New scenery with some new twists.

User Rating: 8.5 | Assassin's Creed II PC
Assassins Creed II is a very thrilling story-driven game that gets you involved in the characters story. Assassins Creed II manages to hold down solid gameplay even when it introduces new features to the game. The game takes about an hour or so to actually get entertaining, but once it does its a hell of a ride. Sadly, the PC version of the game requires the player to have constant access to the internet to be able to play the game. This becomes very annoying and highly unnecessary.

To begin you start as the character Ezio. Ezio starts off as a care free young lad who is forced to take great responsibility when something tragic happens to your family. You take the role of an assassin to honor your fathers final wishes. Your goal is to take down the Templar's who caused such tragedy to your family.

As you progress through the story you get better armor and weapons. The variety of different weapons lets the player be creative with their assassination technique. A new hidden second blade is introduced into the game. Unlike the first game were, you only got one hidden blade, you get to now use two hidden blades. This allows double assassinations to be used at it is an entertaining twist to make the hidden blade more useful and fun to use. Along with the first game, you get the classic weapons like the sword, dagger, and throwing knives. The sword is best used in a multiple person fight, the dagger is best used for a quick stab and easy get away, and the throwing knives are best used for killing enemies from far away like archers.

In addition to weapons, you get poisons. Poisons can be purchased all around the game and almost in every area. The poison can be used to slowly assassinate a foe, but isn't very useful. Along with poisons you can now purchase health antidotes. These become very helpful during fights and are easily accessed at any time in-game. You'll want to keep a full stock of antidotes with you all the time during your stroll around the cities.

After a while you'll be progressing through missions like a mad dog. Sadly after a while the missions start to get repetitive. The missions start to seem like your just wasting your time and they usually always end up the same way. But every now and then you get that one fun mission that leaves you begging for more.

Assassins Creed II really shines when your just roaming around the city aimlessly. The scenery is fantastic and almost every building is climbable, if not every building. Hidden around each city are tons of goodies like feathers and gold. Feathers are collectibles that can be found all over the game and there are tons of them. Finding all of them will keep you busy for a while. Sadly, the new addition to a civilian kill limit leaves the player sad that they can't just run around stabbing random people with their knives and swords. You are allowed 3 civilian kills about every 5 minutes, this just gets annoying especially when your in the middle of a mission and you have to start all over because you accidentally stabbed somebody in the face. Although the limit gets annoying, there is a new ability to loot dead bodies. This becomes very helpful when your looking for gold to buy some poison, armor, weapons, or health. But sadly the civilian kill limit prevents you from obtaining lots of gold very fast.

Assassins Creed II is definitely an upgrade from the first installment. All the new goodies add an exciting new feel to the series. The missions do get repetitive very fast, but every now and then you'll run into that one special mission that leaves you begging for more. The new scenery and story really adds to the feel of a brand new story and is a very exciting sequel. Towards the end you'll be on the edge of your seat while finishing up the last couple missions. While most of the new additions are great, some leave the player wanting a fix of more rampage around the cities.

Positives:
+ Great new story.
+ Helpful new health antidotes during fights.
+ Amazing scenery and voice acting.

Negatives:
- Civilian kill limit.
- Takes a while to get into the action.
- Repetitive missions.
- Constant internet access needed.