Hitman’s Paris level was great, but a little disappointing; restrictive and a little too confined, the only real challenge was acquiring a disguise that would allow you to reach the upper levels of the mansion. Episode 2’s Sapienza, on the other hand, strays closer to the opposite end of the spectrum; set in a sunny coastal town in Italy, Agent 47 is tasked with preventing the release of a dangerous virus through the assassination of two targets.
To begin with, the town of Sapienza seemed incredibly daunting, as it’s spread over a large area, with the small town with its square surrounded by cafes and stores, and the large heavily-guarded clifftop villa that protects your two targets. However, with a little exploration and experimentation, everything becomes a lot simpler. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t get your hand held as much as it was in the Paris mission, but Sapienza is considerably easier and a lot more fun to play.
One of the best things about Episode 2 is the amount of things to do. After around 9 hours in Sapienza, and reaching Mastery Level 20, I still haven’t found everything or used every opportunity. It really is an expansive level, and you can honestly get as much gameplay out of this one level as you can from some modern games in their entirety. You’ll have so much fun experimenting and finding the different ways to dispatch your targets. It really does show off the capabilities of the developers at IO Interactive at building non-linear missions that allow you to do what you want in their enormous sandbox.
In terms of visuals, the town of Sapienza is stunning, with its narrow, shaded streets striking a stark contrast to the sunny beach that sits below the villa. The aged architecture of the buildings, the church in particular, are reminiscent of the Venice scenes from Casino Royale, giving this episode the air of a classic spy movie. It really does fit the tone of a quaint, picturesque seaside town, striking an even more stark contrast with the high-tech facilities that lay hidden beneath the villa.
The targets, Sylvio Caruso and Francesca De Santis, are much more interesting than Paris’s Dalia Margolis and Viktor Novikov, as Episode 2 takes place during a relatively normal day in their lives, rather than a large event they’ve organised. This gives the episode a more relaxed feel than its predecessor, as it doesn’t seem as intense. However, a key difference here is that there appear to be time-limited opportunities; take too long to reach an opportunity, and you’ll miss it. For example, there’s an opportunity that allows you to take a keycard from a lab technician, but you’re only really able to take advantage of it if you do it almost immediately. Checking the opportunity tab later will show you the message “You have missed this opportunity”, adding another level of difficulty to a system that has garnered criticism for its hand-holding nature.
Despite all of Episode 2’s improvements over Paris, it’s quite disconcerting that one of Episode 1’s major problems has not been fixed. If you play Hitman, it won’t be unusual for the game to disconnect from servers intermittently, but considering that this kicks you back to the menu, it can get particularly frustrating if you’re moments away from completing the level, and suddenly you’re kicked back to the menu. When this happens, I’ve noticed that I’ll likely get kicked several more times in the next half hour or so. Considering this is a singleplayer game, it’s hard to justify the need for it to be always-online, although it says a lot for the game’s quality that the biggest problem with Hitman are its connectivity issues. The disconnects are fewer and farther between, but they’re still unpleasantly common, and tend to happen at the worst times.
Another issue is the release format; although the monthly releases contain a surprisingly large amount of content, they only offer brief glimpses into the story. So far, there’s been two cutscenes that have been loosely connected to the missions, and that’s all. It’s good that they’re not overloading us with story, but it would be nice to have a little more than a single cutscene per episode.
All in all, Hitman is shaping up to be a great game. There’s a few things that could be improved upon, but if everything is at least at this level of quality from here on out, the full game will be up there with Blood Money. If the connectivity issues get fixed, it’ll be close to being the perfect Hitman game. For now, however, we’ll just have to manage with what we have so far, which is a surprisingly enjoyable experience, and is definitely a success. Hopefully, things will only get better from here.