Much like everyone else, I have been looking forward to ACII ever since I played ACI .  Only mostly it was hoping that they finally got it right.  ACI was stunningly beautiuful and had a really good story to accompany it.  Unfortunatly, the gameplay was horrible.  If you managed to get through the first area, you have pretty much played the whole game.  Each area of ACI involved things like pick pocket this guy, evesdrop on that guy, beat up this guy, and then kill that one. Wash, rinse, repeat.  Even the collection parts of the game were mind numbing.  You walked into an area and had to collect flags, but there were like eleventy billion of them.  I am not sure I know anyone who actually got all of them.

But this isn’t about ACI, it’s about it’s successor….Assassin’s Creed II.  It would appear that Ubisoft realized that they had a great engine but needed to fill it out with a great game.  And that’s what happened with ACII.  It is amazing to see that a company finally started listening to it’s fans!  The gameplay has caught up to the engine and we as gamers reap the benefits.

ACII starts off where ACI left of (in the horrible WTF cliffhanger, except that now it makes sense) in the Abstergo lab but it takes no time before you jump back into the Animus (2.0 even) to start off on the real reason that we all bought the game.  I am not going to explain the plot of the game for you because this is a review and you probably already know what the plot is.  From start to finish this story grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t leave me be.  Even Sarah enjoyed watching the story (and filling me in on all the buildings and plot lines that mirrored real life).  The visuals remained just as stunning as the original which was great of course.  And the actual gameplay was brought perfectly in line.  Each mission was unique and played well into the story.  The outside collection missions were easy and beneficial.

In ACI you had to grab flags, but in ACII, you collected chests….which had money, which you could spend.  Oh and by the way, they added a mertchant system!  And a real estate system.  Not to mention an equipment system.  All of these things would have been great in the first game.  It worked simply enough, Missions and chests would net you money.  You use the money to make improvements on your Villa (your home base).  More money pumped into the villa would bring you more income over all, which you would use to buy new and better weapons. You could also buy maps, that would show you where the treasure chests were, which would get you more money.

Where ACII really shined though was in the story.  It was engaging, from start to end.  There are very few games that have such an investing story that just grabs you and makes you care about the characters.  (and there should be more!!)  I found myself wonder what happened with some of the characters that I had only casually met! (Where is Christina the girl Ezio was seeing in the beginning?)  At the same time I was excited to go and visit with Leonardo and see what wacky thing he had going on.  This is one of the reasons I was happy to hear that the upcoming DLC for the game would fill in the holes on some of the characters.

Now that I have praised the game enough, lets start talking about where it fell short.  I can not tell you how many times I cried out “No, no that way, Stupid Ezio!!!” (Although Sarah probably could tell you how many times.  I think she was counting.  There were times that the controls just didn’t do what I wanted them to do.  Sometimes it was nothing but a wrong turn but too many times it resulted with death, or even worse, missing a timed event!  I am not even sure if it was me or the game, but like all other gamers, I am gonna blame the game here.  I am trying to communicate that I want to jump after flipping right, and if Ezio goes forward then jump then right, that’s not what I told it to do.  I think the problem really was in the left over animations.  Ezio would still be moving after I stopped, and so it translated wrong. 

Ubisoft cut down on the collection quests but not all together.  The nice thing though is that they added the collections into the story.  Feathers were collected to please your mother and remember your brother.  (They also added a bit to the villa’s worth) There are, of course, the chests, but you can get a map for those where there is no way of finding the feathers except seeing them in your travels (or using a guide).  The only other collection item would be the glyphs for “Subject 16”.  These symbols were found on random buildings and added to the overall story outside of Ezio.  The bigest problem I had with these was finding the building, and then where on the building.  I managed to run across the buildings while I was out and about, the database would let me know there was a glyph but I would rarely have the time to search for it.  So I would have to re-find the building later, and then scour the building for the glyph.  After about 20 min of wall crawling, I ended up using a guide for some of these as well.

I really have to say, ACII is one of the best games I have played all year.  I am not sure how re-playable it is, but it certainly took many hours of my gaming time and I count those as good solid entertainment.  Unfortunatly it’s not a perfect game.  Finicky controls and hard to find collection items added time to the game that I would have rather spent in the story.  The last complaint I have isn’t really a complaint so much as an overwhelming feeling.  There was so much in this game that it was almost hard to keep up with!  Between the Vilia improvements, the main story, the codex pages, the Armor and weapon shops, the Assassin seals, and collections, I found myself sitting down and wondering, What part of the game do I want to play now?  I know I know it doesn’t sound like a complaint, but when I have to ask myself “what do I want to do?” it detracts from what the game wants me to do.

Over All, I give it a good solid 8.8 Florins, out of 10.