While it lasts, Assassin's Creed is a memorable, if repetitive, experience.
The game's main story revolves around the actions of the main character, Altair, an assassin. His goal is to restore his former rank and honor in his society of assassins, honor which was lost for his actions during the game's tutorial. The flesh of the game revolves around gathering information about each of the nine men Altair is assigned to kill. This information is gained in a variety of ways; these ways being informants (who always have a mission before they fork over the information), eavesdropping, pick pocketing, and interrogations. This on the surface may seem like an interesting variety, but by the fourth or fifth target the information gathering stage becomes repetitive. These missions almost become a chore, as the actual assassinations are far more exiting and interesting. It truly is too bad the assassinations take up such a small fraction of the time spent playing the game, as they are by far the most exciting part.
Each city also has a decent amount of side missions, but these only come in three forms: saving citizens, lookout points, and flag gathering. The save citizen missions involve a person being arrested by guards, and it is up to you, Altair, to save them from their tyranny. After killing five or six guards, the mission is complete. Seeing as there are roughly fifty or so of these missions, after a while they too become monotonous and more of an errand. The viewpoint missions involve scaling high towers and getting a view of the area, which will mark missions on the map. Climbing up the buildings with Altair's amazing climbing ability is satisfying and an amazing gameplay element, even if like most missions in the game it becomes less and less exiting after a while. The flag gathering missions are the typical "x items are scattered across a large area, collect them all" missions, and are passable.
One of Assassins Creed's strongest points is its combat system. Altair has four main weapons, not including his fists, and each fits a certain purpose. The stealth blade lets the player kill without attracting attention (hence the name), the sword for fighting out in the open, the short blade for taking on many enemies at once (though the sword works just as well), and throwing knives for taking out distant enemies. Altair can also gain many abilities, though combat truly does become much easier once the counter ability is gained, perhaps too easy. The counter ability is essentially a gambit: the player must time the move correctly, which if successful allows for an insta-kill or knockdown, but if timed wrong, the player is certain to be hit by the sword strike. It is an interesting risk-reward move. The combat only becomes difficult near the end of the game, where many more guards attack and more skillful ones are more numerous. Even then, I personally only died in combat maybe five times throughout the game.
As far as stealth goes, there is a meter which tells the player how hidden he/she is. It ranges from anonymous to seen and under attack by guards. When seen, the main goal is to break the line of sight of the guards and hide, which can be difficult at times and easy at others. However, it does seem a bit ridiculous when the Altair runs around the corner, sits on a bench with his head down, only to have the guards run by, they never noticing the man they chase is right in front of them. And the guards have the amazing ability to completely forget who they were chasing ten seconds after losing sight of the player, which again, stretches realism to the point of breaking.
Truly, enough praises cannot be sung about the game's presentation. Everything is beautiful, from the scenery itself to the animations. It is obvious that presentation was high on the priority list for the game's developers, and it shows. The execution animations are displayed brilliantly, leaving a satisfying feeling afterward. The blood and gore level feels at an acceptable medium. To be totally honest, everything feels real, which seems appropriate in regards to the game.
The game's sound is equally as impressive. Sword clashes sound very real. The voice acting is simply astounding, save for one character, Altair, as his voice is rather flat and unemotional. Speeches can be heard in the distance, the general background noise of the city is present, and even the little things sound perfect. One peeve I had with the game's orators is that they only give one speech and one speech only, save the story related characters.
The game holds little replay value. After playing through it once, there seems to be no need to do so again, and this is most likely due to the game's repetitive nature. Thus, I feel that the game deserves only a rental. It lasts roughly twenty hours or so, depending on how many side missions are done. The game is solid, and I certainly do recommend it to anyone.