I’ll admit, when I played the first Assassin’s Creed I became a fanboy. I played through the so called, repetitive missions, and ran through the kingdom taking on dozens of guards over and over again. I never really saw the flaws in the first game, until I played the second one. I don’t think I can ever go back.

The narrative picks up right after the first game. You play as Desmond Miles. With the help of Lucy, you escape from Abstergo and go to a hideout, where you once again relive an ancestor’s memory. Things are blown wide open in the second game. You will still be left with questions, but also some answers. There will be a lot of cool secrets to discover, regarding the Templars and Assassins, Pieces of Eden, and even the beginning of human history.

The ancestor you play as is Ezio Auditore, a nobleman who lived during the Italian Renaissance. The Renaissance setting is really cool. All the locations look different, and are far more colorful than the first game. The building are beautiful, and you’ll notice great little details as you climb up them, and the individual roof tiles as you run across them. The wealthier people are dressed in fabulous clothing, and all civilians will interact with each other instead of just walking around aimlessly. The only miss with the graphics is the facial models. Most characters faces aren’t very detailed and some just look ugly. But besides that, everything like the new stores makes the setting come alive.

The new RPG elements are one of the great new additions to Assassin’s Creed. You get a villa near Tuscany and Florence that acts as a home base of sorts. You can return there for many important things, such as collecting money. That’s right, money! The currency system is way cool. Earn money by stealing, completing missions, looting bodies or making fat stacks from your villa by running all sorts of operations (like a brothel). From stores you can buy weapons and armor, paintings and treasure maps, and some other goodies. You can also use your hard earned cash to hire courtesans, thieves, and mercenaries. You can blend in with courtesans; thieves are agile and will follow you on rooftops, and mercenaries will help you in a fight. Also, all of them can distract guards for you.

The fighting is yet another greatly improved aspect of Assassin’s Creed II. There are more weapons, enemy types, ways to fight, and MORE KILL ANIMATIONS. Now there are two hidden blades, and they can be used very well in combat. The game features a ton of other cool weapons that would take too long to mention. There are now more than just one main enemy type. There are heavily armored guys (renaissance big daddies), agile guys that will chase you, enemies wielding long weapons, like spears, and some regular weak enemies that will run after you cut down a few of their buddies. The main new addition to fighting is the hand to hand combat. Ezio is really good at using his fists. Instead of Altair’s boring block and attack method, Ezio can do all sorts of crazy stuff. He can grab enemies and beat them senseless, or throw them. He can disarm enemies weapons and use them against his opponents, or like the badass he his, drop it and show off some sweet hand combat finishing moves.

Free running is as fun as ever. Water is an added mode of transportation. You can swim or use a gondola. While exploring areas, many side missions are available. The side missions are based on free running: delivering messages and racing, or combat: assassinations and beating up cheating husbands. I think that assassination missions are the most fun. There are a lot of them, so besides the main missions there are a ton of people to assassinate. The game is called Assassin’s Creed.

The second Assassin’s Creed is better than the first in every way. Combat and free running are more fun, missions are varied, the story expands, and Renaissance Italy kicks butt.