Is AC2 really the best or is it just nostalgia?

[[RUS] Election Hacker]

Many people consider AC2 the best AC game. It was my first Assassin's Creed game and for a long time I also considered it one of the best, if not the best. I've never really replayed it, but recently I've been watching some gameplay again, and I have to say that while it still holds up visually and is impressive for its time, the ranking people give it appears to be mostly nostalgia. The combat and missions are quite repetitive, NPCs look the same, and the world just isn't as alive as the newer titles. I'd still say it ranks above most AC games including Unity and Syndicate, but I think Origins and Odyssey definitely (and probably AC3 and AC4) rank above AC2, to say otherwise is quite silly.

[Silver]

Its just nostalgia.

[Profiler]

I can't remember. I played all of them so now I lost track which is which anymore. AC2 is Ezio? If so,twas a good one, yes.

[✪ m1ke]

It's just nostalgia and the stroy of Ezio in general. The story of the Ezio trilogy is pretty damn good, but other than that most people like them so much because of nostalgia and nothing more.

[Seven]

For me it was the story, attention to detail, and in the followup titles, the optional objectives that required some planning and patience to execute correctly. The newer titles have none of that, just kill everything and call it a day. The environments are great, but that's it for the most part. Technical implementation is of course going to fall behind, but that's pretty much irrelevant to me. Some of the best games I can think of are from the early 2000s, some even older, and it's certainly not because they are technologically advanced.

[Joblo]

Originally posted by Seven:

For me it was the story, attention to detail, and in the followup titles, the optional objectives that required some planning and patience to execute correctly. The newer titles have none of that, just kill everything and call it a day. The environments are great, but that's it for the most part. Technical implementation is of course going to fall behind, but that's pretty much irrelevant to me. Some of the best games I can think of are from the early 2000s, some even older, and it's certainly not because they are technologically advanced.

I agree a lot of thing was brand new idea for a games. Now buying an AC games are more like buying Office new version.

[Mr. Whiskers]

The story was great. The characters were great. The writing was great. It had higher animation quality than Odyssey even being as old as it is. The parkour had tons of room for great skill expression, the combat was fun. I played them again not long ago and the Ezio trilogy absolutely still holds up

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by Seven:

For me it was the story, attention to detail, and in the followup titles, the optional objectives that required some planning and patience to execute correctly. The newer titles have none of that, just kill everything and call it a day. The environments are great, but that's it for the most part. Technical implementation is of course going to fall behind, but that's pretty much irrelevant to me. Some of the best games I can think of are from the early 2000s, some even older, and it's certainly not because they are technologically advanced.

To be fair I played AC2 kind of near the end and . . . it literally have nothing that requires planning, it is the typical generic hack&slash of jumping in the middle of the enemies and spamming attack and dodge to victory, where doing the same at AC Origins or Odyssey is impossible.

If you mean the quests/missions . . . well, there are go here, pick that, now go there, folow him, now pick this and get there, now . . . untill 1 mission end, being the mission like a series of guided mini-missions of 1 to 2 minutes each, 5min tops when you have to hunt some enemies scattered through the city/area.

[Joblo]

Climbing need you to watch the environnement but is true until Unity after that the vertical and horizontal plane make no sense.

The level design are a lot more picky. Yes you can jump and do anything, AC have always be a Casual games.

But if you think that old AC are a typical Hack and slash. You probably miss all jumping puzzle and never checked for the easiest road to your goal. I think you miss a lot of oportunity to make your life easier and it's not too dificult to imagine you dont liked your ride.

But here i agree with OP this games was good in is times. (And in somes aspect we were forgiving with it because of what was done in this times. )

But AC2 was the top this games have to offer past this point its just a "remashup" to milk the crowd.

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by beurp99:

Climbing need you to watch the environnement but is true until Unity after that the vertical and horizontal plane make no sense.

The level design are a lot more picky. Yes you can jump and do anything, AC have always be a Casual games.

But if you think that old AC are a typical Hack and slash. You probably miss all jumping puzzle and never checked for the easiest road to your goal. I think you miss a lot of oportunity to make your life easier and it's not too dificult to imagine you dont liked your ride.

But here i agree with OP this games was good in is times. (And in somes aspect we were forgiving with it because of what was done in this times. )

But AC2 was the top this games have to offer past this point its just a "remashup" to milk the crowd.

To be fair, I always used the "a straight line is the shortest route" and if that is an enemy crowd I used to see 2 options:
1 - go and face everyone head on
2 - jump in the middle and do the meat grinder

With areas at city being sa lot of buildings and possible to go through the roofs mean I dont need to circle around any building what mean the shortest route and possible to dive into someone.
It it was an open area . . just move forward and attack and that is it.

