Story-

Players of the first game might remember that there were two stories to follow. The story of Desmond and the story of Altair. While Desmond’s story was pretty intriguing, Altair’s story, the one you mainly followed through the game, was shallow and filled with “saw-it-coming” plot twists. The sequel begins moments after the first one ended. Lucy, Desmond’s sole friend in the first game, comes in and tells you that you need to get your ass in gear and leave – but first, take a seat on the Animus(the machine that allows you to relive your ancestor’s memories.) You witness the birth of your ancestor – Ezio Auditore de Firenze.

Ezio is a cocky teenager belonging to a noble family during the Italian Renaissance. He has his own gang, is charming with the ladies and values his family. You have to figure out what goes wrong for him to go from that to a life-ending extraordinaire. I won’t pussyfoot around it – I love the story in this game. It really gripped me and had me interested throughout the entire experience. It has a great combination of drama, humor and action. There’s quite a few twist and turns throughout the game that will keep you on your toes and just the overall narrative is awesome.

The characters in AC2 are extremely likable. Ezio is fun to play as and watching him mature and develop really connects you to him. He is also fits the perfect “badass” description. The game is also littered with historical figures and places, all of which are portrayed perfectly, or at least how I expected them to behave. Leonardo Da Vinci is nothing short of awesome. His enthusiastic behavior and brotherly love for Ezio really makes you feel like you have a strong ally on your journey. Other historical people of importance include Machiavelli, the Medici’s and Caterina Sforza.

A minor gripe I will mention about the story is the fact that as you progress through the it time passes. This is actually sort of confusing. You’ll approach a mission marker at dawn, and when the mission starts it’ll be night. Another confusing aspect of this is when Ezio will be talking to someone and mention “10 years ago I started my journey” or something along those lines, and it’s sort of a “Wait a second…what?” It’s a nice touch that Ezio himself grows older, but none of the supporting characters or settings change appearance.

Gameplay-

So the biggest complaint about the first Assassin’s Creed was that it was very repetitive. This game has done everything in its power to make sure that doesn’t happen again. They do a great job of switching it up. You could be doing a stealth section, then five minutes later beating up someone’s cheating husband, then five minutes later platforming in a tomb, etc. Another thing to mention is that all of the missions are laced so tightly with the story, that it almost doesn’t matter. Your father tells you to deliver things in the beginning, which are essentially “run here and back” missions, but because on each end there is someone to talk to, it’s nowhere near as bad. So as far as repetition is concerned, you will rarely be doing the same thing over and over, and if you do, the reason for doing it is different, and that goes a long way.

Aside from the main story, there are four different types of side-quests available to you. These can generally be described as: races, assassinations, beat-ups and courier missions. They are all different enough and fun. I don’t particularly like the racing because the platforming is not up to snuff for my likings, but it still provides some entertainment if you somehow manage to get bored with the other features. The best part about these side missions is that most of them at least tie into the story if not offer their own small story arc.

Combat remains largely unchanged from the first game, and some people will hate this. It’s true – the combat is simplistic, but I never really thought it was bad. As in the first game, you can pretty much make a living off of counter attacks. However, some wrenches are thrown in the gears. You now have three different enemy types. Agiles are your cannon fodder guards that will flee from you when a higher-up has been killed. They’re obviously built for speed and can catch up to you if you aren’t careful while running. Brutes are hulking soldiers in full plate armor that carry a “big” weapon, such as a two-handed sword or axe. They’re slow, but can string a combo together that will really knock you for a loop – you also cannot counter them right away. You’ll have to dwindle down his health a little bit by just dodging in and out of his swings and landing a hit. You could also defeat him by disarming him; a brand new technique for AC2 that allows Ezio to pull the weapon from his enemy’s hands and use it against him(Awesome).

The last guard type is known as the Seeker, and what this guy does is walk around the city poking hiding spots in case you’re hiding in them; he uses a spear or lance.

So the enemies are switched up, but what about Ezio? Well, you have a whole new bag of tricks to pull from. Say the Seeker is coming to the hiding spot that you are in. What you’d do is lunge out, stab him in the face, and drag his body back into the hiding spot with you. You can also do this if you’re hanging from a ledge on a building and there’s a pesky archer above. Ezio also now has two hidden blades, one on each wrist, which is extremely awesome. Not too mention that Leonardo hooks you up with all kinds of add ons for your blades.

