Highlights

• Assassin's Creed Mirage is a shorter game compared to other entries in the series, with a completion time of around 19 hours. It offers a condensed experience for players looking for a refreshing break from the longer games.
• The first game in the series, Assassin's Creed, is one of the shortest with an average completion time of 20 hours. It introduced the fundamentals of the series and established the iconic features like assassinations and the Animus.
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey is one of the longest games in the series, taking around 80 hours to complete the main quest. With branching storylines, vast cities, and numerous side quests, it offers a massive open-world experience set in ancient Greece.

The Assassin's Creed series is still going strong. While the series innovated and refreshed itself in the late 2010s to make the games longer with big open worlds and a focus on free-roaming, the series has now balanced out to feature a balance between these larger undertakings, and more scaled back condensed adventures.

There are quite a few spin-off entries in the Assassin's Creed series but this list will only focus on the mainline games. This list also includes numerous expansions, remasters, and DLC updates. Game lengths are calculated by howlongtobeat, a website that gathers player data to achieve accurate estimates. Given that most entries encourage dipping into side content, "Main Story + Extra" has been used to arrive at the listed estimates.

Updated October 14, 2023 by Gary Kay: When pre-release information about Assassin's Creed Mirage was being released, long-time fans of the series quickly learned that Ubisoft was taking a more condensed approach compared to previous releases. But now Mirage is out, how does it compare to the other entries in the series, and what other entries can its level of content most closely be related to?

14 Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry - 6 Hours

For a series that features resistance to tyranny, it is surprising that only one former slave gets his very own game. And protagonist Adéwalé almost didn't even have that much.

Originally slated to be DLC for Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, the game is, therefore, unsurprisingly short for a stand-alone release. You'll surely feel the passion for freedom and hatred of tyranny burn hot, even if it is only for six hours (make it seven for the completionists).

13 Assassin's Creed Mirage - 19 Hours

When it was announced that Mirage would be a much shorter game than the post-Origins generation of Assassin's Creed games, fans expected something closer to the games that started the series. However, it was not expected that the game would be even shorter than the first game in the series.

As it stands at launch, Assassin's Creed Mirage will take around 19 hours to complete if you aren't rushing, making it the shortest game in the series with the exception of Freedom Cry. For fans hoping to dedicate weeks upon weeks, this might disappoint, but if you are looking for something more condensed, this is a refreshing break from tradition.

12 Assassin's Creed - 20 Hours

It makes sense that the first game is also one of the shortest, taking an average of 20 hours to complete. The original Assassin's Creed followed Altaïr, a member of the Assassin Order during the Crusades. It was a barebones entry compared to future installments, which added several side activities, for better or for worse.

The game is structured to follow the main story closely, only deviating to save citizens from guards or to climb viewpoints. It set a strong foundation for the series by establishing the fundamentals of crowd blending, pickpocketing, and, of course, assassinations. It also introduced the Animus, which a team of experts is still trying to understand.

11 Assassin's Creed Revelations - 21 Hours

The fourth installment in the series is only slightly longer than the original game. It will take, on average, about 21 hours to complete. Revelations follows master assassin Ezio Auditore as he tries to uncover the secrets of Altaïr's vault.

In a surprising decision, Revelations had a smaller open world than previous games and less side content. It had nine main sequences like the previous game, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, but Constantinople had a stark lack of free-roam activities. It feels like half of the game is spent chasing down a single, unique boss.

10 Assassin's Creed Rogue - 21.5 hours

Covering events taking place between Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag and Assassin's Creed 3, Rogue seemed a bit less ambitious than either of these titles, with even total completionist runs clocking in at around 34 hours.

It wasn't remarkably well-received, either, with the adventures of Shay Patrick Cormac drawing fairly average reviews.

9 Assassin's Creed Brotherhood - 25.5 Hours

As an interesting note, if you breeze through the main story then it will take about 15 hours to finish. Most people, though, will squabble in the side content — and there's a lot when it comes to Brotherhood.

You can collect Borgia flags, feathers, destroy Leonardo's machines, do faction side missions, and even follow a flashback story. Not to mention, mentoring and training a group of Assassin recruits. This all compliments the main story where Ezio and his team try to recover Rome from the Borgia.

