Assassin's Creed 2

Assassin's Creed II steps up it's gameplay compared to the first of the series and it started a lot of trends for future games (for better or worse), and the story is expanded, but I wouldn't say for the better. Everything about combat and climbing and everything gameplay in my Assassin's Creed review has been splendidly turned around with this game. Combat feels familiar but improved, with more fluid and responsive swordplay. Climbing is so much better, no longer does scaling the houses and towers feel linear and punishing should you miss an input. It's faster and once again more responsive than the original, making for a fun and overall more relaxing experience (because I'm not blowing steam out of my ears from how annoying the movement was before). Stealth is slightly better from the original, but unfortunately not by much, I still found myself fighting through most encounters due to the lackluster mechanics. Other smaller mechanics are added to improve the gameplay, like hirable factions to distract enemies or hide from them with, but it also comes with a lot of additional side content the likes of which you would find in the later games before Origins. All the extra activities can be a good or a bad thing depening on how you feel, I personally feel the main story was bloated enough without going out of your way to do anything unrelated. Speaking of the story, going back to experience the games in chronological order having only played Black Flag and Syndicate before, I wasn't expecting the shark to be jumped in the second game. In my review of the first game I glossed over the story as not being worth the gameplay, but besides that I thought the premise of history as we know it being fabricated to cover up an intergenerational war between Assassin's and Templars over the possession of magical artifacts to be a very interesting premised and while it wasn't fleshed out much in the first game, I feel like Assassin's Creed 2 did way too much in it's stead. Pick any historical figure you can think of, Ubisoft has made them either a Templar or an Assassin depending on how much the writers liked them and every single event in history has some involvement from either faction being swept under the rug. A lot of the flavor text sounds like something a conspiracy theorist would come up with unironically but even in a fictional setting it doesn't sound any less stupid. As for the actual story, Ezio Auditore is an infinitely more charming protagonist that Altiar was and I quite liked his progression throughout. The early and middle parts are solid, but towards the end the pacing gets really bad and the plot starts to drag. Just when I was ready for the game to be over, the mcguffin is taken and now you're playing in a derivative memory sequence just to get it back and its the most repetitive and frustrating sequence. The actual ending slightly makes up for it, but I think the game overstays its welcome and could have had two of its sequences cut without it disrupting the plot. If you can stomach the latter half of the game, I'd give Assassin's Creed 2 a try if only to envision the beginning of a long lineage of games with all of the extra fluff that would become a staple in all Ubisoft games.

Игра точно стоит свеч, особенно для тех, кто ещё не ознакомился с серией игр Assassin's Creed

I played this once or twice pirated, decided to buy it with some QoL mods like eagle patch and deluxe edition unlocker, I had a fun time doing 100% for this, definitely my favorite from the series.

Miglior gioco della saga a mani basse, una storia incredibile e nonostante sia datato come gioco e comunque godibilissimo anche al giorno d'oggi

peak

abysmal default binds but pretty glad I could look past them to be italian for a few days

didn't play it back in the day so i have no nostalgia and didn't really enjoy the playthrough the bad: requires patches to play today controls are clunky game is too big (too long, too much space, too many characters) the good: italian setting is nice writing has some good moments paved the way for later titles which i prefer, so thanks