Assassins Creed II

Assassin's Creed always felt like a rough diamond. It had an interesting storyline, a spectacular game engine and a massive sandbox to play in, yet it was ultimately just a tad repetitive. For the sequel, UbiSoft has kept the engine and most of the basic elements of the sandbox-style gameplay intact and concentrated on stealth aspects of the formula, more varied gameplay and on the actual story. Yes, in Assassin's Creed 2 you will still ultimately end up stabbing a bunch of people, but that is just a small part of it all. Oh, and the PC version comes with a brand new form of DRM...

Animus 2.0 allows Desmond and the Assassins to explore the past by reliving memories embedded in the DNA.

The story so far? You still play as Desmond Miles, a present-day descendant of a long line of assassins, captured by Abstergo Industries, the modern day front for Templars. In the first game, Desmond was captured and forced to live the memories of Altar, his ancestor, seeking information about a "Piece of Eden" from memories encoded in his DNA while Altair worked his way to redeem his status as an assassin in the late 12th century Holy Land. Eventually Abstergo got what they wanted out of the memory sequences and dispatched a team to recover the "Piece of Eden" in the present day, ending the game in a cliffhanger, with Desmond still a prisoner.

The sequel starts off right where the first part ended and anyone who hasn't played through the first game will probably be a bit confused early on. Lucy Stillman, a modern-day assassin who had infiltrated Abstergo staff as a technician returns and helps Desmond to escape from the Abstergo facility, explaining that the Assassin order of the present day needs his help. Desmond may have experienced the key moments of Altair's life and may have a fine line of ancestors, but he's not yet a trained assassin. With Animus technology, this is not a problem - Lucy takes Desmond to a hideout equipped with an upgraded Animus device and the plan is for Desmond to explore the memories of another assassin ancestor in order to learn the skills through the "Bleeding Effect" of the Animus. Enter our new hero, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an assassin.

Trailer

Assassino!

Desmond quickly dives into the life of Ezio, starting the journey from Florence, Italy in 1476. The story of Assassin's Creed II is very much the story of Ezio Auditore, following his long career as he plots to revenge the hanging of his father and two brothers. Like Desmond, Ezio is initially unaware of the fact that his father was an assassin and the early part of the story concentrates on Ezio learning about his ancestry and the skills an assassin needs. Numerous real historical figures show up along the way, notably Leonardo Da Vinci, Caterina Sforza, Niccolo Machiavelli, Lorenzo De Medici and Rodrigo Borgia - better known as Pope Alexander VI. As with the first game, minute historical details have been bent to fit the characters into the story. Real historical events are also tied in, with The Pazzi Conspiracy used as major part of the storyline early on. The mixture of real history and a fictional story is even stronger than in the first game and the detailed storyline is what sets Assassin's Creed II apart from the first game.

Pazzi Conspiracy, blending historical events with the storyline.

Much-hyped Leonardo's flying machine plays a small part in the story.

In the first game, you were pretty much sent to stab a bunch of people while learning about the order of Assassins and the actual big picture emerged only at the very end. The sequel merges everything much more closely with real historical figures, events and places and mixes it all with a pretty impressive thread of conspiracy that has apparently been going on for hundreds of years. Sure, it ain't a historical documentary but all the real historical figures, locations and events serve an important purpose, reinforcing the illusion of a "what if?" historical scenario.

The story takes you around Renaissance Italy with sections in Florence, San Gimignano, Forli and Venice, just to name a few. Each major area is also dotted with historic landmarks that are easily recognizable, further immersing you to the locales and wide open areas offer a fresh change of scenery when compared to your average action adventure game that forces you to slug through a predetermined path as if on rails. Yes, the storyline still demands you to visit specific places and perform specific tasks, but the play areas give you plenty of freedom to improvise.

Out-of-Animus parts are kept to a minimum - the events still all tie to the present day "real world" and Desmond, but the action in Renaissance Italy is interrupted only on very special occasions, unlike in the first game where you were constantly taking breaks between separate memories. This improves the flow of action considerably.

