Assassin's Creed 2, Bastardo!

Surprised no one has made a thread on this yet. Assassin's Creed 2 came out the 17th and it has proven to be more pleasing than the first.

There is a lot more to do just walking around the cities now. You can chase couriers and kill then for their ample cash(the game has a money system now), track down officials to decrease notoriety(revamped mechanic), more free-running options, new weapons and counter-kills, new fight mechanics, multiple enemy types with their own unique strategies, fable-like city where you can invest, build, and profit off of improving your town, aaaand armour and tailoring options.

The game feels a little slow to start with, but that plays into the story aspect. Anybody stopped playing Dragon Age and picked this up yet?

Yeah that is surprising isn't it...

I want this, but this is absolutely the worst time it could have released for me. I'll probably pick it up closer to the time of the Jingling Bells...

I hear you. MW2 has claimed a few of my friends, L4D 2 has taken the remainder. A lot of people are still making their way through dragon age as well. Competitive month.

I heard the first one's downfall was how repeatitive it got really fast. How far are you exactly?

Spent the last few days finishing the first game, and I've come to appreciate both its strengths and flaws:

What was really great about the first game was really the street assassinations, where you stalk enemies in plain sight. What was not so great was all the aids they put in to help you navigate the world--the excessive HUD, the fog that cleared after you climbed towers. Seriously, turn off all the aids, rely just on Eagle Vision and exploration, and the game turns into an incredibly visceral experience.

And, finally, the great weakness--street assassinations are pretty much the only missions worth their salt in the game. Too little, too late.

Looking forward getting AS2, after I finish Brutal Legend.

This post has been edited by moot on Nov 19 2009, 09:54 AM

Not too far. I have access to 2 cities at the moment, but that will change shortly. There is a lot more to do in this game- treasure hunting being the best, in my opinion.

You can buy treasure maps, but the real fun is hunting down seals in hidden areas. These are the more streamlined places where you have to navigate high above the ground, solving a pathing puzzle and sometimes chasing people down in the process. Quite a lot more to do.

You also own a city that you can renovate. The nicer your city, the more income you get. First places I built were a bank and a brothel. ;p

Anyone got Assassin's creed 2 for mobile.I am facing problem in installing it.Please help

Covering all bases i see.

How about a bankthel? Withdrawals and deposits.

Time to kick this backup after playing a bit more of it.

There are a lot of improvements to AC2. Enzio(sp?) is a lot more likable than Altiar due to the fact they put more thought into the story. In AC1 Altiar was more or less a jerk simply doing what his superiors told him. You had little reason to go after the Templars beyond "because". In AC2 they do a good job establishing the overall meta story about why the Assassin's stand against the Templars in all times. Additionally they take a good chunk of time setting up Enzio's place in the world then taking it away. I also have to give them small props for not completely destroying his family because that gives him two reasons to fight: Revenge and to protect what he has left.

I like the idea of a "villa" which becomes your base of operations. I really love games that give feedback like this: The more successful you are in your "other job" the better looking your town becomes. The only troubling part is that the game kind of goes into this weird feedback loop (as you get more successful, the easier it is to get money, the more you can put back into the town, which means you are more successful....). By the end you have stupid amounts of money and not much to spend it on.

The flow of the game is better because it is more natural. You don't do a main assassination, then go back to the real world. No one is telling the character they need to go kill Mr Badguy where instead he discovers what is going on through the course of the story. If the story needs to skip forward some amount of time, they just do it instead of pulling you out of the animus. They do a "Dan Brown" style of taking historical fact and intermingling the fiction to make it seem plausible.

The game goes out of its way to emphasize these are real locations and has "extensive" information about that location. The problem is that it isn't tied into the map at all. If you are interested in finding "The Church of the Complex Italian Name" because it has a secret, it is hard to find again unless you can recognize how it looks from the ground or the roofs. It would have been nice if you look up the name of something in the "Database", the game should flash where it is on the animus map.

The combat is still the weakest part of AC2. It still seems to make counters and back attacks super strong. This creates again the situation where you end up surrounded waiting for the enemies to take a swing at you to side step for a back attack or counter. You have a "Taunt/Hurry Up" button but it is the same effect. There are some fun additional combat effects like "throwing dirt into eyes" to blind but they still don't seem to be effective when you are forced to fight a lot of enemies.

To that end, I do like what they did to add non-combat stealth options. You can hire mercenaries if you just need more bodies in a fight. Enemies become easier to pick off if they are busy fighting someone else. Thieves and Courtesans can be hired to distract or interfere with guards. Initially I didn't think these would be useful as the mercenaries but as time went on it became almost too powerful to use them.

