(To be fair, these stats are from me being up to the same section of sequence 12, memory 3 for a direct comparison) – The bracketed stats afterwards are the post-game ones. LOL look at the difference in the “times notorious” stat.
-The minstrels. Oh god, the minstrels. There’s something deeply hilarious about hiring some courtesans to occupy a guard so you can get to a chest, and trying to stand vaguely non-suspiciously while they get into the going with the courtesans animation while two minstrels dance around in front of you trying to make me conspicuous. I like to think the guards were so happy dancing with courtesans they never stopped to see where the music came from.
-On the other hand, I’m currently doing a tail the templars mission as I write this, and I’m trying to be at a vaguely stealthy distance while a minstrel blocks my way and sings loudly over their conversation so I can’t take any of it in. CLEARLY HE WORKS FOR THE TEMPLARS. No wonder the templars keep knowing Ezio is chasing them. It’s because the minstrels sing whenever they see him in a “hey, here he is!” cue. xD (In the subsequent dialogue: “[Ezio] could be anywhere! He could be here right now and we would not know!” Clearly the templars greatest fault is not listening to the minstrels more.)
-“Whoops, I glitched the game” moment: There’s an assassination mission that also doubles as a smoke bomb tutorial. What I think you’re supposed to do is to go and speak to somebody about smoke bombs and acquire them before starting the mission. I hate timed missions - that’s both timers, and prolonged chase sequences, as I don’t have time to think. I climbed up onto the roof of the building where my target was sheltering before trying to progress so I could scout it out and get a feel for the place, placements of guards etc. The game then went “uh, you’re up here?” and kicked the mission off – kill him before he fully shelters inside the building. I watched in eagle vision mode for my target, then did a flying dive off the roof that I’m really proud of as I somehow landed directly in front of my target and immediately stabbed him. The game then went “kill your target before he flees”, and I was like… uh, pretty sure he’s dead. The game then realised he was dead and came up with its smoke bomb tutorial. I opened my weapon wheel and… surprise, no smoke bombs! Because I sequence broke. xD I tried running around in eagle vision mode but couldn’t find a door, so dropped it and managed to run out the building, then dive on a horse and gallop away as fast as I could. …I never did learn to use smoke bombs, but it was certainly a far tenser escape! (I did eventually figure out where to buy smoke bombs after reading a lot of useless “Where do you get smoke bombs?” “In sequence 5” posts. Yes, I know that, people. I am –past that point in sequence 5-.)
-More weird sequence breaking: There’s a plotline where the templars are trying to kill the doge and install one of their own. The building is impenetrable, better scout it out! But Ezio has already broken onto the roof there prior to this sequence to tackle an assassin’s tomb. Relax, Antonio, that building isn’t a big deal at all!
-Leonardo, I still have a grudge against you for your flying machine from my first playthrough. Have you ever tried to fly that thing on keyboard controls?! It was much, much easier this time through, when I flipped the controls and could use a controller.
-Ezio: -flies flying machine for literally half a second before crashing due to inverted controls- Leonardo: “I can’t believe it, Ezio! You really flew!” …Er, I think it’s called a crash landing, Leonardo. No need to be so excited.
-My main gameplay memory of Assassin’s Creed 2 was carnevale – specifically, the 2 minute race between checkpoints (and to a lesser extent capture the flag). I hated it. I nearly quit the game. This time, I did it in two goes – I used first partially as a scout route, then chose a wrong way to a route which completely wrote it off. The controller really does make a huge difference to making the timed missions bearable. Using a keyboard and mouse together, I’m not too coordinated so I had to move, stop, move camera, etc because the game is very awkward about where the camera is facing when you jump forward if you don’t want to suicidally dive off buildings. This, naturally, eats away a lot of time and makes timed missions hell. I think, on my PC playthrough, in the end my brother did it for me on an xbox controller. So it’s cool to see how the mission is actually intended to be played. You never know, I may not have a manic hatred for the carnevale sequence by the time I’ve finished this one! Let’s see if capture the flag is as hateful as I remember it being. (Capture the flag: won 2 rounds easily, suddenly became rubbish and opponent won 2 rounds, before I won the final round.)
-I wish civilians wouldn’t stand in the middle of my guard fights. “Desynchronised: Ezio did not kill civilians” appeared when I was in the middle of a brawl with city guards to free mercenaries, and leapt at what should have been a guard but actually did a double air assassination on two civilians instead. Whoops. You guys should really move out of the way.
