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** AC2: "''Universal Acclaim''" (91)
** Practically every complaint with the original game was addressed in ''Assassin's Creed II''. Too repetitive, not enough mission variety? Every assassination has a much more varied sequence of events leading up to it, instead of "gather information, stab mark in face." Uninteresting protagonist? Ezio is a lot more relateable than Altaïr. No tangible reward for collection sidequests? Now there are, and a full-blown inventory/resource management system to boot. Can't shake the beggars off? Ezio can toss money on the ground. [[Framing Story]] doesn't make sense? It still doesn't make much sense, but it's been expanded upon in a manner that shows that there are interesting answers to the many [[Mind Screw|(many, many)]] questions brought up by the first game.
* [[Family -Unfriendly Aesop]]: Savonarola believes Florence should turn away from the Renaissance and its advancements.
* [[Game Breaker]]: Mercenaries are very good at distracting guards, but the game-breaking comes from the fact that attacking any enemy who is engaged with an opponent from behind is an instant kill if you're close enough. You can wipe out dozens of guards without breaking a sweat using mercenaries like this.
** Smoke bombs, to a lesser degree. Pop one, and every guard in a surprisingly large area is helpless for about ten seconds, plenty of time to [[One -Hit Kill]] most or all of them.
*** ''Mercenarii'' and smoke bombs are the two main ways to get the "No-hitter" achievement (kill 10 enemies in a row without being hit while remaining in combat), albeit with ''mercenarii'' you have to hit at least one guard first to initiate combat.
** If you're in a fight with guards you can't win or don't want to put the effort into winning, you can lob throwing knives at them. They're unblockable and only one (Florence/Tuscany/San Gimignano) or two (Romagna/Forli/Venice/Vatican) are needed to kill any guard in the game. If you feel the need to use them up-close, you can also pay a one-time fee for "special weapons" training to throw three at once, though the "charge up" animation before the actual throw can be interrupted.
** Hidden Blades are this ''if'' your timing is consistently good enough; while its "window of opportunity" is smallest out of all weapons (unarmed is equal or a close second), they are the only weapon to ''always'' have a fatal [[Counter Attack]] [[One -Hit Kill|Kill]] against any opponent not named {{spoiler|Francesco de' Pazzi (at il Duomo) or Rodrigo Borgia/Alexander VI}}, irrespective of the opponent's Health. Other weapons only have [[Counter Attack]] [[One -Hit Kill|Kills]] if the opponent's Health is low enough or if they're suddenly vulnerable (disoriented by smoke or sand, distracted by a NPC, just got disarmed, knocked down, bumped into, and so on).
* [[Goddamned Bats]]: In the same fashion as the first game, ''Assassin's Creed II'' has bards who run in front of you, physically blocking you from forward movement, while singing and playing their instruments. Unlike Altaïr though there are multiple ways you can deal with them. You can toss coins on the ground and laugh as people '''swarm the area''', draw your sword to cause them to run away in fear, or [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|punch the talentless gits in the mouth, break their instruments, steal florins from them, or just outright kill 'em]].
** Agiles, though they don't do well in a stand-up fight, can run you down if you try to flee, even when you're sprinting all-out. If you must run, your life will be made slightly better by at least slaying them first.
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** Henry Ford goes from the garden-variety anti-Semite that he was in real life to a lunatic who gave Piece of Eden 4 to [[Those Wacky Nazis|Hitler]] ''specifically'' to start [[World War II]], and who [[Complete Monster|considered the Holocaust to be a good thing!]]. And he isn't even a character outside of the [[Backstory]]!
** Thomas Edison's... contention with [[Nikola Tesla]] is given a Templar flavor when he conspires with J.P. Morgan to prevent Tesla from providing free electricity as well as a worldwide network that would provide [[Pandering to The Base|free information.]] Tesla's Assassin-suggested revenge: [[The Tunguska Event]]. (though the explosion in this case was from destroying a Piece of Eden).