It’s worth mentioning that in the first game, stealth was really kind of a waste. You could be as sneaky as you want and it would end up with you being in a brawl with thirty guards before you’d kill your target. I’m happy to say that in AC2 I managed to kill all of my targets in a sneaky or stealthy way, and this enhances the feel of the game for me a lot.

Ezio also has a few “get out of jail free cards” that I really loved during the game. You have the ability to throw sand into people’s face to blind them, throw a coin on the ground to distract them or just chuck a smoke bomb at your feet – by the time the smoke clears, you’ll be halfway across the city. This leads into another new aspect the game has – hiring groups. Throughout the game, you can hire three groups of people: Courtesans, thieves and soldiers. The soldiers are pretty self explanatory, they’ll just help you fight. The thieves will do much of the same, but they are agile and able to follow you along the rooftops. Courtesans will entice the guards to come talk or flirt with them while Ezio slips by the “Do Not Enter” sign.

Ezio is able to swim in this game, which is pretty handy since a lot of Venice is water. On one particular assassination, I managed to kill the target and then everyone freaked out. I dropped a smoke bomb, sprinted up onto a ledge and down into the water; while people were panicking back at the corpse of my target, I was pulling myself up out of the water across the river. Moments like that just make you feel awesome. The swimming mechanics don’t feel bad, and you can speed up your stroke by pressing A/X. You can also use boats to get across sections with water, but they handled pretty badly so I usually preferred to just swim.

The free running is exactly the same as in the first game, but I personally prefer it that way. Many people were turned off by that aspect in the first, so you will probably still dislike it here. You hold down the right trigger and the A/X button and move. That’s all there is too it. It’s simple but I found it very satisfying. He just looks cool doing stuff.

However, platforming really shows how inaccurate it can be when you enter an assassin tomb. These tombs contain the bodies of other members of your order, and also “seals” that you can collect to unlock Altair’s armor. These tombs usually consist of very little combat, stealth and a lot of Prince of Persia-esque platforming. There are a lot of “pull this lever then hurry up all these crazy ledges to get into the gate on time” things in the tombs.

Speaking of collecting seals from tombs – holy shit are there a lot of collectibles. Six seals, 100 feathers, 20 glyphs, 30 Codex pages, god knows how many treasure chests, and a ton of things for your villa. Your villa is kind of like your home base. When you get there, it is absolutely trashed, but as you progress through the game you can upgrade it. Upgrading works by talking to the architect who will rebuild something like the brothel or the thieves guild for money. You can also upgrade all of the shops, the bank and other similar things. The main building in the villa also houses an armory so every weapon you purchase will go on display there; the same can be said for armor and paintings that you can purchase from the different cities. Upgrading or adding to the villa increases its worth, and every 20 minutes you’ll get money from your villa – think of it just like the Fable 2 real estate feature. I am always a sucker for stuff like this in games where I get to either customize or rebuild something, so I love this part. It genuinely felt good when you’d walk in there and notice “Hey, all the ivy that was on the windows is gone now.”

This unfortunately unfolds into another minor gripe I have with the game. Money is way too easy to get. You could easily have the entire villa running before you get anywhere near the end of the game, and after that there’s almost no point to having money. Ezio can pickpocket citizens which is fun at the beginning, but becomes pointless near the end. The only vendor I even touch anymore is the doctor for health potions (unlike the last game, your health does not simply regenerate, you must use a health potion from the doctor.)

Subject 16, the subject before Desmond, managed to hide all of these glyphs in the animus. When you find one, you will be given a puzzle to solve (varying from fun to stupid) and once it is completed shown a very brief video clip of…something. I certainly won’t spoil it, but it makes the entire Assassin’s Creed backstory that much more interesting. The puzzles can be confusing, like they aren’t being specific enough about what they want you to do, but it is kind of cool to see how they work conspiracy theory aspect of Assassin’s Creed into all types of history.

The last thing I’d like to mention about the collectibles is that they all reward you for something. Sure, you get achievements or trophies, but you actually get something in game as well.

The scenery in Assassin’s Creed 2 is some of my favorite I’ve seen in any game. When you get to the top of a viewpoint (a high point in the city where you can survey the surrounding area) your jaw will probably drop off your head. It’s funny, because I did the same thing in the first one and didn’t think it would have the same impact in the sequel, but it really did for me. The Italian architecture is perfectly translated to the AC world.

