Huge improvement over the first game - wonderful, gorgeous game...with some technical glitches.
Yes, I'm currently in the middle of my fifth attempt to get through Assassin's Creed 2. When it froze while saving the first time, I was about 80% of the way through the game. Multiple crashes later, after scouring the web for advice, breaking down and buying a new copy of the game, deleting everything off the PS3 and downloading a fresh update, and (whew!) making sure I'm offline every time I play now, I'm working my way back into the mid-game.
If the game weren't stellar, I'd have chucked it into the trash and moved on. I played AC1 when it came out, and despite the evocative and unique setting (Crusades-era Damascus, Acre etc.), I found actually playing the game to be repetitive and dull.
But I was immediately down for the 2nd iteration when I read that it featured the ability to caper about on the roofs of medieval Florence and Venice – just after I'd been to these cities!
(and yes, AC2 came out a couple years ago – I'm rarely playing the hot new game when it's hot and new).
I'm happy to say it is really one of the more enjoyable PS3 games – and far and away the best "adventure" style game – I've ever played: beautiful to look at, well-written, with solid-to-excellent voice-acting, and wonderfully immersive sound and music. More importantly, the game itself is a giant sandbox-style open world with a fair bit of diversity in missions and typically several ways to get through a given challenge.
I did mention that it's a beautiful game? I think a large part of why I've kept at it, despite the technical challenges, and the fact that the game is forgiving to a fault (it's really not nearly difficult enough), is that spending time in the world Ubisoft has created is a treat for the eyes and ears. The Duomo is as breathtaking as a video game can make it, and climbing the campanile gets me sweating with tension even though I've done it multiple times, and I know I'm not going to suffer more than a restart if I do fall.
But somebody needs to instruct Ubisoft on the virtues of allowing users multiple save games (and the ability to back up those save files). I shouldn't be on my fifth attempt today, I should be firing up AC Revelations!