After finishing Resonance of Fate and completing most post-game quests for Star Ocean 4 International, I decided to try another game I borrowed from Reppu_Kiri, Assassin's Creed 2. As I mentioned many times before, I'm not really a big fan of western game, but it's not so bad to play this game for a change every once in awhile. The game was relatively short in length, and overall I could say that I'm liking the gameplay, and most of the story but the ending.
Title: Assassin's Creed 2
Developers: Ubisoft
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3), Xbox 360, Windows
Genre: 3rd person action-adventure
Release date: Nov 2009
Platinum Difficulty: 4/10
It's true that I still had yet to get a Platinum for this game because of one friggin trophy: Sweeper which required me to sweep 5 guards at once using a long range weapon. It's actually not a hard task, but somehow I've always get to sweep 4 guards at most after a lot of tries. I would definitely go back to this trophy once I get back to my PS3 in a few days.
*edit 11/4/11* And as mentioned, I finally got the final trophy yesterday, and hence the Platinum. It was not really that hard to get the Sweeper trophy after all: wear Auditore cap, lure the guards (one with a lance) to confined, narrow space/alley, disarm the guard and find the right timing for the sweep. And I got it in my first try lol.
Anyway, if I had to rank among games I've platinumed so far, I'd put Assassin's Creed 2 marginally below Atelier Rorona (which is also had 4/10 difficulty in my list). This is due to the fact that it's very, very easy to get many of the trophies in the games without much effort. There's only 1 missable trophy in the entire game (Fly Swatter), which shouldn't be a problem if we know the timeframe. Another slightly challenging Trophies involves finding and solving all subject 16's videos, as well as locating all 100 Feathers in the game, but that also was not that difficult with the help of proper guides. And lastly, the combat-related trophies, which can take time to master, but still not overly difficult.
Enjoyable games, with few minor problems
One of the stronger point of the game was the flamboyant and enjoyable gameplay. Being able to climb high place, performing high dive (aka Leap of Faith) in specific place into the bale of hay, and the various tricks and method to attack, ambush and kill: The quick way with dual hidden blade; the slightly slower way with poisonous blade; the "not-so-stealthy" way with hidden gun; or simply head on combat with long/short swords, maces, axes or unarmed. In combat, we could also disarm the opponent's weapon, evade their attacks and retaliate with counter kill. And this was even more enhanced by great graphic used in the game. There are a lot of side-missions available (racing to beat the thief's time; beat-em up to defend a woman's honor, a simple assassination contract etc), but to be honest I only did 1 of each (for the trophies), because completing them grant nothing but small amount of money, which we could obtained much more from our own income from the Villa Auditore chest. The mission of the main story can be repetitive at times (tailing, go to target location and kill etc), but it was compensated by the various method we could use to accomplish the mission. There's a lot more to the gameplay (bribing, blending, notoriety level, stealing, hiring people, puzzles etc) for our gaming experience.
Anyway, you know the 2 things I find annoying in the streets of Assassin's Creed2? The people carrying those boxes and the street musician (or whatever they called). A bothersome that if there's no guards around I'd bumped into them purposely and made their box crash/instrument fall. I mean, how can you easily get your hand slipped from the box just by a slight touch? And it's annoying when the musicians chase after me whenever they see me -__-
I've never played its predecessor so I had no idea what Assassin's Creed 1 like, but I heard that it had a poor ending, and that's exactly the same issue I had with AC2. I thought the Templar vs Assassin feud, which started way back since the era of Altair in AC1 were quite fascinating. Desmond Miles, a test subject 17 went into the Animus 2.0 to relive the memories of an ancestral nobleman Ezio Auditore da Firenze during his days in various place in Italy during the late 15th centuries, learning much about his days as assassin while also adopting Ezio's skills as his own. Throughout the story, we learnt about the conspiracy surrounding the death of Ezio's family, and eventually leads to an even bigger conspiracy, even bigger than the war between the Assassins and Templars. This is the point of the story (from Rome/Vatican onward), which IMO feels a bit awkward to me. Out of a sudden, the element of supernatural takes place, and talk about the creation of the world, the Apples and the Staff...wait what?