At a specific point in the story, it is night and during a festival in Venice. The fireworks, costumes and decorations really created a small environment that I fell in love with. I spent a lot of time just hanging out in that area, and was genuinely bummed out when the story progressed past it.

The characters all look very cool and unique, specifically Ezio. They really went all out with the assassin costume this time, and it just looks very cool. The historical characters are very easy to pick out, and they look quite a bit like their real life counterparts.

The voice work is very authentic. A complaint I had with the first game was that it was just weird to hear Altair having an American accent in the Middle East. Ezio and everyone else speaks with an Italian accent and even use the language now and then (mostly while swearing, but it adds to the effect.) Nolan North as Desmond Miles is a little tainted for me, because as far as I know North is Nathan Drake. He does a good job, for what it’s worth, but it’s like trying to watch Jaleel White do a gritty war movie – you just see Urkel the whole time.

One of the coolest things visually this game does is that it really takes advantage of the whole phase in/phase out of the Animus loading. They have a really cool effect where everything will slow down and the environment will start to break apart and shrink or disappear in a very “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” kind of feel.

I did not experience any graphical hitches or game breaking bugs while playing through Assassin’s Creed 2, nor have I heard from anyone else that they have experienced them.

Final Thoughts-

-I think everyone owes it to themselves to try this game. Even if you hated the first.

-Replayability isn’t the strongest, but there are quite a few moments I’d play through again just to re-experience them. *cough* Glider *cough*

-Has an awesome Platnium trophy name.

Every now and then, a game comes along that brutally kicks your ass, assaults you relentlessly, and forgoes a lot of the modern devices of video games that some claim make them easier. Demon’s Souls IS that game.

Graphics-
The game is fairly good looking, albeit it’s not a pretty game. It’s dark, filed with lots of gray and brown, and does not generally feel very uplifting at all. The game runs off of the Havoc Engine, which provides solid physics (albeit, sometimes a little weird. Try walking into a corpse, they’ll flail all over the place). Levels feature lots of destructible items, although they usually feel slapped on, as they rarely offer tactical or logistical advantage.

The rest of the graphics are solid but unspectacular; frame rate is smooth, animations are solid, and there is nothing wrong with them, they just don’t necessarily wow you.

Audio-
The soundtrack is rather subtle in scale as well, often foregoing music entirely for simple sound effects. While music generally does a good job ramping up the excitement of boss fights, throughout much of each level you will find that there is no music to be heard. But that’s ok, because, in a way, it helps create this taut sense of loneliness, and the ghastly sounds of howling rabid dogs down the dark hallway you are making your way through or your feet clanking against a stone corridor are all well done and add to the atmosphere. Sadly, the voice acting in this game feels uninspired for the most part, although, luckily for us, there isn’t much of it to go around. Part of that is because there isn’t much story either; greedy king abuses soul power to awaken demons. That’s it. It’s typical fantasy fare.

Gameplay-
As labeled, Demon’s Souls is an action-RPG, and, surprisingly, has a decidedly “western” feel to it. Played from a third-person perspective in real time, Demon’s Souls is a dark, gritty, no-holds barred adventure of a game.

And when I say dark, I mean dark. Before you even begin gameplay, the game literally asks you to turn the brightness setting way down. I did this at first, but found that the game got too dark for me, and I was fumbling around a bit too much. Use discretion; it’s no fun to pass some lever you were supposed to pull or stumble off a cliff to your death because you couldn’t see (more on death later). I ended up setting the brightness back to it’s default setting, the game is plenty dark.

Enemies themselves range from generic to rather nightmarish in appearance. There are some pretty imaginative bosses to fight, some of them huge in scale (think Shadow of Colossus). They all add to the somewhat “gothic” feel of the game, and the dark atmosphere.

