System: PS3
Bought: July 27th
Started: August 3rd
Beat: August 22nd
Trophies: 47 of 51
Idea: Basically the same as the first one, but this time Desmond isn't being held prisoner by Abstergo/The Templars and you get a whole new life to relive. Litterally, they start Desmond off as Baby Ezio and then do a time skip to when he's older and starts his life as an "Assassin". This way Desmond learns to be an assassin a long with Ezio.
Anyways, it starts up just where AC1 left off. The Lucy chick is actually an assassin as well and rescues Desmond from Abstergo. Meeting up with two others {Shaun and Rebecca} the four of them dive further into Desmond's ancestors memories with the Animus 2.0.
This time one of the main purposes for using the Animus is to help Desmond become an assassin in his own right, that and of course finding more hints to where these Pieces of Eden are. The ancestor this time? Ezio Auditore da Firenze.
17 or 18 years old, Ezio's father is betrayed by a friend and he and Ezio's two brothers are put to death. Following his fathers instructions Ezio finds the assassin's garb hidden in their home and oh look, Altair's weapon.
Ezio is a wanted man now, seeing he was supposed to have been hanged as well. Though he, his mother and sister escape and eventually end up living with his Uncle Mario at the {rundown} family villa. Mario starts to teach Ezio how to be an assassin and slowly you fix up the Villa.
Most of the story is just Ezio running around by himself trying to figure out who's responsible for his families deaths. Along the way you're aided by seemingly random people who all turn out to be Assassin's as well! You get to travel to Florence, San Gimignano, Forli, Venice and eventually even the Vatican.
One of those pesky "Apples" is in this one too, but you end up getting it before the bad guy{Rodrigo} uses it. Of course he goes off and becomes the Pope and ends up with another one of the Pieces of Eden, the papal staff.
Thoughts: Not really a fan of Ezio, it's really like he's a spoiled, womanizing rich kid that just happened to be born into an Assassin family. Sure, once the bastard killed his brothers and father Ezio really stepped up to take care of his sister/mother and to seek vengeance but... Yea.
I prefer Altair, even though his ego was huge and they didn't show him having much of a personality.
At least Ezio could swim. The controls were much less choppy and more responsive too, you had a lot more things to do and you could do them at your own pace really.
The Trophies were a huge plus but, the feathers...the feathers.. Uhg. The feathers made me glad AC1 had no trophies since finding all those flags for a trophy would have killed me.
All and all, AC2 was better then 1 just... I dunno. The ending of AC1 was a lot more fun than 2, beating up the guy with the Apple was more entertaining than beating up the fat pope with a stick.
Characters....
Present Day.
Desmond Miles - He grew up as an assassin, when he hit 16 he had grown tired of living the life of one and decided to leave the order. Out on his own, earning his own way he was kidnapped by a company called Abstergo {AC1} and was forced into a machine {the Animus} that would have him remember/relive his ancestors lives {Altair/Ezio}.
During his stay at Abstergo he finds out that they are the current day Templars, the greatest enemies to the Assassins. They are after Pieces of Eden and with Altair's memories they basically got a map to their locations. Of course the Templars just aren't going to let Desmond go so, Lucy a woman who was working there at Abstergo helps him escape.
Finding two new "friends", Desmond goes to the current hideout for this tiny Assassin faction where there's a second Animus set up. He uses this and the "Bleed Effect" to learn how to become an assassin himself , find out more about Subject 16 and to just find out more information about all the other shit that's gone down.
Lucy Stillman - In the first AC she's merely an employee of Abstergo that is also being held there against her will, in the second AC it's made abundantly clear that she's an Assassin! Wow. That wasn't much a surprise really. She breaks Desmond out of Abstergo at the beginning of AC2 and introduces him to Rebecca and Shaun.
Seems like Desmond may have a little....crush on her.
Rebecca Crane- A member of the Assassin's Order, she's the one who made Animus 2.0. She's rather straight forward and you don't really get to know much about her yet... other then she's part of Lucy's team and she's one of the Orders Tech Support type people.
Shaun Hastings- The smart one, in a way. He's a real pain in the ass attitude wise though. He offers tidbits of information as you go around Italy and even offers up help on Subject 16's puzzles if you take too long.
Shaun is tactic support for the Assassin's Order, for those teams that are out on missions.
Subject 16 - Not sure what his name is, but he was the guy who Abstergo was using in the Animus before Desmond. Seems he went a little crazy due to the Bleeding Effect from being in the Animus too long, somehow he figured out how to leave messages within memories though.
These messages are left on walls and such that Desmond can see within memories using Eagle Vision, in the form of puzzles that you have to decipher to get little memory playbacks.
Once all the memories were unlocked it formed "The Truth" and... It was a little strange. It showed Adam and Eve stealing a piece of Eden from a giant building.... The Apple. Someone is chasing the two of them and.... Nothing. It's a big vague of course, but it's saying that the whole Garden of Eden thing wasn't quite what people had imagined.
Memories....
Altair- He makes a brief appearance in this one, in one of Desmond's dreams. He's chasing a woman, the woman ends up being the same woman from the first game that was pretending to be Robert de Sable... once he catches up to her.... let's just say he's not there to kill her.
I guess this is when one of Desmond's ancestors was conceived.
There is a bit of mention of Altair in the second game, his armor is there as are his weapons or at least instructions on how to make his weapons.
Ezio Auditore da Firenze- Well, I all ready said most everything about this guy. So yea... Up there.
Leonardo da Vinci- Whenever Ezio needs something made or a page deciphered, he goes to Leonardo! He's quite a helpful guy, he even makes a flying machine that lets Ezio break into the Palazzo Ducale.. He's the one who fixes the Hidden Blade that Ezio finds in his fathers belongings.
Leonardo notes that it was first made to only be used if the wearer cuts off their left ring finger, but he fixes that.
The End: What the hell was that? Seriously, Minerva shows up once Ezio using the Papal staff and gets into the secret room. She knows Desmond is there with Ezio too which was actually kind of creepy, of course now Ezio knows about Desmond even though he doesn't know who the hell he is {obviously}.
My take is that, many years ago these beings {Minerva's people} made humans using the piece of Eden. These humans were either under the higher beings control due to the Apple or they were living side by side, not really sure. Anyways, Adam and Eve end up stealing said Apple and then the Humans and "Higher Beings" end up going to war.
That made no difference at all really since... the sun caused some epic cataclysmic event that wiped out most of the worlds population {Human and "God" a like} and Minerva is warning Desmond that there's going to be another one of these events soon.
After the nice chat with the Goddess Desmond is out of the Animus and he, Lucy, Shaun and Rebecca have to run away from Abstergo who finally found their location. Fighting their way out the game ends as Lucy and Desmond hop into the back of a truck...
Brotherhood.
Think I need an AC Break.
Random: This game did add a lot of nice new stuff to do, of course the viewpoints are still there and you have the feathers instead of the flags. You also have the Assassin's Seals that you need to unlock Altair's Armor back at the Family Villa, you get these by raiding previous assassin's tombs and going through jump and climb puzzles.
You have Subject 16's puzzles as well, which range from circle puzzle things to find the Pokeball in historic photos.
It's a lot less, go do this now then come back here then the first one and you can really stray and wander off to wherever. You could really waste a lot of time with this game... hehe..
