I would spend hours with this game just running over the city performing assassinations and messing with the systems as much as I could. It wasn't as sandbox-y as GTA, but it was more..... fluid and intense. I could run, climb, sneak, jump and more all so seamlessly. I then became hooked on the franchise. For the next 10 years, I bought every game (minus Discovery and the Chronicles), every book and would spend a good bit of time reading the AC Wiki. This was the franchise that inspired my love for history.
With that said, after 10 years of playing and loving this franchise, and playing other open world games and excited as hell for Odyssey, I decided to buy and play through the Ezio Collection. I recently finished it but took a while to write about it. At the time, these games were some of the best I had ever played, but now I feel a little different towards them. So no more of my life story, he we go, this will be a bit of a blog post on a look at the Ezio trilogy and any issues and points of praise I may have seen. This will be split into gameplay and story separately and won't be as detailed as something like Joesph Anderson's work. This blog assumes you've played the games and are familiar with the events of the franchise as a whole. I'm going to be pretty jumpy. I am going to start with AC2:
-AC2
When I played AC2 back in 2009, I thought it was amazing. Like nothing would ever surpass this (it was surpassed later). This game is regarded as Ubi's gold standard. After recently replaying it, I found this game to be kinda disappointing.
---The Story.
I have 2 main problems with the story of AC2. First is Ezio's lack of characterization throughout the middle sections of the plot. And the lack of impact and influence from much of the villains.
The first one:
Now AC2 does a great job with its set up. Desmond is still chilling in Abstergo (wait does he see the events of AC: Bloodlines when he goes back into the animus? He is surprised that Altair and Maria are dating.) when Lucy busts him out and gets him to the new crew and into Ezio. This is a great set up for Desmond because it elevates him from simply playing along with Warren in AC1. He now has an active role and arc to follow through that he can partake in. Getting the confidence and skills to take on Abstergo. And the franchise does follow through well on that promise. He gets a workout testing his skills, he flashes to Altair, interacts with Shaun and Rebecca etc. It's not much in the grand scheme of the game but it adds to his story and is a nice contrast to his more investigative but still a prisoner role in AC1. However, from a character development standpoint, it is barebones. Desmond in AC2 doesn't explore much, say much and feel much. He's instantly on board that he doesn't even develop a role, he just shows up and becomes the animus boy and fighter. The game spends very little time discussing the implications of his choice (even after Minerva speaks, Desmond is still kinda lazy about it). You can't even explore much and discover hidden pieces of info as Desmond. All of Desmond's explorations consists of talking to characters who don't develop for games to come, or 16's puzzles which are acknowledged once by Rebecca and then ignored by everyone. Even the stakes and scenario doesn't change much. The result being that Desmond feels like a cardboard cutout rather than a person (I intend to make an essay about this later.)
Ezio's story is set up really well. We're introduced him in a "day in the life" style with touches of what's to come so we have a good contrast for when stuff goes wrong. His interactions with his family and rivalry with the Pazzi are well done. We get a real sense of his character and life. The murder of his family with Rodrigo there sets him up as a villain and key player well.
The problems start emerging when Ezio is training with Mario. Now I know it is generally unfair to compare a novelization of a game to the game itself, but if Metal Gear Solid 4 could nail both very well then so can AC2. I'm going to be referring to this novelization a fair bit because it tells more of Ezio's story, struggle and character than the game itself and that's a shame. It'll show us some of the gaps of the game.
The first, but minor place where the game's story takes a small hit is with Ezio's initial insistence to go to Spain to keep his mom and sister safe at Mario's displeasure. Novel Ezio's insistence and later turn to help Mario is given more weight and time than game Ezio's. This makes his later revenge and call to uncover the conspiracy have more weight. It's small but hurts a bit of the story.
The Pazzi as villains are very well done. They contrast Ezio well and have a connection to his character. Grimaldi is also done pretty well for how he's developed and his role in the story. But the rest of the villains are problematic.
Most of the targets Ezio faces are just bad guys who happened to be on the list of people who killed his family. He doesn't really face any emotional challenge or grows from facing most of them. Tell me, how many of the targets from the game can you remember? What was their character (aside from in on the conspiracy)?
