14 DAY TRIAL // 
Climb to the top of the highest cathedral, take a look around and then jump. Sneak up on the most guarded men in history and slash their throats open with the blades you keep hidden in your arms.
Move around the city like a shadow, bleeding in to throw off your pursuers or take them on before fleeing to the rooftops as they gear up to give chase.
It's certainly thrilling and manages to quickly capture the imagination of the player. Powerful men will fall. Careless young men will become capable warriors and even prophets of a new but old religion. The world will be reshaped by their actions but it will all happen without most people knowing it.
Assassin's Creed II is better, more sure of itself, bloodier, more attractive than the first game in the franchise but it does not yet fully realize the potential of the ideas that power it. Maybe Ubisoft is teasing gamers and stringing them along to make sure that they pick up the inevitable sequel. Maybe that's all the developers are capable of.
The title has enough hooks to grab any gamer capable of holding a controller but also enough problems to persuade some of them to get the game disk out of the console and move on to something else.
Story
There's a conspiracy. It's a bit like Dan Brown and still a bit sillier. There are Templars and Assassins. And Assassin's Creed II tries really hard to make the gamer care about the overall story of the series and about the sequences that take place in the 2012 and not in the past. Either way, by the end, it becomes clear that the people behind the experience are more adept at weaving the existence of Ezio around the various historical figures that appear in the Renaissance story than offering a clear and powerful objective for the use of the Animus and for Desmond Miles turning into an Assassin himself.
In presenting the political fractured Italian city states and the backstabbing leading to various groups losing and gaining power, Ubisoft manages to tell a surprisingly coherent tale of humanity, revenge and murder and before long, I found myself caring about what happens to Ezio and about the impact that he could have on the Renaissance world he inhabited.
By contrast, Desmond seems like a bit of a jerk who takes himself much too seriously. The other characters are also pretty one-sided, serving only as stepping stones to present sections of the plot. Borgia, the villain, probably gets the most characterization, but even he comes across as only being evil for the sake of it. Still, it is all engaging enough to continue running and fighting to see what happens next.
Gameplay
The biggest problem with Assassin's Creed II is moving around and the biggest surprise is that those who worked on the franchise at Ubisoft have done so little to actually change it from the first game. On can argue that familiarity is the most important of concerns when developing the second iteration in a successful franchise. After all, developers want to make sure that those who have played the first title can pick up and play the second one without again going through the learning element.
But the system where the player uses two controller inputs to perform the free running essential to Assassin's Creed II begged for some improvement, meaning the use of just one button or trigger for all the acrobatic moves, based on the environment in which the character finds himself. The current system allows for a lot of error, with wall runs routinely happening when wall climbing was the intent of the player. It becomes more natural after a while but it needed to be natural from the very beginning.
Otherwise, the gameplay remains similar to what players already know. There are haystacks where Ezio can hide from pursuers, if he does not like the odds of actually going up against them in the much improved combat system. The basics are the same but the options added, including a concealed early version of a handgun, the twin blades which are just as effective as any equipped weapon and more brutal finishers, make it a more engaging experience that takes a lot longer than in Assassin's Creed to get repetitive.
There are clear paths traced in the world for free running, but the player can also choose their own course. Moving through the crowd slowly allows the player to rob non-playing characters blind (though it would be a good idea to put some distance in before they catch on). Ezio doesn't seem to share Altair's fear of water and has some tech-based toys to play around with, courtesy of a certain Da Vinci. But at every point in the game, I found myself thinking about the control scheme and how it could be improved and it ended up really weighing down the whole experience for me.
Graphics and audio
Assassin's Creed II shines in offering a breathtaking big picture. Climb to the top of the highest building around, which is usually bound to be some king of church, and take a look around. It does not matter in what section of the game you are, the area around you has the layout and the feel of a real world city, bustling with people and narrow streets flanked by buildings.
Things get a lot weirder when you move up close to something and the textures and the animations begin to look worse and worse. During the normal course of gameplay, when the main character is running towards or from something, but when it’s time for an in-game cutscene, you can see things like hands protruding through objects or bodies that look disjointed and as if lacking any sort of internal bone structure. There are also moments when the models look incredibly flat, especially the supposedly alluring women.
When it comes to sound, Assassin's Creed II handles itself nicely. I experienced about half of the game until now using the Italian voices, which add a nice bit of realism to the entire experience but the English voice cast also handles things very well. The music is also well matched with the period and does not get in the way of the action. Conclusion
Ubisoft has hit on something big with the concept behind the Assassin's Creed series. The idea of inhabiting a possibly infinite amount of historical spaces through the blood of ancestors, coupled with free open world movement and a conspiracy theory thrown in for good measure has lots of legs but the developers seem to be rather slow on realizing the whole potential.
The free running needs to be streamlined (and please let it use just one button in the next game). The combat is still a bit uninspiring. The locations are gorgeous and can only be better. And Assassin's Creed II is better than the first iteration in the franchise and worth buying and playing if you liked what Altair did but everyone who touches it must be aware there is so much more that can be done with the ideas shown here.
