This paper presents a novel commutation failure (CF) assessment method considering the influences of voltage magnitude drop, phase shift, and spatial-temporal discreteness of AC system faults. The commutating voltage-time area is employed to analyze the spatial-temporal discreteness of AC system faults causing CF in high-voltage direct current systems, and the influences of fault position and fault time on CF are revealed. Based on this, a novel CF criterion is proposed, further considering the influence of voltage phase shift and the spatial-temporal discreteness. Then this research develops a new CF assessment method, which does not rely on electromagnetic transient simulations. A real case from the China Southern Power Grid is used to verify the practicability of the proposed method by comparing with simulation results obtained using PSCAD/EMTDC.