Ubisoft Montreal built a sequel that fixes nearly everything wrong with the first Assassin’s Creed. Assassin’s Creed II came out in November 2009 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, then reached PC in March 2010 and Mac in October 2010. It carries a critic aggregate of 9.0/10 across eight outlets, and that number holds up.
Trailer, via Assassin’s Creed.
Ezio Auditore da Firenze
The first game had a problem at its center: Altaïr was a blade with no face. Assassin’s Creed II replaces him with Ezio, a wealthy Florentine born in 1459, and the difference is everything.
By 1476 Ezio is charismatic and reckless, and the game wastes no time breaking him. His father Giovanni and brothers Federico and Petruccio are framed for treason and executed by the corrupt magistrate Uberto Alberti. Ezio retrieves his father’s Assassin equipment and murders Uberto in revenge.
That is the engine of the whole story. Ezio’s mother Maria and sister Claudia flee Florence with him to the ancestral home in Monteriggioni, where his uncle Mario explains the family’s place in the Assassin Brotherhood. Giovanni died, Mario reveals, because he had uncovered a conspiracy run by the Templar Order.
Roger Craig Smith plays Ezio. The cast around him is unusually deep for a 2009 action game: Nolan North as Desmond Miles, Kristen Bell as Lucy Stillman, Danny Wallace as Shaun Hastings, Eliza Schneider as Rebecca Crane, Carlos Ferro as Leonardo da Vinci, Fred Tatasciore as Mario.
Rooftops and Canals of Venice
The open world is the other half of the argument. Assassin’s Creed II spreads across Florence, Venice, Monteriggioni, San Gimignano and Forlì, all recreated to fit the late-15th-century Italian setting.
Each city is more detailed than anything in the 2007 game. NPCs behave more like people — civilians get caught coughing or sneezing, small touches that make a street feel inhabited rather than staged.
Movement opens up too. The player may now swim in water, and Venice’s canals finally mean something. Horses work outside the major cities, gondolas crowd the waterways, and a carriage appears during a mission with Leonardo.
The mission structure is looser than the original’s. Nonlinear play, hack-and-slash combat, stealth, exploration — the game hands you options rather than a corridor.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Pages
Leonardo is the best idea in the game. He is a young inventor here, not the museum piece history class hands you, and he builds Ezio new weapons from translated Codex pages left behind by Altaïr for future Assassins.
Those pages tie the sequel back to the first game without dragging Altaïr back on screen. You also fly Leonardo’s flying machine, based on real-life aeroplanes, during one mission. It is a set piece, and it earns its place.
The historical fiction is doing real work. Niccolò Machiavelli appears as an ally. The Pazzi and Barbarigo families carry much of the Templar conspiracy. Ezio’s targets are mostly nobles, which keeps the revenge plot tangled in actual Renaissance power instead of generic villainy.
Animus and Eagle Vision
The framing story returns to the 21st century. Desmond is pulled out of Abstergo by undercover Assassin Lucy Stillman and taken to a safehouse, where her team has built its own Animus.
Their plan is to train Desmond through the bleeding effect, which lets a user absorb an ancestor’s skills fast. Desmond relives Ezio’s genetic memories to uncover what an ancient race called the First Civilization left behind, hoping to end the Assassin-Templar conflict.
The upgraded Animus gives the game a clean excuse for its changes. A database fills in historical detail on landmarks, characters and services you meet. The health system is more dynamic: synchronization with the Animus handles minor injuries, while serious wounds send you to a street-side doctor or to medicine bought from doctors or found on bodies.
Eagle Vision, the ability to identify specific people and landmarks, now works in third-person view and while moving. That sounds minor. It is not. It turns a toggle into a tool.
A Decade of Vengeance
Ezio’s pursuit of the Templars spans more than a decade, from 1476 to 1499, at the height of the Renaissance in Italy. The game covers that stretch without losing its footing.
The plot is set inside a fictional history of real-world events, following the millennia-old struggle between the Assassins, who fight to preserve peace and free will, and the Templars, who want peace through control. That framing is what separates Assassin’s Creed II from the usual revenge story.
Ezio is not just settling a family score. He is being folded into a war older than his bloodline, and the game makes that shift feel earned rather than announced.
The Sequel Problem, Solved
Here is what matters most: Assassin’s Creed II is the rare sequel that diagnoses its predecessor’s failures and treats them as a to-do list.
The first game had a striking premise and a thin protagonist. This one has Ezio, a family, a city, a cause. The first game had repetitive structure. This one has nonlinear missions and a world with enough texture to wander in.
The 9.0/10 aggregate is not a fluke of nostalgia. Eight outlets landed there, and the reasons are visible on the surface: the cast, the cities, the Codex pages, the flying machine, the database. The game is generous in a way the original was not.
It is also, quietly, a history lesson that respects its audience. Machiavelli as an ally, Leonardo as a weapons dealer, the Pazzi conspiracy as the spine of a revenge plot — none of it is accurate to the letter, and none of it is dumb.
The weaker parts are worth naming. The Desmond material still plays as setup for a larger story rather than a story of its own. The bleeding effect is a mechanic dressed as a plot device. And the modern-day safehouse sections are the least interesting rooms in a game full of Renaissance rooftops.
None of that sinks it. Assassin’s Creed II is the moment the series figured out what it was, and the template it set — one charismatic ancestor, one sprawling city, one conspiracy with real names attached — is still the one later games keep reaching for.
The Numbers
- Release: November 2009 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360); March 2010 (Microsoft Windows); October 2010 (OS X)
- Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Platforms: PlayStation 3, PC, Mac, Xbox 360
- Genre: Action-adventure, open world, third-person
- Modes: Single player
- Setting: Renaissance Italy, 1476–1499
- Cities: Florence, Venice, Monteriggioni, San Gimignano, Forlì
- Critic aggregate: 9.0/10 (8 outlets)
- Score: 9 of 10
Assassin’s Creed II earns its 9.0/10. It is a sequel that understood the assignment, built a protagonist worth following for a decade, and turned the Italian Renaissance into a playground without turning it into wallpaper. The modern-day framing is still the weakest link, and the series would spend years trying to fix it. But the rooftops of Venice, the Codex pages, and Ezio’s long road from a murdered family to the Assassin Brotherhood are the reason this one still gets named when people argue about the best in the series.
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