The more I play the Ezio trilogy and especially the last time I did with The Ezio Collection, the more I get disappointed with the direction the franchise took since ACIV and Unity.

While there are valid weakness points that you mentioned about ACII, I still think that whatever came after ACIII wasn't even close as good as anything that came with ACIII and before. ACIV was great, yes. But it had a huge part missing and Unity as a whole, while it was visually stunning and highly promising as a concept, it was just gameplay with no complete story, even with the obvious connection between Rogue and Unity. Syndicate was better since it showed CGI modern day cutscenes, yet it still missed the charm, the mystery and the involvement with the lore that we had in ACIII, Ezio's trilogy and ACI.