This is where my 2 criticisms mentioned early coalesce. In the novelization, Ezio kills 2 of his targets in very brutal and angry ways before feeling guilty over what he did. Even Mario chews him out for it. This is used as the impetus for his character and the payoff is in the end when he refuses to kill Rodrigo for killing his family citing this won't bring them back. This is great because it comes as the climax of his adventure. This is a major character moment for him that has been built up over the course of the story. But in the game, Ezio doesn't really get the emotional build up. He gets physical training and help from other assassins, sure. But not direct character development. Without this, his talk with Rosa about how he has grown into his vocation and later encounter with Rodrigo loses a lot of its weight. Here, Ezio has gone from guy out on revenge while still keeping his casual side to a wise version of that without the steps in between. It's pretty weird.
Rodrigo as a main villain also has problems. The Main being he's so absent that we don't really see how he works as a character. We don't see other sides of him or how he works except as "leader of a conspiracy who thinks he's right". We don't see much of him struggle or interact in other ways that he comes off as 1 dimensional.
In contrast to other AC Games, AC1 had Altair talk with the targets he killed and the bureau leaders in extended sections. The former would talk a flowery "You've been tricked" line and all have different motives for how they feel are right. Altair goes from brashful "Yeah, sure" to "I see what happens to people who hold themselves without fault". His conversations with Bureau leaders who have different opinions of him also mark how Altair is progressing as a character. He initially acts with impatience towards many of them (especially towards Malik) to humble and wise even when insulted. It's a surprisingly well-done arc of his character and is very organic and pushed by events in the plot. Even the villains would still inform the themes of the game and make Altair look villainous and the villains more sympathetic. You have a doctor who argues mentally ill patients should not be allowed to make their own decisions because of their state, and even Altair is troubled by how assassinating him doesn't fit cleanly with his morals. You have one homosexual man who refuses to finance a war in service to a God who sees him as an abomination. AC1 really leans into its themes on how both sides are flawed in an interesting way while AC2 just makes them both 1 dimensional.
AC3 and Rogue go one step farther. The targets are also people the player has met earlier as allies. So when they fight, the player sees them in different lights, different sides of them and their deaths and actions influence the protagonists in big ways. In Connor's case, makes him see how his naivety blinded him and in Shay's case, it's both the pain of hurting his former allies and how their fanaticism turns him off the assassins more and more. The player has a connection with them on multiple levels
Brotherhood does an acceptable job here with villains. Cesare is set up as a major threat with how he destroys the Villa and the targets you assassinate are connected to his power. So the story has progressed even when Ceasre isn't the villain of the sequence (more on that in the Brotherhood section as I feel Brotherhood squandered parts of its story despite having a great solution)
So how would I fix this? Well, Add those novel scenes back in. Give more of the targets a narrative reason for existing. Have their assassination challenge Ezio emotionally and have him grow more.
One thing AC Syndicate did right was cuts to Starrick after every sequence to see him reacting to your actions. That would have been great for Rodrigo. Seeing him respond with what you're doing and take steps against you, growing more desperate and angry, seeing him deal with losses. This would have made him more compelling as he is now a much greater factor throughout the story. Maybe even tie more of the targets together into a grand plot so every kill feels like the player is getting closer to stopping the bad guys part 2 rather than just working through the list of independent people who's beef is that they were on a list.
Another thing I find about the story to be problematic is people saying Ezio is "likable" and holding that up as a strength. I do not find Ezio to be "likable" here. If anything, the game's attempts to do so only hurt his character. The game presents Ezio as this fun-loving, cool guy with no major character flaw. He starts off being smug and kinda obnoxious in places. And throughout the game, he is presented as kinda dumb for not connecting the dots to Rodrigo. The narrative seems so focused on praising Ezio as this cool guy that it forgets to give us a reason for him to grow. The plot twist that every Ally Ezio has had being an assassin is also quite dumb when you think about it. Ezio's family basically kept a secret from him for 10 years despite him helping with the thing the secret is about.
