Cassidy here with a game recommendation. One of the things you may have noticed when you come into our store is the “Now Playing” section on our chalkboard behind the counter. While my list is usually a lot longer, I try to put the ones I’m most active on. Currently, that happens to be: Assassin’s Creed II: Brotherhood.
I’m playing on the PS4 with the “Ezio Collection,” and I’ve talked about my experience with many of you with the Assassin’s Creed franchise. I’ve tried to play the first Assassin’s Creed multiple times since it first came out on my birthday in 2007. I’d play for an hour, but ultimately put it down. I didn’t care for Desmond, the main character, or the futuristic storyline. I was sold on the historical fiction part of the franchise, and was really turned off with Desmond.
I had a lot of friends encourage me to start with Assassin’s Creed II, but I just never could pick it up. I never tried after my multiple attempts with the first game. However, what ultimately pushed me to try again was seeing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Now, I have a bit of a stubborn developer brain, and that brain demanded that before I could play Odyssey, I needed to earn that right.
I know this doesn’t sound like much of a game recommendation, but I wanted to give you the backstory as to how I got to a point of finally enjoying the franchise, and sticking with it. Since I never enjoyed the original series, I felt that the franchise slowly became a “Call-of-Duty-like” series. Releasing a game for the sake of releasing a game nearly every year for a money grab. Thankfully, I was wrong, for the most part.
I finally sucked it up and played the first game all the way through. It took around 6-8 hours for me to finally connect with the story, and really start enjoying the game. After finishing the game, I quickly started Assassin’s Creed II anticipating the perceived greatness my friends have told me about.
They did not disappoint. I loved pretty much everything about this game. It was clear very early on how much the team at Ubisoft Montreal learned from the first game, and then polished and expanded upon going into the 2nd game. The controls feel much better, and behave much more according to the inputs pressed. I remember not pushing exactly the pinpoint direction needed in the first game, and not getting anywhere. I don’t know if there is more forgiveness in the sequel, or if the “climbable” surfaces are better designed. But, the climbing did not create as much frustration as it did in the first one for me.
I liked that they removed the flag collecting from the first game, and left you with just finding feathers. They also made the feather finding a side-story objective. So you’re rewarded with extra story content, but you don’t miss out
on much for not doing it. I didn’t go for the feathers, but I did grab the ones that I happened upon during my adventure.
I enjoyed how much there was to unlock and do in Assassin’s Creed II. I didn’t collect the feathers or try to go for 100% synchronization, but I did pretty much everything else. I loved upgrading the villa for income, and displaying my sets of armor and equipment. Finding seals to collect for the ultimate armor from
reasonably hard dungeons made me feel like a real Assassin. Only to do something stupid moments later, often killing myself like jumping off a building and going splat on the pavement.
I only had a few minor complaints about the game after I was all done with it. I didn’t like the story of the DLC where there was a handshaking of the “Apple,” along with some bogus objectives where you needed to take out certain targets without being detected. Usually these objectives are not terribly challenging, but there was one in particular that you had to take out two guards, and the main objective. They were in close proximity, and it took me numerous attempts before accidentally completing it.
I also found that the combat got boring after awhile. Especially with the final boss, and me decked out with the best gear, the fight was a wash. If I ever play the game again, knowing what to expect, I might try with different gear / weapon choices to make it more challenging.
All that said, aside from choosing to not do the feather collecting, I really enjoyed this game overall. The story with Desmond improved greatly, and there was a lot of neat content to explore. It would have been nice to be able to skip the DLC, as that would have cut out nearly 4 hours of content that I didn’t care for, but it isn’t possible from what I know about the Ezio Collection version that has the DLC included.
Have you played Assassin’s Creed II? What were your thoughts? No spoilers, I’m not done with Brotherhood, and still have yet to play Revelations, let alone the rest of the franchise.
