Many years ago, I played the original Assassin’s Creed. I mostly enjoyed it. It was very good. But, as I said back then:
The down points are the annoyingly repetitive fighting (especially later in the game when you have to block every attack and can’t just wade in) and the dodgy sensitivity of the wall running and ledge-grabbing when sometimes you can’t climb up even though you know you can – it just won’t let you, you have to climb down and back up the exact same bit to make it “work”. The way the save points work is irritating too, since it saves for you, but sometimes you still have to go back a fair way if you quit and reload.
Thankfully, the sequel fixes all that. There are more ways to prevent fights (better assassination moves), more moves within fights, fewer fights in general, and it’s easier to get away from them – partly because the wall running and ledge-grabbing is mostly fixed. There are more checkpoints too, so saving is less of an issue.
And it’s fun. More varied than the previous game. The cities seem bigger and better designed. Getting from one city to another is streamlined. And it looks even more impressive. Even the story is better. The Assassin’s Tomb raiding is fun. Looking for glyphs is fun. It’s all just brilliant. And fun – but I think I said that.
In terms of story, I’m part way through sequence 9 (of, I think, 14), and it’s taken easily 20 hours to get here. However, much of that time has been glyph, tomb, treasure and codex hunting. I have all the best armour and nearly all the weapons, and have upgraded the villa as far as I can, so I no longer need money, and can just get on with doing the missions for the most part. I’ve still a few codex pages and glyphs though, but nowhere to look for them just yet.
Only had two bugs so far – one where two guards on a boat didn’t appear (a pain since I was supposed to kill them), so I had to kill myself (the only time I’ve died so far!) to make them reappear. It’s a common bug, apparently. The other one was when I fell off a building, and landed under the floor. I stood up and my knees down were underneath the floor as I walked around. Once I’d climbed up something it was fine again though.