Just 2 years after Codename 47, IO interactive released Hitman 2: Silent Assassin - capitalizing on the success the first game was despite it's mixed to above average critical reception, there was clearly promise in the franchise.

Silent Assassin saw improvements in every single aspect compared to it's predecessor, the level design was much better, the animations and visuals popped a lot more, qualiy of life was given to the map and general feel of the gunplay was improved a lot.

While Silent Assassin does have a few stinker missions, namely the ones in the snow mountains of Japan like Hidden Valley and At the Gates, the vast majority of the missions are designed in a similar vein to Thermal Bath Hotel from Codename 47, which was by far the best mission there.

Every single mission is something you can tackle in complete stealth, you're no longer forced to go guns blazing in specific segments, the game also introduces a nuanced ranking system with various labels depending on your playstyle and performance ranging from :
Mass Murderer - killing everyone and everything you see to Silent Assassin - Unseen, efficient with no wasted kills or gunshots.

The only real gripe I have with Silent Assassin is the unpredictable AI, it works fine for most of the time but it can get frustrating when they see you from the back of their head or immediately open fire because you jogged for 1 second.
The suspicion system is not as consistent as future entries, sometimes they just decide to open fire as you're passing by, sometimes they dont. Granted, the less you linger around them, the less likely they are to notice you but it does make close encounters frustrating at times, while working in favor of the game at others like in Tubeway Torpedo where you constantly have to walk past other guards in extremely tight corridors, giving the mission a kind of tension you won't really be able to get in any other Stealth franchise except Hitman.

As for the soundtrack, it's amazing as usual. Jesper Kyd like always delivers top notch compositions that enhance the experience and give Hitman it's unique atmosphere and mood it's known for.
There is a bit of a tonal shift compared to the first game's soundtrack, Silent Assassin has a more impactful and orchestral sound whereas Codename 47 had a more moody and subdued sound.

Overall, it's a fantastic sequel, improving upon every single aspect of the first game and putting the Hitman franchise on the map, still remaining the best selling entry in the franchise - maybe except the new Hitman 3 for which we don't have definitive figures yet.

It is refreshing when a sequel actually tries to improve itself over the original. More often than not, sequels fall into the trap of needing to outdo what came before; bigger spectacle, more outlandish set pieces, more characters, bigger guns, and so on and so forth; but with this need to look more fantastical, the nuance and intimacy of the original project is often lost. I always point to the Alien franchise as a great example of this; Aliens is a great action movie with a heartfelt mother-daughter story at its core, and fantastic special effects and tense action to back it up, but it in no way resembles the first movie's sense of dread. Alien is a movie about an small, intimate cast of unique characters being stalked by a lone alien on one small ship, the smaller budget and scope allow for a much more heightened focus on the smaller details like the characters, environments, and overall horror of it all. In contrast, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin not only offers the bigger spectacle, but also hones in and improves on what made the first game great.

Firstly, by far the biggest improvement from Codename 47 is the level design. CN47’s levels functioned more akin to a series of linear puzzles that had, at most, one or two ways of getting the objectives done, which were often tedious and cryptic. Silent Assassin improves on this by making most of its levels into sandboxes, taking direct inspiration from CN47’s best level, “Traditions of the Trade”. The levels are much bigger in scope and have a complex network of NPC pathfinding and environmental interactions, not exactly to the same scale as future games in the series from what I am aware, but still wholly more ambitious and interesting in comparison to its older sibling. I think my favorite example of this is in the first Malaysia mission “Basement Killing”; the mission takes place in this giant skyscraper with multiple floors and tons of civilians and security walking around, and your objective is to get into the lowest basement level to kill a computer guy. At first it seems neer impossible to get to the basement floor because the elevators are behind metal detectors and tons of guards, but if you do some digging around you will find several different ways to get in: you could take a guards uniform, throw you gear down the laundry chute, and then pick it up when you get down there; you could throw a smoke bomb down that same chute to cause the firefighters to go down to the basement, sneak into the fire department to grab a uniform, and then follow the other fighters so that no one will suspect you while triggering the the metal detectors; or you could just deliver the target a pizza and get him when you deliver it. The range of options presented in these levels is sometimes daunting. As well, I personally love the use of multiple floors and levels in the missions, the missions that take place in St. Petersberg has an incredible use of the sewers for strategically getting around the police patrolled streets, and then subsequently using them to make your escape.

