Assassin’s Creed 2 was released on November 17, 2009 on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.
The third person action adventure was developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft.
Ubisoft Montreal is responsible for other titles such as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Far Cry 2 and Assassin’s Creed 1.
The following review is based on the remastered version on the Playstation 4.
Assassin’s Creed 2 begins with a recap by Desmond Miles, one of the two protagonists in Assassin’s Creed 1.
In Assassin’s Creed 1, Desmond was abducted by Abstergo Industries and forced to use a machine called the Animus.
The Animus allows a subject to live the memories of an ancestor via DNA.
By the end of the game, Desmond finds out that throughout the history of mankind, there has been a secret war between the Assassins and the Templars.
The Templars want peace but a peace through complete control.
The Assassins fight for a world of peace but also for free will.
Desmond eventually finds out Abstergo is just a front for the Templars and that the Templars were using Desmond and his ancestor to find the pieces of Eden.
These pieces of Eden are extraordinary relics with extraordinary power.
With such power, the Templars feel they can achieve their goals.
Assassin’s Creed ends with the a map of one such relic being revealed.
The sequel begins where the first one left off.
Desmond is sat in his cold and colorless room of despair when Lucy, the woman who basically controlled the Animus while Desmond was under, breaks him out of Abstergo.
Together they flee to an Assassin base where they meet two other allies.
At this base, Desmond is once again put in the Animus, but this time, Lucy hopes that with the bleeding effect, Desmond can learn all the movies of his ancestor Ezio Auditore da Firenze.
While in Assassin’s Creed 1, Desmond lived the memories of an Assassin during the crusade.
Now in Assassin’s Creed 2, Desmond lives the memories of an Assassin during the Italian Renaissance.
STORY
So before I dive into the story, I’m going to start with the characters.
Desmond is immediately unlikeable.
In the first game, he was a blank slate.
He didn’t know what was going on and he was going through the motions as he figured things out.
In this game, he starts off with, “I’m a prisoner of war” which just really dramatic.
He’s a prisoner of a war he didn’t know about until recently and it’s not like they were treating him like some piece of shit.
If my folks separated and my dad kidnapped me and forced me to tell him what my ma was up to, I’d say I was kidnapped but that I was a prisoner of war.
During the escape, Desmond asks a lot questions.
At face value, yeah that makes sense.
If you were being broken out, you’d have a lot of questions too.
However, the problem I had was that Desmond didn't take into account the gravity of the situation.
He wasn’t funny and he was annoying.
He is the character that either dies first or gets everybody in his group killed in a horror movie.
After the introduction, Desmond devolves into a generic character with no memorable features.
Unfortunately, the generic design of his physical form doesn’t help.
Lucy, the woman who helped Desmond breakout, serves as the exposition delivery person/
Desmond asks questions and she answers them.
There is this air of woe to her but not enough to impact her dialogue and certainly not enough to make her memorable.
Just like Desmond, her character design does her no favors besides looking like Kristen Bell.
For those two leading the story line outside the Animus, it really bothers me how lame these two are.
Assassin’s Creed 2 could have really built on these two.
If this is really Desmond’s story as he claims at the beginning, then there should have been more focus on him.
Rather than wasting time on building the modern day world of Assassins and Templars, it ought to have been spent on Desmond and Lucy specifically.
Assassin’s Creed 2 does a decent job building the universe outside the Animus but it does no good when the characters in that universe are bland are boring.
Joining Lucy and Desmond at the hideout are Shaun and Rebecca.
Shaun serves as your encyclopedia within the Animus giving you information on people, places, and events.
Shaun is basically Stephen Merchant: English, witty, intelligent but at a certain point he jus becomes somewhat irritating.
Rebecca is the engineer with the technical know it all to keep the Animus working.
She is smart and helpful in her attitude towards Desmond.
Out of the four, Rebecca and Shaun are the more interesting characters because they actually have personalities.
Unfortunately though, that isn’t saying much.
To the casual player, this can all be forgiven because most of the game takes place in the Animus.
In the Animus, you play as Ezio Auditore da Firenze.
In a nutshell, Ezio goes from being this young man delivering letters for his father, getting into fist fights, and sleeping around to a young talented Assassin that has to go up against one of the most powerful people in Italy.
That in of itself sounds like a remarkable journey, doesn’t it?
Well, it isn’t and Ezio as a character isn’t all that wonderful.
As a young man, he’s womanizing and getting into trouble.
After seeing his family hung by their necks in the town square, he’s thrust onto the national stage having to deal with his feelings of anger and revenge but also has to keep his surviving family members alive.
This is all fine and all up until it isn’t.
