So Assassin’s Creed II has finally hit YouMedia, and here is my first hour-and-a-half so impression of the game…
The game starts out very slow, giving a short flashback explanation of what had occured in the first game. It was a nice way of bringing back important story details, but according to my friends who had not played the first game were not really sure as to what was happening.
The game seems to expect that you already know what you should do, but even I, who had played the first game, was still very unsure as to what to do, even before I had actually got into the real game. There were no hints as to where you were supposed to go, and the game wasn’t awfully good at explaining the new HUD. It never had explained most of what the markings on the mini-map had met, but thankfully most of the mechanics were the same as the first one.
The problem with the beginning of the game was it’s attempt at trying to teach you complex fighting maneuvers with your fists, although all you really needed was to button mash. In reality, the fists are completely useless when you fight the real enemies. Thankfully, there is a alternative once your out of the fighting tutorial, which is free-running. Just like the first game, the free-running was still an amazingly fun part of the game. One little gripe for me, either this was the game or me just getting used to the Dualshock controller, but the controlling did not seem as smooth as the first game. The controls seem a bit unresponsive when it comes to free-running, and I’m still not accustomed to it, even with my experience from the first game…
It took a very long time to get to the meat of the game (as in, out of the tutorial and into the action), as you had to go through many tedious fetch quests before you had actually acquired your gear and weapons, but once you finally gained your basic weaponry, real combat with sword-fighting is still very simple and unbelievably easy, but just like the old game, too easy. You could spend most of the time countering for the instant kill instead of wasting your time actually trying to attack. But it was still much better than the hand-to-hand. Just doesn’t seem very deep, but with good timing and a bit of skill, your rewards are awesome combat moves and impressive kills.
This is the boring part of the game and my impression of it, but if this game should live up to it’s reviews, it better up itself! I have no doubt that it’ll do so, since soon after I actually got my gear and the missions started to get more interesting, I started to have a bit more fun. So expect better thoughts later!
-Kaillif Ammen Gamertag “Gloqwi”
PSN: Gloqwi
Steam ID: vgplaya