The AC subreddit is full of threads about how Unity is the best AC game,period. As someone who played it a few months ago for the first time, I'll say it's better then I thought it would be but it's far from the best
I think Unity probably has the best basic gameplay. I mean... Jesus Christ, I think this was the first Assassin's Creed game in the franchise to add a dedicated crouch button. And who would have thought it would be great not solely relay on haystacks as a means of descending from rooftops? Everything else of course ranges from mediocre to outright bad.
To me, I quite like Unity because a) I got it for free lol, b) I played it 5 years after launch, and c) I felt like they were on the right track. When you look at AC 3 and 4, outside of the ship sailing bits, the games look
ancient. The combat is silly fun, the stealth is worthless, and even the free running feels outdated. From a story perspective, both games barely had anything to do with the Assassins. Then you have Unity, which tried to make the combat less mindless, made stealth gameplay an actual thing, and made one of the best feeling free running systems in gaming. An attempt was made at bringing the spotlight back to the Assassins, although they didn't quite succeed. Definitely not the best AC game out there, but it was beginning to reach the potential I think the series had. You actually
feel like an Assassin (read in Dunkey's voice).
Then we got Syndicate. Such a... game-y game. Genuinely felt like it was a game that came out before Unity. Then we get Origins, and Odyssey, and Valhalla, all of which are barely even Assassin's Creed anymore.
I can only imagine how good of a game could have existed if Ubisoft had stuck to their guns and made a proper, stealth-focused Assassin's Creed game last generation. Especially with how stealth games seem to be a dying breed. But sadly, stealth isn't very monetizable is it?