Assassin's Creed II

Honestly no words for this great game! The best game in the AC series.

I'm playing it through right now and I'm still so amazed by how good it is. The storytelling, the plot, the voice acting, intrigue, it's all so good. The different kind of missions tie the story seamlessly together. It's true the gameplay has certainly improved in many ways throughout subsequent games (like fast traveling, hiding in bushes and whistling). But the simplicity is part of the reason why I love this game so much and I absolutely disregard AC Valhalla. The city building in this game is beautiful, filled with people, opportunities and obstacles, so much more than in sequels. Ezio and Desmond are perhaps the first and last characters within the entire the AC universe that I truly effortlessly rooted for.

Let me start off by saying that the developers have truly outdone themselves with this one. All the expectations I had for this sequel to a game that was already well-polished; this title completely surpassed them.

The plot is so much more rich and intricately interwoven with brilliant and even hilarious dialogue, and multi-layered conspiracies. Excellent character development lets you emphasize with the main character (this holds true for Ezio as well as Desmond).

The visuals seem to be more detailed than before, and the sounds are as good as ever.

The inclusion of a monetary system was a great idea, adding much more tactics to the game.

The gameplay mechanic has improved vastly with smarter and tougher enemies, more moves and tactics for your character, and so on.

The game was always challenging, but never frustrating, which is very awesome.

If you were even remotely impressed by the preceding title, you should at least check the sequel out.

I have played through almost all of the games in this series and none have matched up to this game. This is the perfect Assassin's Creed game and has aged quite well.

This is undoubtedly the best game in the franchise. Story, gameplay, characters, locations, everything is on point. Lots of plot twists and turns. Overall it's a masterpiece.