Great touches abound – such as the lute-players, clearly the Renaissance equivalent of morris dancers, who will accost you pickpocket them and they will leave you alone. The mouth-watering setting, which encompasses Florence, various small Tuscan towns, Venice and Rome, is even more lovingly observed than that of the first game, and feels stunningly real – you can bump up your health by buying armour from blacksmiths, hire groups of courtesans (such a quaint euphemism for prostitutes) to act as a suspicion-allaying moving shield and even renovate the Auditore family home and its accompanying town.

This time around, the action moves to 15th-century Renaissance Italy, and you play Ezio Auditore, a young Florentine playboy who witnesses the stitching up and hanging of his father and brothers, and becomes an assassin in search of revenge.

T he first Assassin's Creed flattered to deceive: lavished with praise pre-launch for its moderately cerebral Crusades-era Middle East setting, its graphics and its free-running engine, it was let down by gameplay that proved repetitive and often downright tedious.Ī suitably contrite Ubisoft is adamant that it has addressed that problem in Assassin's Creed 2 and, indeed, it isn't lying.

Feathers assassins creed 2