When recalling the first Assassin’s Creed, one is left with mixed feelings. On one hand, leaping off of a building and assassinating a hapless evildoer was thrilling. On the other, the repetition found throughout the game left it feeling stale and lifeless after a while. Assassin’s Creed 2 not only remedies the problems found in the first title, but makes grand strides in turning the franchise into something more than AC1 could ever dream of being. The repetition is completely gone, the streets feel alive, and there is so much more to do than the main story and a few dull side missions that you could find yourself wandering for a while. Read on for more.
AC2 continues the story of Desmond. He still uses the Animus, and still explores some assassin ancestor’s memories. In this case, he is reliving the life of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an Italian assassin during the Renaissance period. Ezio is a wonderful character, with realistic emotions and a likable personality. He feels like a real person with a background. Unlike Altaïr, you learn to care about Ezio and his situation, and are heartbroken when bad things happen to him. Desmond’s background story gets opened up a little bit more, too, but he is only a small portion of what you’ll be playing.
"Seriously, Lucy? I thought I was the main character. Get my lawyers. I want a contract review."
If the graphics from the first game were good, then these are stellar. The enhanced detail in characters’ facial features are awesome, and the environments (somehow) look even better than in AC1. The historic detail in the buildings and streets are astounding, and you’ll hardly find any flaws in the visuals worth paying attention to. The cities feel alive with people, and it can be fun just walking around and exploring, grabbing the various collectibles in the game such as feathers and flags, and pickpocketing. You can get lost for long periods of time just gawking at the beauty of the world around you from the rooftops above. Ezio’s assassin outfit is a bit more interesting to look at than Altaïr’s, and it can be recolored and customized if you have the money. Yes, this installment of the game has money, and it is fairly well implemented.
The money system is a nice treat, not only because you can choose and buy your weapons and upgrade your armor, but because you can increase your income over time. Ezio’s base of operations is in a little villa called Monteriggioni. Here you can upgrade the various shops in the area or buy valuable paintings to increase the villa’s overall value, thus increasing your income, which you will have to collect regularly from a chest in the villa. More money means more toys, and everybody loves toys.
You can buy new weapons, all of which have different advantages relating to their attack speed, damage, and ability to deflect incoming attacks. You can even wield two-handed weapons, which are very slow, but do large amounts of damage. And it’s always a plus to smash somebody in the face with a warhammer. If you’re broke though, and would like to play around with a new weapon for a while, you can always pick up the weapons of your fallen enemies and use them temporarily. Like brooms.
- Brooms. The cornerstone of any nutritious assassin arsenal.
The combat in AC2 is mostly the same, but with some improvements. You still attack with primarily one button, you still counter attack and string combos together. You can still kick and throw your enemies around to open them up to your attacks. After the basics though, you start to find the improvements over the first game. For one, you can disarm your enemies if you are wielding only your fists. You can then follow up by running him through with his own sword. You can also use the hidden blade as a weapon, and not just a means of countering. You can strike with it, block using the gauntlet, and string together combos like any other weapon. The variety of weapons has increased, which is a very pleasant change. You can wield two-handed swords, maces, hammers and spears. Of course you still have all of your favorites from the first game, too, such as the longsword, shortblade and throwing knives. You can buy different types of weapons in each category (except throwing knives; there’s only one type) and decide which one is best for you. You can still fight from horseback, but I found my self preferring to stand on the ground and fight. The most I did with a horse was escape or use it to travel long distances more quickly.
If you find yourself without a weapon for some reason, you still have options. Not only can you disarm your enemies and steal their weapons as mentioned before, you can kick, grapple, dodge and throw sand in your enemies’ eyes. Ezio is well prepared for almost any situation, and once you get a good hold on the deceptively deep combat system, you’ll own the streets. Word has it that if you’re awesome enough and kill enough men with only your fists in the game, Ubisoft will come to your house and give you a hug [citation needed].
- They love you more than you know.
Stealth in the game is similar to the last, but there are some improvements there, as well. For one, you can poison people. Moments after being poisoned, your target will begin to hallucinate and flail his weapon around, hurting everyone around him. This also creates an excellent distraction, allowing you to slip past the guards unnoticed. The second major improvement to stealth killing is by far my favorite; dual hidden blades. I cannot say it enough; DUAL HIDDEN BLADES. No too far into the story, the wonderful Leonardo da Vinci will provide you with a second hidden blade for your right arm, and you’ll be taking out your targets two at a time. This of course makes your notoriety shoot up a lot faster, which is something I will discuss shortly. Assassination works the same as the first game. You sneak up on somebody and stab them with your hidden blade and walk away unnoticed. You can hide in a stack of hay or a crowd and kill your target from the most unexpected places. Or, if you like to be flashy, you can leap off of a building, pull them down from a ledge and let them fall to their doom, or simply hold the high profile button for an intentionally loud kill. You will eventually get a hidden pistol as well, which is, if I even have to say it, completely freaking awesome. Of course all this high profile murder will only draw attention to you, and result in chases similar to those of the first game, unless you have the skill to take out all of the guards pursuing you. Often times if you kill enough of them, the last one or two will run away, deciding that their blood is probably better off inside their body than on the ground. Once you are finished, feel free to loot the bodies for money and goodies, which you immediately find is a nice change from the last game.
