The Shrine

First off, the original Assassin's Creed game didn't deserve the 7's it got....it deserved substantially lower, like a 6 or even a 5. Anyone who gave this game a 9 was probably wackin' off to Jade's picture instead of playing the game or only played it for the first hour. Yes, the game is a relatively pretty game, nice city layouts, and has a very neat storyline. It also has great ideas but it has an incredibly fatal flaw: incredibly poor execution.

The fighting system is neat, but supremely flawed. Everything boils down to the counter and pretty much nothing else works ever on anyone making all fights a battle of attrition. And as you're going through the last parts of the game, you're fighting tons of guys constantly so it's a real pain in the ass. The climbing system ends up being just annoying as Altair doesn't seem to get exactly what he's supposed to be grabbing on to what seems like forever. Not to mention it's far too easy to jump off the sides of buildings. And you wanna explore the city from the rooftops like you're supposed to? Fuck that, there are guards EVERYWHERE. That wouldn't be so bad if it was for one of the biggest flaws in the game: guards spot you WAAAAY too easily. You can't even walk around without constantly being under duress and trying to lose guards. The idea is that you go on the rooftops but we know why that won't work. Another another supreme pet peeve of mine is forced side-quests. In this game, you HAVE to do a decent amount of them or you can't even advance in the storyline. Stupid.

Simply put, the game is just a pain the ass to play and gets worse the further along you get into it. If I didn't like the story so much I would have put it down after 4 or 5 hours. As it is, I'll never, ever play it again.

But then you play #2 and guess what? They actually addressed nearly every single one of the flaws of the first (and there were tons). Now in the fighting system you've got the dodge ability so even though the system is still pretty mediocre, it's a little bit better. And you don't fight NEARLY as often so it isn't close to the pain it was in the first. Ezio also seems to be far superior than Altair at climbing so it becomes actually fun to climb over everything in the sequel and the jump-grab helps open up the climbing quite a bit. And the cities are far larger and with far more depth than the first one (and there's more of them) so it's great to explore. The fact that they're historically accurate is also a great bonus (my bud who's been to Venice actually helped me point out a real landmark I had to visit by just looking at the city layout from a viewpoint). The notoriety system really helped eliminate the guards recognizing you far too easily and even the guards on the tops of roofs were less frequent and easier to get around, generally only appearing for specific reasons. So exploring actually becomes fun which is a big bonus for a game like this.

Side-quests are just that in #2 but because the game is actually fun, you end up doing a lot of them. The assassin's tomb are quite fun to explore (particularly the one in the Bascilica) and finding the glyphs and unlocking The Truth is pretty neat and fun (and relatively intuitive; I think I only needed help finding 1 of 20). On top of that, the storyline is far more complex and an excellent continuation of the first's (starts about an hour afterwards) and intertwines real historical facts and people in very, very well (kinda like the way Cameron did with Titanic's storyline).

Game ain't perfect, though. Fighting system still needs a significant overhaul and the stupid puzzles to unlock the glyphs were far too obscure and were a pain in the ass. But it's a worthy sequel, deserves an 8 or 9 for sure. My bud who used to work at Ubi talked with a bud of his who was on the team and was told that the problem with the first was they had all these ideas but 6 months before release, they realized they had no game and pieced it together and that the second is where the series really starts. And he was very right.

The fighting system in the first one is a lot better than you think it just has a substantial learning curve to do anything other than resorting to the counter in most fights. As for guards spotting you easily... what are you doing? Walking around with your sword out? Until the end unless you murder someone in front of them they really don't care about you and the ones on the roof tops are just fodder for your throwing knives. It has its flaws but a five or six is pushing it. And if you're having trouble with the climbing and free running on the roofs, the one thing they got completely right in the first one, then you are definitely doing something wrong.

And, yeah, the second one is better in pretty much every way.

What was I doing? Not exaggerating: walking into a town and down the street....that's it. And I'm talking from the first time I walked into cities like Akka (it's not spelled Acre, that's a bad oversight by the team) or Jerusalem. It was insane how easily they spotted you if you weren't blending with others or just holding your hands together. They obviously recognized this with the notoriety system in the second and fixed the issue but man, it was an enormous pain the ass in the first.

I was having a very, very hard time beating the game (too many issue) so I had my cuz, who loved it and beat it last year, play through it with me for the second half of the game. And you know what? All he did was just counter as well 'cause not too much else works. What else did you do that worked?

The actual act of running on the roofs was fine, no issue there. And the climbing was relatively well done aside from the fact that Altair was a bit retarded sometimes and it really was too easy to just jump off the sides of buildings. I could live with that and again, they corrected this in the second. But couple it with how they placed guards who spotted you waaay too easily in the exact wrong spots all over the roofs and it really magnified the issue since you often trying to rush to get away.

