While better than its predecessor, AC2 still suffers from monotony after first glance. This is still a great game.
Hooray for giving Desmond's ancestor some real character this time in the form of Ezio. But it's more give and take. They give you more Ezio, and take away from giving you more Desmond. They take away the boring side tasks, but make the game far too easy with giving you the ability to hire various groups around the cities to distract unwanted attention. So as you can see all of these things are mixed blessings. Oh and before I forget: apparently the history books that the people that Ubisoft read in school growing up, all deal with the fact that you can fix any problem with prostitutes. Apparently courtesans are better at distracting anyone than what they are really intended to do.
Besides some minor issues I really enjoy this game. It is drop dead gorgeous to look at. You can dye and get new armors. You can get way more weapons. I actually found it easier with the old system to pull off kills though. Maybe it's just me, but the hidden blade is way harder to use effectively this time around. You get poisons, smoke bombs, and two handed weapons in this game though, and they more than make up for it.
I wish they had gotten rid of the "collection" achievement in this game altogether though. While they don't have as many things to collect, there is still an absolutely awful achievement in this game for collecting 100 feathers that are scattered throughout the entire game. Who at Ubisoft would think this would be fun for people to do? Tedious is never fun, unless you are an IRS agent maybe. I say rent the game though. You can easily get through this game in a week if you are a dedicated gamer.