The game also has 2 sequences, Sequence 12 and 13, which the player cannot access until the DLCs are added. The game attempts to justify them by saying Desmond's DNA was corrupted in places. Honestly it should have stayed corrupted. They do nothing to add to Ezio's character and slow down the pace of the overall story to a crawl (not to mention are pretty buggy).
The story also jumps future in time at random points in the story. Making it weird that Ezio would wait x many years just to ask someone he was with x years ago what they just did x years ago. It is weird and doesn't help the story.
Here is a reddit comment that encapsulates a lot of what I have to say
"Please don't take this as an offense, I'm genuinely curious, what makes AC fans love AC2 story so much? I always thought the story was decent at best, and most of the time just on an acceptable level.
In AC2 (and AC2 only), Ezio to me seems to be a romanticized and highly unrealistic hero character. The best example for this argument is in the game's final boss fight. Ezio was stabbed in his stomach, his apple was taken away, but he somehow did not die and return to life with full health? I must have missed some hints but after watching a youtube walkthrough, I still can't figure out how he was resurrected. Ezio went on to find Borgia unarmed and the first thing he did was starting a fist fight despite the advantage he had. That is something straight out of B-action movies, very pointless if you ask me. After the fist fight, he spared Rodrigo's life because as Ezio said, killing him would not bring his family back? How many people did Ezio kill without a blink of an eye to get to Rodrigo? My estimation is somewhere between 30 and 40 even if you try to full-stealth in this game. Was there any foreshadowing before his sudden change of heart? He even killed more than 10 soldiers on his way to the church. And just at the last moment, he decided everything was simply not worth it, despite knowing Rodrigo is a Pope and has the army of the whole Europe under his command to seek vengeance on him and everyone he loves?
The second problem with AC2 story imo is the lack of moral choices that make our character question their choices. You could argue that Ezio felt remorse to those he killed because he always said Requiescat in pace to his victims before their deaths. But did he ever have to question himself why he had to do what he did? Would it be better to just leave all behind? Ezio seemed to me just a simple-minded killing machine throughout the game, which made the ending even more bizarre. Later games in the series addressed this issue, for example in AC Unity Arno had to confront Bellec after he killed the Mentor, in AC3 Connor had to choose whether to join his father and forge an alliance with the Templars, or continue his path as an assassin, same thing with AC Rogue."
----Gameplay
I'm going talk about the maps in the game first.
<Rant>
But I like that people complain That Origin's RPG systems make exploration limited (it doesn't) when AC2's map is even more hard-restricted.
For example, Florence starts out giving only a section of the northernmost area, then goes more south as the sequences tick on by. You only get full access to the map once you complete The Bonfires sequence.
Venice starts you off on the northeast part of the map and you only get all once you complete the Carnevale Sequence.
You can't access an entire map, let alone all the maps until you complete the story requirements (even Brotherhood restricts parts of the Eastern Rome. Rev only restricts the Arensal.). Origins let you visit any part of the map and do quests and activities regardless of your level.
2 (and Bro as well but not Rev) even limit what sidequests you can do until story points. And you die automatically if you enter areas too early. So Origins still offers more freedom and exploration from the beginning than 2 or Brotherhood.
</Rant>
Alright, that Rant was more a jab at other people's opinions rather than a critique of the games. I'm fine with either approach (though I prefer Rev and Origin's approach). I point out the hypocrisy in saying 2 offers more freedom than Origins.
Now the maps in AC2 are very well done.
All of them feel distinct. Florence feels a different kind of opulent to Venice. Tuscany and Forli each nail a different "fort in the countryside". It's really impressive. Even games with more km^2 have less variety than this. What more can I say?
I do find it funny you can revisit the mountains on foot where you helped Leo's Carriage for 1 mission. You can't do anything here besides find chests and a few viewpoints. Most games wouldn't let you come back here and AC2 is proof of why. Though, I can't really complain too much since returning here is only for optional 100% completion. Ideally, the game shouldn't have had optional stuff here. This map is too dull for stuff like that (though Bro and Rev's version of this map actually looks more interesting).
