Assassin's Creed II
Background Information
Game Content: In preparation for their new game release Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Ubisoft has released three games for free during the pandemic - Child of Light, Rayman Legends, and Assassin's Creed 2 from May 1st to May 5th. Sadly for those taking advantage of this offer, it didn't have any downloadable content. If you played the game normally, you would discover Sequence 12 and Sequence 13 to be corrupted. These two memory slots are actually from both DLC packages that are included in the Deluxe Edition or Game Collection Packages. This includes rescuing a couple of kids in Battle of Forli and playing a "lightning round" of 9 assassinations around the city in Bonfires of Vanity. Though I guess there have been people who played the game without ever finding the 3 Templar Lairs. Otherwise a lot of the "exclusive" content involved stuff like free wallpaper, cosmetic weapons and armor, and some unnecessary bonuses.
Previous Experience: Unlike the first game in the series, I did not play this game at all. Instead, I watched a video discussing a few alterations. The ability to converse with Leonardo, use his flying machine, and travel through towns of the Renaissance were all highlighted. You can strike two opponents at once with your hidden blades and the much-needed ability to swim was also included. Other than that, I don't remember what locations you visited, what abilities you gained, or anything regarding the story.
Assassin's Creed: Lineage is a short 35-minute live-action film released in 2009 that covers the behind-the-scenes from the father's perspective. Now, I honestly watched this film after playing the game, despite it happening before the events in the game. The film is totally worth watching and ties really well with the game. Should I have watched it beforehand? I'm not sure. I think the "surprise" of the game would have been ruined if I knew the truth behind these characters and villains. In either case, the choreography and CGI is very well done. I also applaud the use of their costume designs. I totally recommend watching it.
Historical Inaccuracy: With all this talk about characters and places I've never heard of, I wondered if any part of the game was actually accurate. I found a decent post on Reddit about how the first game simply borrowed characters and elements from real life. But his second post for Assassin's Creed II was real interesting. It seems that the events were much more gruesome in reality than initially told in the game from 1476 to 1499. Of course the whole bizarre ending with aliens and technology is most definitely not true and probably left people ultimately confused when the credits rolled.
Online Controversy: Developers have tried to battle piracy by forcing people to be online to play their game. This might be understandable for multiplayer games, but not during a single-player campaign. Cities: Skylines in 2015 is probably the most notoriously known case of this. However, Ubisoft also attempted to do this with the launch of their Uplay platform in 2009 (because I guess that's the new thing for every company to do to counter Steam). Can you imagine your game pausing or losing your progress if you lost your Internet connection? They tried to apologize while offering people Assassin's Creed II Black Edition with both DLCs for free, except users were infuriated to find out that they were already in the game this whole time. In 2010, they changed the settings to check for a connection only on boot-up. Then in 2012, they removed it entirely (only required to activate the product) and said they would never do it again. When will companies ever learn this never ends well for people.
Assassin's Creed II
Controller Issues: The developers merely improved the use of a controller in the game but not all the way. Like Assassin's Creed I, the game does not recognize the controller from the beginning and the color keybindings were still wrong. If you started the game with the controller off, the game will automatically switch back to keyboard and mouse. This makes it infuriating when you have to access the menu and switch it back. Things get a little technical when you realize there are more features than buttons. Although the "hat switch" or directional pad allows you access to your standard hidden blade, sword, and fists - the fourth left option has been changed from throwing daggers to medicine. I found this as an appropriate change but ultimately questionable when the D-Pad does not open up your entire weapon wheel.
Taking a Stab at Religion: The whole point of Assassin's Creed is to show how evil the Templars are for aligning themselves with the religious leaders against the general public. Some of the database entries show how the religious leaders cruelly robbed the people by stuff like making prostitution legal, gaining investments in the banks through "gifts" when technically it was illegal, stating that Jesus would have owned land as a reason for why they needed it, and wealth was a form of blessing. There are other quirky comments regarding why people felt like they had to build the biggest tower and how society had to blindly follow whatever rules that were set. That's probably the reason they felt it necessary to add and modify the beginning message of the game.