Once you get out of the city right after your family’s execution, you arrive at your uncle Mario’s villa.
Initially, Ezio only hopes to rest for a bit before moving on with his family.
During his stay, Mario helps Ezio better his fighting skills while explaining to him the Assassin-Templar situation.
While Ezio is there, Mario locates one of the men responsible for the Auditore executions.
Ezio catches up and kills him, angrily as one would.
Mario then simply says, “We’re better than them. Show respect.”
Ever since then, Ezio shows nothing but respect for his enemies during their final moments.
If you were really pissed off about your family getting killed, you wouldn’t just turn it off like a switch.
Eventually this hunt for his family’s killers becomes a hunt for Templars but at the end, Ezio brings up his family again.
So although Ezio never forgot, the story makes us feel like we did.
The further we go into the game, the less it’s about his family’s killers and the more it’s “They are Templars and enemies of the people”.
All this because Ezio had shitty character development.
I don’t care about the honor, nobility and emotional neutrality of an Assassin.
I wanted to see Ezio struggle with those feelings of anger and revenge.
I wanted to see that struggling transition of having to leave those feelings behind for the good of others.
The game takes place over a span of a few years, usually jumping forward in time after a big event.
While in theory, it’s a great way to keep the story moving forward, in reality it’s rarely a success.
I find it to be like if I were to tell you all the main points of a movie and expect you to understand every element.
One of my favorite movies of all time is 12 Years A Slave directed by Steve McQueen.
Let's say I tell you the story the way I felt Assassin's Creed told its story.
So in the beginning, Solomon Northup is a free Black man living in the South.
He’s an accomplished violinist.
These two guys then hire him for a D.C. trip only to drug him and sell him to a Southerner.
First, he goes to a slave owner named Ford.
After awhile he’s sold to a slave owner named Epps.
Epps then leases him to someone else before coming back to Epps.
Then a construction worker named Bass listens to his story, calls the right authorities and after 12 years, Solomon returns to his family.
Would the movie still be powerful and heart wrenching if that was all it showed?
If it hadn’t shown all the little scenes in between?
Would the impact be as deep and emotional if the movie moved so quickly? If we didn’t know it had been 12 years?
I know it’s risky and unfair to compare a game to movie, fiction of nonfiction, a half decent game to one of the greatest (and my favorite) movies of all time.
But I’m trying to compare just the story telling of two works that use a similar formula of telling a narrative over a few years seamlessly.
Assassin’s Creed 2 could have shown much more intimacy with Ezio and better cultivated his relationships with literally every ally he meets.
With so much time passing throughout Assassin’s Creed 2, Ezio should have been shown to evolve more.
It should have shown him maturing and molding into his role of an Assassin.
From when his Uncle Mario tells him to respect his victims, he is literally the same person until the end and with seamless transitions in time, you could easily assume this entire game took place in a month.
Ezio is still the Assassin’s Creed fan favorite as of August 2017 and granted there are two other games he’s in but just based off the first game and second game, he’s definitely the worst of the two.
In Assassin’s Creed 1, Altair lacked any personality but at least we saw him grow.
He started the game as a Master Assassin, fucked up, fought his way back up the ladder and proved that year, he’s that damn good and learned a few moral lessons on the way.
Now while outside the Animus, the two side characters are more interesting than the main character, the opposite is true inside the Animus.
With the exception of Leonardo Da Vinci, every side character in ASsassin’s Creed 2 is essentially a phantom.
They’re there and then they disappear.
Most of the side characters are just there to teach you new tricks or techniques.
If your side characters can be easily replaced by a tutorial pop up, then your side characters can’t be all that great, can they?
This is really a shame because these characters would have been perfect to show the evolution of Ezio throughout the events of Assassin’s Creed 2.
Rather than just teach you a technique or lead you to your next mission, these side characters could have given a little more insight into themselves, their philosophies, their choices to become an Assassin or an ally to the Assassin cause.
The plot is not interesting.
As I mentioned, it’s just a hunt for the people that killed your family that eventually becomes a hunt for Templars.
Every villain has his own big bad deed that’s supposed to motivate you but those deeds felt familiar.
The best thing I can say about the narrative was that it made sense.
VISUALS
On the Playstation 4, Assassin’s Creed 2 looks no different than the original.
It also seems to run no differently.
The screen tearing can get pretty bad.
For its time, Assassin’s Creed 2’s character models were decent.
That remains unchanged here.
My biggest praise in terms of visuals has to go to the setting.
Venice and Florence look beautiful. Forli looks fucking depressing.
The character models are fine.
I don’t really have much to say in detail.
AUDIO
I actually don’t have much to say about the audio, either.
