Assassin's Creed 2 Review

"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted."
This is a series my brother's big into but I had little interest in. Since the trophy data is in my PS3 system and I wanted the Upoints so lets what we got.

Story
You play as Desmond Miles. A man who's used as a plot device for the main story about Ezio Auditore, an Italian man who discovers his father is an assassin and joins them to uncover a plot that could change Italy as he knows it.
I don't have any major problems with the story. Ezio is a fun guy and I can see why he's popular, being a badass while having a sense of humor. There are also some other memorable characters like Leonado and that army guy in Venice, but most of them are very bland and forgettable, especially the villains, who I felt were built up but every hit felt like an anti-climax, except for the big bad himself and the young brat who antagonizes you early on.
Another problem I have is that I don't feel the passage of time. It's suppose to happen over the course of several years but it feels more like months.

Gameplay
I'm not a huge fan of gameplay. I felt the combat was unresponsive and had trouble with it, although you can hire people to distract the guards which I started to use after a while. It is cool to stab some when they're not looking. I really didn't like the free running parkour stuff mainly because while simple to do, is very to mess up. Numerous times was running around, having a bit of fun when I suddenly grab onto a wall. This s the main reason I rarely went up the roof tops unless I had too and I really hated the races. Also, there's one optional dungeon where you have to use a move you never used and was very annoying.
Speaking of the side quests, they're varied enough like beat-up husbands, delivering mail and collecting feather. I didn't do that many assassination missions mainly because the one I found were mainly kill all the enemies and I don't like the combat. I know there are ones where you get to find a target but I only found one. You also get to upgrade a town to get discounts but that's nothing big.
This is a personal thing but I didn't feel like I was falling when I did those leaps of fate. I got the feeling of falling when I thought will break every bone from jumping as far way from hay as possible.

Presentation
I can not deny the fact that this game is gorgeous. You can tell they put alot of effort in the scenery so you can climb all over it. Musics there, nothing special. And the voice acting... Now the actors are not that bad, they sound Italian to me with no voice that makes me rip my ears. My problem is that the writing switches between English and Italian and it gets annoying after awhile. Yes it's nitpicking but it really bugs me.

Verdict
I don't think I'll bother catching up with this series. Yes it's a good game but it's not my thing.
7/10