Assassins Creed 2 Review

Story: (5.5 | 10)
The story of the game begins right after Assassins Creed 1 which follows the story of both Desmond and the new assassin, Ezio, the game starts with a fairly basic betrayed and revenge plot and keeps a fairly interesting story, however around the end of the game, the story does get really silly and leads to some pretty stupid moments.

A lot of the characters in the game are interesting as well, featuring a lot of really good voice actors but this does fall short since the only stories you really ever hear about are of Ezio or Desmond as almost every single other character just gets a basic background before you kill them or before you never have to talk to them again which is fairly annoying since the most you ever get is either a small 1 minute video of who you have to assassinate or a few paragraphs of text from their profile.

Gameplay: (8.5 | 10)
The gameplay of Assassins Creed 2 is where the game really shines, featuring a large amount of new abilites you can use. Like the last game you will have your basic weapons such as your assassination blade, your sword, etc. but now Ezio has a large amount of weapons with everything from two assassination blades to the devastating pistol modification. The game also features a more well-designed movement engine, Ezio can climb just as well if not better then Altair but unlike Altair, he can swim, assassinate multiple enemies at once, purchase multiple weapons, find codex pages to upgrade his weapons or health and purchase better armor.

As stated above, you now have the ability to purchase weapons or find upgrades for your weapons, which is very handy. You can also use your money to upgrade your villa in order to earn more money to purchase weapons, items and maps for the various bits of treasure laying around the towns. Another upgrade to Assassins Creed 2 is the amount of side-missions you can do. You can do anything from assassination contracts which are self-explanatory, beat-up events in which you beat up a cheating husband or races, which are again, self-explanatory.

The only problems with gameplay is the climbing, as I've had various experiences in which I would try to climb up a building and would get pelted with rocks which would be way too accurate and could either get me killed from the fall or injured enough to be beaten down by the guards which gets annoying very quickly, another problem is whenever you would be climbing, the game might force you into an awkward camera angle in which you have to move in order to fix or it could be that the game just glitches and stops Ezio from jumping to a new spot, which can get you killed a lot.

Graphics: (8.5 | 10)
The graphics in the game are beautiful, characters look well detailed and the environments look very colorful, I even stopped playing for a while just to look at the graphics of the game which was a first for me as you will easily notice the amazing graphics of this game within the first minute of starting the game. The only downside to the graphics are some of the characters can vary in detail, some characters will look just perfect while others will look like they were just quickly thrown in to finish the game in time, also sometimes you'll notice that a lot of the characters dialoge won't sync up correctly, which can be an annoyance for some players if you didn't like it in games like Ghostbusters.

Music: (10 | 10)
The music in the game is astounding, fitting perfectly with whats going on in either the action packed fight scenes or the intense chase sequences with the game it mixes up perfectly with no mistakes and no downsides, Japser Kyd did a wonderful job with soundtracking the game which even if you hate the game, you have to respect it for its spectacular soundtrack.

Pros:
Astounding soundtrack.
Wonderful voiceacting.
Beautiful graphics.
Great gameplay.
Lots of side-missions.
Tons to collect.

Cons:
Some graphics may look glitchy or out of place.
Silly (after a while) storyline.
Annoyances in gameplay.
Less focus on character stories.
Glitches.

Overall: (8 | 10)


Rank: Strong Rental/Good purchase.

Overall if you are looking for a good stealth game or atlest a good title to rent, Assassins Creed 2 does offer a wide varitey on what to do and has an above-average gameplay length, 10-12 hours, if you just want to finish the game and some beautiful graphics, but be aware that there are some issues that can get very easily irritating after a while and it isn't exactly anything special in it's story.