I also find it funny that you can return to Florence and Venice after you are done with them and burnings and Carnivale will still be going on in their respective areas. Not going to dock marks here or anything really. The game doesn't really expect you revisit here and it was 2009 so changing maps wasn't really a priority in those days.
-Controls
The Early AC games did something of a novelty with its controls. It used a "puppeteering" concept. The idea being that [] controls your weapon hand, x your legs, O your empty hand and triangle your head, with R2 being a modifier. Now depending on the context, the same button would do something completely different. For example, pressing X will make you blend, walk fast, pickpocket, run, wall run, jump, kick etc depending on the context. [] will make you attack, assassinate, counter etc. O will make you tackle, drop, grab, throw. Triangle will let you speak to people and use Eagle Vision (an alternate vision mode that highlights people and places of interest). R2 lets you go into high profile mode, letting you do things like run. It can switch you from attacking to defence in combat. Together, these make up the bulk of the actions you can do. The d-pad lets you quick select weapons. R1 lets you open up a weapon menu to quickly select the thing you want. L3 lets you use first person. R3 recenters the camera. L2 lets you lock onto targets. Finally, L1 lets you use the "contextual camera". This pops up when you're hiding or being chased to give you a wider view of the area. This feature is only in AC1 and 2 as future games would use this for more important commands.
As a kid, I thought this system was amazing. It let you do so much with so few buttons. Now, looking back, the system has its cracks and it's no wonder Ubi stopped really adhering to it in just a few games. But, it is functional here.
The main problems are that rigid adherence limits more creative commands. For example, in combat, I have only 1 real kind of attack. I may have a few other options like grabbing or kicking, but I can't really use combos or different kinds of attacks. In contrast, AC Origins let me use different kinds of strikes, overpower moves, parring, positioning and more by incorporating more buttons to do different variations of an action. Rev ditched triangle's head for using a ranged weapon so now you can use a gun and a sword in a fight. I'll get into more in the combat system later but suffice it to say, AC2's system is quite primitive now.
One complaint I do have is how pickpocketing and blending can interfere. Now in AC1, holding X when walking let you try to blend in. AC2 lets you blend in with any group of people so that's no longer necessary so the command was replaced with "fast walk". Fast walk lets you move faster when walking and can be helpful in moving from crowd to crowd. However, the problem comes in as fast walking into NPCs will automatically pickpocket them, and thus blowing your cover in few seconds. Meaning it is easy to pickpocket someone when you just meant to walk next to them. Hell, you can simply hold X while standing still and Ezio will automatically pickpocket anyone next to you and whoever just walks near him. This means blending challenges are much more frustrating. And you can't say that fast walking is inherently too powerful or something. AC3 had just normal fast walking tied to X and had no problems. My solution to this problem would just be that x alone lets Ezio fast walk, O alone lets him gentle push and holding X and O at the same time lets you pickpocket. This honestly solves a lot and may let the game use more blending and crowd challenges. I'm honestly surprised about this. I'll talk more about this stuff later when I reach the stealth section.
Eagle Vision, sadly, doesn't get a chance to really shine here. In this game, I only used Eagle Vision when the game told me to and not of my own volition. This is because your mini-map already communicates to you everything Eagle Vision tells you. This is something later games fixed. Revelations lets there be enemies hiding in crowds that only Eagle Vision can pick up as well as mark the paths of enemies and targets. AC4 lets you tag enemies through walls and Origins dumps all that in favour of letting you fly an actual eagle and tag people and items in a way that reminds me of MGSV.
-Parkour and Stealth.
