Assassin's Creed II

Overly Dramatic Review in One Sentence

Ezio makes his appearance and changes the face of Italy with a few quick kills, and a little bit a what the kids call "The Rizz."

The Actual Review

Game time:

PC: 18.5 hours
Xbox: 49.72 hours

Gameplay

//NOTE// - I played with the Ezio Trilogy Remaster Mod to help with some known issues and making it look a bit better.
One of the best parts about playing these games in quick order, you get to see the large changes in the movement between Assassin's Creed and this. It feels so much more fluid. The running is much more fluid.

One of the things I praised in Assassin's Creed was not having to hit all the sync points to see the map. I might miss some different mini missions, but the game was still playable. Things game, you couldn't see anything without them, so I spent so much extra time hitting as few as I had to. However, there are 2 different collectables, Crypts and Codex, that you have to collect to complete the story/lore, so you have to do quite a few.

This also doesn't include all the glyphs you should do for the story for Subject 16 which when you look at the Database, doesn't give you an area of where they are. You have to pay attention when those show up otherwise you need Google + time.

The fighting became a bit repetitive after about 10 hours especially when you can't really fight the bigger guys. I ended up running away or just throwing on of the little guys to knock them over. It felt chunky for sure.

There are some minigames that are ok, but the story they tell are good.

Graphics and Sound

The music is my favorite part. It is just really well done and crescendos at just the right parts. It is well done.

I can't comment on the graphics too much as I did use mods to make it look better, but I will speak to some tricks in the transitions. When moving from the animus to modern day, there is this digitized change in scenery. It folds in. I can't really describe it well, but I just really appreciate that change.

Story and Characters

This is the beginning of the Ezio Trilogy, where you get one of the best protagonist in gaming. He is a little rambunctious at the start, but he turns into a solid character. Even by the end of the game itself, he is a lovable guy. A womanizer for sure, but people like him.

In this game you, Desmond, meets some more of the modern day assassins, and they are hit or miss. Very tonal and the same without any real change. Granted you do get only about an hour of total of time with them and some of that is during some fighting so take it lightly.

The story is good. You meet Ezio and his family and see the love they have and there are already some secrets being kept from some of them by the father. These secrets set the stage for the rest of this game, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, and Assassin's Creed Revelations. My biggest issue is the introduction of the second set of 4. It just feels like they needed to extend the game rather, and so they threw in another 4 people that were part of the Templars. There is also this guy who randomly shows up and you are running around the start area again for some reason. It just feels very choppy in the ending and gives this feeling of it never ending.

There also is only a conversational comment in the historical portion about Templars. I think I remember some "Maybe the Father of Understanding Guide Us." Actually, now that I say that I remember it.

My Rating

When this game came out, I was in the Marines and I remember playing it and enjoying. When I played it this time, I enjoyed it, but the story telling is just dragged over and over. It is too long with small tangential lines connecting the players. It could have been 4 hours shorter and none of the story would have been missed. This also isn't really an open world game so you don't have the joy of finding weird new things like you do in The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion Remastered. It is worth a playthrough, but it could have been better.

Parental Rating

This game is about the assassination of people. You see a guy get hung early in the game. There is lots of sexual innuendo as well. This isn't a family friendly game, so my mom would not be happy if I played it at home when I was younger. I think my dad would be interested in the main story, but not the game so much.

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