Assassin’s Creed II Review

Assassin’s Creed II is a great example of developers taking something that worked and turning it into something even better. The majority of the game takes place in renaissance Italy where you play as Ezio Auditore da Firenze, another ancestor of Desmond Miles. While you begin as a carefree youth, you are quickly drawn into a massive political battle which turns your world upside down.  Like it’s predecessor, Assassin’s Creed II was developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft.

Renaissance Italy is immediately noticeable as very distinct from the drab middle eastern cities you spent time with in the first Assassin’s Creed. Instead, the cities of Florence, Tuscanny, Forli, and Venice are vibrant places that beam with a sense of life. Citizens cheerfully walk the streets wearing brightly colored clothing. Even the psychotic beggars who used to roam the streets have been replaced with gleeful bards who jump at every opportunity to serenade you with their latest ballad. Instead of the constant tension of war which existed in the first Assassin’s Creed , you now live in a flourishing locale where it seems every opportunity is available.

A major design change took place where some RPG-esque elements have been added. None of the additions are at all overly technical, intrusive or take away from the smooth gameplay. You now have the ability to make money and spend it as you choose. You now have more of a direct impact on your home base. Where Masyaf simply served as a place where you were constantly traveling to and from to get new orders and report back to your master, Monteriggioni is an enclave you have more control over. Early in the game Monteriggioni is in shambles. The town seems to be on its dying breath. However, you are able to invest in fixing up the local shops and repairing various structures in the town. As the town is upgraded, you can visually see a difference in how vibrant the town is. Monteriggioni also brings in more money as the upgrades are performed and you get a periodic cut of the earnings. So you can pour money into improvements and then you’d be able to get a pretty decent and steady income.

A huge new addition that comes along with all this cash flow is the ability to purchase new arms and armor. Armor improvements go through some pretty typical upgrades and help you out in pretty standard ways. Weapons get more exciting. There are many options ranging from specialized knives to maces to sabers and lots in between. All the weapons have ratings for damage, speed, and deflection ability. Different types of weapons present with different finishing moves depending on the type of the weapon and I found a lot of the bludgeoning weapons to have particularly satisfying kill scenes. To add even more excitement to all this, Ezio can also learn how to disarm opponents and steal their weapon. These stolen weapons are not to keep permanently but are extremely fun. This is especially true of a new type of enemy which wields long weapons such as halberds and pikes and such. You are able to steel these weapons and use them for a short time to lay waste to your foes.

Combat overall has been given numerous improvements. Gone are the days where you can simply counter-attack over and over and win any battle without any effort as counter-attacks are often blocked now. The move itself is still helpful, but it is not the end-all that it used to be. There are other new moves that can be used including things such as picking up and throwing sand at your enemies to cause momentary distraction and blindness. You can now poison your enemies and watch them go crazy before dying. Health vials have been introduced so you can heal yourself if you get near death (and if you remembered to stock up on them). There have also been new mechanics added which seem so natural and yet are so fun to use. Air assassinations have been given a makeover and now are an extremely fluid way to take out targets from elevated positions. It is also now possible to take out a target while perched on a ledge. You simply crawl up the side of a building up to an unsuspecting guard who stands faithfully on the roof. Instead of crawling all the way up and alerting him of your presence before trying to take him out, you simply hit the kill button and Ezio pops up, shanks the guard, and pulls him over the side of the ledge in one fluid motion.

It’s a good thing that Ezio has all these new advantages because the guards have gotten some improvements as well. In addition to the polearm wielding guards discussed earlier, there are now soldiers that are heavily armored who wield large axes. Their attacks can be difficult to block and do a lot of damage. There are also some guards which can run extremely fast and prove difficult to evade. Interestingly I found that my weapon of choice in battles was the hidden blade. Counter-attacking with the hidden blades was more difficult than with other weapons. The timing window of when you could successfully launch this counter-attack seems much tighter than with other weapons, but if successful, you always end up with an instant-kill and the finishing moves are pretty creative.

All these changes aside, I think the best improvements have been with the story that is told. The story starts with Ezio as an innocent (in some ways) youth who is thrown into conflict. You never know what the endgame is or the whole picture of what is going on. The game feels more like a long investigation where you slowly learn of new templars involved and must hunt them down to discover more information. Character development is also given quite the face lift. Ezio is a character you will learn a lot about. You will get to know his personality and what drives him very well. Other characters will show much more personality as well. Famous historical characters also are cleverly involved in the plot such as Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli.

Music, voice acting, and noise overall is overall pretty outstanding in Assassin’s Creed II. An excellent job as been done on the score, which really serves to complement the game at key moments to enhance the overall experience. Another positive is that a lot of the “collection” type of objectives have been more integrated into the plot of the story. Instead of randomly collecting hundreds of flags, or killing certain numbers of roaming templars, your new “collection” objectives are given more meaning as well as rewards. They are more seamlessly integrated into what’s happening instead of simply being part of the metagame.

One of the great things about Assassin’s Creed II is that you are always doing something different. One minute you’re racing a carriage through the mountains, then you’re grabbing ribbons off of women, then soaring through the sky in Leonardo’s flying machine. The missions are all pretty varied. There are also new things to work for such as the Assassin’s seals, and codex pages. I particularly enjoyed the missions to recover the seals. Sometimes they would take you into dark catacombs while other times you were in grand cathedrals. They showcased the beautiful design of the game and were a great way to mix up the playing experience.

There were still a few downfalls as well. Despite the beautiful visuals, there were a couple graphical glitches where my character would fall partially through a floor or something similar. Also, right towards the end of the game there are a few scenes where I’m not sure if they were pre-rendered or not but they just looked really low quality, like 10 year old game low quality. It was only this one specific part that was pretty brief but I’m not sure why it was left so unpolished right there.

A challenge that always exists when creating and designing a great game is to give the illusion that you are somewhere real. Anything that tells you that you are in a game detracts from the game. While Assassin’s Creed II does a great job overall with presentation one small area that detracted from the game. Certain missions require you to move about or follow someone and you will find that you often will get swarmed by hoards of the annoying bards as well as citizens holding crates of goods. Now I see the dilemma that the developer is trying to find some way to make these missions more challenging, but when you turn a corner and have 3 bards run right up to you and have crate-holder after crate-holder continually bee-lining right for you no matter how you change your course, it comes off as pre-contrived and artificial.

The Desmond plot is expanded on and Ubisoft has definitely taken a unique approach to this. When you complete the game and think back on everything you’ve learned about what’s going on with Desmond, or Subject 16, or other related areas, you’ll realize not a whole lot. With that being said, the little you have learned is slowly picked up over the course of the game in a way that you are always eagerly looking forward to picking up more and when you finally do get a full nugget of information, it is pretty mindblowingly impactful. Now you will not finish the game with answers, but rather with more questions. Interestingly that is not problematic and I eagerly await more.

Overall, Assassin’s Creed II is a game that you will enjoy playing tremendously and when you finish it, you will wish there was more to play. Ubisoft kept things that worked in the first installment, changed things that didn’t, and added plenty more to make a really compelling game.

Overall: 9.6

Release: 11/17/2009