EDIT:  
After signing out from GB about 20 mins after starting this thread thinking it was ignored I bought AC1 the next day.  I beat it now and I thought it was pretty good.  I have played and beaten 2 and yes it is much better but just because one is better than the other it doesn't make the other not good.

I thought it was boring as hell.The second is better. 
 
Granted, I still didn't like it much but it's a better choice nonetheless.

Not worth it. When it came out it wasnt very good, and its worse now.

1 isn't good. I played it a ton and loved it at the time but it doesn't hold up well. Two is where it's at.

AC 1 for the PS3 for $15...NO! The first game is a total cluster fuck on the PS3. Save your money for something better. 

I agree with everyone else. It's really not worth it.

Nope & here's why, you have a list of assassinations to perform and before you can perform the assassination you have to perform 3 tasks to gather information, pickpocketing, eavesdropping and interrogation. There's no way around it, you have to do this EVERY FUCKING TIME! It just gets so annoying and boring doing the same thing over and over and over and over, just don't bother with it man, let it go.

I absolutely love the first game, but as many have already said it really is not worth it. The game itself works but  it is just offensively repetitive.

I love the first game, in my opinion it's worth it. But be warned there are really bad frame rate drops and screen tearing.

I like the first game alot but I'll agree that it was much easier to play before all the tweaks they put in for AC2. So it makes it very hard to go back in many ways. 
 
Its still a great game and one of the few that I have an inking to revisit.

AC1 was fantastic.  I really missed the conversations after the assassinations in 2 and Brotherhood.  But it can get a little boring, what i would suggest is just taking your time with it, one or two assassinations per sitting, just to make sure you dont burn out on the game.  But for 15 dollars? why not, it will hold you over till christmas when your parents pick you up AC2.

I'm in the same bag as the topic-starter here. Had AC1 and 2 shrink wrapped and bought last year. Didn't touch them until I saw the Brotherhood quicklook. I'm about 8 hours into AC1 and I think it's great. 
The side missions are my only complaint, since they get very redemptive at times.

The game is great, ok it is repetitive but when it came out, it was a new experience.

The original Assassin's Creed wasn't very good.

You could probally save even more money by renting it.

I liked the setting and played through it twice doing everything I could but the game is really repetitive, I never did a mission the way I was suppose to, nor did I feel that I could do a mission the right way it always devolved into a chase and  the story is not that important in the grand scheme of things.

It's "repetitive," but if you enjoy what it is you're doing over and over again (climbing stuff and stabbing dudes, basically), you'll love it. And it helps you appreciate the later games even more. Almost any decent game is worth $15, so if you're low on cash, the first AC is a good buy. 
 
Just don't play Brotherhood unless you've played AC2 first!

First Assassin's Creed is a great game marred by repetition. Great engine and graphics that hold up pretty well, excellenet storytelling, solid parkour mechanics, etc. If you're interested in the series you should definitely play it. The design in some areas is flawed, but they improve it a great deal in 2 and Brotherhood.

I played it last year and it held up great, yeah a LOT of people say it's repetitive, but It wasn't a problem for me. I really enjoyed the setting and climbing shit was dope. If you just want to catch up on the story you might as well rent it. 
 
Also yes AC2 is much better

Personally, I felt the first Assassin's Creed was one of the most overrated games of this generation. I can't comment on the second one though. 

 
As others have said, some aspects of the first Assassins Creed still 'hold up' such as the parkour / free running mechanic and its still a great looking game obviously - and if you can persevere the story is quite intriguing (only towards the end though - personally i think it suffers from the same thing as bioshock; good opening couple hours, decent ending but a 5 -7 slog through it to get there)
 
however Assassins Creed 2 is also pretty cheap now (i got it for about £10 recently) and its one of the best games i've ever played, for me its the difference between a bad game and a good game, the second makes the first one seem terrible (its not terrible but its not great) 
 
everything had been overhauled from the first one, the fighting mechanics still aren't great, but they aren't like the first one, the story's a lot more involved in the second and you actually like the characters and the ever-expanding conspiracy is great as is the setting, personally i found the renaissance italy setting far better and more entertaining than the dry sands and mud huts of the first one - the chapter during Carnevale was probably the highlight 
 
but everything in general is far better that it doesn't make sense to play the first, if you're into the story and want to get every aspect of it then yeh play the first one, but you wont understand what's going on really until the second and i imagine playing the first game after having played the second may make more sense 
 
i'm excited for brotherhood too, i think i might leave it for a couple months, because, although i love the story and want to see the characters continue and the new features look entertaining, the franchise does suffer from assassination-fatigue, after having completed the main story in AC2 and the DLC and a couple contracts and smaller things i don't have the same want to jump back into it again, i played it through as soon as i got it, something like 20 hours over 2 or 3 days, i couldn't stop playing it (and i usually stop playing after and hour or two) but its an engrossing story and setting so; yeh the first one still holds up, but you'd be better to play AC2

" I love the first game, in my opinion it's worth it. But be warned there are really bad frame rate drops and screen tearing. "

The first Assassin's Creed is not a bad game, it's just repetitive. I still think it's fantastic.

I picked up AC before AC2 was coming out and I enjoyed the running and jumping from build to build but AC2 does it so much better and there is a short recap of what happened in the last game at the start of AC2. Unless u really want to see the events leading to the end then get it. Otherwise just pick up a different game for the same price.

Not a snowball's chance in hell. Insanely repetitive of boring tasks, and a very dull art style. Five (IIRC) cities with a slightly different hue and the same building structure and layout!

