White cloak, red death

A lot of people were wowed by the concept of the original Assassin’s Creed. The game sounded like a dream come true—play as Altair, a badass, white-cloaked assassin caught in a war with the Knights Templar in 12th century Jerusalem.

Then the game came out.

It was great for about a half-hour, but only in the limited way Grand Theft Auto III was the first time you passed the controller around with a group of friends, taking turns killing cops and beating hookers.

After that, climbing to the highest point in the city, effortlessly blending in with crowds and taking down guards with a hidden arm blade almost entirely lost its appeal, thanks to a bland, variety-lacking mission structure and brain-dead enemy AI mixed with clunky combat.

Ubisoft also pulled a fast one on us within the first five minutes of the game—it wasn’t actually set during the Crusades, but in the future, where the Templars and the Order of Assassins had been fighting for centuries.

You were actually just some chump bartender whose lineage happens to hail from a line of these assassins. And Jerusalem? Nothing more than a Matrix-style recreation facilitated by DNA-embedded memory.

This back story is necessary as it’s the lifeblood of the series, for one. It also serves to drastically contrast Assassin’s Creed II from the original. There weren’t too many huge changes made to the series’ core mechanics, but it was refined and added to in a generally satisfying way.

The setup for AC II is the same: Without getting bogged down in plot details, your future-protagonist joins the cause of the assassins and starts exploring genetic memories that drop the game proper in 15th century Italy, smack dab in the middle of the Renaissance. This time around, you play Ezio, the son of a wealthy Italian banker, who soon becomes an assassin to avenge his family.

First, the bad stuff: The game’s introduction is lengthier, and the fetch-quest nature of the first hour or so makes the game appear to be just a bigger, prettier version of the original AC, with few actual tweaks. And while the controls may still feel somewhat depressingly rigid when compared to, say, the fluid movement in Uncharted 2, free climbing around the beautiful architecture of Italian Renaissance cities still handles very well.

Combat still isn’t spectacular, but it’s OK. Ezio has a far larger arsenal of moves, disarms and cinematic assassination techniques than Altair ever did, but the enemy AI is still pretty worthless and too many actions are mapped contextually to one button.

Blending in with a crowd of people while in a very noticeable white cloak also seems more ridiculous in practice than concept. However, improvements to overall game flow are much appreciated.

This is a game where initial impressions can be very wrong. While in the first game all you had was bad combat and sluggish platforming, its sequel offers something far more realized.

For instance, you can hire courtesans or mercenaries to either distract or fight off guards for you. You can throw money in the street to create a diversion and slip through an area unnoticed. There are far more varied mission types. There are devices you can use made by an up-and-coming Leonardo da Vinci. There’s even a hilarious Mario 64 reference to watch for.

AC II also introduces a monetary system. Your home base, a villa outside of Florence, takes in cash from the surrounding area, which you can renovate in order to get discounts in shops, bring in more cash and open up other opportunities for Ezio. Best of all, you can now upgrade your armor and weapons, giving AC II some role-playing game elements that really breaths life into the game.

Another great surprise are the beautifully done exploration levels, as Ezio probes old catacombs and churches to find hidden, treasure-filled tombs of long-dead assassins of his order.

Though the inclusion of sci-fi to the series is still questionable, there’s a lot more to like about AC II than the original. The script is, for the most part, well-written, if a bit silly at times, and the RPG elements and monetary systems (among other things) really make for a far more engaging experience, and one even people who hated the original will enjoy.