With Assassin’s Creed taking the year off from a new game in the series, Ubisoft instead released Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection, a remastered bundle containing Ezio’s trilogy of games. Ezio is widely regarded as the most popular assassin in the entire series, so it makes sense that Ubisoft would want to capitalize on that. Including three games (and two short films) in one package is appealing, especially with its seamless menu, but it’s unfortunately a rather disappointing remaster.
Assassin’s Creed 2 arguably has the best story in The Ezio Collection, with Brotherhood a close second. Watching Ezio from birth to his teenage years grow into an assassin after his father and brothers were murdered is still a fun and rewarding journey to witness. This game also introduces players to Those Who Came Before, a precursor race that created the Pieces of Eden. This is really where the series took off, in my opinion, both from a narrative and gameplay standpoint. It is by far more polished than the first game, with a charismatic, likeable protagonist, interesting story, and better gameplay.
By now, many people have surely seen the infamous background NPC who looks hideous in the remastered version of Assassin’s Creed 2. The comparisons people are seeing aren’t exactly fair and are somewhat misleading given that Assassin’s Creed 2 randomizes all background NPCs, but unfortunately, new textures and shaders make the ugly ones look even uglier, as is the case with that particular character. The colors in all of the games are now almost over-saturated compared to their original releases, and this is most evident in Assassin’s Creed 2 since it’s the oldest title. More detailed textures were added, but that gets lost in items like clothing when all I can see are the deeper colors.
Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood picks up in Ezio’s life right where it left off at the end of the second game, and I felt like it was a perfect continuation. There were a lot of questions that needed answering after the abrupt ending to 2. Ezio, after leaving Rodrigo Borgia alive, now journeys to Rome to take him down once and for all. I remember finishing Assassin’s Creed 2 for the first time and hoping we would eventually get the chance to explore Rome because only a small portion of the Vatican was playable at the time. Brotherhood did not disappoint.
Brotherhood doesn’t look as rough as the second game can, but I also occasionally noticed some weird performance issues when climbing. There were times when Ezio would lift himself up onto the roof of a building and the camera angle would completely freak out. It wasn’t so much lag or frame rate drops, at least as far as I could tell, but the camera would instead stutter almost as if it couldn’t decide which angle to show. It’s not a huge issue, but it can be annoying. As it doesn’t seem like Ubisoft ironed out any of the original bugs, these problems won’t occur for everyone.
Ezio’s final story is also his weakest, in my opinion, but it also offers the best look at Desmond’s life up until that point. Assassin’s Creed Revelations trades in third-person present day parkour for first-person platforming sections in the Animus that give us deeper insight into Desmond’s past. Back with Ezio, I love that we got to play as Altair one more time when Ezio found the keys to the library under Masyaf, but his story with the Byzantine Templars and Sultan was rather uninteresting. The worst part about it is still the awful Den Defense system which I tried to avoid whenever possible.
Assassin’s Creed Revelations may have the least amount of noticeable changes considering it is the newest game in The Ezio Collection, even though it released five years ago. Like the other two titles, it does have updated graphics along with brighter and more vivid colors that are more pronounced in such a city like Constantinople
If anything, playing these games again reminded me of how dated the controls and gameplay feel. Ezio will uncontrollably jump off of high buildings to his death, completely missing any haystacks. There is no parkour down feature that was mercifully added in Assassin’s Creed Unity, which is probably the best thing that that entry in the series gave us. Occasional bugs that people may encounter are also present in the original versions of the games, and show that Ubisoft didn’t put a lot of time into fixing pre-existing problems. Other than some minor performance hitches, the games generally played well, and feature improved resolution, updated textures, and greater draw distances, which are wonderful when syncing viewpoints.
Summary
Questionable gameplay mechanics and character models aside, Assassin’s Creed is still a wonderful series, mostly due to the interconnected stories of the past and present seen through Ezio’s eyes for a majority of Desmond’s saga. Even if the gameplay or graphics don’t hold up that well, the story and its characters certainly do. The Ezio Collection isn’t an impressive remaster and it definitely shows its age, but these games, especially Assassin’s Creed 2, were some of the best when they originally released. A new coat of paint doesn’t change that.
Jennifer is a games journalist, former games journalist and PR Manager at Gearbox. They contributed 234 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: went on to write for Windows Central and later managed PR for Gearbox Software.