Assassin's Creed 2 (PS4, 2016)
"I did not choose this path. It was chosen for me. At first, I thought vengeance would be easy. For thirty years I've lived in the shadows, visited death upon those who deserved it, and vanished like the wind. I don't know who started this conspiracy, but I know who will end it. My name is Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Like my father before me, I am an Assassin."
Assassin's Creed II (PS4 Version)
Assassin’s Creed II takes place seemingly hours after the first game. Due to the bleeding effect of the Animus, Desmond has gained some of the abilities of his ancestor Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, including his Eagle Vision and limited fighting abilities. Assistant Lucy Stillman arrives at Desmond’s quarters in the research facility and tells Desmond they are escaping the facility. Just before they do, Desmond enters the Animus one final time to discover another ancestor, reliving that ancestor’s birth through the Animus. After escaping the facility by using Desmond’s abilities, the pair find refuge with Rebecca Crane and Shaun Hastings, two members of the modern day Assassins. At the safe house, Desmond discovers that the Assassin’s have developed their own Animus, named the Animus 2.0, and plan to use it to learn more information about the exploits of past Assassin’s relating to both the Templars and both factions struggle for the various Pieces of Eden. In addition, Lucy hopes to exploit the bleeding effect of the Animus in order for Desmond to learn to become an Assassin in a mere fraction of the time. Upon entering the Animus 2.0, Desmond begins reliving the memories of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a young man who lived in Italy during the Renaissance and another of Desmond’s ancestors. Ezio Auditore was only a carefree teenager living in Florence in the late 15th Century when fate upended his life. Members of his family, caught in the middle of a conspiracy in which they are on the wrong side, is imprisoned. Ezio, on the orders of his imprisoned father, discovers a hidden room in their mansion where Ezio finds strange robes and equally strange weapons. Intending on helping his family at their public trial with the help of a family friend, whom Ezio has given evidence of innocence on his family’s part, Ezio discovers that the friend is a part of the conspiracy, and promptly sentences them to death. Ezio witnesses half his family perish at the end of a rope, and is attacked as he attempts to rescue them. Forced to flee, Ezio brings his frightened sister and muted mother to the family villa in Monteriggioni, where his uncle Mario trains Ezio to become an Assassin. Intent on discovering the extent of the conspiracy, Ezio sets on a journey to hunt down everyone involved, meet some famous figures in history (“Templar” and “Assassin” alike), and along with Desmond, discover the truth about the history of Man. ----- Assassin’s Creed II is set in the middle of the Italian Renaissance. Spanning over twenty years of Ezio’s life, the player is able to explore various cities such as Florence, Venice, San Gimigano, Monteriggioni, Forli, and finally, the Tuscan Countryside. Every city has a distinctive look, and all are beautifully crafted to represent Renaissance-era Italian cities. Venice in particular is quite pretty, with the city’s architecture, layout, and atmosphere all being considered. A day/night cycle and even weather has been implemented, ensuring that the cities and countryside have a less stagnant appearance than the settings of the previous game. Even though the game is now six years old, the game nonetheless looks quite beautiful in all of its settings, even the dark and gloomy Forli, due to the improvements in graphics and overall city building. Aiding this is a larger variety of guards and civilians, bringing each city or region to life. These improvements in the setting impact not only the look and feel of the gameplay but also the story in my opinion; it really does feel like you have been transported back in time to the Renaissance. The missions have been GREATLY improved since the previous game, as has the story. Part of the story involves Ezio meeting (and occasionally killing) various historical figures. One of the most prominent is Leonardo da Vinci, who often helps Ezio in upgrading Ezio’s equipment as well as decoding various pages of a Codex that had been passed down from Altaïr. Whereas the previous game consisted of mostly investigations and assassinations, the types of missions have a great deal of variety. Two missions immediately come to mind: using Leonardo’s flying machine to infiltrate a Templar stronghold, and another that involves fleeing with Leonardo on a carriage and having stop the pursuers using said carriage. There are also a great deal of side missions that are not part of the main game but allow you to carry out additional assassinations as well as help the people of Italy in other respects. These missions are incredibly fun, and especially compared to the previous game, varied enough to ensure that gameplay never becomes stale. Other side activities that further expand the world is the ability to raid assassin tombs and Templar treasure rooms, courier missions, beating up unfaithful husbands, and many more. All of these contribute towards making the game a living and breathing world, as well as the game offering many different activities to keep the player entertained in their journey across Renaissance Italy. The story is also quite incredible, as both Ezio and Desmond discover much more about the Pieces of Eden, the history of Earth, and the origins of mankind. The story is one of the most beautiful I have ever played, and Ezio really grows on you as a fantastic, charming, and likeable protagonist that I think every player can relate to. Ezio is in every way a better protagonist than Altair, and a lot of that simply has to do with Ezio having the far more exciting and moving story. The only flaw, in my opinion, is the fact