
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“Assassin’s Creed II” (2009) Sometimes a game mode isn’t necessarily a bad idea, it’s just the mechanics aren’t necessarily built around it. This is the case with the races in Assassin’s Creed II. Normally parkour is designed around speed, so this naturally feels like a match made in gamer heaven. However, being the second entry in the long running franchise, the control over Ezio’s parkour moves wasn’t necessarily there just yet. Due to the imprecise nature of Ezio’s movements especially when you were looking for pinpoint precision, Ezio would more often than not cost you the race due to the game unintentionally misinterpreting your commands. This was further exacerbated by the addition of the courier missions which acted similar to the races only with a much smaller window of time to make your way across the Italian cityscape.
Drinking Competitions
“Assassin’s Creed Valhalla” (2020) While this entry could have easily gone to really any of the extra curricular activities in AC Valhalla, from the sloppy nature of the back and forth flyting to the overly complicated dice game Orlog, we have to give the nod to the drinking competitions. Drinking games are nothing new to open world games and can be quite fun if implemented properly, as seen in Red Dead Redemption 2, but in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the implementation is a bit more sloppy. From button prompts not registering to the screen being covered in an increasingly ridiculous blur effect, the whole ordeal becomes a trial of frustration. While not overly difficult once you figure out the game’s mechanics, it’s not something many players are likely to seek out to check off on their already overloaded objectives list.
Den Defense
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“Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood & Revelations” (2009-2010) When you think of assassins, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Working from the shadows and keeping a low profile to eliminate their targets and vanish without a trace? What about causing a large commotion with loud gunfire, multiple hooded assassins shooting and leaping from the rooftops, all while constructing elaborate structures to hold back invading forces? Yea, we didn’t either, but Ubisoft certainly did and in his quest to build a new Assassin’s Order, Ezio must complete multiple Den Defense sections all while drawing literally as much attention to himself and his order as possible. Even with the mechanics of these missions being extremely rudimentary, they’re just not fun and certainly not in line with what we would consider to be the Assassin’s code.
Encyclopedia of the Common Man
“Assassin’s Creed III” (2012) Look, I know at this point it seems like we’re just picking on AC3, but for this title Ubisoft attempted a lot of new content and not all of it landed the way they intended. Case in point is the “Encyclopedia of the Common Man”, in which after Conner has completed his Homestead and all the citizens within it, Conner must now systematically catalog each denizen’s comings and goings and scan them with Eagle vision as they do extremely specific tasks, many of which are locked to certain times of the day. After everything you already did just to build your Homestead in the first place, this just feels like additional padding. On top of it, some of the characters were glitched upon the game's initial release, preventing many from even properly completing this ridiculous mission as intended!
Modern Day
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“Assassin’s Creed” Series (2007-) When Assassin’s Creed was first revealed, it was portrayed as a realistic period piece in which players assassinate real life historical figures that either actually went missing or died under mysterious circumstances. NO ONE expected you to be playing a (xref) modern descendant of said Assassin, let alone battling a conspiracy involving beings from another world. The longer the series went on, the more ludicrous, convoluted and honestly just downright boring the modern day sections became. What started out seeming to be leading into a modern day game due to the “bleeding effect” that allowed Desmond to use abilities he learned from his ancestors never went anywhere and now these sections just feel almost tacked on and have gotten so ridiculous you need a wiki to keep up even if you’ve played every entry. Kingdom Hearts has nothing on Assassin’s Creed.