The brief tutorial does an okay job of introducing you to the most vital of controls, R1 is right hand use (like swing your weapon), R2 is heavy swing of said item, R3 is enemy lock-on, square is use item, circle is dash, or, with analog input, a roll, and triangle allows you to switch around how you wield your weapon between one or two hands. The two left triggers provide wielding your left handed item (L1), and parrying (L2). The right stick grants you power over the camera, allowing you to move it as you please, and the control pad toggles through items and weapons. While the main gist of combat feels very responsive and fluid, I have some issues. You can only scroll through items in one order, and you can have five equipped at a time. For instance, if “sticky white stuff” (lol, an actual item) is your fifth item, you must scroll using the control pad to it. If you accidentally pass it, you must go all the way through your items again. While this sounds rather small in scale, you’ll quickly learn that in this game, every second counts. Otherwise though, you’ll find the controls are simple to grasp. Sadly, the tutorial does skip over some of them, most notably the message system (more on this later).

There are ten classes in Demon’s Souls to play as, and they all play relatively differently. They’re generally the class archetypes we come to expect from this genre; knight, barbarian, thief, etc. Stats are relatively familiar too, featuring things like Strength (which can increase damage, for instance), and Luck (which can increase item drop rates), among others. Interestingly enough, any class can use any combination of weapons, as long as you have the right stats, and some of the weapons vary pretty wildly in terms of how they play. This makes gameplay a constantly evolving ordeal. You can go big and slow, quick and agile, whatever you want, which is good, because you may want to mix up your style if you find yourself stuck.

Your hit points are suitably represented by a HP bar. There is also a MP bar for magic and miracles, which are spells you can use during the game. Certain stats determine how many you can know at once. There is also a stamina bar, which depletes when running, blocking, rolling, or attacking. It’s important to keep some stamina in the tank at all times, if it gets empty, you can no longer successfully block or use heavy attacks. It does recharge quickly. Items you carry also add to your overall weight, the limit of which is determined by your Strength. The game, fortunately, includes a bank of sorts at the Nexus for items, and it has unlimited space.

Protip: Keep your shield up at all times. You never know what may be lurking around the corner

It’s hard to compare Demon’s Souls to any game out there, it has some similarities to Monster Hunter, without the over-exaggeration of combat, and at times also bares some ties to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. It’s combat oriented; don’t expect puzzles or exploration to take a role in this one. Combat is gory and largely satisfying, and is well paced throughout the levels.

The most important gameplay elements are souls, as one would expect from the title. Souls work as the in-game currency of sorts, and you get them for killing enemies in battle. Souls are used for everything in this game; buying, upgrading, and repairing equipment, purchasing items, and leveling up. You will want to kill all enemies you meet in this game because souls are so important.

Demon’s Souls is a very unforgiving game, mostly because of how death works. When you die, every single soul you have is gone. Potentially hours worth of souls are stripped away from you. This makes it important to spend your souls as you get them, buying equipment and items that you do not lose when you die. Sadly, the only area you can spend your souls at is the Nexus, your home base of sorts, and this can only be accessed from a few different places in each expansive area.

Luckily for us, you do get a second chance. When you die, you are taken back to the beginning of the level and placed into spirit form. Spirit form plays the same as your alive, or physical form, but with one exception; you have less HP. If you want to get all those souls back you lost, you must regain your physical form. There are a few ways to do this; one is to fight your way back to where you died and touch your bloodstain, from the beginning of the level, with every single enemy respawned. Another is to defeat a boss, and the final is to kill another player using PvP (more on this later). If you die in spirit form before getting back to physical form, you are out of luck. Those hard earned souls are gone forever, and once again, the cycle repeats itself. It’s at times frustrating, but it makes your successes that much more rewarding.

And trust me, you will be dying, and the game does not hide that. The first boss you face is in the tutorial, and he kills you in one hit, setting the tone for what is a difficult gameplay experience. Thankfully, the game never feels cheap or gimmicky in it’s difficulty, and you’ll find that overtime you do notice yourself getting better, and cruising through areas that were once difficult. (As a side note, if there was one disappointing boss in this game, it was the end boss, who was surprisingly easy.)

The game itself is divided into 5 large areas, each with several levels, all generally linear in nature, with some side paths sprinkled in for good measure. All the levels are connected in each area, so you could theoretically play through each area’s levels in one go. The levels are the game’s only checkpoints (these checkpoints are also areas you can access the Nexus from), and they often start and stop at bosses. At any time in the game you can access any level you’ve already played through. With a few exceptions, you can choose to play through the areas in whatever order you would like, although note that areas four and five, for example, are harder than one and two, with enemies acting more aggressively and utilizing rolling and other quick movements that they often forgo in the early game. Each area does do a good job of introducing new enemies to overcome, and each boss looks and feels different.

