Taking on the history of renaissance era Italy in its stride, Assassin's Creed 2 - along with its rather charming protagonist, Ezio Auditore da Firenze - on an adventure to avenge the murder of the Auditore family.
This must be the fourth time I've played this game. First playing in 2010 gave me the adrenaline hit I needed - hitting the right notes with alternate history, a cool protagonist, and a thicker plot going on in the background. Over ten years later, and having read Oliver Bowden's novelisation, I'm definitely starting to see the cracks.
I still stand by this game being one of the best games in Ubisoft's line up, not just the Assassin's Creed franchise. It has all the good markings of a brilliant game and it serves us with a greatly paleatable experience. Having played other games from Ubisoft amongst many other modern titles over the last decade, the nostalgia is beginning to wear off.
This will always be a game I'll reccomend, but in faith of writing these reviews for myself in the future, I don't think I'd play it again. Perhaps I've grown out of it four times in, perhaps I just see there are better stories to relive. After having read the book and seeing the effort Bowden puts into embellishing Ezio's first forty years, my experience in-game greatly contracts. I begun to saw how little the game tries to embellish that story, and it all becomes a little anemic and repetitive. Assassin's Creed 2 is a very traditional heroes journey and has very little nuance compared to Assassin's Creed 1. Altair's story was of something greater than himself or Desmond, and Ezio's story feels driven for forty years for the sake of blood lust. Bowden clearly had more opportunity to represent both Altair's and Ezio's feelings in the respecting novelisations, but there is where the video games suffer.
Tack on some great additions such as blending, far more weapons, and varying enemies weaknesses, and some frankly interesting Assassin's tombs; you still have to contend with a pretty boring fighting system (mash those buttons! counter kill!), a map design where I'm not convinced the designers really chose to distinct between what is scalable when climbing and what isn't beyond the blatantly obvious, and an aggressive amount of collectables that don't really add to the experience. Don't get me started on that Savonarola mission....
All in all, if you like the Assassin's Creed titles and want something a little more on-rails than the post-2020 titles, this is the game for you. Make sure you're feeling patient though.
This must be the fourth time I've played this game. First playing in 2010 gave me the adrenaline hit I needed - hitting the right notes with alternate history, a cool protagonist, and a thicker plot going on in the background. Over ten years later, and having read Oliver Bowden's novelisation, I'm definitely starting to see the cracks.
I still stand by this game being one of the best games in Ubisoft's line up, not just the Assassin's Creed franchise. It has all the good markings of a brilliant game and it serves us with a greatly paleatable experience. Having played other games from Ubisoft amongst many other modern titles over the last decade, the nostalgia is beginning to wear off.
This will always be a game I'll reccomend, but in faith of writing these reviews for myself in the future, I don't think I'd play it again. Perhaps I've grown out of it four times in, perhaps I just see there are better stories to relive. After having read the book and seeing the effort Bowden puts into embellishing Ezio's first forty years, my experience in-game greatly contracts. I begun to saw how little the game tries to embellish that story, and it all becomes a little anemic and repetitive. Assassin's Creed 2 is a very traditional heroes journey and has very little nuance compared to Assassin's Creed 1. Altair's story was of something greater than himself or Desmond, and Ezio's story feels driven for forty years for the sake of blood lust. Bowden clearly had more opportunity to represent both Altair's and Ezio's feelings in the respecting novelisations, but there is where the video games suffer.
Tack on some great additions such as blending, far more weapons, and varying enemies weaknesses, and some frankly interesting Assassin's tombs; you still have to contend with a pretty boring fighting system (mash those buttons! counter kill!), a map design where I'm not convinced the designers really chose to distinct between what is scalable when climbing and what isn't beyond the blatantly obvious, and an aggressive amount of collectables that don't really add to the experience. Don't get me started on that Savonarola mission....
All in all, if you like the Assassin's Creed titles and want something a little more on-rails than the post-2020 titles, this is the game for you. Make sure you're feeling patient though.