Have you played them before? If not, my opinion is the opposite of those posted above. I thought 1 was great in terms of introducing you to the way the world worked, but otherwise got to be WAY too repetitive. I loved 2 and am about halfway through Brotherhood at the moment and have liked those both far better.

Picked it up this afternoon and I can't put it down. I have to say, it's exceeded my expectations by far. The first two did bore me a bit, (like I mentioned) but this one is quite a bit different. Great story line, awesome graphics and the soundtrack/sound effects are mind blowing.
The story really sucks you in. It has the feel of Red Dead Redemption to it...
You can hunt, ride horses around the woods etc. I just beat a level where you command a huge ship around Martha's Vineyard and battle a couple British Frigates. Really impressed with the effort they put in this one.
So far I highly recommend this game.

ROFL

Funniest thing ive read in awhile.

This all the way

No, I'd never played the games but have been told from a friend or two they're amazing and I need to get on them. Like I said, my friend has/is going to have the latest two so I figured it'd be pretty cheap to play the entire series so I ordered the first three.

They came in the mail last night so I played 1 for about an hour. It has surprisingly good graphics and is pretty smooth despite being an older game. Learning the controls and what they're making me do right now is a bit repetitive. Can't wait to get to the second and third ones though...

Wow, Assassin's Creed has to be one of the worst games I've ever played. Holy balls, that shit was the most uninteresting, repetitive shit I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with. Visit Al-Mualim, be his bitch, go where he says, find a viewpoint, beat someone up, find a viewpoint, pickpocket someone, find a viewpoint, eavesdrop on someone, assassinate the target, then repeat- LIKE 10 DIFFERENT TIMES!

Through all the bullshit repetition and general lack of excitement, I had a serious issue with the game that was supposed to be based on stealth assassinations AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN STEALTH ASSASSINATE ANYONE. You'd find the target and if you got anywhere within 20 feet of him, the guards would get get suspicious and attack you. Essentially you'd have to start a war and fight through 20 guards to kill the target, which I thought was lame.

Man, I couldn't wait to finish this game so about halfway through I started doing the bare minimum just to progress the story and get it over with. If not for the last 15 minutes worth of storyline, this shit would get two thumbs down from me.

****ING GAY!

Assassin's Creed II, on the other hand, was pretty damn good. I don't recall ever experiencing such a leap in overall playability as I did from I to II. It seems they really learned from the first and made it all better. Ezio moved more fluidly, the cities were bigger and better looking, the voice acting was much better, the story expounded on the last and got pretty interesting, the fighting worked better, they included more customization elements, the missions had FAAARRR more variety, and you could actually stealthly assassinate people!

The only knock that I could bring up on this one was that I got more into the side missions of finding the 6 seals for Altair's armor and ESPECIALLY finding the truth that Subject 16 had hidden in the Animus. Halfway through the game I was hardly even paying attention to the main storyline in lieu of finding all the glyphs and decoding 'the truth'.

Also, although original in story, it's basically Grand Theft Auto dealing with assassins instead of gangsters. Not that I have an issue with that, GTA was revolutionary in its style, just saying they lose a bit for originality there.

You're a bundle of sticks.

I played the first one, and thought it was very very repetitive. It looked awesome, but I couldn't get into it at all.

AC1 was definitely repetitive. They corrected that in AC2.

Sounds like you had about the same experience as I did. I also though the side quests were more fun in II than the main storyline, but at least that storyline was mildly interesting on its own. So far, I'd rate I as a 5/10, II as a 9/10, and Brotherhood as a 7/10. Brotherhood is fine, but the side quests aren't quite as interesting for me for some reason.

i liked ACI better because it pissed more people off.

Do I need to play the originals before I play this one?

Not really. It's an all new story line. But you could buy one of the first ones for bread crumbs to see if you like the game first.

I've watched people play the AC series, and I always thought it looked repetitive with the parkour shit and the "Synchronize" on tall stuff.. and the puzzle minigame thing looked maddening.

But gawDAMN ACIII is AWESOME.