Assassin's Creed was a good series. It was unique and interesting, with a very different take on open world when the genre was fresh and hadn't been taken on by most big developers other than Rockstar. The stealth was light, the combat was slow and controls were a bit over the place but it had heart to it and felt different. It had an identity. It all changed with Assassin's Creed 4.

Somewhere down the line Ubisoft had this amazing thought where you'd be the captain of a ship whose an assassin on the ground, and that game was Assassin's Creed 3. This point in the series had seen a decline in stealth, easier combat with each sequel so stealth doesn't matter and a butchering of the hiring mechanic from Assassin's Creed 2 as it was just a useless dump of money in the game. The ship sequences weren't bad in Assassin's Creed 3, they were cool side missions but didn't fit with the protagonist who is an assassin. The next game took this to a new stage, where you don't play as an assassin for most of the game, but a pirate in an Assassin's Creed game.

Assassin's Creed 4 was a good game but it shouldn't have been an Assassin's Creed game. The assassin sections of the game were weak in gameplay and missions. The cities had no immersion aspect to them. The atmosphere was amazing and so were the soundtrack and pirate gameplay was good. Assassin's Creed Unity was, well, a good game and incredibly ambitious game which was destroyed by its own ambition. Its buggy and sold well but its reception made Syndicate sell the lowest by far. So Ubisoft made this awesome choice to develop Origins as a WRPG like Witcher 3. A WRPG. Another one. Yes, because that's what we need. There are enough RPGs as it is and Origins does nothing to stand tall among them. Odyssey goes balls deep in RPG stuff and looks awful. Ubisoft really made their only original series and made it a generic RPG of all things. Good going Ubisoft.

Assassin's creed will transform into a racing sim next

What do mean by "another one"?

How many big WRPG's do we have that are not Bethesda, CD project, or BioWare? And even then BioWare is moving away from it with Anthem. And at the moment BGS is developing a Open World Survival game, while having a long wait until Starfield.

I have to disagree though. IMO, Origins was a shot in the arm the series needed to be revitalized. I loved the RPG mechanics they introduced, felt like a breath of fresh air for a stagnating series. The second best AC only behind Black Flag, in my opinion. And the fact that Odyssey is doubling down on it with dialogue options etc is awesome too.

I thought the first game was so mindnumbingly boring that I never touched another game in the series again. I know some of the later games are supposed to be much better, but the damage is done, and this franchise just isn’t on my radar.

Agreed. I recently finished Origins, and my goodness, it floored me. Reminded me of how impressed i was with the jump from AC1 to AC2. I honestly think Origins should have been game of the year, but that's a different topic. Unity is the only blight in the series for me, with an underwhelming story, world, co-op and largely unmemorable final boss. 

For me, this has been the best series of the HD gaming era, easily.  And i love how the stories all combine together, especially in origins. I like what i see in odyssey, but i just don't see how it can top or be much better than origins, but we shall see. 

I don't know that I necessarily agree with your assessment that it's no longer good, but what I would say, is that where this series once had a very strong identity, it lost that somewhere along the way, and has been in a constant struggle to remake itself ever since the original trilogy ended. One year it's all about naval combat. Next year it's all about co-op, and back to a single large metropolis, with no traces of the naval gameplay everyone loved whatsoever. Then the year after that, they decide that no multiplayer at all is the way forward, and multiple protagonists will enrich the storytelling. One small hiatus later, and suddenly the game has morphed from a fast-flowing action game, to a fairly rigid RPG. And that's not even getting into how much they've dialed back on the overarching story thread of the games via animus (for better or worse).

This upcoming game is actually the first time in ages that they are showing any consistency with the direction they want to steer this franchise in a long time.

You kinda have to view each AC game as a standalone game, independent of others sharing the brand. Because really that's what it is - a brand, not a series. There is very little narrative wise that connection Origins to Black Flag. With the exception of Unity, I enjoyed all the games but I they have their flaws.

Origins doesn't really live up to it's name. It barely touches upon the origins of the titular creed (there's 2 or 3 references to it) and is more Bayek's personal revenge campaign. I'd really hoped Odyssey would flesh this out more, as I enjoyed playing as Bayek and thought seeing him take his campaign to Greece, exploring more of the Roman Empire would see him lay the foundations of the global creed. But instead it's 500 years before the Origins, which makes little narrative sense.

My guess is it establishes the founding of the Order of the Ancients, or the final repentant of the precursors. Otherwise it literally is just piggybacking on the AC brand.

I agree that the earlier games had heart and soul in them. And thus they were the best. AC2 was the best in the series and it had a lot of soul in it. It just had its magic

The first two games at the time I thought were alright, with 2 being good, but after that the franchise felt like it has gone downhill into mediocrity.

Hmm. I might try out the later AC games then because I became bored of the series with the second game and lost all interest with the 3rd one. I always thought the series should evolve into action RPGs and not a shallow collect-a-thon.