Assassin's Creed 2

I think everyone knows about the Assassin's Creed franchise, but i just wanted to take a moment to talk about my favorite entry in the franchise so far.

Assassin's Creed 2 put you in the shoes of Ezio Audtore de Firenze, a young man from Florence Italy. It takes you from birth, to master assassin, building this character, who starts out just wanting revenge for his family, to realizing that the conflict is much larger then himself. There was a lot of character development, and story advancement, beautiful scenery, a huge world, stunning soundtrack, and new gameplay elements top of what the original already have made for one of the best crafted games of all time.


I still remember my time spent with that game, and to me, it is the modern definition of an Action-Adventure game. Mixing stealth action, with easy to pick up platforming made the game a joy to play. Anyone could pick the game up and feel like an assassin. However, it was always fun with challenge yourself with not being seen, or seeing how many guards you could take on. (hint, a lot.)


A lot of what made the game so great was that it took an already ambitious concept from the first game, and added to it in ways that a lot of people didn't really imagine. The first game had only a few basic mission types, and Assassin's Creed 2 expanded on that greatly. Also, the first games characters Altair was the staple stoic assassin, and kind of a faceless hero. His words never seemed to be his own, he was kind of the voice of the assassins. Ezio however was not. He was born into the order, yes, but he had no clue of it's existence until after the game started. He had a personality of his own, and it was a stark difference from the stoic Altair.


While Brotherhood and Revelations added to the series in there own ways, they were just wern't the step up that Assassins Creed 2 was. Brotherhoods story (apart from the amazing ending and a few key points) just didn;t seem as fluid, it just seemed to carry off of Ezio's personality, but didn't evolve it any. Revelations was better in this regard, with Ezio meeting a love interest and writing his sister, bit he still didn't see as much character development, instead they focused on developing Altair, and Desmond. Which is great, it needed to happen, but they weren't the main people you play as in the game.


So, with new gameplay, more insight on the story, and one hell of a character, Assassin's Creed 2 is my favorite entry in the franchise. Let's see if Ubisoft can design another masterpeice with Assassin's Creed 3.