Assassin's Creed II

[frogbeastegg]

As I said a few days ago over in the "What are you playing?" topic (spoilered for length)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If you liked the first you will love the second. It's enough of an improvement that people who didn't like the first might enjoy AC2. Amazingly it retrospectively makes the first game better by explaining a bit more background, and builds the crumbly story into something much more robust. I would like to replay the first game in light of what I have learned in the sequel's opening hours, I'd see it with new eyes. This is going to be a trilogy in the truest sense of the story-telling word.

I have to add a word of praise for the voice work too. The first game had quality voice acting and the second is no different. All of the major characters are voiced by the same people. The Italians in Ezio’s time all speak with what sounds like a decent accent, and frequently characters will break into fluent Italian for several sentences. There’s also an option to play with all of the dialogue in Italian with English subtitles. Unfortunately this affects the modern day sections as well.

They have fixed all of the issues I can remember having with the first game except the madman/beggar character who homed in on you, got in your way and bothered you endlessly. This time it's a minstrel who sings in your face. I hates him with the power of a thousand fiery suns, oh yes I does.

Thus far I have found only three niggles. Two of those might resolve themselves with further play as I become more accustomed to the set up. The first is eagle view; this time around it makes the entire screen dark and cloudy except for enemies, targets and objectives. It's impossible to see where you're going so toggling it on to stalk your prey is not helpful.

The second is the health system; Ezio does not regenerate health. On the one hand that's good as it makes chases tense, on the other it's a nuisance when he doesn't land a jump as you want and you take a long fall. Having to plod off to spend money on healing disrupts the flow. As doctors are everywhere and you can carry a small number of health potions it's more of a chore than a limitation. There are some potion capacity upgrades for sale so once I pick those up and stop hording my money to spend on income increasers it won't be so bothersome.

The third is the new notoriety system. So I picked some pockets and no one noticed I did it yet I instantly gain notoriety? And because I climbed a building? And because I killed a single guard where no one could see or even find his body? Then to get rid of it I have to tear down posters located at numerous locations around the city. More chores, and a limitation on doing fun stuff that doesn't always make sense. The points aren't applied evenly either; sometimes I gain points for climbing and others I don't. Usually I don't gain points if it's a busy area, backwards as that seems. I am probably doing something wrong.

I do miss Altair's illogical 'hold A while walking to look inconspicuous' ability. Sneaking up on guards and setting up fun stealth kills is so much harder without it.

I'm now around halfway through I think. A lot has been introduced and the gameplay has expanded in ways which demand more thought if you're going to be successful as more than a street thug. Dual hidden blades are fun, as is poison

The health system's fine now I can carry more medicine and have ready money to pay for it.

Notoriety works a bit differently once you get some missions past the point where it's first introduced. It's now very logical, and I'm able to do things I thought I wouldn't without attracting any, such as silent assassinate a guard in a crowd and walk away with no bother provided I don't linger or do something to draw attention. Being fully notorious still gives you a small window before guards recognise you, meaning it's less of the 'endless fight mode' than it originally appeared.

Social stealth is refined and gives much more freedom as well as presenting a higher challenge. People don't get suspicious of you if you jog harmlessly down the street. Bump into people, pickpocket, or start to climb and that makes the guards begin to take notice. There are enemy types specifically created to break apart social. stealth during an alert. Blending with a crowd or sitting on a bench are no longer get out of trouble free cards if the guards are actively hunting; seekers will disperse the crowds and order seated people to stand up, at which point you get recognised. Guards with polearms will stab any potential hiding places as they pass by, so if you're hiding in straw after a high profile kill you will be holding your breath as the alert counts by.

The appearance of the brute, seeker and hunter enemies has shaken combat up. Counter kills are useless against them unless you are using the hidden blades, and they have a very narrow window for success. Unarmed combat is the best tool I have found so far, disarming one of the tough guys and using their own weapon for a single guaranteed counter kill on another tough guy. Disarms aren't always successful so you still need to mix things up with standard attacks, special tactics, and manoeuvring. The dodge button I'd been ignoring actually has its uses!

