I lacked the patience to collect all the flags in the first game, but the toned-down nature of the feathers collection meant it was far more manageable.  I armed myself with maps and ran around the cities, with little incident other than numerous guards on the rooftops trying to shoot me before they died.


The reward for collecting all the feathers? A short cut scene in which Uncle Mario shows himself to be a heartless monster, and the granting of a new cape and a new weapon.  The cape makes me hated everywhere I wear it, and the weapon is a hammer which leads to ludicrously over-the-top death animations.



All achievements collected as well; I'll never get full completion for the first game due to the fact I didn't talk to Lucy enough, but the achievements were well designed in this game.

So, what next?

It took a long time to become a proper assassin - even though I had killed many people, most of the time deliberately, it wasn't until the end of Sequence 11 that I was admitted into the group, at the top of a Venetian tower.  We all jumped off afterwards.


Venice is a pretty spectacular setting and has been used for a large portion of the game.  I don't think it's entirely geographically accurate - the bridge next to which I proposed to Justine wasn't there, for a start - but you get the same sense of getting lost with canals and paths intersecting constantly.  In real life, it's generally frowned on to jump into the canal and swim across, or climb buildings to jump across the rooftops.





Everything seemed to be building to a climax at the end of Sequence 11.  I found out where to go to meet the Spaniard, and what he was going to be collecting.  I infiltrated the guard house and carried the big important box to meet him.  My compatriots met me and there was a big fight, as you'd expect at the end of the game.

Then the Spaniard ran off.  I'd rescued the Apple of Eden, but hadn't killed the man who provided my motive in the first place.

The game didn't end there.  According to the achievements list and various reviews, there were then two "missing memories" (downloadable content) - Sequences 12 and 13 - which I'd skip over and then I'd finish the game with Sequence 14.  Not so; the game continued with me in Forli trying to infiltrate and defend the town.  I seem to have the DLC already.  I'm sure that I don't have a game of the year edition of the game, but it's possible I suppose that wherever I bought it from gave me the wrong disc ...

Anyway, Forli is defended, and I'm off to start Sequence 13 in Florence.