If you decide that sneaking about isn't your thing you can choose to go toe to toe with the various soldiers. The combat system from the first game is back with timed weapon swings and constant blocking the rule of the day. Given your enemy's kindly patience in attacking you one at a time battles are entirely too easy up until the time when the camera decides to swing into the wall or move to where a crossbeam blocks your view. Luckily the combat animations are all well done which helps break up the tedium of battle.

Combat plays a huge role in the game as unlike in the original where each assassination was a carefully planned out affair culminating in the shadowy dispatch of your target, this time your assassinations aren't so much assassinations as boss battles. Basically each assassination mission plays out the same way: you'll run into a structure, fight some soldiers, or run right past them if you like, get to your target exchange some words and then fight them boss battle style until their health bar runs out and you're victorious. Worse, it decides to play it cheap during some of these battles taking away your ability to stab downed foes in the interest of keeping the battle going. You're telling me that Altair, king of assassins, isn't going to stab the leader of the Templars through the back once he's down on the ground after doing that very thing to soldiers for the past five hours? Gimme a break.

Along the way to your targets you'll come across various story and game elements that may have made sense in a larger, more populated game but have little bearing here. There's no one on the streets but you can blend to get soldiers off of your tail. Sure there's a random guy in white hood walking around but the soldiers can't tell the difference between him and you, the guy with a sword, armor and a collection of throwing knives? And why can I "blend" when walking around a castle that no one but soldiers are supposed to be in? I can silently assassinate soldiers with my hidden blades, but the other soldier standing not five feet away and looking right at us doesn't find this even the least bit suspicious, even when I'm approaching him as his fellow soldier collapses in a heap. This is nothing compared to the completely oblivious soldier silently standing guard as I take on four other soldiers right behind him. It all adds up to a disorganized and unsatisfying mess where it seems your only goal is to run from one part of the city to the other to kill some random, armored foe for reasons you don't understand nor even care about.

Sure you can link up this game with the PS3 version of Assassin's Creed II for money and weapon unlocks, but even that's not a good enough reason to spend the five or six hours needed to get to the end of the game. Simply put, there are too many negatives here and too many other excellent action games on the PSP to justify spending time with this jumbled mess. This is one set of memories best left forgotten.