-Got stuck in a building and had to reload. I’d finished one of the nine Florence assassination missions, having killed my target and ran up onto the roof tops, then hid in a bale of hay on the roof to go anonymous. When the game acknowledged I was anonymous, it decided to restart me on the floor in the middle of an enclosed building. I could climb up some of it and hang on the side of a low roof, but game absolutely refused to let me climb up even though it’s something I regularly do in the game. Everywhere else that I could climb I seemed to be hitting invisible walls or things above my head meant it refused to let me jump. Reloaded and started outside of said building, thankfully.
-The enforced stealth missions in sequence 13 prove to me that I’d be a terrible assassin. (Look at those kills stats between sequence 12 and end of sequence 14! I reckon at least 100, maybe even as much of 150 of those extra kills were from sequence 13… so you can see why the “assassinate this guy WITHOUT EVER BEING SEEN” in said sequence missions were not my forte.)
-I hate these rooftop chase scenes. I like being on the roof, but the NPCs run so fast you have to free run to keep up, and free running on roofs mean that at any given moment Ezio discovers his want to be a lemming and starts diving off buildings. Ordinarily, I just hold R2 but not free run up there, so I’m not falling off all the time.
no subject
(Got up to sequence 12, memory 3)
OVERALL:
Synchronisation: 50.7%
Time Played: 17:55:40
Distance Travelled: 97491
FIGHT:
Deaths: 26
Favourite Weapon: Double blade
Enemies Killed In Fight: 347
Enemies Killed With Hidden Blade: 97
Air assassinations: 4
Double air assassinations: 0
Disarms: 4
NAVIGATION:
Height climbed: 5042
Distance travelled on ground: 60911
Distance swam: 1816
Distance travelled on horseback: 10134
Distance travelled on gondolas: 780
Distance flown: 936
VILLA:
Restoration: 76%
Value: 114060
Population: 2661
Renovations Completed: 100%
Shops Opened: 100%
Collections: 11%
Equipment: 26%
SOCIAL:
Florins earned: 281775
Florins spent: 207926
Blended: 00:09:03
Times Notorious: 17
Couriers Killed: 0
Courtesans Hired: 18
Mercenaries Hired: 9
Thieves Hired: 12
PS4 PLAYTHROUGH (CONTROLLER) – 2018
(To be fair, these stats are from me being up to the same section of sequence 12, memory 3 for a direct comparison) – The bracketed stats afterwards are the post-game ones. LOL look at the difference in the “times notorious” stat.
OVERALL:
Synchronisation: 53.52% (66.19%)
Time Played: 20:37:23 (23:43:27)
Distance Travelled: 150594 (171769)
FIGHT:
Deaths: 10 (10)
Favourite Weapon: Hidden blade (Hidden blade)
Enemies Killed In Fight: 435 (626)
Enemies Killed With Hidden Blade: 249 (334)
Air assassinations: 11 (13)
Double air assassinations: 5 (6)
Disarms: 3 (3)
NAVIGATION:
Height climbed: 6895 (7910)
Distance travelled on ground: 100587 (115251)
Distance swam: 3365 (3562)
Distance travelled on horseback: 13421 (15727)
Distance travelled on gondolas: 493 (493)
Distance flown: 1008 (1008)
VILLA:
Restoration: 94% (95%)
Value: 141790 (142920)
Population: 3308 (3334)
Renovations Completed: 100% (100%)
Shops Opened: 100% (100%)
Collections: 50% (55%)
Equipment: 97% (97%)
SOCIAL:
Florins earned: 597867 (838370)
Florins spent: 479762 (481676)
Blended: 00:07:20 (00:10:24)
Times Notorious: 26 (45)
Couriers Killed: 2 (2)
Courtesans Hired: 22 (22)
Mercenaries Hired: 10 (10)
Thieves Hired: 12 (12)
Some funny things about AC2 from replay:
-The minstrels. Oh god, the minstrels. There’s something deeply hilarious about hiring some courtesans to occupy a guard so you can get to a chest, and trying to stand vaguely non-suspiciously while they get into the going with the courtesans animation while two minstrels dance around in front of you trying to make me conspicuous. I like to think the guards were so happy dancing with courtesans they never stopped to see where the music came from.
-On the other hand, I’m currently doing a tail the templars mission as I write this, and I’m trying to be at a vaguely stealthy distance while a minstrel blocks my way and sings loudly over their conversation so I can’t take any of it in. CLEARLY HE WORKS FOR THE TEMPLARS. No wonder the templars keep knowing Ezio is chasing them. It’s because the minstrels sing whenever they see him in a “hey, here he is!” cue. xD (In the subsequent dialogue: “[Ezio] could be anywhere! He could be here right now and we would not know!” Clearly the templars greatest fault is not listening to the minstrels more.)
