Lot of Promise but fails to deliver
Altaïr, the protagonist of the first part, discovers the Templars are heading for Cyprus and hunts down the ascending Templars. As the Templars withdraw from the Holy Land after Altaïr kills Robert de Sable, the Assassin follows them to the island of Cyprus. Finding new allies and enemies, Altaïr helps the local resistance against the Templar occupation and strikes down the ascendant Templar commanders. Along the story Altaïr learns more about himself and the Apple of Eden, as well as the Templar's ways and means of power and peace. The Storyline is supposed to depict what happened to Altair however the story never seems to click as its mostly unclear what exactly is going on and when it becomes clear what we are supposed to do, the question of why we are supposed to be doing it arises. Players who haven't played the first part will thoroughly be bored by the story while old fans wont be sure what to make of the story.
Game play is similar to the previous installment but players will have to adjust with the controls of the PSP. Altair is given missions mostly concerning with assassinating people and to do that he will have to be taken across the city, or rather what should be called a town, by simply running or by platforming elements such as Jumping from one ledge to another, climbing on rooftops or synchronizing from the highest point of the city to locate the destination. Even though the Platforming feels like fun at the beginning it quickly becomes boring due to the very small areas and the maximum time taken to get across the city is about half a minute. Combat adds to the games woes list, the only fun part is when performing stealth kills but that experience is also ruined by the unnaturalness expressed by the environment when you kill a soldier right in front of another and he acts as if nothing even happened. One on one combat proves to be a yawn fest, basically being implemented by 2 strategies, either keep hitting a soldier for about 4 times and he will die or press the R button and counter attack the enemies moves at the precise moment to execute a swift kill. There are many mini missions scattered around for the Player but the virtually empty city, aside from one or two citizens who keep doing the same thing, it wont be appealing to anyone. The Game features a basic level-up mechanic in which you can spend the coins you find scattered about the world on upgrades like extending your synchronization bar or increasing your chances of a critical hit. But this feature is poorly implemented, forcing you to leave the game and return to the main menu if you want to spend the coins outside of the predesignated intermissions.
There are very few characters in the Game so there cant really be a judgment about that. The few characters however have been well played with Altair and Maria's acting being a cut above the rest although the others do a good job too. The Soundtrack is impressive and blends in well with the situation of the game, graphics are poor, both in game and cut scenes, there are many glitches within the game. Sometimes Altair can pass through a guard or sometimes he can just float in midair, The Cut scenes feel very shallow and incomplete with no 3D presentation and are reminiscent to the in Game graphics.
Assassins Creed Bloodlines had the potential to be a very good game if Ubisoft had polished it all up, but the game feels incomplete in every area. With a little more effort it could have been worth the money but this is not the case so Bloodlines is most likely not going to please any new Customers while old fans will also be disappointed. Its an okay game if you don't have anything better to do but is not worth the money and hopefully Ubisoft will put just as much effort for the next Assassins Creed on the PSP as on the console versions