The former is much better than AC1. Though seemingly functioning on the same system. To quickly go over parkour in these games, AC's parkour is a mostly automated system that through a very few sets of inputs, can do most actions. In Prince of Persia, If I want to say, jump across a gap, run across a wall, swing off a pole in quick succession, I would need to alternate between pressing and holding X and R1with correct timings to get across. In AC however, I just need to Hold down R2+X and move the left stick forward and the character will do all of the above seamlessly, right down to precisely picking how far you will jump when hopping over a small gap. The system lets you go anywhere and climb anything with no problems whatsoever in the open world. The animations when climbing are very well done. It legitimately looks like These were scripted to be climbed instead of a dynamic animation system. Other games like Uncharted use holds where the engine can make you climb with similar animations. Not AC, the climbing here looks amazing no matter where you are and this is something no other studio has ever attempted. Even the amazing Zelda BOTW, with its climb anywhere feature, doesn't have as dynamic animations. Now back to gameplay, You can add a little depth by rebounding off walls when wall running or climbing by double tapping x while moving the left stick. You can use this to more quickly scale buildings if there are beams and the like jutting out. These can be really satisfying to use as they can really let you demonstrate an understanding of the game's mechanics and essentially "speedrun" areas. It's a shame these were removed in later titles. The improvements I mentioned earlier with regards to AC1 come from the automatic system being more accurate with where you jump.
However, I've seen many people level the complaint the system is too automated. That you can complete entire dungeons and chases by literally holding R2+X the entire time. I can attest to having done that myself. My defence of the system is that fits well with AC is going for. Parkour in the AC games is like driving in GTA. It's not really hard or engaging to actually perform it. The fun comes from applying it. Whether it's escaping cops or doing stunts, driving is a means to an end, not an end in it of itself. In the case of AC, parkour is really easy to pull off, so the fun comes from using it to escape after being caught, sneak into areas and just exploring. When the system works, it works well. Some of the better tombs even challenge you with finding where you can climb as a form of a puzzle. However, there are some faults AC2 does, it sometimes confuses doing an automated system for applying it. Look at many of the tombs in AC2. Many of them are simply hold down the buttons with few opportunities to deviate from the path or use the rebounding moves I mentioned earlier. This makes these tombs uninteresting as there is no challenge or anything engaging. This is something AC Rev and 3 addressed by making these kinds of tombs more set piece-y. For example, Rev's chase of the boat with explosions everywhere was visually stimulating and such an intense spectacle that it made up for the easy gameplay. 2 could have used some pointers there, it's already taking cues from Uncharted. The system isn't perfect in other ways too. The main being that sometimes, it won't interpret your commands correctly, so you may jump when you meant to climb. And climbing down is pretty barren. This is something Unity fixed with its parkour up and down commands.
AC2 does introduce a feature to try to make vertical climbing more interesting when you get to Venice. The ability to jump up when climbing and grasp a hold to pull yourself. You can jump with x and use O to grasp. Personally, I'm not really fond of this system. The timings are always the same and it feels more like I have to break my climbing flow to do it. You can't use it to skip jumps so much as make jumps later games let you do automatically. Another problem is that the animations associated with it become boring as one of AC's best features is how dynamic climbing looks. I prefer the rebound jumps to this. AC Rev's hookblade does make it more interesting as looking ahead when using it can make you "chain" a bigger jump letting you scale small buildings in "1 move".
Stealth in AC2 is really basic and yet, is still a step up from AC1. The system works by adding to enemy alertness when you step into their line of sight when not hidden. Once their meter fills up, they enter "alert" mode and come in to attack you. You can lose them by breaking line of sight and then hiding for a while. A few positives here is that every individual enemy appears to have their own alertness meter, meaning it's possible to outrun some guards and have them still looking for you while you fight other guards. You have a few nice ways to stealth such as blending in crowds and benches, using courtesans and thieves to distract guards (groups like these add a nice bit to stealth but their drawbacks stop being a problem once you make loads of cash).
The problems however are that firstly, Enemy AI in this game is really basic and predictable. You can come into their line of sight and back away and they will either come into investigating or ignore you. This even lets stupid things happen. One such example was that I once was able to kill a target and hide in a hay bush, and assassinate 7 guards that came in looking for me while their backs were turned. It was ridiculous. At one point, I jumped on a boat a few inches away from a dock and half of my pursuers drowned trying to get me. Blending has no challenge aside from "don't do anything high profile" so that is really easy to use.
