Assassin's Creed on the DS plays more like Assassin's Creed: Trial Edition
The gameplay of Assassin's Creed has four parts: platforming, combat, pick-pocketing, and interrogating. Platforming is what you'll mostly be doing, and if you've played a recent Prince of Persia game, you'll feel right at home scaling buildings, jumping from beam to beam, and other acrobatic tricks. Combat is little more than button mashing with a few combos you can pull off. These rumbles are dispersed in quick little spurts, rarely with more than three enemies at once.
It's the pick-pocketing and interrogations that seem like they were after-thoughts; added on to a game to give it an assassin persona. Both parts play out like mini-games, isolated from the rest of the game with no chance of an interruption. Furthermore, the mini-games themselves are far too easy, and can be completed by most.
Graphically, the game looks pretty, if very blocky. There are some nice details in the surroundings, but sometimes animations on the various characters (even Altair himself) look incomplete.
Sound effects though, are an achievement. You'll hear crowd murmurs, and snoozing guards among the various environmental effects, giving the various cities you'll be visiting life. The music however, although appropriate and a good compliment to the action, is often repeated.
Control is a point of outright failure. A few times, it does seem like a genuinely good scheme, but as the platforming grows more and more complex, the stiff controls rear their ugly head and rob the later levels of what fun there would've been.
Speaking of the later levels, they come pretty quickly. This is a game that could've had an epic storyline and game length, but this ultimately feels like Assassin's Creed: Trial Edition.