Spoiler Danger Low
The Good
+ Assassin's tombs
+ Truth puzzles
+ One of the best soundtracks in years
+ A slam-bang ending
The Bad
- Ezio is a boring character
- Not enough Desmond parts
- Where are my timed attacks?!
The first Assassin's Creed game was a groundbreaking work of story-telling and intense game play. It had an ending that left many a jaw on the floor and left fans clamoring for the sequel. Two years later, here we are, and I finally have a review! :)
It took me a while to get through this game, because other games just seemed more interesting any time I sat down to play. Yet I didn't realize what I was missing. This game rocks!
The game picks up literally seconds after the first game left off. It was exciting to see the old characters re-textured with new animations. Desmond is one of the cooler protagonists to have been created in the video game world in quite some time.
The Animus story follows the soon-to-be assassin Ezio as he learns the craft - a cute ploy that pushes the weak in-the-Animus revenge story and also the out-of-Animus adventures as well. Character-wise, Ezio is about as deep as a puddle - he never evolves as a character, and his revenge sees him straight through to the final moments of the game. He was clearly just a puppet placed in the game to give Desmond an excuse to learn all that assassin badassery. Because of this, I was rather disappointed also by the fact that there were not more parts that took place outside of the Animus. Desmond is the shit, he was more of a character in his brief appearances than Ezio was in the entire game, and I wish more of the game focused on him.
Ubisoft obviously listened to its fan base when approaching the creation of this game. Gone are most of the annoying things that we were subjected to in the first game - no more repetitive eavesdropping or stalking missions. They still exist, but not in such numbers that they become boring drivel as they did in the first game. Instead we have a very fast-paced mission-based game that has you running all over Italy killing people. Additionally, the combat system has seen an upgrade, as it now flows better. As an added bonus, you can now fight with your hidden blades (yes, two of them this time!), and you can disarm foes and use their own weapons against them. Ubisoft brought back the vicious kills in this game, and the sheer number of them are staggering. I highly recommend stealing the larger weapons used by the more heavily armored guards and going to town with those. Good times. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I often found myself wishing the timed attack kills made it back into this game. I missed them all to frequently.
Graphically speaking, this game is damn purty. From the first moments in the Animus when Florence is coming together to the final moments where *censored* (it's an epic ending and I couldn't bring myself to spoil it), the game never fails to impress. It's hard to go back and look at the first game after marveling at the inspiring beauty of Italy. The vistas - particularly those seen from the tops of the highest viewpoints - are a spectacle and left me at times breathless.
The story of the game - a rather simple revenge thread - unwinds itself slowly and through a long string of assassination targets. Yes, you will do a lot of assassinating in this game, and it is great. There are breaks in the story that allow you to romp around the world and engage in the plethora of side quests... or just romp around the world. Free-running is as great as ever, though this game introduces a bit more challenge to the formula used by its predecessor. In Assassin's Creed, you could pretty much just hold RT and A and go wherever. Assassin's Creed 2 adds a bit more challenge in that not everything is plainly scalable - you must actually look for places to climb now. I find myself wishing for even MORE challenge come AC3, because after a while, I was starting to notice patterns in the buildings, which made climbing them repetitious at times. More variety for the next game.
All this aside, there were two parts of the game that really stood out for me. Firstly, there are numerous assassin's tombs hidden throughout Italy. They provide plenty of great - and at times, hard - platforming joy. As fun as the tombs were, they were all to brief. I love running around and jumping to and fro across rooftops and such, but really they could have made a game that was entirely an assassin's tomb and I would have been content. More of this in the third game, please.
I love me some truth puzzles. There, I said it. They're hard, they're fun, and I was very sad when I finished all of them. Essentially, there are 20 glyphs hidden across Italy, and finding them is just half the challenge - probably a significantly smaller percentage at that. Once found, you must solve a puzzle to unlock a piece of a video. For example, a couple parts of the puzzles have you looking at 10 paintings and you must find the 5 that have something in common. Other puzzles involve decoding phrases or finding correct codes and so on. These parts are challenging, because there is nothing in the game that prepares you for them. You must be observant and apply generous doses logic to solve most of them. I cannot quite capture my love for these puzzles in words, so suffice it to say I want many, many more of them in the next game. Oh, and if you happen to solve all 20 puzzles, the video you unlock is quite... fascinating... and worth the effort. I'll say no more.
But even with all this, we still haven't hit upon my favorite part of the game. It was (drum roll please) the music! Jesper Kyd's score was AMAZING. I cannot possibly say enough about this score. It's very different from anything else I've heard in quite a while, and it fits the atmosphere of the game to a T. I occasionally found myself missing Altaire's theme from the first game, but the sheer beauty of the score for this game quickly ushered those feelings away. I've long been a fan of Jesper Kyd's work (he's done the Hitman games and some other random things), but I've not heard anything this wonderful out of him ever. If you get the chance to sit back and admire the music in this game, do so. Then go pick up the soundtrack - it's available on CD and iTunes right now.
So, all in all, Assassin's Creed 2 was one of the better games I played this year. Where it lacks in character development and deep story, it makes up for it with spectacular game play, some damn nifty out of Animus sections, and one kickass soundtrack. 'Nuff said.
Score: 9.7/10.0
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