Disappointing... too linear
Unfortunately the answer is not much. It has the potential to be fantastic but it is far too linear and gives no options as to completing any information gathering quest.
The structure is incredibly simple, you must attain information about how to kill your target, there is only one method for each target and the amount of information you gather doesn't seem to improve you're chances. There is a small selection of options as to how you acquire the information and these options are identical for each target.
As the game progresses it gets tedious to have to repeatedly do essentially the same objectives over and over and I certainly got very bored after about 2 hours in.
The graphics are good, the scenery is a little plain but it paints a realistic picture.
The combat, for me, is a major issue with this game. Surely an assassin will try to avoid combat and kill his target without him ever knowing he's under attack but no. Towards the end you come across a fixed battle where you cannot avoid having to fight a dozen heavily armed guards, hardly the work of an assassin.
It is not the difficulty that annoyed me but the fact that you aren't actually an assassin, you are a sensible soldier that doesn't always fight his way into the most heavily guard fortresses, he goes round, seems the only thing to do when one person is faced with a fight against many.
The actual combat mechanisms themselves are average, nothing new or imaginative going on to draw interest.
For the sequel to appeal to me Ubisoft will have to vastly improve the structure of the game, though judging by the oddly positive reviews I doubt that the second installment will appeal to me