Playing In The Sandbox

Assassin's Creed II story is presented in the form of missions - you visit a marked spot on the map and the story progresses with a cutscene and the objectives are spelled out. Mission goals vary a lot - sure, many of them ultimately boil down to assassinating someone, but there is a lot of variety. Gone is the repetitive style of the first game, requiring you to repeat same small pool of investigations to open up an assassination target. Every main story mission in AC2 is unique. As can be expected, the play area is initially limited and city districts and areas open up as the story progresses. Travel between major areas you have already visited is immediate and "manual" travel is used as part of the story and not as a repetitive gameplay element.

Venice rooftops - plenty of room to roam.

Play areas are large and wide areas of countryside surround smaller towns.

The story flows between different cities with later missions opening up new previously inaccessible areas, nicely re-using existing content to maximum effect. You rarely feel boxed in and there is always something to do - so much, in fact, that it is easy to get distracted from completing the main story missions.

Nice weapon, mind if I loan it?

Movement and combat is fluid and easy to control once you get used to the control scheme. PC version disappoints with the generic on-screen prompts - instead of showing a key you are supposed to press, you just get a symbol of the action required - Open Hand, Armed Hand, Talk and so on. The only place where you can find out which key or mouse button corresponds to which action is in the keymapping menu. Fortunately the problem goes away after the first hour or so as you learn the logic of the control system.

Default controls are also pretty much the same as in the first game, so veterans are probably going to be familiar with the setup instantly. Still, Ezio has the same annoying habit as Altair - jumping off buildings if you fumble with the space bar at the wrong moment. It is mostly a matter of learning how the controls automatically adjust to different situations (and when space = jump = bad idea) but it can be frustrating at times.

Still, once you get used to the control layout, AC2 is easy to handle. Combat is much easier than in the first game, even if counterattacks still rule the day. Bigger enemies that are immune to counters can be alternatively tackled by switching to unarmed stance and going for a disarm. Ezio also has the new ability to swim - very handy, considering that large part of the game takes place in Venice.

Gotta Collect 'Em All

Some treasure chests are guarded - well, at least they try.

The storyline missions are only a part of the gameplay - a major part, but there is loads of other stuff to do in all areas. Viewpoints are still around and while you are not forced to climb them to survey the area, they do open up the map uncovering Codex Page locations and easing navigation considerably.

Codex Pages written by Altair are the only mandatory collectibles. They are stored away in guarded boxes that show up on the map. All 30 codex pages include hints about the overall story and they are ultimately needed for the final chapter of the story - should you be missing any at that point, they are added to the map even if you haven't previously uncovered them by visiting a nearby viewpoint.

Optional collectibles include Treasure Chests, Feathers, Seals and Glyphs. Treasure Chests appear on the map once you have purchased a treasure map from the local artist - they are small boxes with money that are often guarded or hidden away. Feathers are the "hidden packages" of AC2 - a harder set of collectible items. There is no in-game map for them and some are in truly bizarre locations that require some creativity to reach.

Seals are hidden away in tombs of assassins. All six are required to unlock the Armor of Altair and while optional, these tomb maps offer a very good set of alternate play areas. Tombs are constructed very much like levels in Prince of Persia games - you have to reach a hidden tomb in an indoor location with a lot of climbing and acrobatics. Tombs are all about figuring out a complex path to a goal. Each major room includes a helpful flyby that gives you a good idea where you should be heading to, but it is up to you to figure out the exact path that will take you there. Some later tombs include complex timed sequences of movement that are probably the only truly challenging parts of the game, forcing you to return to the start of the area at the slightest mis-step.

Hidden tomb of a past assassin.

Famous landmarks contain Glyphs that help unravel the conspiracy.

Glyphs are a mysterious set of objectives that seem out-of-place. They blend the line between reality and ancestral memories experienced in the Animus. They apparently did not exist for Ezio, but are instead "glitches" in the Animus 2.0 representation of the era, hacked in by "Subject 16", the previous assassin that the Templars used to dig into the past. All glyphs are tied to major landmarks and when located, trigger a puzzle sequence with some truly strange conspiracy-related imagery and hints. Each completed glyph unlocks a fragment of a "Truth" video sequence that is central to the whole Templar/Assassin storyline.

Glyph puzzle: Moon landings - obviously part of the Templar plot.

Glyph puzzle: Yep, JFK and Dallas, they all tie into all this too. Tinfoil hat recommended.