New Abilities: Although you can get by with your standard attacks from the first game, it just wouldn't make it very fun. The game slowly unlocks new gadgets and gizmos as you progress through the 14 sequences. They added poison (which I never used), a pistol that you'll use when you're bored, smoke bombs that make assassinating a squadron of soldiers way easier, and double hidden blade action. Grabbing people becomes way more exciting when you can punch, kick, headbutt, or toss them to the side. They gave you ways to throw people over the ledge, jump into them like a leopard chasing their prey, pull them into your straw pile to kill them, or hop on top of them with your blade sticking straight down. You can swim! Amusingly no one else has this ability so friendly targets, enemies, soldiers, targets, and civilians in general can instantly die by falling into the water. There was this one time I was escorting four thieves through the city when I stopped to look for guards. I turned around and stated "Alright, you four" before watching one of them fall into the river. "Alright, you three," I said as the fourth member drowned in the depths below.
Currency: One major change they added to the game is the ability to accumulate currency. Although you constantly be running out of money throughout the game, the abundance of "florins" you get from your villa will trivialize everything else. Once you have bought and upgraded everything within your little construction home, you will be making roughly 10,000 florins every 20 minutes. It notifies you every time your chest gains currency. Just make sure to go collect at least every 100 minutes of game time. Otherwise your sister will pocket the overflow.
Of course you can always find little ways to obtain florins in the game. Women will recruit you to go beat up their cheating husbands or message birds will provide you with assassination contracts. You'll be catching run-a-ways, racing through checkpoints in the city, delivering letters, and finishing memories for around 1,000 florin. Treasure chests will have around 200 - 700 florin, boats will net you 100f, or pick pocketing people and looting bodies will always give you around 5f (and randomly give you any items you might be missing). Of course all of this gets very risky when the guards are watching you like a hawk. Tackling or striking the wrong person, running on roof-tops past a few archers, or shoving through a guarded warehouse can all immediately ruin a simple mission. There is no way to simply reset the mission either. You have to "abort memory", talk to the npc again, have him say his spill about the mission, and then proceed.
What would money be good for unless you had stuff to spend it on. You can spend 150f for mercenaries to attack, ladies to distract, or mobile thieves that can follow you up buildings and lure guards away from their post. You can spend money on weapons like swords, daggers, and maces or sets of armor. Dye (one-time use each time) will change the color of your outfit for around 500f. Paintings will increase the value of your villa. Treasure Maps will reveal treasure chests on the map. You can pay to increase your inventory, ammunition, medicine canisters, more throwing knives, or deadly smoke bombs. Since your health doesn't automatically regenerate all the way, you can pay around 50f to get healed from one of those lovely doctors with a beak mask.
Objectives: As I mentioned before, completing all the objectives and missions is pretty redundant. In my 20 hours of gameplay, I collected 61/73 Viewpoints, 35/100 Feathers, and 160/330 Treasures. Although the map will show you all the treasure chests when you buy them from a tailor, there are just too many of them. Feathers are not on the map and reward you with a slap on the wrist "hard-mode" cape. Although your database will show you which locations still have a glyph, locations are not displayed on the map. Besides, the puzzles get weird and your reward even weirder. I do recommend at least doing the additional challenges. The 6 Assassin Tombs will give a good pair of sweaty hands running through secret locations for the ultimate Armor of Altair. It goes well with that 45,000f Sword of Altair. By the way, Duomo's Secret was my favorite tomb.