In the last paragraph I mentioned a little something called notoriety. This is a fun system that can be somewhat likened to a “wanted level,” a la Grand Theft Auto. The more trouble you cause, the more notoriety you will have. So if you did choose to stick around and fight the group of guards hating on you, you’ll be building up your notoriety pretty fast. Once your meter fills up, any guard who sees you will become suspicious and approach you. Usually if you can walk away without creating too much of a disturbance they end up leaving you alone. If you run though, they will pursue you. To reduce your notoriety you can tear down wanted posters of yourself, bribe heralds with money to talk about something to get the public’s mind off of you, or kill officials that happened to be witnesses. If you can reduce your notoriety to zero, you should be able to walk around undisturbed. If you are notorious and a guard figures out who you are, you’ll have to decide pretty quickly if you’re going to make an escape or try and slaughter everyone. If you decide to escape, prepare to make Harry Houdini jealous.
If you played AC1, you know that you had a very limited variety of hiding places. You had your hay bales, rooftop gardens, benches, and groups of scholars. Well, all of those are still around, with the exception of the scholars. The reason is because now, it is possible to hide in any crowd. Find a group of people standing or walking around, walk into the middle of them, and you’ll blend right in and begin chatting or walking with them. If your pursuers didn’t see you enter the crowd, they’ll have no clue where you vanished to. Even if you are notorious, you will usually be fine if you are hidden in a crowd. It’s not as seamless as it could be, though. Groups of people are separate from each other, and you won’t see two separate crowds melding into one big one. They will be considered separate no matter what. If you find yourself being chased on the rooftops, you can once again perform a leap of faith into stacks of hay or leaves far below on the ground, immediately hiding yourself from your pursuers. The leaps of faith are just as thrilling as before, and my heart skips a beat every time I go flying off a roof high above the city. On top of all that, you can use smoke bombs to give yourself time to escape, or throw money on the ground to create an obstacle for the guards in the form of a crowd of greedy people.
If you are trying to remain hidden, especially if you are notorious, and need a little help, it’s readily available from different factions in the game, if you have the coin. You can hire courtesans, a nice word for “prostitutes,” to strut their stuff and distract a group of guards while you slip by. They also act as a mobile hiding spot that moves with you, which is basically a much improved version of the scholars from AC1. You can hire thieves to cause trouble and make the guards chase after them. Finally, you can hire mercenaries to attack them. This will help you in battle, if you are surrounded by multiple guards, allow you to escape, or create a huge distraction. Any other guards that pass by and see the street battle will join in as well.
In the first game, there was a feature called Eagle Vision. When Altaïr was fully synced, you could go into first-person view and see the world differently. Enemies would glow red, hiding spots would glow white, friendlies would glow blue, and targets would glow yellow. That feature returns in AC2, with (bet you can’t guess what I’m about to say!) major improvements. You don’t go into a first person view, and you aren’t stuck in one spot during the use of Eagle Vision. You don’t have to be fully synced, either. It can be activated anytime, and you can walk around with it on or off. This gives you a great advantage when planning out your assassinations, or how you’re going to reach a certain point without being noticed. It serves you much better in this game than in AC1.
- “Where’s my X-Ray vision? I’m sure there are some good looking Italian girls here.”
Outside of the Animus, a few interesting things happen. When you are playing as Desmond, you’ll mostly be talking to the people that have been monitoring you as you walk around in Ezio’s memories, but Desmond is noticing some strange effects on his body. Be warned, mild spoilers are coming up ahead.
At the end of the first game, Desmond was suddenly able to use something akin to Eagle Vison, and saw some strange markings on the wall in his bedroom. Roll credits. That left us scratching our heads. In AC2, it is learned that this is something called the Bleeding Effect. Desmond is learning the skills his ancestors had. He is able to sprint, climb, and fight as well as Ezio, and you even get to experiment with it a little bit. It opens up a lot of questions about the direction of the next game. Will the game be set in modern time? Will Desmond finally see more of the spotlight? Are Desmond and Lucy going to make out already!? It’s maddening!
The twist at the end will drive you nuts, too. The story in the game is much better than the first, mainly for the lack of repetitiveness. You feel like you have accomplished something with every mission, and you’re always looking forward to the improved weapons and armor you’ll be able to obtain over time. The side missions, such as assassination contracts, courier assignments, and collecting feathers, are sure to keep you busy for a long time. There’s almost always a reason to come back to AC2, and the Platinum Trophy (PS3) is well worth obtaining. Hardly anything in this game feels dull and generic like the first, and it makes you wonder why they couldn’t have done so well the first time around. If Assassin’s Creed keeps going in the direction it is, things serve to only get better over time.
Also, Ezio can swim. Eat it, Altaïr.
Related posts: Assassin’s Creed review, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood review