Early Glyph puzzles are very easy, but the complexity of the puzzles ramps up nicely - to a degree that the only time I reached for a walkthrough was to solve a couple of the Glyph puzzles that got really complicated. Technically they are wholly optional, but for me the Glyphs were actually the driving force for completing the game - each puzzle was a nice change of pace from the action and the conspiracy backstory is both bizarre and entertaining. It is just like "Da Vinci Code" - a story about a conspiracy so strange that it goes beyond all the mundane events of the game - at least until it all ties together when... ah, but that would be spoilers.

Villa Auditore

The fact that Ezio collects and uses money seems strange at first but there is a whole economic element to the game and suddenly it all makes sense. After the initial story missions force you to flee with your family, you end up basing your operations out of Villa Auditore in the town of Monteriggioni. The Villa is initially in a state of disrepair and as an additional goal you can renovate the Villa and the surrounding town with the money you collect in your journeys. There is a clear benefit in doing so - local shops, when upgraded, sell to you at a discount and with some work the Villa becomes a money-making machine. Every 20 minutes of play time you get a share of the revenue that grows with the value of the holdings.

Upgrading Villa Auditore and the surrounding town.

Collected weapons are all on display at the Villa.

The Villa also functions as a gallery for your collections - all the weapons, armor, paintings, codex pieces, seals and feathers are stored here and most collectible items also improve the value of Villa Auditore, providing more revenue and allowing you to buy better weapons and armor. Villa also acts as a map to explore on its own, with a set of treasures hidden in the area, some which are available only after certain renovations are completed. Villa map also includes Auditore Family Tomb, a seventh tomb map that is unlocked with Uplay points.

The Villa management is a nice distraction but the system breaks down in the late game, leaving you with massive piles of money and nothing to spend them on. I mean, if one includes a constant money faucet into the game that grows larger as you spend money to upgrade it, unsurprisingly the end result is that money eventually doesn't matter. Not a huge deal, but a flaw anyway.

Tools of an Assassin

Ezio receives the signature weapon of the assassins - the hidden blade - early on and soon obtains a second one for some juicy double-stab action. Other melee weapons include daggers, swords and maces which you have to purchase from weapon merchants. While each weapon does have a set of stats and the later, more expensive ones are theoretically better, in reality you can complete the whole game with just the hidden blades.

Now with dual hidden blades for twice the stabbing power.

Sorry. I know... I'm a pain in the neck...

Armor works the same way - merchants both offer sets for sale and repair them - but armor upgrades are actually useful, at least until you gather up all the seals and obtain the Armor of Altair. Stores also offer consumables - throwing knifes, smoke bombs, medicine, poisons... all kinds of little things that allow you to get creative when completing your tasks. Smoke bombs are especially handy (and overpowered), allowing you to stun a large pack of enemies - either for a quick getaway or for a quick series of deadly stabs.

What really sets AC2 apart is the attention to small detail. Corpses can be looted for some extra money, many items can be used as temporary weapons in a pinch and you can toss money around to create a distraction in crowds. You can also pickpocket money and consumables with obvious consequences if you linger too long near your victim. These are all minor details that are technically irrelevant, yet they further enchance the immersion to the game world - something far too many games tend to forget these days when trimming "unimportant" features during development.

"Keep looking at those... assets... while I just walk by here..."

There is also a notoriety system that determines how guards react to you. As you assassinate people during your missions or in order to secure codex pages and treasures, your notoriety level raises. Get too famous and guards will start recognizing you on the streets, leading into chases - stacks of hay are still quite useful. To get rid of any unwanted infamy, you can destroy posters, pay off heralds or assassinate officials that have witnessed your handiwork - all help reduce the notoriety level. You can also obtain capes that effectively disable notoriety in certain areas, usually once you are done with the area in question. Handy for completing side jobs with less harassment from the guards.

You can avoid detection through blending - no, you don't have to hold down a button to look like you are praying all the time or to walk real slow (ugh, that was annoying in the first game) - all that is required in the sequel is to move normally between crowds of people. Each time you enter blend mode by mixing into a group of people, any nearby guards stop investigating as they lose track of you in the crowd. You can also hire courtesans, thieves and mercenaries to take care of the guards, either by distracting them or by fighting them while you do your job.

