Assassin's Creed 2 - 17/20
+More of the same gameplay wise, but with a much improved story/narrative/characters
+Really good setting (perhaps helps that I've been to Florence), makes me want to learn more about Renaissance Italy
+Decent game length, Steam clocked me in at 30hrs so probably about 25-28hrs excluding when I had it paused.
+Much more depth than the original which now seems rather tame and repetitive by comparison. Most of the things you do feel like they have a purpose rather than than just being a glorified arcade game.
+Just a generally good example of what a sequel should be - builds on the original game mechanics, corrects a few flaws, continues the story/lore.... basically AC2 is the natural evolution of AC.
+A few quirks but for the most part the platforming sections (assassin's tombs etc) felt reasonably forgiving, about right for someone like me who hates platformers.
-62fps cap, totally unacceptable for a game released this decade especially considering the original is uncapped
-Graphics a touch worse in terms of no DX10 support, slightly blurry character models (especially in present day) and a lot of popup.
-Annoying bit at the end where I had 29/30 codex pieces and had to travel around looking for the last one. The game goes "OH DON'T WORRY WE WILL MARK THEM ON YOUR MAP!!!!" which is great and all, except that it doesn't tell you which city map you need to look at - clearly you have some sort of special map that you can only look at when you are in that location!
-Annoying extra layer of DRM from ubisoft, can't run the game in offline mode and needed to download a load of **** even after doing a full install on Steam.
-Don't really like the arbitrary stealth missions where it says you can't be detected for no apparent reason, worst one was in Sequence 13 where you have to kill some bloke on a ship who is hidden from view. In the end after about 10 failed attempts I cheesed it up by making myself partially visible so everyone ran out looking for me then just waited for him to come near the edge of the ship and pulled him over!
-A few annoying continuity sections, for example when you first get access to Venice there is some viewpoint you can access but can't climb up because you haven't learnt the jump-grab technique yet. As soon as I was taught it, I went straight to that viewpoint figuring it would help me, and it did. Great! But then, jesus ****ing christ, the VERY next mission was basically an extended tutorial, it made me climb THE EXACT SAME BLOODY BUILDING that I'd just climbed! Just felt like poor design to me, they couldn't have even exposed the viewpoint marker until that mission was triggered. Oh almost forgot, also in the dream sequence you climb this tower and then have to use a special jump move to grab a beam at the top, again no hints from the game to that point about this move and indeed it felt like it shouldn't be necessary based on the architecture. Was REALLY annoying because I spent ages trying more and more extreme ways of grabbing it, meaning one time I literally jumped off the tower and fell to my death