A Franchise Renaissance
Imagine a hidden-blade wielding assassin chasing his target at full speed on top of a roof in Renaissance Italy. Now imagine he leaps from one building to another, over a canal in Venice. Then, he grabs a pole, swings off that pole, and is now gracefully falling through the air. Now imagine as he lands, he skillfully thrusts his blade through the neck of his target. Now imagine this scenario is typical gameplay in a game with beautiful graphics, tight and easy to grasp controls, a driving story, and a setting bursting with atmosphere and detail. What you’re picturing right now is exactly what Assassin’s Creed II has to offer.
The sequel to 2007’s Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Creed II was released on November 17, 2009 for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 from our friends at Ubisoft Montreal. It takes place during the Renaissance in everyone’s favorite country shaped like a boot (more specifically, the cities of Florence, San Gimignano, and Venice, among others). The first question anyone is going to ask is “So, like, is it just like AC but in a different setting?” The only simple way to answer this is “In all the best ways”. You play as Ezio Auditore Di Firenze, another one of Desmond Miles’ ancestors. He begins the story as a local son of a banker who plans on following in his father’s footsteps. Except that before he can reach his goal of counting money for a living, something terrible happens. This sets him on a personal quest for vengeance, prompting him to don a white cloak and hidden dagger. He was never part of a guild before, but that isn’t an issue as the game is able to justify how he learns to become an assassin. The story is fairly detailed, well written, and sure to interest even the most historically cold hearted high school student.
All of the best aspects of the first game are present and accounted for. You’ve got your free-running on rooftops, your climbing seemingly un-climbable buildings, your hidden blade (two, in fact!), and your sneaking around trying to stab a fool without anyone knowing you were even there. This game also adds a weapon and armor upgrade system, currency, a small real-estate portion, and Leonardo Da Vinci: a family friend who is eager to let you test out his inventions on several unsuspecting guards. Of course it’s all in the name of science, so there’s no need to feel bad about that. The game also manages to tie in multiple other historical figures in interesting and innovative ways.
The combat here is built upon that of the last game, and the controls are just as you’d expect them. You attack, grab, block, dodge, and counter all with a combination of a trigger and the four face buttons. It is easy to learn, difficult to master, though consistently rewarding. You can pick up the discarded weapons of enemies (which range from other swords to battle axes and spears) to really “stick” it to ‘em.
ACII is a sequel in the best sense of the word. Not only does it feature all of the good stuff listed above, but it also does away with all the elements that made the first game not so great. There is now a much larger variety of side quests to perform when you’re not busy assassinating someone. These are not only more fun, but aren’t required to progress through the story. So if, for some reason, you have a thing against beating up dudes, taking on extra assassination contracts, running races, or delivering high-priority mail, you can definitely skip these activities without penalty. However, if you enjoy doing stuff like that, there’s plenty of opportunity to be found here. These side missions also act as a great way to learn the layout of the city that you’re currently in. There’s only about five or six different types, but each one is named individually, so at least you get the impression that you’re doing something unique each time.
If repetition is really a pain in your behind, then going through the story will not require any painkillers on your part. The missions vary from getting from point A to point B, to taking out certain groups of guards across the city, to certain cinematic events that are one-of-a-kind, and give you quite the adrenaline rush upon completing. The story here is noticeably longer than that of the first game, and will likely take you anywhere from fifteen to twenty hours to complete, depending of the side missions you partake in. It should also be noted that it is very easy to get distracted from the main story with all there is to do and see.
But in order to see as much as you can, you’ll once again need to scale and sync viewpoints, which requires that you climb to the spot indicated. There are 62 of these spots in the entire game. It gets tiresome and plain old boring scaling towers for the sake of scaling towers, and since some of them are repeats (you’ll scale the same tower about four different times, difference being the location), partaking in other side missions will sound like a preferable alternative, especially because the whole “viewpoint” thing goes on longer than it should.
Certain missions that involve “tailing” someone also have a tendency to go on longer than they should. Checkpoints are generally spread pretty thin during these missions, so patience is definitely a virtue for making it through incognito, and with both Ezio (and your controller) in one piece.
From a technical viewpoint, this game looks and sounds beautiful. Everything from the busy city streets to the slight wave of Ezio’s cape looks smooth and sharp. The sound design is also a strong point. Busy market noises, peaceful relaxed chatter, the violent clash of swords, and the scream of a slain foe all sounds very well done. The orchestrated music composed by Jesper Kyd fits the mood perfectly. Add all of that to beautiful looking textures and effects, with highly detailed environments, and Assassin’s Creed II presents you with what feels like a living, breathing world where you will want to spend as much time in as you can.
When making a sequel, you always need to balance out new content while maintaining what made the first game what it was. Assassin’s Creed 2 does a marvelous job of that. It is still definitely Assassin’s Creed, but with refinements, adjustments, and additions that improve on every part of the first game. The controls are familiar but improved, the story is deeper and more fleshed out, and the environments are as pretty and feel as alive as they’ll ever be. There is a lot more to do, and side missions are a lot more interesting this time around, but certain of the other parts of the game can begin to feel tedious. This is overshadowed, though, by the terrific main story and strong narrative. Truly a sequel in the best sense of the word, ACII is definitely worth playing if you liked anything about Assassin’s Creed.