The parkour was a bit better yes, I remember you had to watch out for "where you will jump next" and yes, that was the best part of the game . . but it get obnoxious when you get to a roof or gate and . . . you cant move forward because of a "matrix" wall that pop up there if you have not progressed on the game . . . then some tedious 10 to 20 missions later, you can explore . . more 1/5 of the city . . . once you get the whole city to explore, you dont want to see the game anymore.

imo Brotherhood was a lot better than AC2, because I loved the exploration of Brotherhood but AC2 was . . good for its time as I had nothing to compare with other than older games.

[Seven]

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

To be fair I played AC2 kind of near the end and . . . it literally have nothing that requires planning, it is the typical generic hack&slash of jumping in the middle of the enemies and spamming attack and dodge to victory, where doing the same at AC Origins or Odyssey is impossible.

There were plenty of mission in which "jumping in the middle of enemeies and spamming attack and dodge" would mostly certainly not lead to victory, as merely getting detected would fail the mission instantly. True, generic combat was easier in a sense because counterattacking and kill chaining was pretty overpowered (Origins and Odyssey combat is not particularly complicated either, it just takes longer because everything is a sponge). Also, as I explicitly said, the followups had secondary objectives in most missions that did require you to plan things out because in many cases there were limited windows of opportunity where you could get it done. There is nothing even remotely comparable in the latest installments; at best there are some missions where you get slightly different voiceovers afterwards but it has zero effect whether you clear a location undetected or if you just Leeroy Jenkins the whole thing. The first in the AC2 series lacked this as well, but it still represented a massive improvement over AC1.

If you mean the quests/missions . . . well, there are go here, pick that, now go there, folow him, now pick this and get there, now . . . untill 1 mission end, being the mission like a series of guided mini-missions of 1 to 2 minutes each, 5min tops when you have to hunt some enemies scattered through the city/area.

Which, due to the mission design, is still a great deal more variety than anything Origins and Odyssey offers. I had a great deal more fun doing many of the missions in Brotherhood and Revelations, trying to get everything align correctly to complete all objectives, planning on which guards to eliminate and when to avoid being detected and opening up a new approach, than anything I did in Odyssey, simply because in Odyssey there was no reason to do anything like that other than in a handful of missions and even then the only difference was a bit of voiceover afterwards. The only reason I found to be stealthy was because combat became such a chore that I just didn't want to do it anymore. The one and *only* quest chain in Odyssey that I felt was actually above passable was the Mykonos rebellion, on account of there actually being different outcomes depending on your choices.

Odyssey is, for the most part, a hiking simulator. What isn't hiking is killing things, with a bit of random looting and burning stuff thrown in, usually for no particular reason other than because it's there. If that's your thing, good for you, but it isn't mine. I ended up using cheat engine to increase the game speed by 5x to cut down on travel time, and it's not a good look for a game when I'm using 3rd party tools just so I can skip large parts of it.

Now, I'm sure there are plenty of people who like this new style of AC games, and that's fine. Good for you. But the idea that the earlier games are just crap and the only reason anyone would enjoy them is nostalgia is stupidity of the highest order.

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by Seven:

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

To be fair I played AC2 kind of near the end and . . . it literally have nothing that requires planning, it is the typical generic hack&slash of jumping in the middle of the enemies and spamming attack and dodge to victory, where doing the same at AC Origins or Odyssey is impossible.

There were plenty of mission in which "jumping in the middle of enemeies and spamming attack and dodge" would mostly certainly not lead to victory, as merely getting detected would fail the mission instantly. True, generic combat was easier in a sense because counterattacking and kill chaining was pretty overpowered (Origins and Odyssey combat is not particularly complicated either, it just takes longer because everything is a sponge). Also, as I explicitly said, the followups had secondary objectives in most missions that did require you to plan things out because in many cases there were limited windows of opportunity where you could get it done. There is nothing even remotely comparable in the latest installments; at best there are some missions where you get slightly different voiceovers afterwards but it has zero effect whether you clear a location undetected or if you just Leeroy Jenkins the whole thing. The first in the AC2 series lacked this as well, but it still represented a massive improvement over AC1.

If you mean the quests/missions . . . well, there are go here, pick that, now go there, folow him, now pick this and get there, now . . . untill 1 mission end, being the mission like a series of guided mini-missions of 1 to 2 minutes each, 5min tops when you have to hunt some enemies scattered through the city/area.

