Assassin's Creed 2 lives up to the hype and promises- it's bigger, badder, and better than Assassin's Creed 1.
This is where the game gets fun. Right of the bat, you'll be thrown into a fistfight with some goons. Once you have beaten you must go to the doctor to heal your wounds, which is a new feature that has replaced the old regenerate health system. At first it may seem like a pain to have to take a health potion or go to the doctor whenever you get majorly hurt, but you get used to it quickly and there are doctors all around the cities and you can hold as many as five health potions at a time( you can hold more later), thus making it not a problem. After that, you'll get to meet the family and get a taste of Ezio's life by "checking on" your girlfriend, racing your brother to the top of a church, collecting feather on rooftops for your younger brother, and beating up your sister's cheating boyfriend. Without giving away too many spoilers, I'll say your family is framed and betrayed and Ezio, desperate for revenge, takes up his father's role as an assassin and seeks out revenge. Soon after this, Ezio must flee the city. Things only get better from here. You'll get a huge villa that you own to explore, where you can upgrade the town's shops and services to attract visitors, collect codex pages and feathers, buy paintings and art to decorate your house, screw around outside on a horse, beat villagers up and steal their money- hell you can do just about anything here because of the lack of guards. This villa happens to be one of the best of the game's countless new features.
Alright, well I don't want to drag this on so, I'll get to the meat of the game
Gameplay 10/10: This game never gets within a mile of being repetitive. It has many varied missions and minigames, including a large chase after an assassination target across the rooftops of Florence, running along the canals fighting hordes of guards to protect a gondola, flying through the air on a flying machine, protecting your mother and sister from hundreds of guards, saving a woman from a small island with a gondola, and many many more. The story missions are lengthy and exciting, and you will find yourself sucked into the game's great story. But that's not where the content stops.
Lasting AppeaI 9.5/10: I found myself appalled at how much they could fit into the game. There are about four cities in the game(plus the countryside and your villa) and in each there a number of fun side missions, tons of new pieces of armor and weapons to buy, and my favorite of the non-story activities, the assassin's tombs. These tombs are extremely long and require alot of thinking and platforming. Your reward for finishing them? One of many keys that will unlock the gate to Altaïr's armor, a literally unbreakable set of armor(yes your armor breaks occasionally).
Story 9/10: The story is alot more convincing this time around, and the characters more believable( in fact, some of them were real people). Ezio's backstory is alot more tragic and realistic than Altair's(who barely even had a story) and explains his reason for becoming an assassin( once again, missing from Assassin's Creed 1).
Sound 9.2/10: Once again, a great score from Jesper Kyd. The music always seems to fit the scene whether you are running across the streets being chased by guards or your climbing the rooftops of Venice. The voice acting is solid, and the dialogue is funny and cleverly written.
Graphics 9.4/10: Whether your riding your horse through the beautiful mountains or riding gondolas among the canals of Venice, the graphics are incredible and very realistic. The Sun's rays gleam off the water like they should, and the huge tower cast huge looming shadows like they should. The only thing that was flawed was the face animations, which while still great, sort of stand out and don't really fit in with the realistically animated buildings and backgrounds.
Overall 9.6/10: Assassin's Creed 2 is an amazing game, with few flaws except for the lack of variety in the side missions, which while great, are mostly just repeats of past story missions and the flawed face animations. You can see here that I really struggled to find some flaws within Assassin's Creed 2, and the only ones I found were very minor. So, if you were a fan of the first game then you really should get this game as you will see nearly every problem you had with the first were fixed, and you will no doubt be extremely satisfied. And if you didn't play the first game, you might miss out on some cool references to the first game, but that should not stop you from playing this amazing game. Either way, you need to pick up Assassin's Creed 2 because not only is it one of the best action games this year, but in a very long time.