-“Whoops, I glitched the game” moment: There’s an assassination mission that also doubles as a smoke bomb tutorial. What I think you’re supposed to do is to go and speak to somebody about smoke bombs and acquire them before starting the mission. I hate timed missions - that’s both timers, and prolonged chase sequences, as I don’t have time to think. I climbed up onto the roof of the building where my target was sheltering before trying to progress so I could scout it out and get a feel for the place, placements of guards etc. The game then went “uh, you’re up here?” and kicked the mission off – kill him before he fully shelters inside the building. I watched in eagle vision mode for my target, then did a flying dive off the roof that I’m really proud of as I somehow landed directly in front of my target and immediately stabbed him. The game then went “kill your target before he flees”, and I was like… uh, pretty sure he’s dead. The game then realised he was dead and came up with its smoke bomb tutorial. I opened my weapon wheel and… surprise, no smoke bombs! Because I sequence broke. xD I tried running around in eagle vision mode but couldn’t find a door, so dropped it and managed to run out the building, then dive on a horse and gallop away as fast as I could. …I never did learn to use smoke bombs, but it was certainly a far tenser escape! (I did eventually figure out where to buy smoke bombs after reading a lot of useless “Where do you get smoke bombs?” “In sequence 5” posts. Yes, I know that, people. I am –past that point in sequence 5-.)
-More weird sequence breaking: There’s a plotline where the templars are trying to kill the doge and install one of their own. The building is impenetrable, better scout it out! But Ezio has already broken onto the roof there prior to this sequence to tackle an assassin’s tomb. Relax, Antonio, that building isn’t a big deal at all!
-Leonardo, I still have a grudge against you for your flying machine from my first playthrough. Have you ever tried to fly that thing on keyboard controls?! It was much, much easier this time through, when I flipped the controls and could use a controller.
-Ezio: -flies flying machine for literally half a second before crashing due to inverted controls-
Leonardo: “I can’t believe it, Ezio! You really flew!”
…Er, I think it’s called a crash landing, Leonardo. No need to be so excited.
-My main gameplay memory of Assassin’s Creed 2 was carnevale – specifically, the 2 minute race between checkpoints (and to a lesser extent capture the flag). I hated it. I nearly quit the game. This time, I did it in two goes – I used first partially as a scout route, then chose a wrong way to a route which completely wrote it off. The controller really does make a huge difference to making the timed missions bearable. Using a keyboard and mouse together, I’m not too coordinated so I had to move, stop, move camera, etc because the game is very awkward about where the camera is facing when you jump forward if you don’t want to suicidally dive off buildings. This, naturally, eats away a lot of time and makes timed missions hell. I think, on my PC playthrough, in the end my brother did it for me on an xbox controller. So it’s cool to see how the mission is actually intended to be played. You never know, I may not have a manic hatred for the carnevale sequence by the time I’ve finished this one! Let’s see if capture the flag is as hateful as I remember it being. (Capture the flag: won 2 rounds easily, suddenly became rubbish and opponent won 2 rounds, before I won the final round.)
-I wish civilians wouldn’t stand in the middle of my guard fights. “Desynchronised: Ezio did not kill civilians” appeared when I was in the middle of a brawl with city guards to free mercenaries, and leapt at what should have been a guard but actually did a double air assassination on two civilians instead. Whoops. You guys should really move out of the way.
-Got stuck in a building and had to reload. I’d finished one of the nine Florence assassination missions, having killed my target and ran up onto the roof tops, then hid in a bale of hay on the roof to go anonymous. When the game acknowledged I was anonymous, it decided to restart me on the floor in the middle of an enclosed building. I could climb up some of it and hang on the side of a low roof, but game absolutely refused to let me climb up even though it’s something I regularly do in the game. Everywhere else that I could climb I seemed to be hitting invisible walls or things above my head meant it refused to let me jump. Reloaded and started outside of said building, thankfully.
-The enforced stealth missions in sequence 13 prove to me that I’d be a terrible assassin. (Look at those kills stats between sequence 12 and end of sequence 14! I reckon at least 100, maybe even as much of 150 of those extra kills were from sequence 13… so you can see why the “assassinate this guy WITHOUT EVER BEING SEEN” in said sequence missions were not my forte.)
-I hate these rooftop chase scenes. I like being on the roof, but the NPCs run so fast you have to free run to keep up, and free running on roofs mean that at any given moment Ezio discovers his want to be a lemming and starts diving off buildings. Ordinarily, I just hold R2 but not free run up there, so I’m not falling off all the time.