Overall, AC2 is a much better game than AC1 but the problems with way combat and some of the way stealth and stealth combat works are still a problem. Especially when compared to Batman:AA, this is a great game but not the best.

ps. The Truth is crazy but I suppose it is no weirder than the idea of Templars vs Assassins though.

This post has been edited by Tomar on Dec 7 2009, 12:24 PM

The problem here is... I don't know which part of that is the pun.

I'll be picking this up later... when it comes down a bit. (stupid medical bills).

@errantrogue, one of more "useful" things to do with Courtesans is to hire them and they'll walk with you. They made being into low profile/stealth easier to do where all you need to do is stand or walk in a group of 4 or more which is a lot more flexible than what you had to do in AC1. But this shows a bit of "video game" here because you have the remarkable visage of a grim looking, darkly shrouded guy surrounded by sashaying girls cruise past the guards.

Definitely grab this when you get the time.

Needs. More. STEALTH! And I don't mean blending in with a bunch of civilians.

I'm desperate to play a fantasy assassination game where you can't just cut your way through to the target in broad daylight. Where if your lightly armed assassin with his knives, poisons, darts and other artful tools of death goes up against a guy in chainmail and a broad sword, he gets chopped up.

I don't know if other people would find this idea as enjoyable as I do. But I want a game where the purpose is to get in and out attracting as much notice from the guards and populace as a light summer breeze. Or if you're feeling particularly vindictive, taking out an entire household without any of them realizing the rest of them are dead until it's too late.

Combat did feel a tad imbalanced. Surely killing 15 guards with your bare hands isn't that unrealistic.

The linear events still impressed me the most. The one inside the time-event chapel was a bit bugged, however. When walking on top of a ledge, I hopped across a gap to another ledge, the camera flipped, and I immediately jumped back to the first ledge. Not a one time thing either, it kept doing that. Overall, they were great fun. Especially the last one.

Wonder if they'll finally let us go homicidal on civilians in the third installment. Desynching yourself from reality would be a bit of a stretch. Not that I would go around doing that or anything.

Taking all bets on the replacement for the haystacks in 3. Canopies? Piles of garbage? Very assassin-like, diving into piles of garbage.

Meh. I like playing things quiet, but I don't really want to be force restarted if a guy notices me. I think Thief (the first 2?) have what you're looking for though.

That's not how the Assassins with capital "A" worked in real life, and the first game was done to imitate their style - highly visible execution-style attacks in the broad daylight. Ofcourse in real life the Assassins themselves often didn't survive such assaults, but that wouldn't make a very good video game, I'd imagine.

But yeah, there are other games dedicated to stealth gameplay.

@reguliszero, I never used piles of hey for hiding when there are so many crowds I could mingle into. However I do see dumpsters as a great place to put bodies!

I am also strange that there is so few people talk about this game.

If this was released at another time, more people would be talking about it. As is, it is better than AC1 in all forms and functions but dwarfed by other games. There isn't much more to discuss about AC2 while people can still talk about DAO went for them.

Assassin's Creed II is a non-linear third person action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles, and Microsoft Windows. It is the second video game installment of the Assassin's Creed series and is a direct sequel to the 2007 video game Assassin's Creed. The game was released on video game consoles in November 2009, and will be released on Microsoft Windows in February 2010 in Europe and in March 2010 in North America
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This post has been edited by Gourry_Inverse on Jan 7 2010, 08:00 AM

New DLC is out and the PC version is going to have some ridiculous DRM going on. If I can drag myself away from Mass Effect 2 for a break, I'll probably drop the negligible 400 pts to grab the DLC, although the lack of new achievos is kind of... shitty. Assassin's Creed 2 turned out really well despite the very underwhelming tutorial act.

This is a great game. I've waited for this to come out for a while.

Anybody else playing this on the computer?

This post has been edited by swtrooper42 on Mar 19 2010, 08:40 PM

Only after the stupid DRM scheme will be gone and forgotten.

I might pick it up for PC once there's a crack for the DRM.

The chances are that Ubisoft will drop the DRM on its own after the game ceases to be new and hot. When they have to sell it with more than just the hype, they'll get rid of unnecessary obstacles. The same's happened on almost every ridiculous DRM scheme ever installed on PC games; after the game's been out for a little while, they get dropped since they start being more expensive than they're worth to hold up.

Likewise, I'm not buying it till the DRM is gone and the price drops. No excuse for charging a console price for a pc game, no licensing fees here.