8 Assassin's Creed 2 - 26.5 Hours

There's only a hair's breadth of difference between Assassin's Creed 2 and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood in terms of length. Assassin's Creed 2 has the longest main story out of the Ezio trilogy while Brotherhood has one of the shortest. The second Assassin's Creed also has four cities to visit instead of one bigger city.

Surprisingly, Assassin's Creed 2 severely lacks side content. It successfully expanded from the original game by creating a more traditional open world, but it didn't add much of the optional fluff until Brotherhood.

7 Assassin's Creed 3 - 31 Hours

Assassin's Creed 3 finally gave us a break from Italy and Ezio with mixed reactions. Ratonhnhake/Conner began his Assassin journey during the American Revolution. Many fans did not like Conner as a character and complained about the slow start. There are fans, though, that vigorously defend Assassin's Creed 3 as their favorite game in the series.

It takes about 31 hours to complete, the average length for an Assassin's Creed game. There are 12 sequences in the game, but you don't even meet the main character until sequence 5. It's well worth the wait, though, as Connor is one of the most powerful assassins in the entire series.

6 Assassin's Creed Unity - 32.5 hours

Everyone knows about the infamous Assassin's Creed Unity. The disastrous game hardly worked at launch and tainted the sales for Assassin's Creed Syndicate. The technical issues overshadowed some of the good things about the entry.

It's the best-looking Assassin's Creed (besides the newer entries, which have their own fair share of annoying problems) and it has one of the best parkour systems. Arno Dorian's story will take just under 33 hours to complete.

5 Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - 33 Hours

Let's skip a few entries and look at Assassin's Creed Syndicate. Taking place in the most modern time period yet for a mainline entry and set in the Industrial Revolution, it was the first to feature two playable main characters. Evie and Jacob Frye combat the templar-run industrialism in London. It takes around 33 hours to complete.

Along with the main story, you will spend most of that time running gangs out of London, a lofty bit of side content. To do this, you have to complete a series of missions, such as taking criminals to the police and liberating children from cruel factories. After completing a certain amount of these missions, a successful gang war will allow you to take control of the map.

4 Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag - 40.5 hours

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag was a big jump in game length. Black Flag followed the pirate, Edward Kenway, and featured a huge open world. The game lets you sail around the Caribbean and explore several optional islands and cities.

It takes 40 hours to beat, and it was the biggest environment in Assassin's Creed yet. Black Flag was also one of the most critically acclaimed Assassin's Creed games. It's surprising then that the next games (Unity and Syndicate) went back to the more traditional formula.

3 Assassin's Creed: Origins - 50 hours

This is the transformation of Assassin's Creed — a major change in the traditional formula. Assassin's Creed Origins marked the transition to an RPG with a massive world and an almost inexhaustible list of quests. It will take 50 hours to play and about 80 hours to finish everything (including those fantastic side quests).

The game followed Bayek and showed fans how the order of the Assassins started. Origins also changed the established gameplay making it a clear revamp for the series. It also created a stark divide among Assassin's Creed fans: the old schoolers and new schoolers.

2 Assassin's Creed Odyssey - 80.5 Hours

You can spend 80 hours finishing the main quest and the majority of the map is still unexplored. This doesn't even factor in the time added for the mods, which have improved and added to the game. A completionist run of Odyssey will take about 131 hours, and that's completely understandable.

There are branching storylines, vast cities to explore, cultists to hunt down, and the most side quests in any Assassin's Creed game. Odyssey takes place in ancient Greece and chronicles the story of a certain mercenary's troubled family.

1 Assassin's Creed Valhalla - 96.5 Hours

At launch Assassin's Creed Valhalla took about 66 hours to complete when taking your time, but with the expansions and DLC now all taken into account, if you want to complete Valhalla and all of its extra content will take over 90 hours.

With how long this game was, it is understandable that the next mainline game in the series decided to take a step back, especially since you could easily still be playing it years after launch. However, if you love the gameplay loop presented in Valhalla, then it is easy to dedicate plenty of time to this jam-packed world.

Next: Best Skills In Assassin's Creed Mirage