Assassin's Creed II

Assassin's Creed II significantly refined the concept of the first game and moved the story to fifteenth-century Renaissance Italy, where the young Florentine nobleman Ezio Auditore, after the murder of his family, embarks on a path of assassin's vengeance against the conspiratorial Templar organization seeking domination over the world. Ubisoft Montreal fixed the key flaws of its predecessor — repetitive side quests were replaced with more varied activities, an economic system was added around renovating the family villa at Monteriggioni as a source of regular income, and the arsenal was expanded with hidden blades, poison daggers, and a flying machine based on the real Leonardo da Vinci's sketches, who became one of the main supporting characters.

Parkour climbing across the historically faithful cities of Florence, Venice, and Tuscany remained the core of movement but was enriched with smoother animations and more varied interactions with the environment. New ways to vanish from guards' sight were also added — blending with a crowd, hiring courtesans or thieves, tearing down wanted posters bearing your own likeness, or bribing a town crier — turning simple escape into a small game in itself. Combat relied on counterattacks and disarming opponents, while the leap of faith from a tower into a haystack was definitively cemented as an iconic image of the entire franchise. A story linking Renaissance history with the sci-fi framing device of the modern day, centered on the character of Desmond Miles, drew players into a conspiracy spanning centuries, and Jesper Kyd's music gave the whole journey a grand, melancholic touch.

Ezio became one of the most beloved characters in the entire series thanks to his charisma and long, emotionally rich development across the trilogy. Critics praised the enormous jump in quality over the first game in every respect. Assassin's Creed II conclusively launched the series as one of the most successful franchises of the generation and is still considered one of its high points, one that even players who fell out with later entries in the series still refer back to.