Fancy footwork, running, leaping, falling. The enjoyable experience in Assassin’s Creed 2 is entirely based around the fact that Italy has magnificent art and architecture, and being able to explore such structures in a tactile way is gratifying. Unfortunately there’s an annoying story part which is required to continue further exploration, Grand Theft Auto style. The story is entirely based on the silly concept of reconstituting a character’s past lives, except that said reconstitution is entirely needless. There’s not a lot of need to explain why exploring medieval Europe’s architecture might be fun. Millions of people go to see it every year as a tourist attraction.
What’s worse is that the system of exploration around these spaces is not fleshed out. The interesting bits of information surrounding them are, as is usual, buried in menus with text slogs, rather than snippets and small pieces of information shown through architecture, or the individuals who created it. The game could even take cues from successful media interventions around these pieces, taking an audial tour approach, given that the poorly wrought story definitely allows for it. Though Assassin’s Creed 2 represents the architecture correctly, it misses what makes the architecture interesting, which is minutia.
Going inside most of these buildings isn’t possible, which is another problem, particularly due to the strange dissonance between certain buildings always being open and others never being as such. But perhaps what is problematic and annoying, to even exploration, is the combat system. The combat system makes any conception of being an assassin entirely ridiculous. You are a walking one-man army and have nothing to fear from even fifteen guards. Unless it’s a story cinematic and then all bets are off. What’s worse is that the annoying guards are everywhere, they have no problem chasing you around, and only serve to frustrate the exploration.
I hark on the exploration aspect of the game because it’s something that’s sorely needed in more games, and a game like this has a lot of potential for really showing off the environment. A subtle fighting system for a subtle character makes far more sense than the superhero-esque persona the main character seems to take on in the game. Falling from four stories doesn’t even faze you (or anyone else really). This might be unsettling, but since every character in the game is close to being insane, to some degree this makes sense.
Assassin’s Creed 2 explores a great space, but any overt interaction almost assuredly has your character running into annoyances. They might seem challenging at first, but past that initial phase, the thrill is replaced with near-rote reaction. The system is worn thin long before the experience is finished, and whacky characters and insane plots aside, the exploration is thoroughly punishing, despite Assassin’s Creed 2 ostensibly being about exploration.
Recommended: No