Still waiting for the first AC to be fixed.
Assassin's Creed 2 was extremely hyped for fixing everything that was wrong with the first game, and glorious review after glorious review told me that it didn't matter that the I thought the first one was underwhelming, because this one was "everything the first one should have been". I can totally see where people are coming from saying that it is a more fleshed out experience in terms of characters and storytelling, because those aspects are definitely improved from the first Assassin's Creed, but in terms of actual gameplay quality, I honestly found this game just as lacking as the last.
Some of the thematic differences in AC2 from the first are ones that probably hint at a gameplay difference, but in reality don't actuallly change much. The dual hidden blades is the most glaring of these: you still just press X to off somebody, and if there are 2 guards right next to each other do you really think there still would have been 2 if you only had a single blade? This is a choice that really just changes animations, and while those are cool, make no mistake that double hidden blades is the exact same from a gameplay standpoint as one hidden blade. The inclusion of all the different types of equipment in general just feels somewhat wasted. You can have a sword, small weapon, hidden blades, poison blade, throwing knives, gun-thing, smoke bombs, and probably some others that I'm forgetting equipped at the same time. These are thematically all kind of neat, but realistically I only ever fought using my sword or just straight up unarmed. That's right - unarmed. With all the multitudes of weapon choices in the game, Ubisoft thought they'd make the game "harder" by making enemies that you can't block or counter, making unarmed fighting easily the best option in the game.
Another frustrating feature added to AC2 is the assassin's stronghold. This is your base of operations that you can upgrade to make money and get discounts at shops, and it is also where all your equipment is stored. I can't understand for the life of me why I had to run all the way back to my stronghold to change equipment or get my income every 20 minutes - it seems like the money could just be deposited into my wallet instead of an extremely far out of the way chest, and I'm pretty sure nobody would care if you put an "Change Equipment" option in the pause menu. The last big sore spot for me about AC2 is just the general traversal problems I had. I fell off of rooftops all the time because Ezio didn't do what I wanted him to quite right. Ubisoft made Prince of Persia, and that game had excellent platforming even when on much more complicated set pieces than anything in AC2, so I just don't understand why those mechanics just felt so off.
All that being said, AC2 isn't a bad game. It's just not the improvement over the first that I was lead to believe it was. As I said, probably the best thing about the game was the character development and plot progression, well, excluding the end sequence of the game. Unfortunately, this doesn't make up for the still very bland combat, unsatisfying and sometimes annoying platforming, and the other annoyances like the frequent trips to the stronghold. If you really loved the first Assassin's Creed and are up for more of pretty much the same thing, then Assassin's Creed 2 is your game. If not, you might want to think about getting out of the franchise now, because I don't see it going far away from it's bajillion copy selling formula any time soon.
