Hi, I'm Snakefingers13. Here is my review of Assassin's Creed 2, a game I have recently completed and enjoyed thoroughly.
The game will take you around 15 hours to complete thoroughly, as in gaining a Platinum Trophy or 1000/1000 Gamerscore. I am currently on 17 hours, and I still need to do 90% of the side missions, and find 70% of the treasures.
The storyline jumps about occasionally, missing years out. Ezio's adventure starts in 1486, and he is still on the hunt for revenge 10 years later. However, there are the usual cryptic sections, that all weave together to build up to a fantastic ending which leaves people guessing.
Also, there are 14 DNA Sequences, and Sequences 12 and 13 have been removed and released as DLC, the Battle of Forli and Bonfire of the Vanities Sequences respectively. Sequence 12 is shorter than Sequence 13, weighing in at around an hour of gameplay, with Sequence 13 offering around 2 hours. Although they build on the story, you can definitely tell why they were deleted. They are rather rough and ready in parts, but still enjoyable, and worth purchasing.
The gameplay is much less repetitive than the original, with a host of new weapons/gadgets, such as the abililty to swap your sword for a hammer, axe or halberd, draw your dagger, throw a smoke bomb, or distract guards and citizens by throwing money on to the floor.
Which leads me nicely on to my next section.
There is a use for money in the game! It is earned both from completing missions and side-quests, and from the villa in Monteriggioni, which produces money every 20 minutes of play time.
The villa will give you more money when you renovate shops/locations, buy equipment and complete your collections. You can either use this money to further upgrade your villa, buy throwing knives, medicine or poison among other things, or dye your clothes to a colour only available in that location.
Ubisoft Montreal have tried to spruce up the previous counter-fests of fights in the original Assassin's Creed by adding new counter movies, and different enemy types to keep you on your toes. It is far harder to counter a Brute than a normal guard, Agile guards will keep pace with you when you run away, and Seekers will search hiding spots for you.
All this requires you to make good use of stealth and your Assassin tools to reduce enemy numbers before you get yourself in a fight.
Also, there are new ways of assassinating enemies. In the previous game, did you scream in frustration when trying to kill an archer from a ledge, and having to climb up to kill him, increasing the risk of detection?
Not any more. 3 new ways of assassination are killing from hiding spots like haystacks, pulling guards off ledges and jumping off rooves to land on them for a quick kill. As you upgrade your hidden blade, double Air Assassinations become possible, taking down your enemies even quicker.
The collectibles have improved from the hordes of flags you needed to find in the original game. There are 100 feathers located around 5 locations, and finding them all is a chore, but you are well rewarded with a weapon and the Auditore Cape, for 50 and 100 feathers respectively.
More cryptic are the glyphs, located on 20 historical buildings in Italy. You have to scan each glyph with the Assassin signature power Eagle Vision, which brings up a puzzle which must be solved to unlock a segment of a video left by Subject 16, Abstergo's puppet before your character, Desmond.
As you progress through the glyphs, the video begins to look weirder and weirder, until you unlock the full video, which is confusing to the extreme. Want to find out what happens? Get Glyph-hunting.
Side-quests in the game are plentiful, and include races, beat-em-ups and assassinations, and they add 3-5 hours of gameplay, depending upon your speed.
Ubisoft Montreal have definitely looked at history when making this game. Figures such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Rodrigo Borgia and Caterina Sforza all appear throughout the storyline, and you even get to have a go on Da Vinci's flying machine!
Overall, Assassin's Creed II is well worth purchasing, and one of the finer games released in 2009.
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."
But hey man, I was hoping you had some words about the psp connectivity assasins creed bloodlines and ubisofts uplay in-game rewards system. Uplay isnt complete but so far I like the ingenuity.