The crux of my review is going to be this: the developers have done the thing which earns them the deepest respect of the gaming community, they took what they had which was good, figured out what more was needed by listening to US, and then put those two things together into one stunning masterpiece.
The first title had a lot going for it. It's root, Prince of Persia, had always been horribly linear when you take into account that it's movement system is FREE-running, so producing Assassin's Creed was a great idea. Everyone loved roaming free on the rooftops above the heads of the commoners, dispatching guards with lethal finesse. The brutality of the combat was murderously entertaining, although the combat itself felt almost the same every time with the limited number of death animations, only one type of enemy (not including bosses), and only 5 weapons. The stealth worked very well too, although lacked in options. But apart from that the character of Altaïr didn't develop a whole lot, so story was limited to the overarching conspiracy, and connection with Altaïr (the game's main playable character) was never really felt. Also the missions were all pretty much the same, only a few variants of different missions just put in different locations, without a whole lot changing from start to finish in how you would actually perform the assassinations. Basically, with the missions and combat, variety was an issue.
In AC2, however, they resolved these issues, while building on and improving all that was good. They made the movement even more fluid, the controls more intuitive, and removed some small silly things that fans complained about (guards realising you're an assassin simply if you gallop on horseback, and Altaïr's inability to swim for example). They increased the variety in architecture too, from small run-down Monterigionni to the pompous, sprawling waterways of Venice. The combat is now much more varied with different types of guards for whom different tactics are necessary, a much greater variety in customizable weaponry and armor, items like the smoke bombs which you can drop to create a cloud of smoke which you can use to escape, and a lot more (awesome) kill animations. Stealth now has many more options i.e. poison, dual assassinations, better air assassinations, assassinations from over ledges and in hiding spots, drop-down assassinations, the list goes on. Also the use of recruitable courtesans, thieves and mercenaries, all of which can be used to distract guards from their duties, aswell as the ability to pick up dead bodies and place them so as to distract the guards. The (non-lethal) poison is handy for getting past guards without raising the amount of alarm that bodies do. Now, the over-arching conspiracy is becoming truly intruiging with MUCH more depth, as well as the fact that Ezio is a massively deeper character, who we follow from birth to the end of his purpose, while we watch him develop from a harmless young noble into a lethal but now truly noble assassin.
This game has much more variety in general. I can barely pick any issues with it, you can now actively decrease your notoriety level and change how guards will react to you, there are now random courier events where you can choose to hunt down a target and take his riches, not as a mission but just someone you happen to chance upon in the street. Any crowd can be used as cover now, not just groups of monks. Ezio's clothing can now be changed with dyes and he has his own small city which he can invest in and upgrade how he sees fit, with building upgrades or paintings et etc, which earns him income. You can control gondolas on water, horse-drawn carts on land, and Leonardo's flying machine in the air. The missions are all varied with practically no two the same during the (pleasantly surprising) 16-18 hour singleplayer story, making it much more gripping, and the basic assassination, beat-up or race type events are now entirely optional sidequests, but with a lot of unlockable depth. On a less core point, the graphics are stunning and the achievement points are incredibly well allocated, encouraging you to get a taste of each of the many facets of the game rather than to fully complete everything. I also like the fact that DLC has been announced that will bring us back to the game in the months to come, as it sure deserves it.
My complaints about AC2 are few. Occasionally, the movement controls aren't quite understanding you and you end up running up the side of chairs when really you want to be out of the room, but it doesn't happen often and isn't a major concern, and crucial moments of the game like big assassinations appear to be mapped out specifically to avoid this. The game has also at a few parts taken qeues from it's origin in Prince of Persia and some indoor tomb section which occasionally use a fixed camera have been included. the fixed camera though forces you to use the thumbsticks to control Ezio from your plane of view and not relative to Ezio, so for example you might be viewing from the side and wanting Ezio to jump from one beam to another, left to right. Ezio is facing away from the beam on the right, so you hold down (meaning to jump behind Ezio) and press A. This instead results in you jumping directly towards the camera, and is frustrating, but again it is only very rarely a problem (3-4 times during my playthrough at most). It also warms up rather slowly IF YOU PLAYED THE ORIGINAL A LOT, with the player only getting completely drawn into it about 2 and 1/2 hours in, because at first it is mostly teaching you the stuff that you could already do in AC1.
So to sum up, it's in my top 5 games ever, and I have the utmost respect for what Ubisoft did with the series. The best praise I can give it is this: I have earned all 1000 Gamerscore on it, but seeing as I've barely scratched the surface of some aspects of the game (the sidequests mainly), I'm still going to put the disc in tomorrow and carry on assassinating, hunting, swinging, jumping and racing.
By Abercromby3