One problem with the soul system is that at times it makes grinding a bit necessary. When I get stuck on one particularly hard level and am at a point where I can’t really sustain any soul gaining, I often go to an earlier level and play through it a few times to get some extra souls for things like repairing equipment. This doesn’t work very quickly though, as earlier levels do not have nearly the soul rewards that later levels do, and you’ll find that the cost of equipment, leveling, etc., quickly ramps up. And did I mention that you can’t sell items? Luckily though, these instances of grinding were relatively short and few.

This all leads me to arguably the most innovative aspect of Demon’s Souls; the online play. As long as you are connected to the internet with your PS3, you will be playing online. Wispy ghostlike figures that represent other players dot in and out of your sight as you traverse the level, letting you know that you are not alone in your plight.

There are several crucial online implementations that help you progress through the game. The simplest and arguably most vital is the message system. With the simple press of the select button you can leave a message that other players can see. It’s a great way to leave hints. You’ll find your game littered with little hints saying things like “trap ahead,” “enemy on the right,” “treasure down this way,” or “blunt weapons work well on next enemy.” It’s a creative little way to have a small, in game guide of sorts. You can also rate the messages left behind by other players. Messages that get highly rated will result in health benefits for the player who wrote them, a nice little touch.

Much has been made about the bloodstain aspect of online play. Throughout a level you will encounter bloodstains of other players who died. By touching these bloodstains, you can see how they died. While cool in theory, in practice it is largely underwhelming. You can only see the player who died, not what enemies or trap might have killed them, leaving you just as clueless as before you checked the bloodstain out.

The other online gameplay elements are more grandiose in scale. Once you clear the first level, you gain the ability to summon spirit form players to help you, or be summoned as a spirit form to help another player who is in physical form. Help that player defeat a boss, and you get your physical body back.

The most intriguing and sinister online gameplay element is the PvP. After clearing through a little bit of the game, you gain the ability to force yourself into another players game as a spirit, or Black Phantom. Kill the host player and you gain your body back, die, and you will lose a level from your highest stat.

This all changes the world tendency either towards white or black. Killing other players as a Black Phantom, or dying in game changes the area you are in to black, causing enemies to become more difficult, but more rewarding. Defeating demon bosses or Black Phantoms in battle changes the world tendency to white, which has the opposite effect. These changes can also open up new areas, foes, and friends. Your own character also has a tendency, and it is gained much the same, with different tendencies affecting the bonuses you get from certain items.

As you can imagine, once you get far enough into the game where other players can assassinate you, the intensity ratchets up another level. Trust me when I say though, that it is much easier to play this game online. Playing it offline means you get no tips or co-op, and that really ups the difficulty. The tradeoff for online play is worth it.

As a side note, trophies are largely going to come overtime; defeating bosses is the major source of trophies, as well as maxing out weapons and finding all items. You will, however, have to play through the game more than once to get them all.

All-in-all this is a fun, challenging gameplay experience. With satisfying combat, expansive areas, and imaginative boss fights, this is a game worthy of purchase. It’s incredibly intense and at times frustrating, but right when you feel you have gotten to your breaking point, you succeed. There are some other flaws to note; one notable “fluke” of sorts is that, while it’s easy for you to fall to your death in this game, enemies do not sustain any damage from falling from large heights, at least from what I saw, which can make fighting high off the ground a bit frustrating.

If by some inhuman chance you find the game easy on your first play through, don’t worry, it gets harder every time you beat it. But I honestly don’t think that too many people will come to that conclusion with this game. What you get out the game on it’s second play through depends on how much you enjoy it; there isn’t really anything new to do.

I don’t know what else to say about this game. It is a terribly difficult experience, and yet, when you finally defeat that boss that has killed you 10 times in a row, the sense of accomplishment is amazing. This game is an incredible source of both the sting of pain and the rush of triumph, all wrapped up in a fittingly dark, dreary world. A throwback to older games; what with it’s lack of cut scenes, checkpoints, and continues, Demon’s Souls is not for the faint of heart, but if you are up for the challenge, it is one of the most infuriating, engrossing, and masochistically enjoyable games of this generation. Thumbs up.