The second is the movement on part of the player. Ezio can't crouch or have a "Stealth Mode" or additional options, so sneaking often consists of just, normally walking past enemies. Or you can jog and risk enemies hearing you. It isn't until Unity added crouching that more interesting challenges and ways of sneaking like using cover and actually sneaking past enemies instead of just walking past them. Later games let you whistle, use poison or sleep darts and other tools, corner takedowns to make stealth more interesting and fluid
This means sneaking past enemies in AC2 is often really easy as there is often no challenge or limitation on the player or creativity that can be applied. This is something future games would remedy by adding challenges and more tools in missions, improved movement and better AI.
-Health
AC2's Health System is not a good fit for this game. The system works by letting you take a potion at any time when your health is not full and your health doesn't regenerate automatically,
Regarding The debate surrounding Rengerating Health vs Health Pickups, I don't normally mind what a game does so long as it suits the game itself. In the case AC2, it doesn't.
Here is a piece from a debate I was having on Twitter with this person who felt that having a Dark Souls like Estus System would suit Origins. I feel this nicely sums up my feelings towards the AC franchise working better with Regenerating health
"But again, Origins is a bit different. In Dark Souls, the Estus is less a "health potion" and a more of a "How many mistakes you are allowed to make before you die, or should have to make it to a bonfire." The idea being that the limiting factors in a linear environment should constantly build tension on the player as they go through the levels. That philosophy doesn't really work in Origins and could limit your options.
Let's look at GTA games for a second. As Open World Sandbox games, they share a lot but all but one GTA game uses a Regen system. Every game except GTA V requires you to eat food you find in the world for any health recovery. Added with no checkpoints, this meant missions in this older titles were very frustrating as you could die very easily requiring you to replay a lot of ground. The Limited ways to regain health, especially on missions, made it much less appealing to play creative or intentionally mess up. In GTA V, the first half of the player's health can only be recovered with food or health packs while the remaining half can regenerate to half full. The result here is that (especially in Singleplayer with checkpoints) players have more freedom and leniency to get creative, with enough of a safety net as to not make it too easy. I was hopping out of cars and jumping over bridges more in GTA V and Just Cause 3 (especially in missions) than I was in prior GTA Games. Just Cause 3 wouldn't be able to do what it does without regenerating health as that is the thing that encourages the player to become reckless and experiment rather than play cautiously.
In AC2-Rev and Unity, the player can use potions as a crutch because it heals you completely. This reduced a lot of the challenge as Players could be essentially invulnerable in many fights. Even if you decided to play fair and not to abuse them, you still can't give yourself a challenge because of how much the potions heal and the lack of alternatives to ramp up the difficulty.
The main obstacle here is that the AC games don't have all the other limiting factors like Dark Souls that make health potions make the experience more intense
Let's do some math. Let's say an AC game has health potions. You can carry 5 and can take 5 hits before needing to top up (so you can't take 6 hits in a row). This means that in order for the enemies to make you run out of potions and health, it will take them 26 (5*5+1) hits to kill you. I don't know about you but that seems like too wide a safety net. And considering you can get armour and more health potions, it really further increases the safety net. If you simply increase your potions and armour by 1 each, you're now looking at 37 Hits before going down. The numbers grow too fast instead of being relatively in check with the enemies. The game could severely reduce your armour and potions and give the enemies more powerful hits but that makes you almost too vulnerable (besides, a regen health system could easily solve all this). On top of that, what is really gained from winning depending on your health? In Dark Souls, the more health and Flasks you have after a fight, the better your odds are of making it to a bonfire. It makes Victory feel more intense. In AC, you can restock your supplies right there from the corpses of your enemies. Also consider that vendors are generally close enough and sell medicine for 6f per one. This Means regardless if you won after 0 or 25 hits, it is effectively the same anyway. The limited nature of the potions contributed nothing to the challenge both before, during and after the fight. If anything, it takes up your time to restock supplies rather than be an interesting challenge.
By Comparison, Since Origins works via Health Regen it does a few things.
Firstly, it ensures the player has a safety net that better accommodates their skill because of how the Difficulty Levels and Regenerating Health can ensure the player doesn't outgrow the enemies exponentially. Meaning the player will never take more than 23 hits to die and should ideally be closer to what challenges them based on where they are in the main areas. (Especially if they turn on Level Scaling). It doesn't matter if the player wants to be invincible or wants a challenge. You can choose what you want to experience.
