It's a strange time to have just finished Assasins Creed 2, a year after its release and with Brotherhood now on the shelves. It's taken me a year to complete after being sidetracked by other games but the 20 or so hours I have spent playing it have definately been enjoyable ones.
Assasins Creed 2 does do well in developing all aspects of the original, AC1 was often said to be very repetetive and AC2 does it's best to alleviate this by adding many more tasks to prevent the gameplay from being so much of a case of deja vu. The world of AC2 has sidequests, more to explore, more things to find, more puzzles, more story, more everything. However at times for the completionist such as myself you can get bogged down in the same repetition as the first and perhaps to an even greater degree as there is far more to do. For example climbing towers to see the world in AC1 was repetative, while there are a wider variety of tasks to do in AC2 there are a lot more towers to climb than before.
The game takes place directly on from the first one, with Desmond escaping the Templars and entering a different Animus to be a different assasin, Ezio. Ezio has a lot more life to him the Altair ever had, and has a big cast of interesting support characters to back him up in the games Renaissance Italy setting. The game takes place across many cities with good varaiation to the environments both in the city walls and outside, the game manages to create a wonderful level of immersion with it's good story and strong setting.
Ezio divides his time between many activities. The main plotline involves stealth missions, chase sequences, set battles, and using every skill and weapon in Ezio's every growing arsenal. At one point you even fly over Venice using a flying machine built by Leonardo Da Vinci whi plays a prominent role in the story. Along with the main plot there are many other activites, collecting chests, rebuilding Ezio's base city to be prosperous, finding the tombs of assasins of old in order to unlock powerful armour as well as piecing together a code hidden in the fabric of the animus.
The huge amount of activites are mostly a lot of fun with a few noticable exceptions. Stealth missions do not tend to work well and with optional assasination contracts often having sections where you can't be seen and doing so meaning an instant game over, frustration ensues. The stealth sections in the main plot are weak too purely because the mechanics do not work well and leave you wondering how a guard saw you or why the over sensetive controls led to you randomely climbing a wall and losing your target or falling in front of some watchful guards. The controls can be quite twitchy at times which causes the elaborate often time limited platforming sequences in the games assasin tombs to be frustrating too. Ezio will sometimes leap in the wrong direction unless you take sections you need to take speedily slowly, and you can find yourself falling which leads to death or having to attempt the platforming section many times.
Visually the game is stunning, the cities are huge and expansive and a joy to behold. The games musical score is also spot on, and makes the game feel like a blockbuster film. Voice acting wise things are spot on, the cast speak with great accents, sometimes in Italian to excencuate certain lines and this adds to the immersion brilliantly. Cutscenes can have some truly "lol" moments and everyone puts in a stirring performance.
Overall, AC2 is AC1 but more polished. A good thing. It still has it's flaws but you can forgive yourself to overlook some of it's frustrations and repetition to enjoy Ezio's beautiful world.