What is it?

Assassin’s Creed 2 is a 3rd Person, Open World, Swashbuckling, Historical Fiction, Free-Running, Stealth, Action-Adventure.

What’s good?

One of the best all time gaming character in Ezio Auditore, Fun Sword play and good kill sequences, Addictive revenge themed storyline, Excellent voice work, Satisfying stealth killing mechanics.

What’s bad?

The game has some control issues during free running that can be Frustrating, graphics are a bit dated, Desmond Miles sections are boring.

Assassin’s Creed 2 - Full Review

I recently revisited the exquisite world of Ezio Auditore with the fantastic Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection. Like most, I have never played the original Assassin’s Creed. My first experience with the long running franchise was with Assassin’s Creed 2. What an amazing game for its day. It’s now around eight years old and shows some sign of aging. I played it on the Playstation 4 and can say it doesn’t feel quite as dated as the first Uncharted does on the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection.

Maybe it’s just that Uncharted’s gameplay has continued to evolve and with Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End it hit a new benchmark for the series. Or maybe it’s because in 10 years Naughty Dog has only released four Uncharted games on console, five if you included the standalone Lost Legacy game. Ubisoft on the other hand milked their franchise a bit harder and have put out 8 major games in 8 years and their gameplay has largely remained the same year over year. It’s clear the yearly releases have hurt the quality of the games although they certainly look prettier. Let’s just hope Ubisoft fixes all that with Assassin’s Creed Origins this fall and does for the series what A Thief’s End did for Uncharted.

I think I’m mostly alone here but I simply don’t give a shit about Desmond Miles or any of his companions. All of the real world shit with Abstergo is nonsensical and none of the characters are even likable. So in my opinion they can stay right the fuck out of these games for all I’m concerned. Every time I get pulled out of Ezio’s world I let out a big sigh of disappointment thinking hopefully this scene is over quick. The world is bland, the story is bland, the voice work is bland and it just seems like no one not even the developers were having any fun there.

That is such a huge contrast from the rest of the game where you play as Ezio one of the coolest characters ever. In my opinion he’s not as funny or charming as Nathan Drake but he’s damn close. Well at least he is in Assassin’s Creed 2. By the time you get to Assassin’s Creed Revelations he devolves into a much more serious and brooding arch type. In that role he doesn’t nearly measure up to the deliciously cerebral Joel from the Last of Us. All that being said he is a great character and probably the sole reason I bothered picking up the Ezio Collection. Well that and it was deeply discounted on Amazon Prime day.

Ezio’s story begins when he’s a young man living in Italy. He’s reckless and impetuous and a real ladies man. His family seems wealthy and his father seems to be some sort of businessman with connections to the church and city leaders. Ezio doesn’t care about any of that though. He’s not interested in politics or power, just having fun. All of that changes when his father is betrayed by a confidant and is arrested. Ezio sneaks to the window of his father’s prison cell out of desperation.

His father tells him to return home and retrieve the contents of a hidden chest. Inside the chest he finds his father’s assassins outfit, hidden blade, and a letter containing evidence to exonerate his father. At his father’s behest he delivers the letter to the city magistrate not knowing it was he who betrayed his father in the first place. Now with no evidence to clear his family’s name Ezio looks on in horror when his father and two brothers are hanged in a public square for treason.

It is in this moment Ezio’s rebirth as an assassin begins as he plots to murder the magistrate. After the magistrate is dead Ezio escapes the city with his mother and sister. He brings them to an old family estate where his uncle lives. It is here he learns of his family’s lineage as members of the Order of Assassin’s. At first hesitant to join he reluctantly does and from here on the game opens up considerably. You realize the magistrate you killed was nothing more than a pawn and there were many figures working behind the scenes.

It’s the Templar order, an ancient and secretive sect of wealthy and powerful individuals whose goal is literally world domination. They remind me of the Mayflowers in the criminally underrated Bruce Willis movie Hudson Hawk. They don’t believe in individual freedom s they believe people are too stupid and dangerous to have freedom. This is the complete opposite of the Assassin Order which believes in liberty and collaboration for building a better world. As such both are sworn enemies. The rest of the game follows Ezio as he tracks down and kills everyone connected to his family’s murder. Which, lucky for us is a pretty long list.

The game world is essentially an open world split across a number of smaller areas each representing a different city. Once an area is unlocked through the story you are pretty much free to travel to and from it as you like. There are side quests and collectibles all over but not so many that it becomes unruly like in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and beyond. Luckily for trophy hunters you don’t have to complete all of the side quests, at least not in the re-mastered versions. As noted above, the game is about eight years old so don’t expect anything like Horizon Zero Dawn in terms of graphical presentation. That being said the graphics are still fairly decent and the world is very pretty aside from the somewhat blocky character models.

The gameplay is now something most are familiar with. At least it should be considering the sheer number of releases. But in 2009 Assassin’s Creed 2 was still fairly fresh. I mean Grand Theft Auto 4 was around which is the big daddy of open world game series, and Batman Arkham Asylum was released that year which had the same style of block attack parry brawling. The game I would most directly compare it to in 2009 would be Infamous. Both had open worlds where you could scale practically any building and you just ran around doing quests and killing people. Although similar in some regards the games were still vastly different.

Infamous featured a super powered individual and the players through gameplay choices could become either good or evil. The end of the game would be different depending on the karmic choices you made. On the other hand, Ezio had no super powers in Assassin’s Creed 2 and there were no karmic choices. The story beats were set in stone. By the numbers Infamous should have been the better game. But it wasn’t. Ezio’s character and his story were much more interesting and the gameplay was much more fun. Now fast forward to 2014 when Assassin’s Creed Unity went head to head against Infamous Second Son and without a doubt Infamous wins that round.

The swordplay is dynamic and fun and the finishing move animations are pretty sweet. I always considered Assassin’s Creed to be sort of a cross between Prince of Persia and Tenchu. Just better than what either of those franchises was putting out anymore. I would still love a really phenomenal Tenchu Game made for current Gen consoles. I had hoped Nioh would be that game but instead it was more like a samurai styled Souls game which is way too frustrating for my taste. That being said the stealth killing and free running pretty much set the bar for games that followed.

Bottom line, Assassin’s Creed 2 was one of the year’s best games when it came out. It’s been eight years since but the re-master edition on the Ezio Collection is still a really fun game. It shines a light on just how terrible the main characters in the newer Assassin’s Creed games are. Aside from Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag I can’t think of any character since Ezio I actually remember let alone like. If you’ve never played Assassin’s Creed 2 and you have an open window in your gaming calendar I would easily recommend this trilogy of games. Same goes for fans of the games who haven’t played them in a while. Playing all three back to back was a great gaming experience. As a bonus it’s a real easy platinum trophy to earn, probably the easiest of the three Ezio games.

These ratings are based on games I have played at the time of this posting. Additions and Alterations made to game ratings and rankings after this date will not be reflected in the written review. For a fully updated list of games and game rankings please visit Rebel Gaming Canada's GAMES LIST.