I know I'm really negative about the AC franchise, but lets face it: The first was awful, I couldn't expect much from the second...
You see, Assassins Creed wasn't altogether a failure for being wonky and tedious, but because it had so much potential and just flat-out ditched everything interesting about it for the Sci-Fi storyline, stupid assassinations, and boring/repeating gameplay. AC2, however, does not make this mistake. I see AC2 like Gears of War 2: The first one sucked, but the second one is actually decent. The storyline is more fleshed out and interesting, the character was intriguing, and the plot was pretty good. It focused more on the animus memories this time, which is something AC didn't do (go in, come out, go in, come out). The whole story was fluid and actually made sense. Even the environment was much more interesting, the Italian renaissance. Pretty cool, and being allied with Da Vinci was just as awesome. Their names are fun to say; Ezio Auditore da Firenze. The characters were much more three dimensional, assassinations had an emotional connection and felt like more than "oh god damn ANOTHER mission". Anyway:
Gameplay was same old AC, freerunning, jumping, climbing, etc. However, movement is really god damn frustrating. Sometimes, while trying to climb a small ledge, Ezio will impulsively jump on it, then straight off it (this most often occurs at the top of a god damn tower) or things like jumping in some random direction unrelated to the direction of my joystick. Sometimes, climbing was a pain in the ass because Ezio doesn't want to reach a little to the right so I have to reposition myself, climb down, climb up and finally he'll grab it. Due to this, the Assassin Tombs were terrifying and downright boring and frustrating. I did them all just to get them out of the way because I wanted Altair's armor.
As for the RPG features, it was pretty, but not too dense. For some reason this attributed to me linking (lol) AC2 to Ocarina of Time; It feels like a new version of Legend of Zelda.
Combat was a little more fun this time around. There were more ways to approach a situation than just "stand and hold R, press X when someone attacks", which was a big issue with me in the first game, it got loving irritating. Assassinating people was A LOT funner with the new ways you could do it, and killing someone and hiding their body left me more accomplished.
My biggest hitch with AC was the stupid-ass Sci-Fi plot. I just wanted to be an Assassin and do Assassin stuff, not be pulled out of god's virtual reality game every 30 minutes. AC2 relieves this a lot, only coming out once or twice, and even then it's more than just "go to bed". Even the Sci-Fi plot had me more intrigued this time around, especially with the glyphs. I was actually excited to find them and learn a bit more.
The final boss this time around was A LOT more inspired. It actually made me say 'oh stuff bro', as you actually use the Apple of Eden to fight the pope. I mean, you break into the Vatican and proceed to assassinate him, then you talk to Minerva. AC2 even pokes fun at the stuff-TASTIC ending AC provided, by fading to black and having Desmond say "What the forget." before rolling credits, a few minutes later a cinematic begins and the game continues through the credits for AN ACTUAL ENDING.
Overall, this game is FAR better than its prequel, but then again, it's not hard to do better than stuff.
4/5 for fixing nearly everything that was wrong with AC.