Minor Jobs

In addition to the storyline missions, each area has a number of optional side missions. There are four types of optional missions available.

Races - Beat the clock while traveling a path dotted with glowy targets, usually on foot, sometimes on horse. Can take several tries as you learn the route.
Beat Up Events - Women with sob stories about their unfaithful husbands. Just find the scumbag, put your weapons away and just beat up the guy in hand-to-hand combat.
Courier Missions - Your average delivery boy job, run around to deliver letters under a time limit.
Assassination Contracts - Find target. Apply pointy hidden blade. Profit.

Importantly, each side mission is still an unique, if short, story piece. They are not part of the main story, yet they all do contribute towards full 100% completion of the game and offer some much-needed challenge that is otherwise not really present in the main story. All side missions and collection tasks can still be completed once you have finished the main storyline, so if you are eager to see the conclusion of the main story, you can safely skip them and fill them in later.

Console Conversion

Compared to the first Assassin's Creed, graphics options are more limited. There are still multiple things to change - Environmental Detail, Character Detail, Shadows, Reflections and so on. They just don't change things that much. When comparing the visuals between maximum and minimum settings, you lose some post-processing effects that soften things a bit, you get lower-resolution shadows, no reflections on the water surfaces and... that's about it. The overall lighting on lowest setting is noticeably worse, but in general, lowest possible setting is comparable to "Medium" setting in the first Assassin's Creed. This also means that the practical minimum has gone up considerably when compared to the first game, even if the engine is mostly the same.

Minimum settings.	Maximum settings - most noticeable difference is with shadows.
Minimum settings.	Maximum settings - water and reflections are much improved at maximum detail.

Visual quality is similar to the first game but it appears that the game world is even more detailed than before. The engine has also gained some new bells and whistles, supporting full day/night cycle, reflections, water and better spot lighting and there is more unique building pieces in the different play areas. This does improve the illusion of a real city, even if you still do tend to notice that the world is mostly pieced together from a limited number of "generic" building parts. Unfortunate casualty appears to be the quality of shadows. The shadow resolution drops dramatically fairly close to the main character and there is no way to push it higher in the visual settings. Buildings also drop to a lower level of detail fairly close to the player - an obvious flaw when you start looking at it, but hardly noticeable in normal game play. Such compromises are understandable for a console game, but it would have been nice to be able to push LOD range and shadow resolution up on high end PCs. Still, this is mostly a cosmetic flaw and doesn't matter one bit when playing.

Four guards dead before the first one has fallen to the ground. Very detailed character animations.

When compared to the first Assassin's Creed on the PC, something is also missing - there is no DX10 rendering path. This is not a a big loss - the only noticeable difference between DX9 and DX10 in the first game was that the DX10 codepath handled texture caching slightly better and the sequel seems to work just fine in this regard with no visible stuttering when moving to new areas. It probably just wasn't worth the effort to include a DX10 renderer as the content is all done to Xbox 360 limitations anyway.

Animation can't really be praised enough - it was already superb in the first game and the same is true here. Movement and combat includes massive number of animation sequences and they all blend together almost seamlessly as you roam and fight. NPCs react fluidly, there is ton of variety, especially during combat and while the level of detail found in some minor character models isn't that great, the sheer number of characters that may appear simultaneously, all moving about doing their business (or trying to kill you) is very impressive. Too many games these days fail at animation and AC2 deserves every bit of praise here.

Reasonable Requirements

Publisher's minimum requirements are just a tad fuzzy - a "256MB Shader Model 3.0 card". This would theoretically qualify something as ancient as GeForce 6600GT, but in reality the game is unplayable on such hardware. If you want to play at 1280x720 at a reasonable framerate (matching the consoles) you'll need at least GeForce 9600 GT or Radeon HD 3870 and even then you will have to tweak down the settings a bit.

On the processor side, a dual core CPU is mandatory - and it should really be a fast dual core. Assassin's Creed 2 is fairly heavy on the CPU and can easily max out a low end Core 2 Duo if paired with a modern video card. The engine threads fine for up to 8 threads and even a modern Quad like Core i5-750 will show more than 50% total load across four cores.

