Assassins Creed II

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Thoroughly enjoying the mechanics and the world so far. Im up to sequence 5 and barrelling my way through the story as per usual only collecting stuff when I need a break or during a quick play. But I find myself a touch bored by the sword play. Im thinking of collecting all the codex pages and the amulets from the tombs to beef my guy up, but Im worried this will over power me and make an already fairly easy game way less challenging. Thoughts? Does it get much harder? I genuinely want to play Pokemon with the game and collect everything but im an action/story guy and I want it to still hold weight.

I hear you can get uncle Mario (Isa me, Mario!) to make you a warhammer??

[Chindie]

The combat never gets harder from what I remember. All it does is throw a few more enemies at you and few more challenging enemies.

What it does start to do, IIRC (2, Brotherhood and Revelations have become a bit of a blur for me...), is make the stealth sections increasingly awkward and does slightly more complex chases and the like.

The Tombs are worth doing in and of themselves. I can't remember what the benefit for doing the other collectible stuff is but it might be worth doing just to extend your enjoyment of the game.

It's never a particularly difficult game. I always have associated difficulty in the Assassins Creed games as being brought about by **** ups with the game engine more than it genuinely being hard.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Cheers.

Ive only done the first tomb but I feel like they took the Prince of Persia style platforming and absolutely nailed it. There's a **** ton of stuff I like about this game I just wish it was a little more challenging.

On the flip side I feel like I'm decent at the parkour aspect of the game yet those races are really **** difficult purely from a "where the **** am I supposed to go next" aspect. Feel like they've botched it a little. Fighting is a little clunky too.

I know its a two year old game but with the third one coming out soon im hoping they can improve on this stuff like they allegedly did from one to two, because its a good game. Im just not sure ill be able to finish it?

[Dante_Lockhart]

I **** love the AC series.

Not played Revelations yet though. AC1, 2 and Brotherhood were immense and highly addictive.

[Stevo985]

I think you'll finish the majority of it at least. I did it without even really trying. Not trying to make myself sound like a don there, what I mean is I just played through the storyline, and did side quests and collecting stuff etc on a purely ad hoc basis (when i felt like it) and ended up completing a lot of it.

I'd say the only thing that would take a long time is collecting the feathers or whatever it is that you have to collect (can't quite remember)

It's a very good game though, especially compared with it's predecessor, which was pretty crap imo.

[Chindie]

A lot of people thought the tombs where one of the best parts of the game and IIRC there is a reward for doing the lot, so I'd keep at it.

The thing with the Assassin's Creed games is, and always has been, that when the parkour/platformy/traversal stuff works, it's excellent. And when it doesn't, it's infuriarating. And the times it doesn't work are always when you're doing a race or a chase. They automated a load of the movement which is why when it works you're doing very little but on screen Ezio is pulling off these great flowing moves, but the automation sometimes interprets your input wrong and you end up with him jumping off the wrong way into 'Game Over!'. And because in the races and chases you don't know whats happening next or where you're going, those input errors occur more often.

They've never fixed it. It gradually got better over the games but it still fails once in a while. I've played all of the series to completion and it's clear they improved it over the games (they nail it in Revelations in it's version of the Tombs from 2, they use the camera a lot more effectively to make your inputs more obvious and make it flow better, the downside is you end up sitting there holding up on the stick and little more. This game also largely did away with the race/chase stuff), but it never went away and, in all honesty, unless 3 is a ground up rebuild, I don't think it ever will.

They did the same with the fighting. Fundamentally, little changes, but with each game they tinkered. In Brotherhood they take the tedium out of the big fights but adding a system where you easily string together 1 hit kills in a fight if your timing is down, which was a good move, and they also added in the brotherhood mechanic where you can call in some assassin mates to help out.

I'd stick at it, it's not a hard game and it's good even with it's faults. The sequel, Brotherhood, is worth a look if you finish 2 and like it, it's basically 2.5 and gameplay wise is probably the pinnacle of the series so far. 2 with Brotherhoods gameplay would have been an immense game.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

I didn't realise Brotherhood was a stand alone game. I would have bought that instead because to be honest the story is bullshit.

I feel like I'm ripping the game apart now and I don't want to because I genuinely enjoy it.

Ill probably do what you said Stevo and ad hoc as much of the collectables as I can.

[Stevo985]

Yeah I'd suggest that.

Once I'd done the storyline I went back to do all the side quests and it didn't take me more than a few hours to do it. There wasn't a huge amount left.

As I said, I never bothered collecting everything, but I did all the quests, so i wouldn't imagine it would be too hard to carry on from where I was and complete it 100%

[Ginko]

Personally I found Assassin's Creed a bit shit, whereas the second game and it's sequels were much better but never as good for me as other people seem to think. Vastly over-rated games in my opinion. I'm interested to see how they'll handle AC3 considering it's setting.

[the_eristic]

A lot of people thought the tombs where one of the best parts of the game and IIRC there is a reward for doing the lot, so I'd keep at it.

The were THE best part of that game for me, as far as actual gameplay went. I was sorely disappointed by the Brotherhood equivalents, the Lairs of Romulus, which were nowhere near as interesting or challenging. The only one that even approached them in terms of puzzle platforming was the Palazzo Laterano. Most were "run around, stab some guys, stab the main guy", which is too similar to the main game. The tombs in II were typically a fabulous break from the somewhat repetitive mechanisms driving you through the primary storyline.

I do wish the difficulty scaled up more in all the games, that the Guild had been better implemented in Brotherhood, and that the games had more genuinely secret areas. With environments capable of housing tons of sweet places and things to discover, virtually all "secret" locations and their purposes were totally spoonfed.

Still, all in all, quite a fun series when it hits its stride. Haven't heard too many positives about Revelations, though.

[Stevo985]

Personally I found Assassin's Creed a bit shit, whereas the second game and it's sequels were much better but never as good for me as other people seem to think. Vastly over-rated games in my opinion. I'm interested to see how they'll handle AC3 considering it's setting.

The first one WAS shit.

Dull storyline and the worst cut scenes I've ever seen in any game. They just stand there and talk at each other for about 15 minutes.

The second one was a hug eimprovement in terms of making it more interesting.

Haven't played the ones after that but assume the improvement continued