I thought it was ace.  It needed more investigation mission types for sure, but overall I think the structure was purer and closer to what it should be:  you have your target, you investigate your target, then you carry out the assassination and escape.  Learning about the targets and how they were all connected was subtly done and interesting.
 
What they didn't make clear was that each of those investigation missions had useful information that (in theory) would have made the assassination easier.  Had the assassinations been challenging enough for this information to really help then the investigation missions wouldn't have seemed so arbitrary and pointless.  
 
Unfortunately, instead of addressing this fundamental lack of challenge they have actually decided to keep going even further in the other direction, making combat easier and easier, to the point where you don't really feel like an assassin at all anymore - you're just a one man army.  The traversal/parkour stuff is losing its raison d'etre; there's little point being subtle in approaching a target and even less point in escaping quickly before the guards catch you, because you can kill any number of them without breaking a sweat.  I really hope they take another look at this when AC3 comes around - yes taking out one or two guards in quick (and stylish) succession should be easy, but combat against multiple enemies needs to be challenging enough to make avoiding them and running from them the smart options.

It's still a ton of fun. I would definitely get it, especially if you care about the story in the series. Do be warned though, it is repetitive.

If you haven't played any of the games in the series previous, you might be able to get past the repetition. When the original title was released I was an ardent defender of it, despite the redundancy in mission design and the somewhat overbearing length.  
 
After having played the second game, I realized just what a misstep the original was. Assassin's Creed has some story bulletpoints that are rather important, but I think you'd be fine to just read a wiki and jump straight into Assassin's Creed II. 

No subtitles and the camera was fucking terrible throughout. 
 
I treid replaying it a few weeks ago but no dice, those two things kept me from playing it.

" I'm surprised opinion has turned so much against the first game over the last 3 years.  When it was released it was critically acclaimed and sold gangbusters.  It was repetitive, sure, but it was still unique and pretty damn compelling.  I think the OP (if he hasn't played it) should get AC2 instead since the story of AC1 is pretty short and simple enough to explain.  If number 1 is what he needs though, $15 is pwell within the reasonable range to spend on a game like AC1 now, even with better sequals out. "

" It's "repetitive," but if you enjoy what it is you're doing over and over again (climbing stuff and stabbing dudes, basically), you'll love it. And it helps you appreciate the later games even more. Almost any decent game is worth $15, so if you're low on cash, the first AC is a good buy.  Just don't play Brotherhood unless you've played AC2 first! "

HOLD IT!   
 
I enjoy AC1 more than AC2.  As an Arab, it is rare to see my people in a nicer light.  It holds up, and the plot wasn't complete fuckary like it was in AC2.

If you haven't played any of the other AC games, I'm sure it's fine. The reason a lot of people can't go back to it is simply because they've played 2 and Brotherhood now, and those games are such an improvement from the slightly-charming jank found in AC. It is repetitive, but it's also fun still. 
 
You could do worse.

I hadn't looked at this thread since I made it since it seemed to have been ignored and after my purchase I'm happy I didn't.  That game was pretty good although AC2 did improve on it alot.  Since when did this game start to get hated?  Just because one is better than the other doesn't mean the other is shit.

" @SethPhotopoulos:  
 
OBJECTION! 
 
The biggest problem with AC2.   Ubisoft jumped the shark.
 

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

Aliens.

"

awful, awful game to play years after its release, and, not to mention, 3 games into the series.  unless you really want in on the story, don't even bother.

" @100_Hertz:   OBJECTION!  AC1 had a solid plot with a solid hero's journey.  AC2 rushed the series into something that didn't belong.  AC1 plays fine today.   "

" OBJECTION! AC1 introduced crazy and AC2 only built on the crazy.  AC1 plays pretty good but AC2 is better. "

" @SethPhotopoulos said:

" OBJECTION! AC1 introduced crazy and AC2 only built on the crazy.  AC1 plays pretty good but AC2 is better. "

TAKE THAT!  AC1 had some sort of scientific reality based around it, and a solid base of a mythos.  AC2 simply tried to make it too crazy for it's own good.  Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed are the same.  HOWEVER!  While ME2 built on the mythos, AC2 simply goes overboard and puts in crap that shouldn't be there.   AC is no longer a Sci-Fi story, but rather a faux-fantasy tale. "

" @SethPhotopoulos:   CORRECTION!  Faux Sci-Fi Fantasy.  :| "

Love Assassin's Creed, just beat it last month. Love Altair, I really enjoy the way his story wraps up and how great the ending is with Desmond. The missions are repetitive but it only takes like 30-40 minutes in a new city to unlock the "Assassinate" mission. 
 
I know you already bought it, but you all need to hear my opinion.

No, not at all, though I'm not sure how it passed for a great game back in 2007, either. The enemy guard AI is so cheap and irritating that if you so much as bump into a civilian you'll be subjected to a mind-numbingly boring, overdrawn, shitty fighting sequence with the fuckers. The repetition would be tolerable if the controls weren't so clunky and Altair didn't consistently lock onto the wrong guy every fucking time you try to trigger a mission. There are also sections you might encounter while trying to scale viewpoints where Altair will straight up stop moving forward, even though there's clearly a usable ledge directly in front of him. I threw my controller over ten times during my first playthrough. It's fucking maddening, and if this shit doesn't get better in II, I'm going to be furious.

In my opinion AC1 was overall good but AC2 was great.