Secondly, since it doesn't matter how you win fights anyway, the regenerating health prevents you from spending extra time restocking.
Thirdly, it makes it more intense when you do get low on health because it can potentially happen to any player relatively quickly and only with their own skill and tactics can they then turn it around (perhaps even survive long enough in the fight to regain a hit point). This can make the fights more intense. You can also use secondary effects from your weapons like “Health on hit” which are more useful now with Health Regen.
Fourthly, it fits the lore better and makes the Animus experience more believable. It's not supposed to be the 'health bar' but instead the 'sync bar' which shows your synchronization with your ancestor. That's why killing civilians in AC1 depleted your sync bar because you lose synchronization with your ancestor upon committing actions which your ancestor never did."
Of course, a big part to why this is the case is also due to the combat system of the game, which we will look into now
-Combat:
The Combat in AC2 is a slightly updated version of AC1's. The problem is that it is not very interesting. You can attack, grab, kick, dodge, counterattack, counter dodge, taunt. The problem is that combat isn't that fun because you only have 1 efficient way to fight: counterattacking. You also have an instant "backstab" move as well. This means when you're in a fight surrounded, you have to wait around for enemies to attack you one at a time so you can instantly kill them one at a time. You then repeat the process until done. When you have allies fighting as well, you can go behind guards and instantly kill them. You have a few cool moves like being able to disarm enemies, grab and kill weaker enemies, kick to stun etc. The problem here is that these extra moves aren't really useful or provide the means to improve your creativity in a fight. You often have to use counters as they are most optimal method. Since you have to wait around, (with that massive health pool) fights are never challenging or stressful. On top of that, timings for attacks are much more lenient. In AC1, using the hidden blade for counterattacks was risky because while you could 1 hit kill people, it couldn't block and had a much more small window for counterattacks. Even the sword, which was safer as you could block, had a pretty strict timing for countering which left you vulnerable. Enemies in AC1 could also break your block, grab and mess with you to make fights challenging. Not so in AC2 where you can block with the hidden blade, and sword timings are so lenient I didn't even have to pay attention to counters.
Another problem is that AC2 gives you a lot of different melee weapons from daggers to axes to swords but many of these function the same. Even though the dagger swings slightly faster than the axe, the axe moves fast enough and combo just as good as any other weapon. This makes your choice of weapon uninteresting aside from the animations tied to it. You can throw your axe at people but since you can't cancel the animation or actually aim the thing, it doesn't really end up working or being used often.
Later games would expand on this from Unity onwards to make the weapons actually feel and play distinct.
Also, even when unarmed, you have access to enough moves and abilities that you can often take down multiple guards. The game really doesn't try to challenge you.
Now all my prior points come in to inform how I feel about the main missions in the game. Since the story is unengaging and too busy making Ezio look cool, the stealth is basic, and the combat is too easy, I was bored through a lot of the game. It is a shame as I really wanted to enjoy this game.
-Side Content
Many people often refer to the way many modern games do open world side quest design as "Modern Ubisoft Open World Design" in a negative way. Citing lots of uninteresting collectibles, one-off missions and more. Like almost a procedurally generated set of contents. The funny thing is that I feel this applies more to AC2 than almost any recent game.
There's fair amount of different kinds of quests. You deliver letters, beat up cheating husbands, race, do assassination contracts, explore tombs, solve Subject 16 Puzzles, find collectibles.
The problem is that most of these aren't really interesting or even consistent with the narrative. Why is Ezio going around delivering letters and beating up cheaters on the word of people he doesn't know? In something like the Witcher or Deus Ex (I know, unfair to compare a 2009 game to 2015 Great ones but stick with me), these quests would be contextually justified and have something interesting as a result happen. Even AC3 and Unity had that. In AC2 however, no Beat up has a twist. Every Race starts off the same way (with a paragraph flavour text that may not even line up with what the mission giver says) with no surprises (there is one horse race, when done has the mission giver have sex with Ezio like a bad porn parody.). At least the Races are pretty fun to complete. Out off all the assassinations, there is only 1 that tries to mix up the stakes with the player stumbling onto decoys in the form of training dummies. None of these are very interesting or challenging. I felt bored doing them.
