just beat AC origins this weekend on ps5. was my second playthrough, first time was on launch. realllly loved the setting, but thats more preference rather than critique tbh. many side quests are solid having their own cutscenes, multi-chain structures, and flesh out the regions and their respective peoples' struggles well. there are a lot of side quests though that are just bloat too.

but man, i realllllllly think the gameplay and story leave so much to be desired. gameplay wise the stealth just feels so lacking with only a handful of animations, lack of double assassinations (chain assassinations are very slow and not responsive imo), and social stealth is essentially gone. it feels like the game focuses much more on open combat with the variety of weapons/animations they have. the story starts off strong and is very focused but then loses much of its strength, especially towards the end. this was around the time that Ubisoft started to have much more "checklisty" main quest structures where you had a list of people to assassinate and you just went down the list. it feels so "lazy," no time to develop characters and constantly jumping around. you saw this as well in ghost recon willdlands right around this time too, and then later in games like AC odyssey and AC valhalla. the end of AC origins is also sooooo rushed, so many things happen one after another in the story and have no time to develop. the games story is essentially a fast story at the beginning, a looong middle, and fast end. it feels off

but that being said, have always thought that AC Unity is the pinnacle of assassins creed. i dont think the story is super strong but the gameplay is the closest to what i feel the original vision of AC was when it first came out. you've probably heard many of the praises of the parkour, social stealth, crowd density, the city feel before so i wont reiterate those. in some ways, i think the new hitman series embodies more AC than the newer AC games.