I loved the first game, watched the trailer for this one over and over, and jumped head first the moment I could get my hands on this game when I was around 14 years old.

I learned the whole city completely, to the point that now I wonder if I could have oriented myself in Rome if I was dropped there in real life. It felt huge having this new game mode with characters that joined the assassins, the story felt powerful, and there even was a multiplayer game, that if I don't remember wrong (could be from other assassins game) is the one I played for tens of hours at least.

A game that really understands what a sequel should be in regards to character writing, story, world building and gameplay.

Recruiting and using assassins in combat and stealth is peak assassin power fantasy (no need for ridiculous supernatural powers, cough originsodysseyvalhalla cough)

Ezio's brotherhood robes might be the best in the series.

Rome feels oppressive and looks great (the skybox especially is beautiful), combat while being incredibly easy like most of the Ezio trilogy still feels engaging due to the intrinsic motivation to feel like a badass assassin (piling up bodies with chain kills), you feel the impact of the kills with animations that are brutal and flashy like they should be.

However,
The cover art is honestly a sin, I get it wanted to feature the multiplayer selling point, but this could've been easily fixed if they replaced them with generic assassins you recruit for the brotherhood. Would've still gotten the multiplayer point across and made more sense in regards to Ezio's journey