A great story will suck you in but if you are not ready to repeat a lot of things then steer clear of Assassins Creed.
Assassins Creed's controls are very finicky; you will find yourself falling often in the free running. The big hook in Assassins Creed is the free running. You are told that you can go anywhere run on any building and jump. Do not believe this. The world is semi open because you cannot go in certain areas. You are constricted to areas and this boxing in feels so unnatural and annoying. You want to explore this history rich world but you cannot. Climbing on buildings is fun but all the buildings look the same and the same textures can get boring over time. The open world could use major brushing up on to not make it repetitive but free running feels great when you have the controls down.
Assassins Creed's AI is poor at best no care was taken into the enemies. I do understand this game was made in 2007 but that doesn't give it any leeway. You will find yourself often owning Arabs with your blade. It makes combat very disinteresting to the point you will just run away from a fight. Combat is repetitive and lacks any thrills. Also the town's people sometimes get stuck in some weird AI glitch that makes them run around for no reason. This is distracting and it can break your cover.
Besides the towns folk glitch Assassins Creed is well polished on the glitch front. You might fall through the games geometry once because you fall funny or your consol might just freeze up. I had trouble with the freezing because at one point it was almost hard to pick it back up and play it because of the freezing. Over all the glitches are fine and you might experience a little freezing with prolonged play.
There is a great story in Assassins Creed and you need to trudge through to the repetitiveness of the quests. Once you do that a rich story will entice you. The game is rather long because of back tracking and quests so it will take you a good 20 hours to play the game all the way through. There is no replay value to this game and that is one of its major down falls. There are a lot of side quests but they are all the same and they all are boring. Collecting flags is another thing to do but you will find yourself not doing that at all. The plot is good and that is the true silver lining to this game but it could have much more replay value with interesting side quests and important Easter eggs. If the side quests had more depth than replaying this game might be worth something.
Repetitiveness is the games fatal flaw; it goes the same way all the time. The progressing through the story seems to slow. You have to ride on horse for an hour to reach a town when a fast travel system would have been better. This dive in pacing takes the game down a windy path of action for a little bit, and then starting at a horse while you ride for the rest of the time. At some points you might just want to trough this game down but remember this is just the first game and it gets better.
Assassins Creed is the gate way to the series and I truly recommend playing the original before you play the second and third game. This game can be repetitive at times but the reward of future great stories is motivation to trudge through, and trudge through it you will. I give Assassins Creed 4 out of ten because of its bad AI, semi open world, dull world, repetitive side quests and combat and everything else, no fast travel system, good free running, a polished game, and a great story. The things Assassins Creed could have done to make it a 10 out of 10 are mixing up the side quests. We really want as players to have a game that mixes it up and Assassins Creed does the opposite. Also we want to see better combat, a good fast travel system, and better AI. Assassins Creed is truly a gateway game, I do recommend playing it first if you want to get into the series because it gets a lot better than the first game. If you have no intention to get into the series then stay away from this boring broken game. Keep repeating yourself because it's Assassins Creed.