The first Assassin's Creed was a major disappointment, I think few will argue that fact. The original largely boiled down to a game engine with lots of promise but nothing to draw you into the game beyond that. The repetition was mind-numbing, the plot was a joke. I never actually finished the game, I got about 2/3 of the way through it.
After the bad taste the first left in my mouth you can imagine by reservation when Assassin's Creed 2 came out. But this time I was not disappointed; instead I was finding myself unable to put the controller down. Assassin's Creed 2 is the perfect sequel: it took everything that was weak about the first and improved it.
What a difference a plot can make. The first one had a plot but it wasn't a personal plot. You were just a tool of a larger war between two factions being told to go kill boss X and Y. In between bosses they didn't even try to hide that you were doing the same thing over and over again. You always had ~9 smaller missions before the boss, which were always of the same type. In Assassin's Creed 2 it is actually personal and diverse. You start out not knowing a thing about Assassins or Templars (heck you spend most of the game not caring about that), you're just a guy whose family is attacked and you go after the killers in revenge (sweet stabby revenge). You're going around killing people because you want to, not because you're told to. And everything in between killing bosses doesn't feel like repetitive kill X, pickpocket Y, loot treasure Z. Sure it boils down to that in the end, but it doesn't feel like that at all. The game flows so well.
The asides from the plot are vastly improved too. If you find yourself wanting a distraction from the revenge-plot there is plenty to do this time around beyond just climbing around. You can help out in the cities with various assassination and beat-the-cheating-husband up style missions that reward you with money. Partway through you get your own villa which you can chose to sink money into. Doing so gets you the warm fuzzy feeling (also helps the place stop looking so run-down) but also makes upgrades cheaper as you spend money to upgrade your blacksmith. Plus as you upgrade your villa more and more it will start generating money for you every 20 minutes.
This money comes in handy as there is a full weapon and armor system in the game, finally. There are quite a few classes of weapons you can choose to carry around, from daggers to swords to maces, all of which cause you to fight a little differently. Along with weapons and armor there are plenty of little upgrades too, like additional medicine pouches and knife-slots that really help out later in the game. There are six Prince-of-Persia style jump-puzzles (Assassin's Tombs) you can do if you want the best armor in the game.
For the obsessive-collectors they kept plenty to do in the game that requires running around everywhere trying to find things. Most importantly you have hidden glyphs you can seek out (with small hints as to where in the cities they are) that help unlock something within the game. There are hundreds of treasure chests around the city, and a side-quest where you need to find 100 feathers in memory of someone in your family. You can try to buy all the paintings available as part of the side-quest to restore your villa to its former glory.
They added in a notoriety system for the second game. It tracks your notoriety per-city and really helps you gage how cautious you need to be around guards. And now there is finally a way to lower your notoriety if you care: running around ripping down wanted posters, bribing town criers, or killing city officials. And when you are running from guards they're a lot more intelligent with their chase, they'll actually look for you in hiding spots sometimes. This makes it feel much more realistic instead of just having them give up once you jump in some hay.
One can tell that they really learned from the shortcomings of the first game and made sure they didn't exist in the second. A complaint I had was the rebounding-off-walls controls. There were a few times it would have me jump off in a different direction then I was going for, but this really only showed itself during the more difficult jump-puzzles (the most inopportune time for it to happen). The combat wasn't vastly changed in the sequel, it was still a bit of well-timed button-mashing, but it didn't really detract from the fun of the game.
Without a doubt Assassin's Creed 2 was a wonderful game and well-worth the time I sank into it. It's what the first game should have been. I'm glad to see Ubisoft pull a 180 with this game and really produce something with such high quality. And fortunately it ends with a pretty cool twist leaving it open for a third (which they've already said will happen).
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