that Ezio only joins the Brotherhood out of vengeance, and does not feel like a true Assassin. Indeed, Ezio really only uses the robes and equipment of the Assassins to exact his vengeance on the Borgias. He does not even become an official member of the Brotherhood, nor learn of it, until the end of the game. But despite this, Ezio’s story as well as its impact on Desmond is nothing short of beautiful. One of the new features of the game involve the ability to hire people to aid you in various missions. You can hire courtesans, who can “distract” guards from performing their duties, thieves, who can lure guards away from their posts, and mercenaries, who will attack others on your orders, or defend you when you’re attacked. With this also comes the ability to “blend in” with these groups, also allowing you to escape the attention of guards in general. Ezio can also blend in with large groups of other people that are wandering around. These gameplay additions are interesting, and can be very helpful in missions and just wandering the game in general. Related to this is the ability to blend in with groups of people as well, including the courtesans who will basically become a walking shield for Ezio from the guards. Overall, these additions are very much welcomed, and are definitely needed for the game as a whole. As in the previous game, performing high profile actions such as running along rooftops and running into people will inevitably attract the attention of the guards. Unlike the previous game, killing them does not necessarily end your troubles. With every major illegal action such as killing people, your “notoriety” goes up. As your notoriety increases you (as Ezio) will find it increasingly more difficult to escape the attention of guards. When your notoriety maxes out, guards and enemies will attack you on sight. Fortunately, you can help this by ripping down wanted posters (fashioned to your likeness), bribing heralds, and killing corrupt officials. This notoriety only affects you on a town-by-town basis; just because you are likely to be attacked on sight in Florence does not mean you will be in Venice. Likewise, lowering your notoriety in one town does not do so across Italy. Assassinations have been made a lot easier in this game compared to its predecessor as well. In addition to the variety of assassin missions, it is much easier to perform the actual act than before. The targeting system sends you in the right direction when used correctly, allowing you to focus more on the planning than the actual execution. The new equipment also gives you a greater variety of methods of carrying out these executions. Related to this is the changes to the combat system. The combat system, my main gripe about the first game, has been updated to allow Ezio a greater chance when it comes to fighting guards. Of course, this was likely implemented due to the greater variety of guards, all with different weapons, strengths and weaknesses, and fighting styles. Ezio can fight with the trademark weapon of the Assassins, the hidden blade, because he now wields two. He also has access to a variety of other weapons such as maces, hammers, swords, daggers, spears and halberds. A new range of fighting styles and abilities accompany these extra weapons, such as disarming opponents, as well as greater countering and dodging abilities. Ezio also has the ability to poison opponents with one of his hidden blades, and he also later receives an upgrade to one of his hidden blades in the form of a small hidden pistol, which you can use in both assassinations and combat. You also have access to a whole variety of different types of armor which can help you survive longer, though this armor can become damaged and periodically needs to be repaired. You can also now heal yourself in combat with medicine. These changes are cool, and set itself apart from its predecessor. My only problem with these changes is the addition of the medicine, as I feel it detracts from the aspect of maintaining synchronization through the Animus. The whole point of the previous game was that Altair never got hit in his lifetime but when it happens in game the blocking still occurs with the loss of synchronization. Adding medicine and to a lesser degree various armors that can help block attacks and adds to “synchronization”, takes away the sense of Ezio never getting hit. But other than that, the upgrades to the combat system were an incredibly welcome change to the gameplay, as it was simply weak in the first game. VIDEO
A new mechanic to the game involves Monteriggioni, the Auditore family villa. Monteriggioni serves a similar function as Masyaf did to Altaïr in the way that it is Ezio’s headquarters. Ezio’s family resides there after Florence, and you must return there every once in awhile where you can discuss events with your family or train in the courtyard. In addition to providing Ezio a home, Ezio can improve the small city, increasing its value and earning Ezio money. You now earn money by looting corpses and completing missions, and also by pickpocketing people (but they notice fairly quickly and will either fight you or call for guards, so you better run). This money can go towards buying better armor and weapons, buying medicine and poison, as well as improvements to Monteriggioni. This economic system, while perhaps a bit strange when compared to the previous game, does add a bit of RPG element to the game, which some may find a good addition. I’m rather mixed on it, especially since if you upgrade so soon you often find yourself with far too much money by the end. Other small changes have also impacted gameplay quite a bit. As already stated, you can now heal yourself, which greatly changes how the synchronization bar/health bar functions compared to the last game. Part of the side missions involve Monteriggioni and restoring it, which costs you money but greatly increases the value of the city, periodically giving you a great return on your investment. Also, hidden away beneath the villa