Assassin's Creed II

It's like I had skipped a game in the series. The first one truly was like a tech demo, a proof of concept, so much does Assassin's Creed II improve from it. The potential was claimed and the result is a well-rounded game that is surprisingly close to the newer end of the series, at least feature-wise -- there's still room for polishing.

A cherished sequel

The present day story picks up right where it left off. Lucy Stillman -- the undercover-Assassin animus operator in Abstergo -- escapes the facility with our protagonist Desmond Miles. They join with two other Assassins who have their own animus machine. One of the assassins I recognized immediately from his British accent and prickliness: Shaun Hastings appears to be a recurring character through the whole series.

The team's plan is to quickly teach Desmond assassin skills through the animus bleeding effect: reliving someone's memories lets you passively pick up their tricks. Although I guess Desmond is really continuing his training since he already went through a lot of Altaïr's memories.

AC2's past day protagonist is Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an Italian Renaissance era Assassin. Ezio is charismatic, immediately likable and I could right away understand why people have so fond memories of this second game and the so-called Ezio trilogy it forms with its sequels Brotherhood and Revelations.

Ezio is voiced by Roger Craig Smith. I don't know how his Italian pronunciation sounds to a native speaker but to me he was great -- authenticity is secondary when that's the case. Also, I have in the past wondered if it's truly necessary for characters to have appropriate accents for the setting, either native or acted. I suppose my final conclusion is that it does add to immersion even if the characters are still speaking English. Makes it easier to suspend one's disbelief. Sometimes this game's characters speak longer sentences in Italian which was cool even if trying to read the subtitles for the Italian and its English translation simultaneously was often too much.

A revenge story (of justice)

Ezio is still a young man, living a rather carefree life as a scion of the respected Auditore family. Unknown to Ezio, the Auditores are also members of the Assassin Brotherhood -- I guess Ezio's not quite yet old enough to have been inducted.

A Templar plot kills half of Ezio's family and he swears revenge. But first he has to find shelter at his uncle Mario's in Monteriggioni, where the Auditores have a dilapidated villa whose refurbishments you then get to sort out.

The villa provides a passive realtime income that increases with your investments. I wasn't greatly joyed to discover that, exactly like in AC Syndicate, there's a limit on how much your income chest can hold currency. You have to periodically return to empty it lest Ezio's sister Claudia (assigned as bookkeeper) claims the overflow. The train base in Syndicate may have had limited space for additional safes but the villa is huge: just buy more chests! (And where do you even keep the money on your person anyway?)

"It's a-me, Mario!" --Mario Auditore

Under Mario's guidance Ezio trains as an assassin and starts hunting down everyone responsible. In addition to the Tuscany region, Ezio's journey takes him to Forlì and Venezia. He allies with a handful of different historical figures like Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli. The former's demeanor reminded me of Dandelion from the Witcher games. Instead of being simply excitable though, Leonardo's of course also an actual genius. That ends up being useful with the things Ezio deals with.

Varied but still excessive

It may be again due to my completionist playstyle -- and it most likely is -- but this Assassin's Creed felt too long as well. Even though activities are more varied, the amount of it got too much towards the end. Assassination side missions in particular were tiresome to do back to back because there are many of them and you often have to first run across the town to start one after accepting the contract. And if it then has slow paced tailing involved, it becomes doubly excruciating to complete the contracts repeatedly. At least drop assassination became a thing in this one.

Parkour races could have been higher in number though, mostly because they come with an absolute banger of a track, Venice Rooftops, which I would've recognized as Jesper Kyd's work even without prior knowledge. Kyd composed the first game's score too but it wasn't all that memorable. AC2's soundtrack however, is a masterpiece.

The rooftops of Venezia -- or almost any town in the game -- are not all that peaceful places. I guess it's because Ubisoft Montreal hadn't yet come up with the restricted areas concept that they had to populate the roofs with guards everywhere in these early games. At least as Altaïr I could usually just run to a rooftop guard to stab him with the hidden blade but Italians apparently have better hearing. They will notice a sprinting Ezio and an alerted guard can't be stabbed just like that. Later on, I discovered that instead of trying to kill them with weapons, it was easier to grab and throw them off the roofs. That also had the benefit of not increasing notoriety.

A slew of minor annoyances

Notoriety is a silly mechanic and it is unfortunately present in the whole trilogy. The moment Ezio is witnessed doing something illegal, posters of him go up on walls and town criers start yelling about him. When notoriety gets to its maximum, guards in the streets become hostile. To avoid that you can rip down the posters and/or bribe the criers. It's uninteresting busywork. You get capes that negate notoriety but I was always done with a location by the time its relevant cloak was handed to me.

Collectibles return in lesser force than in AC1: only 100 feathers to pick up. And this time there's also an in-game reward although it is maybe even more of an insult than having no acknowledgement at all. "Auditore Cape? I wonder what it does. Oh..." Having your notoriety constantly maxed just doesn't seem all that useful.

Another needless mechanic are quick time events in dialogue. They have zero consequences outside some minor interaction in the scene in question. I have read comments about people feeling bad for missing a chance to hug Leonardo though. Regardless, I'm glad they dropped the QTEs for the rest of the trilogy (at least).

I felt I could have had the open world stuff end by the time I got to Venezia. The game still had plenty left however. Originally memory sequences 12 and 13 were not shipped with the game and after Venezia, Ezio's story jumped like 10 years forward to the final sequence. 12 and 13 were released later but I found them pretty pointless padding to get through as a mandatory part of one's first playthrough.

The finale was again kind of terrible. Jumping locations and trying to escalate the action still didn't work. It felt hastily done too: not fun to play either. Combat in AC2 is better than in its predecessor but it's not yet good enough to be entertaining. It was still a tad too chaotic and unpredictable to my liking.

When I was done with everything there was, my total synchronization percentage was only at 97.18%. Evidently the now unavailable Auditore family crypt and Templar lairs count for that even if you don't have them enabled in your game. (I believe the files are there though.) Fortunately you can unlock the dungeons with this mod (which seems to have been updated last month -- curious) and get your sync up to the satisfying 100%.

They are actually good content -- or at least I enjoyed them -- almost Tomb Raider kind of places. Similar locations returned in the two sequels though with an added negative aspect. But more of that later.