The harassers can be dealt with in a variety of ways, some of which leave your cover intact, meaning their return isn't the nuisance it first appeared.

I’ve got a whole new set of ways to kill people stealthily, including poison, twin hidden blades so I can stab two close targets at once, a variety of ways to kill from cover, and the ability to pull people off buildings as I hand from a ledge.

There are many more assassination missions than in the first game, and you are freer in how you tackle them. They don't feel half as grand as the assassinations from the first game though. Less build up, shorter, fewer special circumstances put in place, no city-wide hue and cry afterwards to escape.

I'd pay full retail price to have a copy of the original which incorporated ACII's fixes and tweaks. Being able to ride a horse without every guard on the map being immediately suspicious :tears of joy:

The game features a full day/night system. You can view some timelapses of it (and the cities) in action here.

[Fragony]

It's supposed to be very good, these are happy times for gamers, when I am done with last year's bliss current bliss should be on budget, so many quality titles lately.

[Greyblades]

:sigh: It sounds so good, Its times like this where I realy wish that I wasn't a PC-er.
Ah well I guess febuary will be a month to remeber what with both this and mass effect 2 coming out.

[Beskar]

The PC get a director's cut with improved graphics, content and other things, according to one of the developers I spoke with.

[Husar]

Well, I heard it's very good, but the hidden blade(s) is/are the best weapon(s), making the others a bit pointless perhaps. Fights are supposedly still too easy and there are slowdowns on both consoles, so waiting for the PC version might make sense. At the moment my gaming budget is close to zero anyway, but it does look interesting.

[frogbeastegg]

Slowdown? Not on the xbox version. I've played for approximately 10 hours and not seen a single hiccough, and I've been in some very busy situations

Hidden blades are a guaranteed instant counter kill if you get the timing right. They have a very narrow window though, so you need to practice a lot if you expect to use them with consistent success against the tougher foes. Get the timing wrong and you get hit, and anything other than the most basic of enemies will follow that up with a combo. A couple of failed counters against a group with a brute and you will be down to your last dreg of health.

IMO unarmed combat is the super weapon in ACII. Fists have the full range of counters and instant takedowns offered by the dagger and sword weapon classes, so they're not limited in anything other than their range. Disarm works on any enemy and rarely fails. Once they are disarmed even brutes are not much of a threat. Heavy or long weapons gained from disarming give you a single guaranteed success counter kill against any foe. The grabs are pretty powerful as well if you use them to set bunches of enemies up for ground kills. Throwing sand to blind enemies usually sets you up for one or two instant kills if you swap to the hidden blades and assassinate. If you're forced to fall back on regular combat moves for a time then unarmed offers the longest combo chain and very fast attacks, meaning more chance of leaving an enemy vulnerable to a counter kill. There's a weapon upgrade which triples the damage your fists do, too!

The final bonus to both fists and the hidden blades is that Ezio can't be disarmed. More advanced enemies love to smash your weapon from your hand.

I tend to use hidden blade counters against small groups of basic guards, sword counters against a larger group, and my fists on anything that's not basic. Where possible I'm avoiding combat or assassinating some enemies to get it started.

[Centurion1]

*drools*

[Monk]

*drools*

I know the feeling, alas, waiting for the PC port is gonna be tough.

[Samurai Waki]

I could get it... Finals week is coming up, and then I'm free and clear for a month. The only problem is, is that I never play my Xbox... so to justify buying this game and playing through it feverishly, because of my disdain for consoles, and then never touching it again.. or waiting until it becomes available in February, and playing through it slowly and taking in every detail.. I think I'll wait until the PC release.

[miotas]

Well, I heard it's very good, but the hidden blade(s) is/are the best weapon(s), making the others a bit pointless perhaps. Fights are supposedly still too easy and there are slowdowns on both consoles, so waiting for the PC version might make sense. At the moment my gaming budget is close to zero anyway, but it does look interesting.