I hated Assassin's Creed 1 more and more as I got further in the game. It really was a supremely flawed game, so much so the actual team members admit it. I only forced my way through it for the storyline. But I was quite happy that #2 solved most of the issues. I don't have to write off the series now and will actually look forward to further games in the series

I almost never got noticed unless I was on the rooftops and then I would just use throwing knives. The only difficult part of that game for me was the last fight against Robert.

As for the fighting, yeah, I pretty much used counter kills the entire time and that was it. Either that or I'd throw a guy and then wail on him while he was down.

Different things to do:

Combo kills - timing each hit until you get an auto kill animation

Throw - when they're down tackle them with the hidden blade or into scaffolding or merchant kiosks resulting in quick death

Hidden blade - if they're facing the other way, or countering if they're not

Running away - because sometimes it's so easy

I've beaten the game at least five or six times on the 360 and PC. I won't say it's perfect but I'd say 7.5/10 easy. I have beating this game down to a science. An extremely fun and murderous science.

I prefer the first...so I find your ratings backwards.

AC2 added some neat stuff and fixed/streamlined a bunch of things from the first, but gameplay feels incredibly dumbed-down to me.

Yeah I wasn't too crazy about the notoriety system. I found it more accurate in the last missions when everyone knew you were coming and you had to be extra careful. And I hated the glider part.. I died like half a dozen times. I did love the changes to the hidden blade though.

What exactly made you feel like it was dumbed down?

Shrinweck wrote:Yeah I wasn't too crazy about the notoriety system. I found it more accurate in the last missions when everyone knew you were coming and you had to be extra careful. And I hated the glider part.. I died like half a dozen times. I did love the changes to the hidden blade though.

What exactly made you feel like it was dumbed down?

I never once felt in danger, walking into ANY combat situation. In AC1, despite combat being a little less flexible (block, counter, win), running away was more difficult. Walking into an assasination without an ounce of forethought in AC1 generally led to failure, whereas in AC2 you can pretty much brute force every mission and easily run away (or hell, just kill everyone).

AC1 was the better "stealth-type" game. AC2 was the better "action-type" game.

Shrinweck wrote:Different things to do:

Combo kills - timing each hit until you get an auto kill animation

Throw - when they're down tackle them with the hidden blade or into scaffolding or merchant kiosks resulting in quick death

Hidden blade - if they're facing the other way, or countering if they're not

Running away - because sometimes it's so easy

I've beaten the game at least five or six times on the 360 and PC. I won't say it's perfect but I'd say 7.5/10 easy. I have beating this game down to a science. An extremely fun and murderous science.

Combo kills would work on occasion but proved useless if you were fighting more than 2 guys at once, which was far too often. Hidden blade was useless when you were in the middle of combat. Running away was fine unless you had to fight to advance the story, which was waay too often.

It really ended up being counter or nothing for the entire second half of the game. Made the system kinda like Xenogears, great ideas and worked well for a bit but ultimately ended up very shallow and a one-trick pony

Combo kills work when you're surrounded if you're careful about it and end the combo and continue blocking at the right time. The enemy can only block so many times before your combo kill either finishes or you just get the kill. I really like how the combat is based on timing. Also the hidden blade is never useless, you just have to be quick enough with it. It's the easiest way to take out templars. Push them onto the ground and then switch to the hidden blade. Done right it's fairly seamless.

The PSP version is fun and beautiful, but not very difficult or complex. I find im not doing the side quests because its a pain in the ass walking around the cities. There are a lot of guards, so if you walk slow you are always fine, but once you run you are screwed. At least in a game like GTA the cops didnt chase you until you did something wrong. Just running in AC is a crime?

I didn't like the PSP one that much. It felt like if AC was done on the PS2 but poorly. The cities were empty which was one of the fun things about the games. Plus, it didn't make sense if they didn't notice you when you're one of three people on the streets. The controls were a little weird and there were a ton of glitches that I saw. The story wasn't too bad though.

Flip wrote:The PSP version is fun and beautiful, but not very difficult or complex. I find im not doing the side quests because its a pain in the ass walking around the cities. There are a lot of guards, so if you walk slow you are always fine, but once you run you are screwed. At least in a game like GTA the cops didnt chase you until you did something wrong. Just running in AC is a crime?

Running gets you noticed. It's the armor and half dozen different weapons that get you in trouble. That and guards are told to look out for you in the later missions, so Man who fits description + huge variety of weapons + getting noticed = even the dumbest guard would realize you're an assassin. The idea is that you strike in public in broad daylight when no one is expecting it and then blend in with the crowd again but when you're murdering regents and merchant kings that gets you identified.

I don't remember much of it but I played an hour or so worth of the Assassin's Creed version on the DS and I couldn't stand it.