Not Quite There: Although I touched on the imbalances of money and problematic side-missions, there are a ton of other things that totally annoyed me. Take for example traversing the landscape. There are certain locations outside the city walls that you can pay 100f - 200f to instantly port to other spots. There was one instance you could teleport straight to Leonardo's workshop. However, you cannot travel to another spot within the same city or directly inside your villa. You might be able to zoom out to the entire map of Italy, but you cannot zoom in and check other areas without visiting them first. Whenever you buy a new weapon or armor, it automatically equips it with no regard to what you are currently wearing. And the only way to switch them out is to visit your villa and manually select the item from the rack. After you finish a zone, you receive a "notary-free" cape that somehow still doesn't prevent archers from busting your butt for running on rooftops.
There are other little things. If all 4 of your recruits survive an encounter, there is a chance all 4 of them will say the same thing thereby creating a weird echo. One thing I noticed within the first hour of gameplay is how close to the ground the camera is. This makes it near impossible to see where you are going. This also makes it blatantly obvious how bad the galloping animation of your horse is compared to the smooth riding of the first game. The weapon wheel is a nice addition but needs better implementation while moving. The intro video isn't really inspiring. It is just a rehash of the events in the first game. If you never played the first one, then it would only confuse you.
Drastic Improvements: You can be amazed at the number of little details you can find within the game. Immediately you will discover that the game offers fitting subtext (and their translations) to the nice dialogue. You can finally fall down the whole ladder! The horses you jump off from will slowly follow you around. Conversing with people is now tied to the widely-known 'Y' button instead of the 'lock' button. In exchange, "eagle vision" must be held down for a moment or two. Speaking of which, a notification to use the ability will appear anytime you reach the highest point of the tower. Exiting the game is super easy now. Any progress is recorded in your "DNA", your villa unlocks are recorded in "the book", and your general character statistics are recorded in "stats." This can include some really weird statistics from distance traveled, men killed, and money stolen. There are database logs, sometimes read out loud by the characters. There is a nice day and night sequence. You can use a boat!
They did a fine job giving you the opportunity to outrun the guards while making it still possible for them to search hiding places near the vicinity when they lose sight of you. You can adjust your walk speed from adjusting your stick from slow walk to normal walk. Holding the move button doesn't make you pray but allows you to walk briskly. Instead of an "eye icon" that lets you know how closely the guards are watching you, the game provides multiple arrows that slowly build up awareness and point towards the direction of the guards.
Hollywood Treatment: I've mentioned this several times already but the developers definitely made this game more "fun" in all aspects. All you have to do is take any scene and spot the joke. The "It's a me, Mario!" line got me so good! Bianca scene was pretty funny too. Desmond and the rest of the crew swear a lot more. The guys in Italy do too, only in their native tongue. "...bank logs indicated he mostly dicked around rather than actual working" is an actual line from the database. There are some scenes that are completely comedic in nature since they would never make sense in a realistic setting, like the fist fights in the beginning. I actually caught a guard say "What is your problem? Does your woman not perform to your satisfaction?" There are a lot of nude paintings, but I guess that is acceptable considering the era. Story-wise, don't try to be smart with the game either. I shot a bullet from a safe place, only to be forced into a cutscene where I lay the man down on the floor.
Everything is so pristine as well. Anything from the database to the maps are all shiny. Blending is now conceptualized. Instead of simply "blending" with a handful of priests, you can hide in large groups. There is a "gray zone" that appears with white computer designs on the floor. I was thrilled to see a "remastered" version of William of Montferrat's keep from the first game after Memory Block 5. Tutorials gotten way better with their 3-times objective checklist box. I might not have been happy with the way everything is depressingly brown and gray before making changes to the zone, but I guess that is just another problem artists have with setting the atmosphere.
Game Review: Assassin's Creed II takes the majority of things presented in the first installment and drastically improves them for a better experience. Although the game lacked a few things that would cause annoyances to a completionist, the personalities of characters and villains will entertain you through the short campaign of 20 hours. Ignoring the huge pit-falls of its release, the game proved quite satisfactory and enjoyable for a modern player. Just be aware that it is more geared towards general warfare over long periods of time between Renaissance families than it is running solo while receiving and planning assassination contracts within the first game. I do recommend giving this game a shot.
5-10-2020