I bought the AC package during the last Steam sale and finally got to continue the story. Great game for the most parts - once you get used to the little quirks with the parkour, especially the jumping, the gameplay feels really good.

But I definitely take issue with some of the story elements in the game. I really wished there'd been more dialogue with people. I mean, Claudia just sits by the desk unchanging and without anything to say - for decades? Uncle Mario has nothing to say about that fact that his crappy mansion and pathetic town is now all nice and shiny and filled with art? I ended with 98% - just missing 44 feathers, which I doubt I'll go get. So I was really expecting some comments when I finished renovations, unlocked Altaïr's armor and etc. Ezio's personal life felt just so dead - time passed and nothing changed.

The game also had way too many scenes where you have the enemy at your mercy and then they pull "Ha ha! I'm not at your mercy at all." and stab you or run away. And my biggest issue with the game: Ezio let the Spaniard live? For god's sake - he's pretty much the reason for every single death in the game. He's the reason you've been slaughtering people left and right for two decades and when you finally get a chance to make all those deaths count by killing the bad guy - you let him live so he can continue enioying his life as the Pope. Totally ruined the ending for me, which otherwise was pretty interesting.

Oh, and the DLC sequences... It took Ezio 9 years to track down that damned monk? Really?

Think I'll have to take a break before installing Brotherhood.

Yeah kinda lame, but what do you expect?

The DLC sequences almost ruined AC2 for me, the gameplay in them was so boring. They came with the PC version so I just stumbled into them.

As for the end, yea letting him lives was really a strange choice, you'll see however that it doesn't have nearly as huge an effect on story as you think it would. You should go play Brotherhood.

Well, I decided to jump right back in with Brotherhood and so far, I've been pretty annoyed.

Why can't I go back and retrieve the invincible Altaïr's armor - surely it survived the cannonball? Or any of my gear for that matter? I had 2 rooms full of stuff and I doubt the Borgia soldiers bothered to steal my daggers and stuff when I somehow left my 300k florins lying around as well. I don't know - I get the reason they stripped me of my money and gear, but I feel they did it in such an awkward way that they just managed to piss me off.

Also, I hate the 100% synchronization thing - now I'm forced to replay bits of the game? What the hell. It didn't bother me too much, until I had to replay the Romulus attack 5-6 times before I could kill them without taking damage, and when I realized that if I wanted to get the Romulus dungeon done within 8 minutes, I had to come back later beccause otherwise I'd miss out of the secrets. Why they would do this - I have no idea.

Maybe a longer break would have been warranted - this might just be a case of AC overdose.

I finished AC2 last month and I too thought that the DLC almost ruined the entire game. I can't beleive I paid extra for that!.

And yes I also agree that for 20 years Ezio has no personal life. Claudia is sitting at a desk, Mom is crying in her room and I'm running around killing some of the most influential Italian players of all time.

You don't have to do any of the 100% synchronizations to finish the game. Just get 50% on everything and move on, don't bother being completionist about those as they're not SO well done it's worth it. They're meant to guide you to try a different playstyle, and sometimes they do that efficiently.

I'm hoping you do have some more substantial complaints about Brotherhood than "I didn't get my gear because video games are still video games" and "an optional element of the game is giving me a frustrating case of OCD." Because there are some, and those are so minimal in comparison to either what makes that game good OR what makes that game not great that it confuses me that you'd bring either one up.

I've heard awful things about the DLC sequences in ACII. Also, it seems like you're confusing side-characters not being developed with actual STORY issues. What does Mario commenting on how nice the villa is now do for the plot in which Ezio gets revenge on the Borgias for his family's deaths and assaults and becomes a master assassin in the process? Ezio's personal life is pretty dead; I personally don't understand people's attachment to the character, as he's not quite Batman or Spiderman in the suit and doesn't even try to be Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker outside of it. Well, until Revelations, but if you're bummed out by the story at this point, Revelations is gonna seem like a damned chore.

As for not killing the Pope, it's meant to be a place where the arc can end for Ezio. Until they saw fan reaction to their not-character and realized how much money they could make off of him.

@Dunchad: Ubisoft kinda boxed themselves into a corner by using actual historical figures. There are limits to how far they can play with it and still not lose credibility. But don't worry, Rodrigo Borgia or Pope Alexander VI if you will, died very painfully just a few short years later in 1503from a 'fever" that made his skin peel and turned his stomach and bowels into liquid . When viewing his body a day later an account was given that

"The face was very dark, the color of a dirty rag or a mulberry, and was covered all over with bruise-colored marks. The nose was swollen; the tongue had bent over in the mouth, completely double, and was pushing out the lips which were, themselves, swollen. The mouth was open and so ghastly that people who saw it said they had never seen anything like it before."

As far as the DLC then it was a complete ass move by ubisoft in order to squeeze just a few more silver pieces from the players. You can clearly see they intentionally took those chapter out of the game in order to use it under the guise of DLC.

@Mikemcn: You thought Bonfire of the Vanities was boring? It was 9 fairly clever assassinations in a row, it was one of the best parts of the game.

Ezio didn't kill Rodrigo because 1. It's still a bit historically accurate. He wasn't killed by some Italian dude in a secret room in the Vatican, he died of illness, which Brotherhood explains quite easily into its whole conspiracy thing. 2. Ezio already said it earlier, he spent 2 decades looking for the guy and didn't feel like he would get any fulfillment from killing him. Cheesy, but lightly foreshadowed. However, Ezio isn't an idiot, so I think he should have killed Rodrigo because he's an evil bastard. That's what stands out to me about it.

The time skips were always bizarre. You kill this guy, then there's a transition 2 years forward, only for everybody to act like it all happened just yesterday.

As for Brotherhood, it has a lot to do, but I only really liked it when I was just messing around. Way, way too many tailing sections, the plot goes nowhere, Rome doesn't have nearly as much freedom as Venice or Florence.

Brotherhood is definitely a better game all around, though the ending to Brotherhood is mind blowing as well...   But yeah since the Assassin's Creed series tries to tie in real historical figures, they have to leave certain people''s fates intact, in this case the Pope wasn't murdered until years later where he was poisoned with cantarella(or sickness, it's up to debate and still unknown really).  If Ezio killed him right there at the end, then they would have to rewrite hundreds of years of history for the rest of their game series to fit their game wolrd and i don't think that's a task that Ubisoft wanted to deal with.

All of Ass creed has too many "I am sneaking....I am sneaking....oh no..." Guard shouts "I see ASSISANSINO!!!" all in a cut scene. You dont actualy sneak in that game.

Oh well at the end you got to kick the pope in the balls over and over and over and over and over.

Ah, thanks for the resurrect.

Those two posts were just me ranting about little stuff that I somehow always get bothered by. Having finished Brotherhood, I can say with confidence that it's a pretty damn great game. But when you have a great game like that, those little things tend to bother you even more than they should.

And like you can probably tell, I'm a completionist and also it drives me crazy when the story doesn't stick to the established rules of the world it's set in or it does something illogical by human behaviour standards (at least what I perceive to be the standards). So these games did drive me up the wall on an occasion - but I still managed to have tons of fun with them. No harm, no foul.

Won't be getting Revelations though - don't like anything I've heard about it so far.