This game is a masterpiece. A game that will be in my games list for years to come. (Spoilers, no story, just mechanics)
Ok, lets get serious and straight. This game is far better than the first one. Why?. This game gives you more options than it's predecessor. For example, back in the first game, you are only limited of a number of weapons and styles. On this game, the developer gave us more variety of weapon to upgrade from and more style to use for either escaping or killing. A gamer can say that they are basically the same weapon(i.e. swords), that is true. But each weapon has stats on them. Damage, Speed and Deflect(Might be wrong on this one, forgot what its called). The stats are pretty self-explanatory. Also, the armor gives you HP and guess what, armor rating now. Before, if I remember it right, you need to finish certain memory to get more HP. Now you can buy armor and gather codex to get your HP up.
So you might be asking, how about money? How can you get money?. Well there are more options than you think. First, you can get money by doing your main mission and side mission. Second, you can hunt treasures. Yes, treasures. This can be your money maker early in the game. Why? Go to an art merchant, buy treasure maps, find treasure, loot it and there you go. The third, is from your villa. On this game your main base is a villa(Courtesy of your uncle MARIO). Later in the game you can renovate your villa, put stuff in it, search for statues, and more to get it's value up. And every 20mins, you will get money. How much money, or florins in game, you get depends on how much value your villa has. And you can expect later in the game that you will have tons of florins to spend on weapons, girls, etc.
Like before, your normal side missions of killing, racing and collecting things are still here. You still update your map by climbing up to the viewpoints(Not harsh as before) and they added a more twist to your gaming experiences like Databases, glyphs(THE TRUTH), etc.
Like I said, I haven't finished the game yet. And I also believe that I am not even close to the middle. So I might still be missing a lot of stuff.
Overall this game is a masterpiece. I rented this game first, not sure if it's any good and right after I played it, I bought it the next day. . This game will be in my collection of good games that I bought this year.
Now we just need to wait for 2010 and see what else can they offer to us.