** Savonarola in the ''Bonfire of the Vanities'' DLC. Granted, having countless Renaissance paintings and sculptures thrown into a fire because you find them indecent is a bit of a dick move. But people forget that Savonarola's denouncements of such priceless artworks were ''very popular at the time'', mainly because the continued patronage of fancy artwork by wealthy Italian families began to seem like a mocking gesture as poverty, plague, and other miseries continued to climb in Italy. He's definitely extreme, but probably had [[Well -Intentioned Extremist|good intentions]], and he certainly wasn't the conniving maniacal bastard he is in the game. (In fairness, the ''AC'' team aren't the first ones to portray him that way.)
* [[Holy Shit Quotient]]: The final boss is {{spoiler|Rodrigo Borgia, a.k.a. '''[[The Pope|Pope Alexander VI]]'''}}. You have to infiltrate {{spoiler|the Vatican}} to get to him, and you fight him in the middle of {{spoiler|the Sistine Chapel}}. And after that's over, you chase him down again, where you proceed to [[Let's Fight Like Gentlemen|settle it like men]].
** Sadly, he's [[Anticlimax Boss|not particularly difficult]].
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** The Abstergo Files in Assassin's Creed Revelations mention and explain this. The Borgia and their allies deviated from the Templar's goal, seeking personal profit and ambition, true to Italian Families' style during the Renaissance. Yes, [[Dr. Jerk|Warren]] [[Complete Monster|Vidic]] [[Even Evil Has Standards|and his employers think Rodrigo and his cohorts were bastards]]. Warren's comments in the first game did put his mentality on a light similar to the Templars from Altair's time...
** The [[Motive Decay]] appears to be part of a general theme in the second game; in the first, both factions had very different methodologies but also remained fundamentally noble. In the second, however, while both groups have the outward trappings of nobility, both sides have actually decayed in their own ways. The Assassins' allies range from the corrupt (the Medici) to the brutal (Caterina Sforza) to the inept (the Barbarigo who controls Venice once the Templars are driven out). The Assassins freely utilize and associate with the dregs of Italian society: mercenaries, thieves, and prostitutes. Its subtle, but the Assassins over time have decayed much like the Templars.
*** Also, one should consider that most of the game goes from [[Protagonist -Centered Morality|Ezio's point of view]] in his [[Revenge Before Reason|quest for vengeance]]. That said, anyone who opposes the Templars are good in his books, in spite of the flaws of character and moral. The game sugarcoats it to make Lorenzo and Caterina to look nobler and more likeable, but in [[Real Life]], they were no better than Francesco de Pazzi, Rodrigo or Cesare Borgia, seeking as much power and influence as possible. When Lucrezia points out that Lorenzo killed every single member of the Pazzi family, even the ones who weren't aware of the plot, and called Ezio out on how the Assassins put events in motion, but never see them to the end, his [[Shut UP, Hannibal]] was rather poor, prompting Lucrezia to call him hypocrite. And unlike the Templars, who eventually turned back to their [[Utopia Justifies the Means]] ways, the Assassins remained static and not meddling in politics for so long that Abstergo became quickly more powerful than the Assassin Order, which regressed to Al Mualim's Assassins' ways of hiding from society and indoctrinating children born into the Order right from childhood, but also keeping a shroud of secrecy and conspiracy, which is exactly why Desmond ran away from his home. They degraded so that their Mentor's death and the revelation of all their bases in the comics was enough to make the Modern Assassins to fall into chaos and ruin very quickly.
**** The Dev's acknowledge this. One guy said in an interview that the Ezio trilogy kinda strayed away from Templars vs. Assassins and kinda turned into Ezio vs. Everyone Ezio doesn't like. They say they will be going back to the big conflict in [[AC 3]].
* [[Nightmare Fuel]]: One of the easter eggs involves looking into murky water for at least forty seconds. Upon doing this, {{spoiler|a massive octopus-like creature swims by, glowing orange eyes fixing on you for a second. Try it again, and it attacks you with a tentacle, just barely missing its mark}}.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Assassins Creed II]]
[[Category:YMMV]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]
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