Which, due to the mission design, is still a great deal more variety than anything Origins and Odyssey offers. I had a great deal more fun doing many of the missions in Brotherhood and Revelations, trying to get everything align correctly to complete all objectives, planning on which guards to eliminate and when to avoid being detected and opening up a new approach, than anything I did in Odyssey, simply because in Odyssey there was no reason to do anything like that other than in a handful of missions and even then the only difference was a bit of voiceover afterwards. The only reason I found to be stealthy was because combat became such a chore that I just didn't want to do it anymore. The one and *only* quest chain in Odyssey that I felt was actually above passable was the Mykonos rebellion, on account of there actually being different outcomes depending on your choices.

Odyssey is, for the most part, a hiking simulator. What isn't hiking is killing things, with a bit of random looting and burning stuff thrown in, usually for no particular reason other than because it's there. If that's your thing, good for you, but it isn't mine. I ended up using cheat engine to increase the game speed by 5x to cut down on travel time, and it's not a good look for a game when I'm using 3rd party tools just so I can skip large parts of it.

Now, I'm sure there are plenty of people who like this new style of AC games, and that's fine. Good for you. But the idea that the earlier games are just crap and the only reason anyone would enjoy them is nostalgia is stupidity of the highest order.

I obviously did not consider the "stealth missions" when I mentioned that it is just "jumping in the middle" but still these are more "pay attention and parkour" but yes, these "stealth missions" were good.

Now if I want a stealth I do the stealth through the whole fort/camp/leader-house/city . . . it is not a mission but still fun anyway, to get in, pillage everything, get out and no one noticing.

Combat in Origins and Odyssey are not "spam to win" not because enemies are more spongy, but because combat dont allow you to press dodge and attack and you go dodging everything not taking any damage while dealling damage to everything around, what is super cheap and easy way to victory.
At Origins and Odyssey you have to think of what action you are going to take, of your distance from target, of when you engage and when you disengage, also having more enemies around is a more serious danger because you can be staggered to death and it all starting with a arrow or 1 attack from one direction you did not pay attention, things that at old ACs, if I cant see my character and where other enemies are it is fine, I will just keep pressing dodge and attack and pray to victory, and 99% of the time victory it was by just pressing dodge and attack and not even paying attention to anythng around.

[Joblo]

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

Combat in Origins and Odyssey are not "spam to win"

This is perhaps true for Origins but very false for odyssey. Odyssey timing in fight are a lot more forgiving

Perhaps not for some boss. But when the games have falled very anoying throwing me 2 or 3 mercenary in the midle of a forteress. I have just turned full turtle, spaming my "magical heal" (dont remember the skill names) in priority. Yes you have to move the combat away from arrow, and its where you see how the AI is dump and easily tricked.

But you know this games is designed for a gamepad i dont see how thfight cant be anything else than a button masher.

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by beurp99:

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

Combat in Origins and Odyssey are not "spam to win"

This is perhaps true for Origins but very false for odyssey. Odyssey timing in fight are a lot more forgiving

Perhaps not for some boss. But when the games have falled very anoying throwing me 2 or 3 mercenary in the midle of a forteress. I have just turned full turtle, spaming my "magical heal" (dont remember the skill names) in priority. Yes you have to move the combat away from arrow, and its where you see how the AI is dump and easily tricked.

But you know this games is designed for a gamepad i dont see how thfight cant be anything else than a button masher.

Dark Souls is designed for controller and is not a button masher.
This thing with skills is an exploit you can use (and I use it to cancel enemy specials, with a skill that deal damage).

iframes at AC Odyssey are not reliable, but positioning and colision is so positioning and timing is important, but there are exploits.

Still, classic ACs you could exploit everything just by frantically pressing dodge and attack at any direction.

[Joblo]

I cant argue over Darksouls never played and i hve not a lot of experience over console, for that part im probably wrong.

But like i said before AC are a casual games designed for the crowd.Fight are always be shallow and i dont think they have made stunning progress on that matter.

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by beurp99:

I cant argue over Darksouls never played and i hve not a lot of experience over console, for that part im probably wrong.

But like i said before AC are a casual games designed for the crowd.Fight are always be shallow and i dont think they have made stunning progress on that matter.

Tell that to who say AC Origins and Odyssey are hard to the point of demanding grinding and spending money to buy "time savers" . . . meanwhile I go wandering around against enemis 5, 7 and now 9 lvls above my own level at Nightmare Heavy . . . (and I hated I could not record properly, game really is poorly to no optimized at all, first game I can not record gameplay but a slideshow with audio).