Assassin's Creed II

Ever rarely does it seem that a sequel to a loved, albeit flawed, sales hit ever deliver on it's promises of fixing every problem and adding on more than what was ever to be expected. Assassin's Creed II not only manages to fulfill it's duties as a sequel by addressing the most notable issues encountered in the first game, it also does so much more to improve itself that it amounts to an incredibly satisfying and fulfilling experience. 

People can never be pleased on the internet, it seems. While generally well-recieved by fans and critics, the first Assassin's Creed suffered from a few issues that were voiced loud and clear by it's players. Unlike most situations, Ubisoft Montreal actually took the care to listen in to everyone's complaints about the first game and quite literally made what could interpreted as the perfect sequel. Along with having a story that actually is quite good, the game is almost double the length of the first, even after removing all of the open world tediousness of horse-back riding and the infamous "flag collecting". The main story is now filled with interesting and lively characters and the most dreaded fault of the first game, it's repetitive mission structure and lack of side-mission variety, is almost completely nullified. There are still some issues but what ultimately makes Assassin's Creed II great is what also makes you forget about those problems.

Achieving the Platinum trophy after 25 hours of play and beating the main story somewhere around the 17-18 hour mark, Assassin's Creed II is a significantly longer game than the first. The game will take you through a much greater variety of areas and the story you'll be playing through is much more engaging than the first time around thanks to some great characters. The game instantly picks up after the first Assassin's Creed with you controlling Desmond Miles as he escapes Abstergo with Lucy, the female assistant from the first game. You proceed to meet a group of individuals who have their own Animus machine, dubbed the Animus 2.0, who recruit you to unlock the secrets of the Assassin order and answers related to the Templars and their relic conspiracies. In the Animus, you'll play as Ezio Auditore di Firenze, a young Assassin who's father and brothers are murdered due to a political injustice in Florence. Ezio seeks out answers as to why his family is killed, how the Templars tie in to all of it and what are the pieces of Eden both the Templar and Assassin orders are chasing. The first game essentially had you acting out an agenda with no real emotional tie to all of it, so it's a huge breath of fresh air for Assassin's Creed II's main character to be so vocal and likable. Along the story you'll meet a bunch of supporting characters, the most notable one being Leonardo da Vinci, and they will take you through many areas like Florence, Tuscany, Venice and Forli. Speaking of which, the game is doused in historical references. You'll be helping out the Medici family early on and move on to meet many characters involved in Renaissance history like Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI). You'll meet them in extremely accurate portrayals of each city filled with perfect-to-the-tooth recreations of the landmarks found in each one. If you're unaware of the history like I was, it's dazzlingly interesting stuff. If you're well aware of the history, it's super-interesting to see how they tie everything together while still staying marginally faithful to their source material. The story will introduce a fair amount of sharp turns you won't see coming and the end of each chapter will always leave you wondering just what is waiting for you next. It really ties in together super well and makes it well-worth playing through. That shouldn't even be a problem, I personally couldn't put the controller down once I got halfway through. It's pacing is great and the momentum the story has is terrific. 

Unfortunately, I bought the PS3 version. The story sure can have momentum but the game's performance sure doesn't. Not on this system, at least. I've yet to try the 360 version but the PS3 version runs pretty terribly. By no means is it unplayable, it never ever got in my way and never made itself more than just an unfortunate disadvantage. The textures pop-in frequently and the draw distance is rather poor but the biggest offender is the frame rate. It's never consistent and will more often than not drop between the 15-20 range. Not just in crowded areas, either. You could be facing the ocean and it would still drop. I've no clue why, it's not like Ubisoft has never made a game on the system before, it's just extremely unpleasant and makes it kind of a bother when you notice it. The animation on the characters is fantastic, thankfully. Ezio will move in silky-smooth fashion (when the frame rate isn't chugging) and cutscenes are acted out incredibly well. The only problem I had, really, was that apart from Ezio, who is intricately modeled, most of the characters in cutscenes look rather fugly up close. They look a little blocky and choppy, some textures just looking outright awful. The terrific voice acting is there to divert you although accents can take a little adjusting, considering they're obviously going for "We're going to make you understand our conversations" instead of "Historical accuracy". Even then, it remains quite stellar. Better yet is to put on some of the foreign tracks. The game offers you the ability to play the game in italian with subtitles, though I played a good part of it with the french track on (I'm from Montreal so I tried to see just how good the french track is) and it's quite well produced. For people who don't understand the language, it's entertaining but for those that do, it's incredibly well acted and the mannerisms are much more accurate in french than english. I would assume it's same for the italian track.

