Assassin's Creed 2 Review

Alf Horsley

There’s no doubt that when Ubisoft Montreal conceived the original Assassin’s Creed, they were thinking outside the box but although it was certainly a unique feeling game that set up a tremendous story, it did have its flaws. Assassin’s Creed II not only resolves these flaws, it improves all the elements of Assassin’s Creed that kept you playing.

The game begins the second that the first left off, throwing you into a scene with Desmond and Lucy escaping from Abstergo labs to an assassin lair. While parts of this scene can be entertaining, like watching untrained bartender Desmond swing a punch like an idiot and mildly amusing lines like ‘Is it Animuses or Animii?’, This scene gets boring fast and is an amazingly slow paced yawn-fest that could have been replaced with an opening cut-scene. However, the drivel is soon cut through and the true game begins, throwing you straight into the shoes of Ezio Auditore di Firenze in his early years as a young son of a nobleman in the midst of a ‘Romeo and Juliette’-esque fight with another noble family. From this point you can tell that a lot of the troubles of the first game have been erased, such as the fact that Ezio is an actual character in this game and this is HIS story, not the world’s or Desmond’s. Similarly, as soon as you are dropped into the fight you can tell that the combat system, while not entirely overhauled, has had almost all of its flaws removed. 

The pace of this opening fight is, however, ruined by the fact that you’re going to spend the next 4 to 5 hours being spoon fed the new features, along with a few of the old ones, before the game feels like you’ve stopped learning and started playing. While there are a tonne of new features to the game, it’s just not enough to warrant such a long section of the game where you’re held by the wrist and pointed exactly where to go and how to go there.

Once this section is over and you have the early cities unlocked for you, the pace picks up to whatever you want it to be. This is a much more open-world feeling game than its predecessor, with stunning representations of 15th century Italy to be explored, and while they may not be to-the-map replicas, they all flow well, used the actual geography of the area as a base and have all the major landmarks in the right places, you really would need a time machine to see a more true to life representation of these cities. The cities also feel a lot more alive than the previous games, have proper scheduled events happening at times of day, shops that work and sell to people other than you and the free running lines looking more like actual roof tops and less like things placed randomly on roofs that would be more subtle if they had neon signs with ‘FREE RUN HERE’ floating above them.

The free running system used to traverse these cities has been improved greatly, especially the animation. The freely flowing system is similar to its predecessor but is a lot better at detecting nearby ledges and foot holes, as well as animating a lot better than it’s predecessor, so much so that I haven’t come across a single place where the animation didn’t match the terrain. The system is prone to ending long runs early but jumping straight when your destination is to the left or right which can ruin flow in tense situations, but this can be alleviated with a little patience and the right aim.

The side missions and collectables are also an improvement over the first game, with each side mission, of which there is a lot more diverse a collection, has a little story before and after. The collectables are a whole load less ridiculous than before, with only the feather being a randomly placed collectable. The new Glyphs give a reason to explore landmarks and tell the tale of Subject 16 (the guy who redecorated your room in his blood in the first game) and his discovery of the truth about the Pieces of Eden. While they are a good idea, after you have solved the puzzle within the glyph they remain glaringly obvious in the landscape and can mar the beauty of some of the cities. There is also the fact that the video unlocked by the glyphs takes the underlying conspiracy of the series and turns the ‘Nut-shit Insane’ dial up to 11, turning the mildly believable secret society wanting to control the world plot into the kind of thing that makes you want the person who wrote it committed in a mental institute.  The Tombs of the Assassins are easily the best new addition collectables wise. The tombs, hidden throughout the cities in the world, are sections centred on platforming, sometimes timed, sometimes challenging and sometimes in chase of a target. These parts put a whole new slant on the free running system and reward you greatly when you complete them all; although most of the tombs are challenging enough that you feel rewarded when you reach the end and see the part of the prize in Ezio’s hands.

The new money system is also a welcome edition to the series. You gain Florins, the currency in Italy at the time, through story, side missions and stealing. Florins can be spent on upgrades for weapons, armour, storage and the villa. The Villa Auditore can be upgraded to have shops and other buildings around the town, providing you with both income and discount prices in the town. The villa also improves in income when you deposit your collectables, purchase new armour and weapons and complete collections of any of the things. While this system is a motivator, you’ll soon find yourself with more money than things to spend it on and by the end of the game you’ll be throwing it at peasants and hiring factions even when you don’t need to. The weapons you can buy vary in range, coming in two categories, large and small. The small weapons are all standard daggers in different shapes and forms and tend to be fairly useless, in combat situations you need to use large weapons and in stealth situations you nee to use the one hit kill of the hidden blade. Large weapons vary from rapiers to broadswords to maces and hammers. While the hammers and maces are fun to use and come with their own animations, they tend to fall out of use later in the game as they just can’t keep the pace of the fight like the swords can.

Once you get past the slow paced beginning, the plot and pacing really come into their own. The plot, although completely linear for almost the entire game, will keep you engrossed with interesting and varied missions requiring skill in every facet of the game complemented with superb cut-scenes that are well written and acted (although some of the accents are a little cheesy), animated perfectly, although they can show off some of the flaws in the games graphics that you can only see up close. This is all combined with an amazing original score both in cut scene and in the world makes for an amazingly presented game

Assassin’s Creed II is by no means a flawless game, but it’s one of those games that was everything the original should have been and so much more, and gleaming positives more than make up for the flaws, sometimes so much so that you’ll forget the flaws are even there. It provides you with so much more to get lost in that you can immerse yourself in it for hours on end and find yourself just running, doing side missions or looking for glyphs and tombs. For fans of the original and newcomers alike, this is one of the games of the year and one world that if you put yourself into, you won’t want to say arrivederci to for a long time.

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