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Assassin's Creed II Review (X360)

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Assassin's Creed II Review (X360) Ubisoft
Assassin’s Creed II is a better game than the original in just about every way. It is more varied, more open, tells a better story, and fixes just almost all of the other complaints gamers had with the original. In all honesty, we really, really liked the first Assassin’s Creed, but Assassin’s Creed II completely blows it away. This is not only a great sequel, but also one of the best games of 2009 overall.
Game Details

  • Publisher: Ubisoft
  • Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
  • ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
  • Genre: Action
  • Pros: Huge mission variety; better assassinations; solid platforming gameplay; cool story and setting
  • Cons: Gameplay falters under duress; inconsistent graphics; pacing issues

Story and Setting

Ubisoft
Assassin’s Creed II follows the same basic setup as the original game where you are playing as two different characters in two different eras through the wonders of technology. You play as Desmond Miles in the present day, but also play as one of Desmond’s ancestors in a virtual world through a device called the Animus. Why are you doing this? To uncover the secrets of a war between Assassins and Templars that has been raging for centuries. The ancestor this time around is Ezio Auditore di Firenze, a young man in 15th century Italy who, at the start of the game, isn’t aware of his assassin heritage. As the game progresses, Ezio learns of his heritage and discovers he possesses a skillset he didn’t even know he had.

The setting in 15th century Italy is excellent, and some of the characters you meet (notably Leonardo Da Vinci) are just awesome. You explore Florence, Venice, and even the rolling farmland of Tuscany among other locations, and the cities and countryside are all nicely varied and interesting to explore. Ezio is also a great, instantly likeable character and it is fun to see the world through his eyes.

One great improvement is that you only jump back to Desmond in the real world a handful of times instead of after every mission like in the first game. That destroyed the pacing of the first AC, and ACII is much better because you spend a lot more time with Ezio than Desmond. Frankly, the whole virtual/real setup and Desmond in general seems sort of pointless. I just wanna assassinate fools, I don’t need this other story going on.

Gameplay

One of the main complaints gamers had with the original Assassin’s Creed was that it was too repetitive in that you had to do the same investigations before each assassination and there wasn’t much else in the game to do at all. Thankfully, there is a lot more stuff to do this time around. ACII has an economy, and the money you earn lets you buy weapons and armor and even paintings to decorate your villa. Your villa and the surrounding village are a home base of sorts that you can upgrade and the businesses in the village provide a pretty solid income for you. Likewise, completing missions – beating up cheating husbands, competing in races, and non-story essential assassinations – earns you more money. As you play through the game you are constantly given money and have access to new armor and new assassination tools and it is a really rewarding game because of it.

As you explore each city, you can buy maps that point you towards hidden treasure chests, viewpoint locations (high areas that let you look over the city to fill in your maps), mission locations, and other collectibles. In addition to the collectibles and missions, there are also a couple of meta-missions going on that span the whole game. First, there are 6 hidden tombs that you have to first find, then explore, in order to find special seals that will unlock a very special set of armor for Ezio. These tombs are basically platforming puzzles similar to, say, Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia.

The second extra mission set is that a previous test subject has left 20 messages hidden inside the virtual world that you can find in order to unravel that truth behind the overall story. These messages are puzzles that you have to solve that range from selecting similar pictures, to code breaking, to aligning a picture puzzle, and more. The puzzles are actually pretty clever you really have to think about some of them.

Both the tombs and “the truth” puzzles add another layer of interesting stuff that fills out the story and game world and makes for a, I’ll say it again, really rewarding experience overall.

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