The graphics are really where I'm done complaining about issues in the game. The rest is all gameplay and it's gloriously refined to the point of being a standard for open-world games. The most important thing to point out is that the repetitive mission structure and nature of the original Assassin's Creed is gone. ... Seriously. It's over. No more 3 mission types. No more flags. ... DUDERS. Seriously. It's worth the 60$ right there, christ. But no. Ubisoft just, you know, had to sweeten the deal. How 'bout every mission being it's own type? How about side-missions having a bunch of sub-types to offer up so much variety you'll never feel you're doing the same thing twice? That good enough? It's basically the difference between GTA: Vice City and San Andreas. The first had terrific ideas but was hampered down by the fact you were essentially doing the same 4 missions over and over with just a different dialogue happening before, during and after the mission. San Andreas had every mission be it's own thing. You were still doing Point A-to-B, shoot until X, drive here, etc. but it was handled in a way that always made it fresh and different. The same can essentially be said for Assassin's Creed II and it's what makes it tirelessly entertaining. It will have you clawing at your own brain for more when away from it. The free-running is still here and slightly improved to make climbing and such a bit more fluid, though the "having jump and run on the same button" thing can get a little infuriating when you're running one way, trying to jump another and miss your leap completely. It's  nothing climbing the way you went can't fix, but still. The one thing I found a little weird was how the rooftops and such were designed. The first Assassin's Creed was designed in such a way that the rooftops really were the best route to go if you were trying to get somewhere. In ACII, the rooftops seem so much more complicated and varied in design that it makes it rather difficult to just speed through roofs. It had me relying on city streets more often than not and it took a little getting used to. It's not a game breaker or anything, perhaps it's just the rooftops in the Renaissance era are more complex or some dumb hogwash like that. Oh, and Fast Travel stations. That's right! No more horse-back riding across desolate deserts and areas devoid of excitement. Wanna go from Florence to Venice? 100 florins!

While on the subject of money, there's a lot to spend it on. Which is a good thing. 'Cause by the end of the game, I had 460,000 florins in my virtual pocket. About an hour or two in the game, you will have to flee Florence to your family's home town of Monteriggioni where you can spend money to upgrade the town's decrepit stores and vacant lots to attract tourists and merchants. The city upgrades, you get tax revenue and the better the city, the higher the revenue. Buying paintings from art dealers, completing Armor sets, finding items in the world- all of these contribute to the Villa's value and you get a cut of the tax revenue every day. I was getting about 50,000 per game day-cycle. That's every 20 minutes, another 50,000. You can buy armor upgrades, weapon upgrades, throwing knife ammo, smoke bomb ammo, poisons, health packs— there's a fairly vast amount of things to spend your money on and luckily the game will be more than happy to throw it at you. (Or you can throw it at the crowd, up to you.) All the upgrades affect your health, attack power, attack speed and counter-attack effectiveness. You can also spend your money on Treasure Maps that will show the locations of chests sprawled across the world containing more money. Spend money to make money. Along with the treasures, there's 100 feathers located throughout the world that you can collect, viewpoints return from the first game and the new addition this time around, the glyphs. 

The glyphs are symbols hidden in the world by Subject 16, a former Abstergo captive like Desmond. Subject 16 discovered a deep truth about Abstergo and has encrypted his finding in separate glyphs that you find on walls of the game's many historical monuments. When you decrypt a glyph, you're faced with a series of puzzles that uncover the truth behind the Templar's interest with the Assassin order as well as their role in world history. It's all super-fluous and it's territory explored by other mediums, but it doesn't stop it from being so interesting that you'll wish it was actually true so you could study up on this stuff. The whole Abstergo/Templar fiction the game elaborates on is some of the most engaging fantasy I've been exposed to in a while, despite being the whole world conspiracy/new world order jargon crazy people go on about. If you know a little bit about the Knights Templar, you know there has been rumors since their very conception of their involvement with holy relics and conspiracies around their rapid rise to power and injust dismantlement. The game just takes all of that and pushes it to a level far beyond you could possibly imagine which makes you, in the end, think two things. One makes you think what could possibly come of the game after the end of this one and the second, what the hell the Templars actually were. I'd suggest you read up on them if it interests you, it's some incredibly interesting history. 

Assassin's Creed II isn't just what I wanted out the first game or what I expected out of a sequel. It really is an accomplishment as to what an extremely dedicated team who adores their fans enough to listen to every single one of their complaints, while still moving forward with their intended direction, can do. It plays better than anything else in it's genre, it has an extremely engaging story line and establishes a fiction that could be explored for many more entries to come, it looks and sounds beautiful and best of all, it's fun for every second it will last you. You need to buy this game. It's an absolute must-play for anyone who remotely enjoyed the first and if you didn't, you'll probably like this one too since it fixes all of the problems you most likely had with the first. If this is the product of developers listening to fans and critics, there's no excuse for not supporting it. Assassin's Creed II is, by far and large, in a league of it's own and at the top of it's genre.