Unlike in the future installment Assassin’s Creed: Unity where the French sounded English, in this game everyone has an underlying Italian accent in Italy.
However, there’s no emotional weight behind the delivery of any line in the game.
So the voice acting isn’t bad but that lack of emotion is what keeps anyone from being memorable.
Jesper Kyd did the music for Assassin’s Creed 2.
He’s also done music for Hitman Blood Money and Kane and Lynch.
It’s good and different. It’s far from nonexistent like other games where the music plays but it’s so boring you don’t even notice it.
It’s varied, orchestral…it’s just good.
The sound effects either hit home or didn’t.
Sometimes the sound effects would unsync with an action.
You’d hear a punch land a half second before you actually see the action.
The same with a kill with your hidden blade.
It is not game breaking though.
I’m just sad that this problem is still in this remaster.
GAMEPLAY
Much like everything else, the gameplay is average. I didn’t find it satisfying or a lot of fun.
In everything you do, you feel like something is missing.
This might be totally unfair because the Assassin’s Creed gameplay has been improving and since I’m playing this after playing future installments, I may come off biased.
I think it’s fair to say time just didn’t help the gameplay.
My biggest problem gameplay wise is that some missions asked you to be undetected and in some of the missions, it’s more difficult than it should be because those missions were constructed for a level of stealth capability the game just does not have.
That just made those missions infuriating.
Keep in mind, that Ezio can only walk incredibly slowly or sprint.
Another negative I had was that the detection system was flawed.
A little bar appears above an enemy when you are in his line of sight.
When it fills to red completely, he will attack.
The flaw is that this system has a mind of its own.
Sometimes the meter or bar will fill slowly, fast, or just immediately turn red and I never understood why it was so varied.
In restricted areas, sometimes the meter filled up slowly.
In unrestricted areas during free roam, sometimes that meter would fill so quickly I didn’t have a chance to do anything.
Imagine the difficulties of that variation during story missions where you needed to remain undetected, where you can only either sprint or walk slowly.
On the other hand and the positive side of the gamepaly, it did improve from its predecessor in a few ways.
Customization is now available although not totally necessary.
You can purchase dyes for your clothes if you’re a bit sick of the whites.
You can also purchase better armor and equipment.
Stronger armor will give you more health while there are more options for weapons.
You can purchase some stronger but slower weapons, faster but weaker weapons, or if you like to keep it simple, there are also balanced weapons.
Your equipment is also more varied as opposed to your barebones load out in the first game.
You now have things like a firearm, double hidden blades, and smoke bombs.
In a way, this also allows for a customized way to approach most missions.
As I mentioned before, after Ezio’s family is hung, Ezio seeks refuge at his uncle’s villa.
This place becomes a small RPG element in Assassin’s Creed 2.
You can purchase art to improve the property and order renovations for the small town around it.
The more you invest into these small shops, the bigger the discount.
The higher the value of the entire area, the more you make.
Since this area becomes your biggest and constant source of revenue, you are encouraged to visit and invest often.
There are also collectibles to lengths your gameplay.
One such collectible is essential to the story and to unlock the final part of the game, you have to collect them all.
It’s made worthwhile by the fact that collecting a certain number of these collectibles, gives you a permanent health boost.
The rest are thankfully optional.
I do have to praise the hidden symbol collectibles in which you scan a symbol left by a previous user of the Animus and each one has a small puzzle that has to be solved.
Solving these small puzzles unlocks a second long clip.
The more you unlock, the clearer the video is.
They were short, fun, interesting, and most importantly, not overwhelming.
Gameplay wise on a PS4 controller, it feels good.
Sometimes it felt unresponsive but I can’t tell if it’s the remaster, the game, or just me from having played future installments.
CONCLUSION
The story is barebones and exhausting in that I tried to really care and I couldn’t.
The visuals and audio are good.
The gameplay sometimes feels more difficult than it should be but besides those relatively few moments, it works and it did improve in a few areas since the first game.
The length is there which is a good and bad thing.
If you have no attachment like I did, the game dragged on.
However it’s good because you do get a lot of bang for your buck: long story, several side missions and collectibles.
There’s really no New Game Plus or rewards for beating the game so re playability is low.
When you complete the story though, you can go back and finish anything you might have missed if you really cared.
If you’re looking to play the series as a whole, you can’t miss this one. If you’re looking to have the exact same experience when you first got this game, look no further than this remaster…it’s not even that, it’s a fucking port.
Besides that, Ezio, the story, nor the gameplay are really worth a recommendation of “You have to! You gotta play this!”
So from me, Assassin’s Creed 2 gets a 5.5…out of 10.