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Assassin's Creed II review

Game: Assassin's Creed II
Platform: PlayStation 3
Genre: Action Adventure
Developer: Ubisoft

Staff review by Jason Venter

September 07, 2012

Ezio Auditore Da Firenze never had a perfect life, but by 15th-century Italy standards, he did quite well. His father was on good terms with bankers and politicians, his brothers and sister were happy within their roles in society, and Ezio had the admiration of a variety of beautiful women around Florence… with certain benefits that left their fathers rather outraged. Chastity mattered a lot back then.

In Assassin’s Creed II, you don’t technically play as Ezio even though the game tells his story. You instead play as Desmond, a modern-day assassin who is only just discovering his birthright. He is a distant descendant of Ezio’s, and he sometimes sits in a fancy chair (dubbed “the animus”) that allows him to live the memories of his ancestors (in this case, Ezio). Desmond digs through those buried memories not for the sake of his own amusement, but because he is a reluctant soldier engaged in a war against the Templars that for all anyone knows has been waged since the dawn of human civilization.

Assassin's Creed II asset

Assassin’s Creed II begins precisely where the first game ended, with Desmond staring at a wall. Events unfold quickly for the next few minutes, and before Desmond knows it he has been spirited to a new location where friendlier hosts look after his wellbeing. Those new allies encourage him to continue his adventures in the animus, where they hope he can find intel that will allow them to strike a blow against the Templars. Grateful for their assistance, Desmond is eager to help. As the player who is control of Desmond, then, you will spend the bulk of the game navigating the streets of ancient Italy, plugged into a program where death isn’t possible but a lack of synchronization is mortality enough.

There’s a lot of lore in the Assassin’s Creed series, but most of it was only generally alluded to in the first game. Assassin’s Creed II feels a lot like a remix of the first title, in that regard, only the story has evolved into something more than the curiosity that it was previously. The battle between the assassins and the Templars is explored more thoroughly and the principle characters are for the most part a great deal more compelling. Ezio begins as a spoiled but generally likeable young man, and over the course of the game he gains maturity and perspective that make him the most sympathetic character the franchise has yet seen.

While the improved and expanded storyline is reason enough to play through this second chapter of the Assassin’s Creed saga, it perhaps wouldn’t amount to much if it rested entirely on the same repetitive play mechanics that left gamers discouraged the first time around. The developers clearly learned from their mistakes, though, and the sophomore effort takes everything that worked in the first game to the next level while making only a few small tweaks. As it turns out, that’s all the series really needed.

Assassin's Creed II asset

In Assassin’s Creed II, you’ll still climb to the top of towering buildings to tag viewpoints that allow you to see a greater portion of the city (and you can still dive into waiting piles of hay far below). Such antics will still draw commentary from the peasants, and you’ll hear the town criers blabbing about stuff--sometimes you--as you assassinate meddlesome guards or raid treasure chests or search for collectible goodies. Such familiar objectives are fine, though, because this time the experience expands upon them.

Glyphs are one new idea, and a particularly neat one. There are a variety of impressive buildings located throughout each of the multiple cities you explore, and some of them have strange markings that were placed there by one of Desmond’s predecessors. When you examine those markings, you’ll be able to solve puzzles to access a small snippet of an encrypted video. There are twenty pieces in total, hidden all over Florence and Venice and surrounding environs. If you piece them together, you’ll discover “The Truth.” It’s a nice little side challenge--completely optional--that explores some of the lore without shoving it in your face. The puzzles can be genuinely perplexing, but you always have sufficient information to solve them, even if it sometimes seems that you don’t.

The six hidden tombs that you might find and explore are another nice touch if you’re growing bored with the primary campaign, though they sometimes prove rather frustrating. Most of the game’s least enjoyable moments play out in those tombs (rendering them optional and allowing you to more thoroughly enjoy the primary content), since you’ll often need to make daring leaps to narrow ledges and it’s all too easy to jump off to the side and take a fall. That by itself isn’t so bad, but some of the more difficult challenges also implement a time limit. A stray leap to the side at an inopportune moment can prove especially irritating, which is disappointing because otherwise the tombs lend the game a satisfying air of mystery (and the reward when you secure each tomb’s treasure is quite cool).

Assassin's Creed II asset

Currency also plays an expanded role in Assassin’s Creed II. You can use money to hire courtesans and thieves that will distract or perhaps even battle guards so that you can more easily reach targets in one piece. If that’s too much effort, you can also toss coins on the ground and doing so will often cause peasants to mob the area, thus giving you freedom to keep moving. Your wealth also allows you to buy armor and weapons--more than you’ll ever need, actually--and you can invest in paintings to decorate an estate that you discover around a quarter of the way through the game. That estate then generates revenue every 20 minutes, and the amount of cash you gain grows as you make upgrades. Those light simulation elements are quite satisfying, as far as they go, much like amassing a real estate fortune was in Fable II.

Most of the other ways in which Assassin’s Creed II improves over its predecessor are less obvious than the ones referenced above. You can find assassination targets for extra income, for example, or you can race thieves along the rooftops or pick fights with wayward husbands. The story missions themselves also include additional variety, and in general you also have better reasons to complete them. You’ll perhaps find a (thankfully brief) stealth mission in one case, then in the next you might have to trail someone who knows something important until he feels secure enough to reveal his secret.

Assassin’s Creed II is a beautiful game, but so was the first Assassin’s Creed. Much of the praise that a person might heap on this sequel applied to its predecessor, when you come right down to it, and yet the execution this time around has undeniably improved and the scope has expanded. The first game showed tremendous promise. It was the start of an exciting new IP with promise, but that’s as far as it went. Assassin’s Creed II is the game that uncompromisingly turns promise into reality, and you can currently obtain it quite cheaply. See that you do.

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