is the family Sanctuary, where the armor of Altaïr is locked away. Ezio must travel to various churches containing tombs of past Assassins scattered throughout the cities and complete puzzles to acquire keys that can be used to gain access to Altaïr’s armor. This armor, combined with Altaïr’s sword (which can be purchased from the Monteriggioni blacksmith late in the game) make Ezio virtually unstoppable. Constructed by the past assassin with the help of the Apple of Eden, the armor is unbreakable and provides Ezio with the same amount of health squares that the best purchasable armor can provide. Freerunning has also improved a lot, with Ezio being far faster in climbing especially than his predecessor, able to climb farther distances up a wall by jumping and grabbing. The player can also utilize a series of fast travel points scattered throughout the game maps to move around speedily. Finally, Desmond must use Ezio’s memory to find a series of symbols that had been placed by the mysterious Subject 16 (another person that Abstergo used in the past, only briefly mentioned in the first game) to gain knowledge of “The Truth”, which answers few questions concerning the overall plot of the but creates many more, some of which are answered at the end of the game. I honestly wish I could say more, but it is so spoiler-ridden that it would be impossible to not spoil people. But I can say, the game ends with you and Desmond both thinking “What the hell just happened?!”. Finally, there are plenty of side activities and things to collect to keep you going even after the campaign has ended, or if you wish, to extend the campaign as a whole. These small changes nevertheless make a big impact on the game, and add to the fun factor as it requires much exploration of both the maps and the mysteries of the franchise to unlock everything. VIDEO
A small thing I’d like to add for this review is discussing the music. I simply cannot sing the praises of this soundtrack enough. The soundtrack for this game is absolutely phenomenal. From the ambient music from when you are walking around to the combat music to the mission and event specific music, everything about the soundtrack is fantastic. There is not a single track that I do not enjoy, and I honestly try to listen to parts of it every week. While all of them are fantastic, some of the standouts include “Ezio’s Family”, “Leonardo’s Inventions”, “Flight Over Venice”, and many more. Jesper Kyd, the composer of this game, deserves all the praise he can get for creating such a beautiful soundtrack that really contributes to this beautiful game. VIDEO
Let’s take a quick moment to discuss the PS4/XBO version as released in the Ezio Collection. While Ubisoft has decided to postpone any new Assassin’s Creed games for a while, they did decide to throw a bone to the fans by giving us something everyone has wanted. The game is, without a doubt, significantly better looking than before, with somewhat better performance as well as overall beauty compared to the PS3/360 version. While it does not look quite like it belongs on this generation of consoles it certainly looks cleaner and brighter than the dirty atmosphere than was seen on the previous generation. However there are some issues that I have with this remaster. While cleaning up the game is nice, there are some maps that I felt should not have been cleaned up. In particular I would argue Forli, which is a swamp, should not look as clean and beautiful as it does in this version. That’s not to say that the map of Forli did not look beautiful in its own way previously, but it looks too bright and too polished to be a map centered around a swamp. There is also the issue with far too much pop-in graphics wise in many cases. The game does run better for sure, but I honestly don’t recall there being so much pop-in on buildings and other things in the PS3 version, and that does not make sense to me at all. And while I do not necessarily care whether a game runs at 60 fps or 30, having a seven year old game run on 30 fps on a vastly superior system is an odd choice when it should be able to just fine. There is also the trouble with the faces on Ezio, Desmond, and other characters not looking quite right, especially around the eyes, which is an odd issue to have and should have been noticed before the game was released. All these relatively minor issues make me believe that this was nothing less than an easy cash grab by Ubisoft, and while I appreciate the chance to play it again on a better system I feel like more work could have gone into this game. Overall, this game is such an improvement over the original that they can hardly be compared. There is little I can say against it: the only thing that comes to mind is that the health/synchronization bar is now more health than synchronization, which sort of diminishes the plot device of deviation from the memory too much can desynchronize you if you can simply heal yourself. The fact that Ezio does not learn he is a member of an Assassin Brotherhood until much later also slightly detracts, but otherwise is not important in the grand scheme of the game. Other than that, I honestly cannot think of anything really bad to say. Everything has been improved: the characters, the plot/story, the combat, the soundtrack, the missions, everything. The soundtrack especially is a vast improvement, expanding from twelve songs to thirty five, all of which are amazingly composed. My favorite of course is “Ezio’s Family” which is the highlight of the soundtrack in my opinion, and is an absolutely beautiful piece of music. The general voice acting, the highlight being Roger Craig Smith as Ezio, has improved a lot as well, and along with the excellent scriptwriting, they make Ezio an immensely likable character. And guess what: unlike the previous game, you can now swim, a must have when running around on a map like Venice. This game is simply a fantastic sequel to the very first Assassin’s Creed. 10/10 
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