Assassin's Creed II: Brotherhood completed. When I was in the midst of playing this, Tales of Xillia was released and I put this down for several months whilst I worked on it. So when I returned, much like what happened to me and Grandia II, I couldn't really remember the first half. Oh, I remembered the initial hour of the game, but after that it was rather fuzzy. If you look at the Wikipedia article, the plot synopsis is seven paragraphs long. The first two paragraphs is that hour I mentioned. The last four paragraphs is the final two hours of the game. Which means the tiny paragraph in the middle is literally everything I missed, which seems kinda ridiculous because that's the bulk of the game and also means nothing important was happening. I remember when the first game came out Yahtzee said you don't do much but rather the appeal is running around, but the second game wasn't like this. Shit was happening. This could've been literally a five-hour game.

What's crazy is the new feature that allows you to recruit other assassins (hence "brotherhood"). You don't even have to assassinate anyone anymore with that. You literally just stand there, point at whom you want killed, and they do everything for you. In fact, they are better than you could ever be. It's kinda crazy how I should be the master assassin but I'm not even doing that anymore. At the end you lose your ability to call out your comrades, and I had to spend a few minutes remembering how the fighting system worked.

The first game's minimap was frustrating because it wasn't one; it was a radar that pointed you in the direction of your target. That was useless because you needed to be able to navigate the labyrinth of the Levant cities with ease, but it just wouldn't provide that information for you. Ubisoft realized they fucked up and added the buildings to the map, which was great for the second game. But now it's become a problem again because we need fucking geographical indicators. Venice and Florence were more or less level ground, so back then it wasn't an issue, but Rome has cliffs every five fucking feet. I can't tell you how annoying it is to be headed straight for your target, realize there's a huge crag in the way, and then spend the next ten minutes attempting to walk around it.

I feel like this game should've been somehow added to the previous game or perhaps even added to the next one (I don't know how that's gonna play out because Ezio's storyline seems more or less ended). But I doubt the rest of the series is gonna make sense if you miss this though, so it has to be done.