Impressions of Assassin's Creed II
After the first part of the Assassin's Creed series, I finished the second. The contrast is huge. The second part is just really great. Bright, beautiful, with a great story. On the one hand it felt much longer than the first part, on the other hand I spent only 3-4 hours more finishing it. The story is simply denser, and there are fewer repetitive routine missions.
The second part takes place in Italy during the Renaissance. You play a guy who goes from a reckless teenager who gets into fights, sneaks to young ladies at night, and only knows how to climb buildings, to a seasoned adult assassin.
Ezio Auditore, the main character
The second part adds a lot of new gameplay elements borrowed from other genres. There is RPG stuff here: armor affects how long you can last in a fight and how many hits you can take. Clothes can be dyed different colors. Weapons can be changed as you play, you can buy new ones and choose whether to fight with a sword, a cleaver, or just smash enemies over the head with a war hammer. There is also an economy now: money appeared in the game, and you can spend it on weapons, armor, and ammo. The main character has his uncle's villa, which you can improve: build structures, for example, or buy paintings in different cities that later hang on the villa walls. The more upgrades, the more the villa is worth and the more income it brings. You can then spend the profits on weapons and armor. Or just pay for transport to another city and choose one of several drop-off points there. Convenient. Although when you travel to the villa itself, it drops you off at the outskirts, and running to the villa on foot every time gets old.
An additional story thread was also added around Altair's armor. There is a vault with the coolest and most powerful armor in the game, which Altair made for himself after gaining knowledge from the Apple of Eden. It is locked with 6 locks. Each lock needs a key stored in an assassin tomb. Some tombs are just simple chase sequences, but most are interesting puzzles about how to reach the next level in a building. Sometimes you have to climb under cathedral domes, for example. Interesting stuff.
As in the first part, the action takes place in different cities. Each city looks different from the others. But for the most part everything looks quite colorful. Green suburban landscapes, or gray tones and bad weather.
Historical figures appear in the game again. The one who shows up most often and is the most useful is Leonardo da Vinci. He upgrades your gear and comes up with various things like a flying machine for getting into an impregnable fortress. One part of the plot revolves around the Assassin Codex written by Altair from the first part. Its pages are scattered across different places in the game, and you need to collect them. Da Vinci decrypts them, sometimes finding Altair's inventions there, such as the hidden pistol.
Niccolò Machiavelli is in the game too, another well-known historical figure. There is not much of him, though. He is involved in the events, but more often stays in the background. Still, the cast in the story is interesting.
One stage of the game takes place during the carnival in Venice. And the city itself is beautifully transformed: it is nighttime all the time, there is fun everywhere, dancing, everyone is wearing masks. It decorates the game both visually and in terms of the story. Carnival masks are a great plot device so the hero can act in secret and not be recognized.
The scenery is beautiful: medieval European cities, rivers, the canals of Venice.
As for combat, everything became much more interesting than in the first part. First, enemies are smarter and harder to bring down. Second, after a certain point in the game you can fight with the hidden blade, and it looks beautiful and brutal. Third, you have allies in the game. Either through the story or just in gameplay, you can hire a squad of 4 mercenaries to fight on your side. They fight so-so, rarely landing hits and mostly just fending enemies off. But they can distract some of the enemies. And battles look bigger because of them. They also fixed something that looked implausible in the first part: now an enemy (usually an archer on a roof) does not die from one throwing knife. Now you need to throw two :) Can't say it became fully realistic, but it is better. And now you can shoot bullets too. You even need time to aim.
The main character changes as the game goes on. For example, in the screenshot above he had been wounded and spent time sick in bed. He got scruffy and pale. It is funny in general that more than 20 years pass over the course of the game's story while you play.
Overall, the first part completely pales next to the second. The second is really good, interesting, and varied. I barely did any side quests like «go beat someone up» or deliver a letter. There is much less routine in the main story than in the first part, and much more variety. And again, you often have a choice: complete a mission stealthily or go and cut everyone down. The missions themselves fit the story well; in the first part it was always the same thing: go, gather information, eliminate the target. You had to do the same sub-missions 9 times, like eavesdrop and beat somebody up. Here that is gone; the missions progress linearly. Overall I am satisfied. Though I realized I had never actually finished the second part the first time I played it. I do not remember why I could not reach the finale; I think there was some kind of bug or my computer let me down, but it turns out I saw the ending of the game for the first time today. Gap filled. Next up is Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, a continuation of Ezio's adventures.