It's a fantastic follow-up, probably one of the best sequels you'll ever play, one that actually takes the complaints of the first game and improves upon them tenfold.
The bottom line here is that Assassin’s Creed 2 is one of the best games of this year or any other, period. The first game was great in its own right and this one is better in almost every way. Even the finale is brilliant in how it provides a satisfying conclusion to this chapter while dropping huge bombshells that demand the series continue. This is a gamer’s game from start to finish, and if you don’t like it you might need to consider a new hobby.
Probably the best of the saga, the history is perfect and well-written, and it immerses you in Ezio's character. The gameplay is very good with a lot of animations and moves. You can choose weapons from a big list and you can customize and upgrade your armor. Well done for a game of 2009
With a more complete story, much more varied gameplay and the same virtues than the original, Ezio's adventures in the Renaissance will captivate everyone this time.
The experience is layered, unique, and shows an incredible attention to detail. This is one case where the sequel has triumphed over the original by catching the gameplay up to the already excellent visuals. No matter what your preconceptions are about Assassin's Creed II, the game is well worth your time and money.
The sequel to one of this generation's biggest disappointments has emerged as a strong contender for game of the year, and if you didn't see that coming, don't worry - neither did we. [Christmas 2009, p.122]
Ubisoft has finally realized its darling dream by creating a world where substance and style go together. Virtual tours of Florence, Venice and Tuscany are as captivating as the main story. For once in a way, “open-ended” doesn’t translate to “boring”, “lifeless” or “empty”. The height takes your breath away every time Ezio scales a tall building; the excellent animation makes up for annoying bugs and quirky gameplay conventions. Yes, the final boss fight is borderline silly, but it’s just a smudged line on a last page of a thrilling novel.
The game's variety and length come across as nothing more than smoke and mirrors, the endless, grinding busywork that contributes nothing to the overall gameplay is inexcusably plentiful and mind-numbingly repetitive, and to top it all off, the game can't even compete in the visuals department and somehow looks worse than the original.
Exploring the world and performing assassinations is fun and feels like a lived-in experience. Shame the world is rather lacking in engaging activities.
Still serving as a sketch for future better games, as much as in terms of gameplay and lore as it is as history, this gnostic propaganda urge with rage against every conceivable established notion of christian hierarchy, order, morals and codes, and invites the player enter in the most contratitory methods to achieve freedom allying with lumpenproletarian figures like prostitutes, thieves and mercenaries to take down templars, priests, mongs and the Pope. If it didn't end making its point abundantly clear with its targets and agressive explanation of reality and genesis of humans, it could serve as a simplistic piece of fiction, despite still being cynical. However, the way it presents, it's just propaganda, and a bad one. The dialogue, terribly written; the history unfolds a quite linear path merging with the gameplay evolution, as secrets of the lore are discovered at the same time the protagonist uses them to enhance his skills and weapons. The drama is underperfomed by the characters facial expressions and the twists are quite uneven for general arcs; it didn't help the fact that the direction of Sylvain Bernard opts for the most uninteresting angles and framework, making the decoupage of cutscenes look extremely poor. What saves the product of being unbearable is the visual splendor of the textures of the faithful architecture, buildings, churches, water, clothes and green fields. The same level of details cannot be said to have been applied to combat and the precision of parkour - although pretty functional -, none of them explored as in-depth as Batman Arkham Asylum was - released at the same year. Being better playable, with more variety of main missions, and bigger than the atrocious first game is not a grand merit, but having an infantile conception of the world and not being executed with compromise with deep action gameplay or stealth gameplay, trying to please two consagrated styles, is one hell of a "good to look at, average to play" demerit.
The first thing that comes to anyone who plays this if they played followed the series from the first through to present day assassin's is wtf happened to the graphics good god I purchased this and was like wtf happened to the look of the characters it looks very horrible in assassin's 2 very horrible
SummaryAssassin's Creed II is the product of over two years of intensive development by the original creative team behind the Assassin's Creed brand. In a vast open world environment, the game invites players to incarnate Ezio, a privileged young noble in Renaissance Italy who's been betrayed by the rival ruling families of Italy. Ezio's subseq...