Overall Assassin's Creed 2 was quite a refined and enjoyable game to play. Not so short, but not that long either with fun gameplay, and lots of quest available. Some of the puzzles can be quite challenging if you attempt it without guide, and that's a plus. The pace of the story, especially near the end might be a turn off for some, but as a whole, AC2 was still a solid action adventure game worth playing. Oh, and somewhat easy to Platinum too.
p/s: title will be changed once I got the final trophy and Platinum this.
*edit 11/4/11* And as mentioned, I finally got the final trophy yesterday, and hence the Platinum. It was not really that hard to get the Sweeper trophy after all: wear Auditore cap, lure the guards (one with a lance) to confined, narrow space/alley, disarm the guard and find the right timing for the sweep. And I got it in my first try lol.
Anyway, if I had to rank among games I've platinumed so far, I'd put Assassin's Creed 2 marginally below Atelier Rorona (which is also had 4/10 difficulty in my list). This is due to the fact that it's very, very easy to get many of the trophies in the games without much effort. There's only 1 missable trophy in the entire game (Fly Swatter), which shouldn't be a problem if we know the timeframe. Another slightly challenging Trophies involves finding and solving all subject 16's videos, as well as locating all 100 Feathers in the game, but that also was not that difficult with the help of proper guides. And lastly, the combat-related trophies, which can take time to master, but still not overly difficult.
Enjoyable games, with few minor problems
One of the stronger point of the game was the flamboyant and enjoyable gameplay. Being able to climb high place, performing high dive (aka Leap of Faith) in specific place into the bale of hay, and the various tricks and method to attack, ambush and kill: The quick way with dual hidden blade; the slightly slower way with poisonous blade; the "not-so-stealthy" way with hidden gun; or simply head on combat with long/short swords, maces, axes or unarmed. In combat, we could also disarm the opponent's weapon, evade their attacks and retaliate with counter kill. And this was even more enhanced by great graphic used in the game. There are a lot of side-missions available (racing to beat the thief's time; beat-em up to defend a woman's honor, a simple assassination contract etc), but to be honest I only did 1 of each (for the trophies), because completing them grant nothing but small amount of money, which we could obtained much more from our own income from the Villa Auditore chest. The mission of the main story can be repetitive at times (tailing, go to target location and kill etc), but it was compensated by the various method we could use to accomplish the mission. There's a lot more to the gameplay (bribing, blending, notoriety level, stealing, hiring people, puzzles etc) for our gaming experience.
*images credit to gamerspot*
Anyway, you know the 2 things I find annoying in the streets of Assassin's Creed2? The people carrying those boxes and the street musician (or whatever they called). A bothersome that if there's no guards around I'd bumped into them purposely and made their box crash/instrument fall. I mean, how can you easily get your hand slipped from the box just by a slight touch? And it's annoying when the musicians chase after me whenever they see me -__-
I've never played its predecessor so I had no idea what Assassin's Creed 1 like, but I heard that it had a poor ending, and that's exactly the same issue I had with AC2. I thought the Templar vs Assassin feud, which started way back since the era of Altair in AC1 were quite fascinating. Desmond Miles, a test subject 17 went into the Animus 2.0 to relive the memories of an ancestral nobleman Ezio Auditore da Firenze during his days in various place in Italy during the late 15th centuries, learning much about his days as assassin while also adopting Ezio's skills as his own. Throughout the story, we learnt about the conspiracy surrounding the death of Ezio's family, and eventually leads to an even bigger conspiracy, even bigger than the war between the Assassins and Templars. This is the point of the story (from Rome/Vatican onward), which IMO feels a bit awkward to me. Out of a sudden, the element of supernatural takes place, and talk about the creation of the world, the Apples and the Staff...wait what?
Overall Assassin's Creed 2 was quite a refined and enjoyable game to play. Not so short, but not that long either with fun gameplay, and lots of quest available. Some of the puzzles can be quite challenging if you attempt it without guide, and that's a plus. The pace of the story, especially near the end might be a turn off for some, but as a whole, AC2 was still a solid action adventure game worth playing. Oh, and somewhat easy to Platinum too.
p/s: title will be changed once I got the final trophy and Platinum this.
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