Assassin's Creed 2

The best thing I can say about Assassin's Creed 2? It's longer.
The worst thing I can say about Assassin's Creed 2? It's longer.

Depending on whether or not you found Assassin's Creed 1 either enjoyable or tediously repetitive, AC2 can be either awesome and a direct improvement, or an even more arduous test of endurance.

The AC series has always been about nebulous answers to paranormal/sci-fi questions put into a backdrop of cinematic parkour through a historic urban landscape. In achieving this, AC2 does excellently, and I think it can be universally accepted that Renaissance Italy was much more appealing than the grime and dirt of feudal France presented in its predecessor. AC2 is a sight seeing adventure, but when it comes to completing missions, the same worn path from AC1 awaits you.

Again, many missions are simply run in and assassinate, either detected or undetected. I found myself planning an attack even less than before, simply using an elevated pounce or a quick dash from a concealed area to close the distance between the target and myself, ending in a quick kill before I'm noticed. Unfortunately, it still doesn't feel very 'assassin-like', as I alert every guard in the city right as soon as I murder the target.

You'd think the developers would want you to assassinate without EVER being revealed, but it's not the case in AC2, as the pounce/dash-kills are astonishingly easy to accomplish, and getting away from the guards are simply a matter of time. It's simply not worth spending time planning a perfect assassination, even if there was such a possibility. (There is no such possibility by the way, most kills will auto-trigger an alert, and it is part of the mission to escape capture after a kill. Sometimes, the kill will end the mission and warp you out, even though you see thousands of guards swarming you after your less-than-covert tactics.

There's a lot more content than before, and definitely more areas to explore than before, and sidequests and items to collect along the way. However, I feel that they took a rather bland approach at extending the replayability of the game, since the sidequests are shallow and often the same thing: beat up a philandering husband, or win a race. 20 hours of those sort of quests are rather mindnumbing... You keep hoping that the next sidequests will be more fulfilling, but they never are. Yet you can't see the next quest until the previous ones have been completed, despite them have no relation in the slightest.

This time, Ubisoft actually progresses the story in a meaningful manner. You have a rather boring and predictable vengeance story told from the perspective of Ezio Auditore, but it is overlaid over the real story: (spoilers) impending cosmic doom foretold by extinct, malicious deities. Unfortunately, the latter portion is told through riddles picked up by exploring optional areas of the game, so a casual playthrough would unveil literally nothing until the final cutscene of the game. That is the worst storytelling: not telling anything at all. I think it is nice to have extra tidbits the player can get by going the extra mile, but the ACTUAL story shouldn't be entirely concealed.

Bottom line: AC2 is okay, it is an adequate sequel, but it won't turn any heads for anyone who wasn't impressed by the first game. It quite a faithful (if not unoriginal) sequel that doesn't try to deviate much from the original formula. While that sounds like a negative connotation, it isn't. That's pretty good praise considering the franchise in question here.