The game that started it all, but is it as good as the ones that followed?
Sadly, none of those pros can make up for the various cons and annoyances. Firstly, it's not a very long game, secondly, despite having multiple and varied locations, it's not very varied itself. The model is extremely simple: you go to a city, you go to the bureau (all look the same), you finish at least three actions necessary to find out who's the target, you go to the bureau again, you go to the target, you kill it, you return to Masyaf, you listen to a speech, you go to a city again. That gets very tiresome very quickly. Moreover, the cutscenes are many (I'd say about 50% if not more) and filled with disturbingly boring dialogs you cannot possibly skip. As much as you want to forgive the little annoyances, there are too many to simply forget and forgive: Altair, despite being a trained assassin practicing parkour like there's no tomorrow, easily stumbles on people on the ground (it's a flaw that was shamelessly carried to all the games in the series) and every contact with knee-deep water ends up in him dying and desynchronisation. The IQ of your enemies is low - the fights are easy to win, even with the bosses. But, most importantly, there is a huge lack of relation between the story of Desmond and Altair's... What Desmond relives as Altair is rarely discussed, mostly ignored, making it seen as if those two stories had nothing to do with each other.
Assassin's Creed can be seen as a good start game: a good start for a now-famous series. A demonstation of what was to come. Despite having so many faults, the game should not be missed, especially if you are planning on playing the famous ACII. And you really should.