Vast overall improvement from AC1, another decent story line and many fun side mission making AC2 Worth a look.
Gone are the simple missions of just uncovering clues from two to three people before you can assassinate that person. Like GTA 4, their are tons of side missions you can do, instead of following the main story. Their are many side missions, like doing hitman contracts, courier duty, and a carrying out cheating husband beat down, but the one that I've enjoyed the most is exploring the Assassin Tombs. Their is about six of them in the game and uncovering them all will reward you with a super armor. Fans of Tomb raider or Ninja Gaiden would be very familiar this gauntlet that you will have to do uncover the Assassin armor. It's somewhat moderately difficult to jump from ledge to ledge to finally reach the tomb, which even involves some thinking on your own in how to climb all the way their.
They also added a simple economy system to have money to buy shops, paint, and upgraded weapons. Everything you get will be stored at a Castle, basically a safe house town, where you will be frequent to. To collect money, turn in decoded codex, and assassin medallions from the tomb. Collecting money in this game will be plenty later, so you will not be fretting about spending too much. Just upgrade your Castle if you can, and when can. Get the Armor, painting, and weapons later.
The story in the game was fairly good, given that there is more different characters than ever from the first game. You will be meeting all different kind personalities from town to town. Their is also glyphs that are scattered thorough out the cities, where you can only detect it with eagle vision. Uncovering these glyphs will give you a small interesting riddle and side story, bits by bits where the all powerful Apple of Edens been throughout real history.
The combat in this game has improved so much, that fending off your enemies is too easy. First off, you can pay a bunch of thugs to fight with you for cheap, making your battles against 10 plus easy.The additions of the Brutes will make your battle a little more tougher if by yourself, since a simply counter move will not work and a few hit will drain your health down quick. The only counter move that will work on Brutes is the hidden poison blade, if timed correctly. Ezio is also much more deadlier than Altair ever was. He can now assassinate unsuspecting victim hanging on ledges, from roof tops, and while hidden in a haystack. He has almost 20 different swords and knives, including a smoke grenade, which makes killing way too easy. While everything else has improved in combat, the clashing of swords doesn't sound as authentic in this one like AC1, while the cinematic counter move kills also wasn't as impressive. Which most AC1 enjoyed greatly in the first game.
AC2 made great strides to improve, like eliminating the automatic suspicion by guards and bland citizens saving which was repetitious in AC1. At the same time I don't feel they made a huge leap game play wise. AC2 feels too much like a carbon copy of GTA 4, while adding a snippet of Tomb Raider and Ninja Gaiden instead of their own idea's. Definitely worth a look, but not much more captivating than the first game that will have you thrilling for a replay.