Assassins' Creed 2 is the second instalment on the Assassin's Creed series released on the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and soon to be PC platform. The game is now set in late fifteenth century Italy, in the cities of Venice, Florence and the beautiful Tuscan countryside.
You still play the character as Desmond Miles who find out that he has ancestors from the late 15th century Italy and decided he wants to relive that time period as a character called Ezio, due to cryptic messages on blood he discovers in his room. This time he uses the Animus 2.0 which is an upgraded machine of that used in the first Assassin's Creed game.
Focused in the Cities of Venice, Florence and the Tuscan countryside, to play as Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a son of a banker working for the Medici family. Rifts between the Medici and Dodges family occur when Giovanni, Ezio's father is arrested and later executed for talking about secrets that aren't to be discussed.
After that, Ezio swears revenge on the rival family which leads and long, exciting and twisting story line which keeps the player wanting to uncover more about what's going on. Due to the spoilers, I'll leave out the juicy storyline to be uncovered as the player explores the game.
The game itself is similar to the old one in the sense that there are several, huge, vast and highly detailed cities to explore which include a living, breathing and realistic population too. Aside from the main missions, there are more side missions. From the like likes of tearing down wanted poster of Ezio, looting cash for weapons and upgrades and free running missions to race other NPC time's around the city. This takes advantage of the well choreographed animations and allows the player to explore the ancient cities while completing objectives in the game to boost his or her progress within the game. Not only running but gondola racing is rather addictive too which can also provide very useful during the main missions.
Weapons have seen an upgrade from the first game, noticeable of which are the two hidden daggers which come in handy when sneaking up and taking two guards out at once. Aside from the two hidden daggers, more and to the point, bigger weapons are now available. From sharp swords to blunt maces and hammers, you now have a greater choice on how you want to take your opponent out. But even the new selection of weapons aren't enough for Ezio, you'll receive help from non other than Leonardo da Vinci who will conjure up all sort of weird and wonderful gizmos and desigsn to make your job of an assassin all the more easier to do. And if you want to store these contraptions, you'll have an apartment to store your purchased weapons and other items which will come in handy for when you feel like either being stealthly or an all out brute.
Graphics in the game are spectacular. More the highly detailed cities of Florence and Venice to the beautiful rolling countryside of Tuscan, Assassin's Creed 2 is a very graphical game. Character details reflect that of the time period and the building are stunning to which must have required hours of painstaking effort for the developers to recreate. Not only are the graphics a treat but the animations bodes well too. From the subtle and discrete walking among the crowds to the high flying and jumping actions on the rooftops. Animations are similar if not better to that of the first game. This allows Ezio to navigate up and along the 15th century building and escape his foes with ease.
Not only can Ezio walk the walk but he can also talk the talk. Assassin's Creed 2 features high quality sounds from the busy city markets to the clanking of swords vs swords, this game sounds just as good and how it looks and plays. The soundtrack is fitting of the theme of the game and the voice overs and acting is to be commended too which helps sinks the user deeper into the storyline to get him or her more involved with what is going on.
The AI. The AI of the game is good. Guards seem more intelligent than the last game and civilians will even through rocks at you when they see you up to no good. This can promote more cunning and skills within the game resulting in more adrenaline and cunning required to reach goals or defeat opponents.
So in conclusion Assassin's Creed 2 is a marvellous game, set in a classic time period and sporting luscious graphics, enticing storyline and exciting gamplay. The only downside are the character controls can sometimes get confusing and leading to you accientally jumping in a wrong direction off a side of a building and dying and that it'll be another two years before the enxt Assassin's Creed game is out but apart from that this game is highly worth getting. If you liked the first Assassin's Creed you'll love this one.
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
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