Our recommendation for play at maximum settings and constant 30fps+ is to have (any) quad core CPU paired with GeForce 9800GTX 512MB or Radeon HD 4850 512MB and there is something to do even for high end cards - even a Radeon HD 5870 can't quite keep things locked to 60fps at 1920x1200 with everything maxed out and AA in use.

Exceptional, But Just a Port

Bonfire of the Vanities DLC - built in, but just a series of stealthy assassinations.

Assassin's Creed II is a superb game. It mixes a strong storyline with tons of activities and places it all into a detailed environment that is teeming with life. Small hooks like famous landmarks and notable historical figures help you to immerse in the world, each adding a little bit to the mix until it all just weaves together to form an exceptional experience. The play areas are massive, fast travel system ensures that you are not forced to spend time on horse and there are so many things to collect and do that it is easy to get sidetracked from the main story for hours at a time.

I guess the biggest downer is that the PC version doesn't really differ from the console versions. Higher resolutions, better framerate, some token graphical options and that's about it. It is a very good port, but still just a port, with all the visible shortcomings ported intact. At least the two DLC packs are included as standard on the PC - even if they are not that remarkable to begin with.

Sure, there are some things to complain about, but they are mostly minor. Difficulty level could have been set higher. Now the only bits that truly challenge you are some of the side missions and some of the tombs. It is nice that the volume of fighting has been toned down and the vast majority of killing can be done properly, with a sharp stab to the gut. Yet it is sad that if you choose to go toe-to-toe against the guards, just a couple of tricks will defeat every single one of them without much effort and any failure to counter or disarm can be easily undone with a quick medicine bottle. I would have preferred to see the game pushing you more towards being an assassin and being more harsh when you fail. There are some missions that do require stealth, with the memory desynchronizing the moment you are detected and I enjoyed them immensely, but for the most part the only reason not to just chop up everyone in melee is "effort" - it is usually faster to be quiet and insta-gib everyone with backstabs. Either way, combat is just as easy - it really takes to some truly monumental fail to actually die in the game.

Still, the whole is such a solid and playable game that all the issues are easily forgiven. Even if you couldn't stomach to finish the first Assassin's Creed (or never played it), you should definitely not miss Assassin's Creed II. It is effectively a "quadruple-A" title, pushing the envelope in detail, polish and production values. And no, the DRM is not a big deal - unless you are a pirate and were hoping to play this for free.

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

The publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:

Component	Publisher's Minimum	Publisher's Recommended
Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.4 GHz	Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 / AMD Athlon 64 6000+
Memory	1536 MB	2048 MB
Graphics Card	Shader Model 3.0 with 256MB Video RAM	Not specified
Graphics Card Example	NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT series 256MB / ATI Radeon X1800 Series 256MB	GeForce 8800 GT / ATI Radeon HD 4700 Series
Free Disk Space	8 GB	8 GB
Net Link	Broadband - constant online connection to UbiSoft servers required	Broadband - constant online connection to UbiSoft servers required

To learn more about how YouGamers performs its hardware testing, click here. Through our extensive gameplay and hardware testing across the full spectrum of PC configurations, YouGamers suggests that one should use the following guidelines for an appropriate minimum and recommended setup:

Component	YouGamers Minimum	YouGamers Recommended
Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 / AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+	Intel Core 2 Quad (any) / AMD Phenom X4 (any)
Memory	2048 MB	2048 MB
Graphics Card	NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB / ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MB	NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB / ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
Free Disk Space	8 GB	8 GB
Net Link	Broadband	Broadband

Scores

To learn more about our scoring methodology, please click here.

Gameplay	93	Gameplay has evolved in countless different ways, trimming off the bits that didn't work and adding in more variety. Smooth, playable and interesting to the very end with tons of things to do.
Graphics	89	Exceptional animation quality and massive detailed cities, yet there are some small flaws stemming from console hardware limitations that could have been addressed on the PC. Instead, we get a direct port.
Audio	94	I've always appreciated Jesper Kyd for great music that fits the game and it is true here as well. Voiceovers use the "spice things with Italian phrases" trick too much but overall the voice acting is solid.
Technology	90	Technologically pretty much flawless - no bugs, glitches or instability. The OSP DRM system is arguably an issue to some, but as long as it works to keep pirates at bay, it is an acceptable deal. Internet connection required.