Apparently the PS3 version has worse graphics and still slows down, whereas the xbox version runs fine. According to this review anyway. I'll be getting my copy this morning and playing it this evening after I get back from work. I can't wait

[frogbeastegg]

After 16 hours I've reached Venice. It's huge! I think it might be larger than Florence, Romagni, your villa town and the castle town all put together.

On the down side I'm not so impressed with the early Venice gameplay. Every single roof has a guard on it so I'm being yelled at constantly, and having to fight far too frequently. The streets are confusing mazes and right now large chunks of the city are blocked off with Barriers of Doom(TM) so the path which looks like it might get you headed in the right direction is no use, and I can't reach most of the view points so my map is absolutely useless. This has to be temporary, limitations put in place to encourage you to play through the introductory missions. Got to be. I can't understand why else they would make simple travel to be such a joyless pain in the behind in the largest area in the game.

[edyzmedieval]

I'm anxiously waiting for the PC version and I'm desperately hoping it's not just a console port.

[The Stranger]

I just bought it... im not gonna read this thread cuz froggy says to much :P but I love it... its awesome!

[Owen Glyndwr]

If I get any Christmas money, it'll probably go into buying this game!!

[miotas]

I just finished it. I'm still not sure I understood exactly what happened, the story is pretty epic. The first thing I said when I finished was literally "Aw, Come ON!" but it wrapped up nicely, definitely a 3 parter though.

[miotas]

I smell DLC. After finishing the game I headed back to Florence and realised that a large section of the map, the southern portion across the river, is still inaccessible to me.

[Monk]

I smell DLC. After finishing the game I headed back to Florence and realised that a large section of the map, the southern portion across the river, is still inaccessible to me.

Your sense of smell is impressive, miotas. DLC was just announced for AC2 coming next year, two releases in fact. One in January and one in Feb. I can only hope this means a bundled release for us PC users.

[Ice]

I just bought this game, and I must say I can see why it's game on the year. I'd highly recommend anyone with an xbox 360 or a ps3 pick it up NOW. I honestly haven't played a game this good for ages.

[Veho Nex]

*cry* It doesnt come out for pc for a while still :(

[Prussian to the Iron]

i just beat it after having it for around....oh 17 days? i got it the first night of channukah.

i dont know if ill have time to play it again, but if i am ever bored, i can certainly come back to it. great game, the ending was a little unsatisfying

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

why didnt you just kill vidic? he was all of 2 feet away when they told you they needed help. just slice his leg, stab his face when he falls, and then go!!!

but still totally awesome. the scope is definitely much grander than previously; it takes a while to run just about anywhere in the major cities.

the combat system is great, but the battles with rodrigo borgia get boring. for a fat 60-year-old man in the papal outfit, he certainly moves like a 20 year old in a t-shirt and shorts. he blocks just about every attack, counters dont work on him, trying to disarm him gets you nowhere, and the only way to beat him is: attack,attack,attack, block, attack, attack, attack, block, attack, attack, attack, block...etc.

notoriety is handled kinda funny. because, as we all know, removing 4 wanted posters makes a man wanted for hundreds of (known) murders, who has a 50,000 florin bounty on his head, makes him totally unknown. and killing people automatically spawns corrupt officials and wanted posters. but i know if it was more than 4 for being totally incognito from a 100% criminal, id go insane.


there is 1 mission that i almost ripped my brains out over though. the one iwth davincis flying machine. it. is. stupid. and. boring. and. whoever. designed. it. needs. to. fall. down. a. cliff.
one can only hear "Marcossi! shoot! shoot the flying demon!" so many times before he cracks...



while it may seem like i hate the game, it is a work of art. i just cant think of too much to say about it besides the parts that drove me crazy. i advise everyone to get this game.

[Beskar]

My father got the book of this game for Christmas. I haven't played the game, so I decided to steal it from him for a read.

I have to admit, the authorship isn't that good. There is a lot of rushing and jumping sections. You are reading then you suddenly go "huh?" as there was a bit inbetween missing, in the sentence. Without going back to find it, it would be for incidence talking about seeing a girl on some rooftops a mile away, and during the sentence he is suddenly talking to her and she is replying, without the whole travel part.

