Assassin's Creed II (2009)

Played through a bunch of the early game for the first time since Christmas 2009 - kind of an interesting revisit since I can see both how this formula and foundation eventually got very old and how its shortcomings didn’t matter at the time.

The brief modern day stuff at the very beginning, which I’ve forgotten most of the details of, felt really weak despite the fact that everyone seemingly misses it - guess that was partly just a case of unfulfilled potential. But once you get in Ezio’s shoes, it quickly gets better. I visited the old Florence area represented here recently in real life and found the visual anchoring that its river and amazing Duomo do from various vantage points to be a great aspect of being there, a natural fit for this game’s synchronization points and for the kind of concentrated urban environment that works well for the series. The game eagerly jumps into a few iconic landmarks in a way that gives it both a touristic appeal and a bit of historical gravity.

While early missions are somewhat boringly designed, and they along with the open wandering lead very frequently into the game’s pretty meh-feeling combat where a group of enemies often waits around for you to finish with the one you’re working on, they are at least doing a pretty good job with the early story setup. On a scene-by-scene basis, this feels somewhat uneven, and the facial animation (at least in this Ezio Collection version, can’t remember the original) is distractingly of an era where things just weren’t quite there yet, but I still think the narrative setup is pretty good as a whole. It also feels both pretty M rated and actiony while also vaguely “cultured” due to the setting so its appeal to a teen like me at release is obvious.

For me, I don’t think these likely really merit full replays, just not really fun or gripping enough to justify it especially after the series wore out its welcome many years ago, but I could totally see dipping back into more of their historical worlds for a bit.

The sequel in what is now an impressively long-lasting series shows huge strides in improvements over the original. While graphics still suffered, the movement, character development, and fighting all received huge amounts of change for the better. None of these are without faults however, especially fighting.

Combat still is lacking in its fluidity and how easy it is to "cheese" certain encounters but then also get cheaply attacked by others. I do enjoy their expansion on weapons able to be used and having to change fighting styles based on the enemies you are against, but the new weapon types still show room for improvement as this is their debut.

As for the story, it pairs well being a sequel to Altair's story, as well as an original in its own future trilogy. Ezio is an amazing character given great backstory with his family and supporting characters, and a great villain with the returning Knights of Templar.

I played this game with the plan to 100% the achievement/trophy list, which I will say is quite the grind. Completing certain fighting tasks and collecting everything is not the where this game shines, but it does do a good job of breaking down what is still needed so you are not stuck guessing and checking like the first one.

All in all, Assassin's Creed II is a key part of the rising era of Ubisoft, but not quite in it's golden age where great worlds and stories are consistently the standard.

While it's a huge improvement over the first game, I still don't enjoy the gameplay much. It's weird! Feels like a game stuck between different generations. I played better and older stealth games, but, I think the main difference is Assassin's Creed is trying to accomplish stealth and other mechanics in a big, populated city. For instance, it's not totally fair to compare it to Splinter Cell, which is played in a very narrow environment and has very few enemies. I wanna continue only because of the beautiful city design but I'm starting to think that this series is just not for me.

By the way, I think "gently push" may be the most useless game mechanic ever :) If only we had a cover or a slow walk button instead of it.