Assassin's Creed was little more than a really good tech demo when it came out. It had all the trappings of a great free roam game with stealth and assassination, but was bogged down with repetition and next to zero variability. While many gamers were turned off with this three note fiddle, I personally preferred that game to what Ubi Soft has given us with Assassin's Creed 2.Story:
The story of Assassin's Creed 2 is arguably better than the first game, it is at least more fleshed out. Clearly the developers went out of their way to make us care about Ezio as opposed to Altiar from the first game. Very generally Ezio is developed over the start of the game. He's a ladies man, gets into trouble, we see his...birth? Yeah, so it really doesn't go into a lot of hard detail like a good RPG or a game where character development matters. I honestly wish I didn't know about Ezio. Everything we were given was too general to like him, and enough to know he has no business being as badass as Altiar was. For this reason I didn't feel like a badass in the game anymore like I did in the first.
The plot itself is more or less serviceable, but exists when it wants to and not when you expect it. By that I mean more often than not you are an errand boy for someone or another and then randomly Ezio will start to pursue his own ambitions. Ultimately it feels exactly like the story from the first game. The only notable differences are the parts with Desmond, and sadly he's even more uninteresting than Ezio. He honestly may as well be the silent protagonist except that he actually talks sometimes, but all he ever says are questions to prompt the supporting cast to tell the player wtf is going on. The only reasons it seems he has to stay with the group he's with is because of his ancestry and his cock wants the hot science chick.
Graphics:
There's not much to complain about here. Graphically speaking ACII does a good job. Lighting, textures, and really good water effects stand out for me. The only problems I notices were sometimes you can be standing on top of a building looking at other buildings and they will literally just start freaking out. It doesn't happen often, but the textures on the buildings will just start jumping around and going crazy. I lol'ed pretty hard watching that happen.
Gameplay:
This is where the game really falls apart. Perhaps the fault of not enjoying this follow up is my own. I played the first installment on the PC, which was a joy to play. Never did I encounter as many frustrating moments as I have with ACII. There are some serious design choices that I find very questionable in this game.
Firstly, a simple task of trying to run someone down. The free running in this game is more than just touchy, it has a mind of its own. I feel like the game is trying to play by itself and ignoring what I tell it. Often when I'm trying to run down a thief or rich nobleman to steal their gold Ezio will decide that he wants to climb the nearest whatever because it's fun or something...
Sometimes I'll agree, and try to climb said object or building. Another supreme design flaw crops up while climbing. Unlike the first game where every building was built like a ladder and you literally just went up, ACII said screw that and for reasons of "realism" tried to make the buildings more puzzle like and not a straightforward climb. This is fine sometimes, but not when you're already frustrated during a chase Ezio starts to climb and you didn't want him to. So frustrated I start pressing random buttons and he ends up leaping like a freak off the building and I take damage.
Even while calming down and trying to figure out the asinine control scheme of climbing buildings I still can't for the life of me ever make Ezio do what I want him to do unless I find the rare straightforward climb building and just go about my business.
But the biggest flaw with climbing is the stupidest design choice I came across with this game. The leap ability (or whatever lame name the game gave it.) About 60% of the game you are playing with a flawed and mentally ill Ezio, and you don't even realize it until you get this ability. It allows Ezio to JUMP higher to grab stuff above him he couldn't reach before.... This has to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen. Ezio has to learn a lot of simple basic Assassin things through the start of the game, makes sense to me. But why in the holy fuck doesn't he learn how to JUMP and GRAB ledges? He actually has to WATCH someone do this to understand the concept. It blew my mind. All those times I watched Ezio try to climb buildings and be RIGHT at the top only to just stare at it as I hold up, and NOW he fucking learns how to jump? What's worse is even before I got this "ability" I saw him nab things higher than those glitched unclimbable buildings I came across earlier. But to actually make it an ability gobsmacks me. This should have been available at the start of the god damn game. Not only that, you shouldn't have to enter a command for it, Ezio should just DO it on his own if shit is too high for him to reach. Further, who's fucknut idea was it to make the Grab command the SAME as the Release command? Should I even have to describe why that was a stupid as fuck idea? Of all the unused buttons on the controller they had to combine grab and release....so I find myself using the shitty jump command, only to have Ezio occasionally not do it, reach for my circle button (grab/release) and have it release me off the building and then I have to go find my controller because I chucked it across the room in frustration.
Another exploration gameplay element I loathed were the 6 stages you collect ancient shit to unlock a door that has the game's best armor in it. I won't delve into how stupid I think their security system is, but let me tell you, it's retarded. The issue I take is with those 6 stages. What are they? They are HUGE platforming areas where you guide Ezio through seemingly endless climbing areas to eventually obtain one damn miserable key. With Ezio having a mind of his own and his gimped climbing abilities, these areas are the shittiest I have ever played since the dawn of 3D gaming, and I am not exaggerating. You can spend 6 minutes climbing around trying to figure out where to go next, and then boom Ezio says fuck you and leaps like a freak off and you start all over again. They actually put checkpoints in these areas, like they knew you were going to hate climbing around this shit. WHO THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE FUN? The game is called "Assassin's Creed," not "Jump from random shit to random shit" for an hour, you want to fucking kill things secretively.
I picked up playing ACII just after I got the platinum trophy on Infamous. I mention this because Infamous's exploration is a lot like ACII. The difference is that it's never frustrating. There's no "run" button, no "leap" button no "grab" button no "release" button. There's move the stick that way press X to jump, shit works. Learn from them please!
Combat:
The combat is largely unchanged from the first game, which is fine. The combat really boils down to waiting for the enemy to attack and counter him. They attack you one at a time just like last time. The only real improvement is now you can taunt, negating having to wait for them to attack you can actually prompt them to attack. There's a new type of counter now, you can take their weapon, but it results in the exact same ending as if you did a regular counter. Ezio does learn some new things, but I honestly can't remember what they were because all you have to do is use the counter command.
Music:
When it's noticeable, the music is astoundingly good. I didn't dislike a single track, and eagerly awaited prompting the next melody. Very well done, a vast improvement from the first game.
Overall:
I enjoyed ACI more than ACII. Somehow they made ACII more complicated for no reason. Sure there were flaws in ACI, but instead of improving or fixing those flaws they added more of them to ACII. It's a shame really, but I was honestly more frustrated by ACII than anything else.
*Ezio used "leap like a freak" attack*