[frogbeastegg]

there is 1 mission that i almost ripped my brains out over though. the one iwth davincis flying machine. it. is. stupid. and. boring. and. whoever. designed. it. needs. to. fall. down. a. cliff. one can only hear "Marcossi! shoot! shoot the flying demon!" so many times before he cracks..

Oh yes! I played that section a few days ago and I think I died more times on it than on the rest of the game.

The other thing that has me gnashing my teeth are the assassin's tombs where there's a timed jumping section. I'm on my final tomb before I complete the set and RAGE is such an inadequate term. Fixed camera angles + need to hurry + controls designed for use in wide open spaces instead of hamster course = GAH!

[Prussian to the Iron]

i assume you mean the tomb where there are some roman soldier statues, and when you jump to and hold on to certain poles it moves some door to unlock it at the end of the puzzle? that one took around 30 minutes.....but one of them was extraordinarily hard for me.

it was in Forli i think, and right at the start, you had to run up a wall onto this 1 post, and than jump backwards onto another one, climb up a few, and jump back to another higher one, etc. to the top. i cannot tell you how many times i just about broke my Tv, controller, and ps3 all at once when he didnt just fricking jump backwards. after the first one, it was fine though, just the first was killing me...

[Owen Glyndwr]

Gah! I hated the last couple assassin's tombs. There was a couple times where I spent an hour on one section not because it was difficult, but because the camera was positioned in such a way as I simply did not realize that I could go where I needed to jump.

Fighting was as a whole better, but I liked the feeling of fighting with the sword overall a lot more than previously.

The ending was very confusing, definitely not helped by the fact that

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Minerva

was ******** impossible to hear!!

All in all the game was a lot of fun, albeit I felt a lot less difficult (anyone else remember dying like crazy in the last few fights of AC1?). Being sneaky felt way cooler though, and I really liked that there was a lot more variety in the game.

[Skullheadhq]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There are ALIENS in the game! This ruined my entire game...

[Greyblades]

Ah crud...

[Beskar]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There are ALIENS in the game! This ruined my entire game...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There are aliens?

[frogbeastegg]

Spoiler tags please! The game's ending is not common knowledge.

[spoil ] text goes here[/spoil ]

i assume you mean the tomb where there are some roman soldier statues, and when you jump to and hold on to certain poles it moves some door to unlock it at the end of the puzzle? that one took around 30 minutes.....but one of them was extraordinarily hard for me.

No, I did that one second to last and had convinced myself that the remaining one couldn't be nastier. I'm inside the church with the big mosaic on the floor, which had 4 buttons around it which open up 4 different timed jumping sections. I have completed one section. I would say I completed a second section but it seemed to glitch; I made the final jump as the time ran out. I couldn't press the button to bring the chain back down and the game hadn't shown me the success cutscene. There's a third section I haven't tried at all yet, and the fourth I cannot complete because Ezio always falls off the cross-shaped chandeliers.

(anyone else remember dying like crazy in the last few fights of AC1?)

:shudders: I try not to remember that part.

[Beskar]

Yeah, that massive spoiler just ruined the anticipation for the game for me (waiting for PC release). =/ It was like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Fail when I loved the Last Crusade.

[Prussian to the Iron]

No, I did that one second to last and had convinced myself that the remaining one couldn't be nastier. I'm inside the church with the big mosaic on the floor, which had 4 buttons around it which open up 4 different timed jumping sections. I have completed one section. I would say I completed a second section but it seemed to glitch; I made the final jump as the time ran out. I couldn't press the button to bring the chain back down and the game hadn't shown me the success cutscene. There's a third section I haven't tried at all yet, and the fourth I cannot complete because Ezio always falls off the cross-shaped chandeliers.

oh.......i had a bit o trouble with that too. after i really analyzed it though, i got through each one in time. the bottom and left one (standing in the middle and looking where you activated the buttons to appear) were the easiest i tihnk.