Graphics: The visuals are great. The environments aren't as stunning as other games, but still makes you feel immerse in the 15th Century Renaissance. The character animations are well done. Lighting and water effects are very nice. Not a lot of screen tearing, but you notice pop-ins often.
Character: Every character has a uniqueness to them. You feel like you are making friends in the game, like you build relationships, and family ties; all of which is important because family is everything in Ezio's life. It is funny that all the girls you knock down like falling with their legs spread wide open.
Story: Awesome. If you know the first game, you have a ence of the Matrix-like vibe. But this game has two stories: Desmond's and Ezio's. Ezio's is great and filled with lots life. It is of course used to explain Desmond's. But it is extremely hard to explain either one's without any spoilers. So I want you to know they are tied together, and both brilliantly written. Sequences 12 & 13 will be released as DLC. They were in the original game but removed. I'd blame DVD9, but I really don't know why it was taken out in the first place.
Dialog: Great! It's awesome that everyone's accent is nice, and there is a lot of Italian to immerse you. Nolan North seems like the go-to-guy for voice acting, but like Uncharted 2, AC2 is well done with the voice work.
Gameplay: A variety of different missions, side missions, gameplay styles really drive the game. Feather hunting is an asspain, but never a gamebreaker. The only minor issue I have, is for a free-running game, this one can have unresponsive controls sometimes, causing you to die or fail. Climbing is not as dynamic as other climbing based games, but it still works nice.
Sound: Voice and Music is awesome.
Replay: I wouldn't replay it, except for the DLC coming, because the game isn't designed for it. you complete your game, and of course like any sandboxer, you can run around and finish all the last details you miss, but don't really get an opportunity to replay anything. You win a race, you can't replay it. Once everything is done, you really only have gaurds to kill. But for a game that takes around 30-40 hours to 100%, there is no complaint from me.
Overall: This and inFAMOUS are my favorite sandbox games this gen. I probably like it more. And AC2 crushes GTA4 into the ground. I highly recommend this game to everyone. And please do not let the mediocrity of AC1 to turn you away. This is a GOTY worthy contender.
I score is an "A"
IGN - Assassin's Creed's focus on character-driven storytelling has been buried by its RPG sandbox features, and the series is weaker for it.
A rare W opinion piece from IGN.
IMO, Ubisoft needs to setup two primary AC dev teams. 1 would focus on and release character-driven OG-style AC games for OG fans and the other would continue the current RPG-ified AC style for current fans.
Release by them Bi-annually and alternatively. There'd less fatigue and a boost to quality.
I definitely appreciate 3 more after playing it again in recent years along with the Liberation game. Back when 3 was new I was still riding high on AC2 and Brotherhood so when I played 3 I felt a bit let down. Even the ship battles grew on me.
AC2 - Yes
AC3 - Urm...I don't know
I feel they kind of dropped the ball with AC3 and with the way the story went it just didn't make sense to me at all. I felt it would have made more sense lore wise if they had it so the Red Coats were mostly Assassins and the Templars were mostly the Colonists who wanted this "new world" as a fresh start for their operations, to build a country up they'd have full control of from the start so they manufacture the war as something else while really it's just a front for the Templars vs Assassins.
It just meant that since the Red coats lose the war it explains how the Templars have gained full control of future America and how the Assassins have slowly died out by then. This entire event would have been the turning point of how things went to s**t for the Assassins and how there's not many of them left in the present.
Haythem was a lot more interesting than Connor and he should have been the main Assassin of AC3.
I thought AC2 was the greatest of the series and it is but replaying it recently, I stared to see more flaws in the game. Basically every single mission is an assassination besides a few tailing missions lol. Still, the implementation of all the new mechanics were great. The smoke bombs, disarming guards, story, hidden tombs, swimming, flying machine, multiple locations, etc. it definitely felt a bit more special to me at the time of release though
Dunno about 3, the 1st act was cool, then i couldn't tell you what happens after that. But 2 was so good! The entire acts 1-3 were al memorable, whereas i really couldn't even tell you what happens in any other AC game
Assassin's Creed 2 set the template for the series going forward, but it's harder to see it getting made today.
Lol Assassin's Creed 2 is the game that introduced most of the things people say they hate about modern Ubisoft games specifically and open world games generally.
Those elements were fresh when they came out.
The problem is not that they were introduced, the problem is how they have been repeated to stagnation.
@Elantregaless
100%, we call it the Ubisoft formula for a reason, the formula can still be fun, we just need pallet cleansers and actual side activities that offer something other than 100 bases or 50 towers to climb
ACs were nice till Syndicate. Just that they were releasing it wayy too often i.e nearly annually or some times 2 games per year i.e III + liberation same year and Unity + Revelations same year.
People complained that we're getting same AC games every year. Ubi's solution should've been to release the games every 3 years or so and abit more refined.
But instead they turned the franchise into humongous RPG fetch quests that just exacerbated the prior issues. People were fine with Origins, since it was new but got bored/overwhelmed by Valhalla.
AC should've stayed like Ezio trilogy or Unity.
Not the RPG that they've turned it into.
They know it, hence we got Mirage.
While the art was on point and the writing was okay, Origins was designed around microtransactions. It's not really a game, it's a monetization scheme. Unity is a massive fetch quest like all AC games and it has worse mission mechanics than the new ones. Good parkour doesn't hide all of its flaws. If you liked Unity, it's strange that you wouldn't like any of the others going forward.
They used a Valhalla DLC to make Mirage and it didn't sell as well as their others. IGN has it tenth, there are only 13 mainline games if I'm not mistaken and it maxed out only around 7k player peak on Steam. The "engagement numbers" out there are fake. This shows that people didn't really want a return to form DLC.
Some people get bored and some don't. Some people like the copy-paste style and some people don't. Some people like fetch questing and some people don't. But a lot of people don't like UBI turning their SP games into live-services. The problems with AC games are the monetization schemes.
Speaking of this same old shit every year, I just found this about AS Mirage. "Assassin's Creed: Mirage now playable through leaked Denuvoless debug build." As well as Dragon's Dogma 2 . Torrents are up. I'm going to guess someone at both companies leaked this out in the wild, most likely to get back at them, maybe with layoffs or other reasons. 😁
I get down votes for calling out the truth on what happened to both games LOL. Don't know how it happened I already said what my guess was. DD 2, hmm not for me, and no more AC please.
i would not play that even if it was free, there are better games out there to waste your time on
Nah ubisoft doesn't aim above "just good" titles, sequels are supposed to be refined and improved each time they released. I remember in the ps360 gen it was like that, a known sequel would definitely be a step up from the previous titles. I remember seeing an article where someone from ubisoft said players don't just want "solid" titles. You damn right sir they always just deliver the bare minimum nowadays. These consoles this gen have enough power to contribute to thoroughly made gems. Ubisoft acts blind to that
Ezio got 3 games and an animated movie, they dedicated a lot of time to him and those games. No they can't make a sequel as good, cause all they wanna do is milk the series.
i thought brotherhood was the better game of the 3 but 2 story is best and yes of course it is possible but i dont have any trust in ubisoft
Yea, Brotherhood and 2 trades punches, I loved them both equally... but the series lost its charm with the humongous RPG trilogy,
The games became too much to handle
GF365: "Oftentimes, video games have characters who are antagonistic and really not very pleasant. Here are some of the friendliest characters in games where you might not otherwise expect to find them."