Subject 16, Desmond's Predecessor, has left puzzles throughout the game world that you can solve. These are generally pretty interesting as they ask you with things like unscrambling paintings or photographs to discover more of the game's lore. Lore about how deep this conspiracy rabbit hole goes. They're good.
The Assassin Tombs are hit and miss. Many are simple "Hold X + R2 all the way and you're done". Some have a puzzle and others mix it up with climbing, combat and other ways to make it interesting.
You can also get money in the game from doing activities, pickpocketing and more. Investing in your base town of Montergionni also nets you passive income. However, the problems are that you reach a point where you earn money so quickly that I was swimming in cash before I was 2/3 of the way through the game. I had nothing to spend on as I bought everything there was. Since there are no money related penalties or challenges, this also comes off as feeling superfluous. This is something future games fixed as it takes a lot more time and effort to reach a point where you don't need money anymore.
The game has collectibles in the form of feathers you can give to Ezio's Mom to get her to start talking. They are fine. You don't get much out of it.
I’d argue even AC1 does it better. Yeah, the quests may have been repetitive, but they were well contextualized in universe, and actually contribute to the world in meaningful ways.
For example, side quests provide you with more health and allies in the city in form of vigilantes and scholars. Investigations provided you options in your assassinations you were free to use. And the assassinations themselves were varied, climactic, involved character development.
-Graphics and Audio
The Game is an absolute treat sound-wise. Jesper Kyd's music, all the various sound effects and NPC dialogue. Very well done. Voice acting was good all around.
In terms of visuals, while the buildings and animations are pretty good (seriously, the remaster may be just a PC port of the original game but it still looks great) the NPC character models look a little weak. There was a meme about it when the remaster came out as certain civilians have these massive eyes that look like those Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
Even more negative is how despite Brotherhood and Revelations Remastered looking much better, this game's remaster isn't as good as it could be. Especially compared to other remasters. This could have been much better.
-Bugs and Performance
The game ran smoothly enough with no major hiccups or issues at 60 FPS on PS4 aside from major bug during Sequence 12 where a particular cutscene when you enter the fort causes the game to crash and makes you restart the mission entirely. I had to replay this 5 times before I looked up online that I needed to reinstall the game to fix that problem.
The Mac OS Version of this game is atrocious in that, it won't even launch. The launcher dissapears and won't let you enter in your details. So, I don't recommend that version
-Other complaints
The UI is too massive and detailed and overbearing. It even takes up 4 corners of the screen. Future games did this much better by restricting it to 2 corners and keeping it more minimal
-A small but very annoying quirk of trying to blend into moving crowds is that Ezio moves at a different speed from the NPCs; depending on how far forward you push the analog stick, he either moves faster than them or slower than them, forcing you to alternate your speed to stay on pace with them. Thankfully in Brotherhood, this was fixed so Ezio automatically matches their speed.
-Conclusion
I remember a comment on Ludocritcism's video on AC2. It talked about how AC2 is often seen as the best for a few reasons, it came out after the successful AC1, it was focus tested to be more appealing to the average gamer with quick banter, cool moments, slick presentation and more. This is in contrast to AC1, or 3 or Rogue or Origins which opted to be something more but were criticized for not being like AC2. I feel that is often the worst part about AC2. If this game came out today, it would be criticized as bland, uninteresting etc. I know this because AC Syndicate came out and tried its damnedest to be AC2 again and was unrewarded for it. But because AC2's unique position, it is now a gold standard for the series and gaming despite any game attempting to reach it being doomed because the standard itself is so flawed.
It is a game that glorifies its main character while not having them earn that glorification. It goes out of its way to make the heroes and villains one dimensional and being praised for it while the other entries that do something different get chewed out for it. It is a game with an uninteresting gameplay, missions and story but great promise and technical prowess.
If I were a reviewer, this game would be a 6/10 max. And I hope Other companies and gamers look at AC2's failings.