There is still a notable amount of jank present, however, and I think this is a result of going for more nonlinear, open level design. The NPC’s are much more fidgety in this one; if the player looks at them too long, runs in an open area, or even just quickly checks the map, the AI will immediately be suspicious, sometimes even just opening fire on the spot. The game does go out of the way to tell you that running is suspicious, and will tell when certain areas are filled with particularly paranoid enemies, but even then they can be a little much and begin to try even the best players patience. On top of that, the bigger, more complex levels can leave the AI with broken pathfinding, or even broken set pieces; the Japan missions are probably the biggest culprit of this issue. The level “Hidden Valley” has a whole system where Agent 47 must stow away in the back of trucks in order to get past security check points, but in almost every single one of my attempts of this mission, the trucks pathfinding just completely broke, along with all the NPCs at the checkpoint, so I had to forgo my want to stealth and just John Wick my way through the rest of the level. The level's size can be mismanaged too; sometimes they are just too big for their own good, leaving to long sections of just running, only to have to restart because an enemy that you couldn’t see because of the draw distance spotted you. As well, these big open levels, open as in space not choice, are for some reason very cryptic, opting to not give the player any information till they reach a certain point in the mission. Which would be fine if they weren’t so big to the point that it takes nearly an hour of trial and error just to scope out where everything is, because the map isn’t really that helpful, especially on higher difficulties. Thankfully, there are manual mid mission saves that the player can utilize; a feature that was not available in the first game, but that still doesn’t excuse the poor design choices.

That being said though, there are a handful of things that I would like to mention that I believe supplement a lot of what the game does well. The overall presentation of the game has been astronomically improved from the first game; the voice acting is no longer stiff and actually feels like these characters have emotions, Agent 47 particular is elevated from just being a borderline blank slate to someone internally grappling with his place in the world as clone only meant for killing. The soundtrack, performed by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, gives much more tension and emotion to the big plot points when they occur, like how in the mission “Shogun Showdown” the score gets more grandiose as you progress up the giant tower, coming to a crescendo when you sneak up to behind the titular shogun at the top of the complex. Finally, the UI has been drastically improved and made more user friendly. I played this on a GameCube controller and it still felt intuitive, and not at all clunky like the first game did.

While the AI could have been better, and the bigger levels more concise, Silent Assassin far and away exceeds the precedent set by its precursor, and lays the groundwork for the intricate design and precision that would be put into the series going forward.

They improved massively from their first game developing a stronger identity of their series with a improved sense of game design. Creating mini sandboxes which almost feel like interactive action puzzles, you experiment searching for the best route to your targets whilst being rewarded for stealth but punished for aggressiveness with their new scoring system.

Part of me wants to praise them for the variation of the missions. It is obvious they were still experimenting with the formula but this creates a real mixed bag of quality to the levels. Some of them being amazing, laying the groundwork of things to come but some are pretty meh and some of them being by far some of the worst in the series. Add that to the general jankiness of the engine and it's AI, this reduces some levels to pure rage inducing experiences.

This was one of my favorite childhood games, I remember playing it for hours and hours, But i never really played it like an actual hitman game,
I just used to go in, kill a guy with a cool costume, take the cool costume and kill everyone i encounter,

I wanted to have the "Real Hitman Experience" so i decided to replay the game in 2024,
Now for my honest Review :

Let me start with the story,
It's Non-sense, It starts as if it's trying to show Agent 47's struggle with "Humanity" and "Existence", but that literally existed for the First Mission and was never referred to again,

But to be fair, No one actually plays Hitman for the story, It Simply exists so it can act as a Motive or some form of Excuse to send you to Missions all over the world, From the crowded streets of India to Hidden castle in a snowy valley of japan, etc...,

Now the "Missions and Level Design",
It's very Much hit or miss, Sometimes you are playing an extremely well crafted Mission that is fully detailed with so many ways you can beat the level, Many of them even became Iconic in the series, Missions like "Terminal Hospitality" or "Basement Killing" are some of the best !

On the other hand, some missions feel so linear, They Act as a Filler, It's clear that the focus was on quantity rather than the quality, There is so many Missions that feel as if they should have been merged together to form 1 big quality level, But the focus was clearly on the quantity

I will be classifying the Missions in this game into 3 categories

Useless Filler/Should have never existed :
-Hidden Valley
-At the Gates
-Graveyard Shift
-Tunnel Rat
-Temple City Ambush
-St. Petersburg Revisited
-Redemption At Gontranno
(I recommend you just Max Payne your way through these levels, they aren't really worth the trouble, Especially with the terrible Ai in this game)

Kinda Linear/Feels like a Cut content :
-Kirov Park Meeting
-Tubeway Torpedo
-Tracking Hayamoto
-Motorcade Interception

The Real deal/Iconic :
-Anathema
-St. Petersburg Stakeout
-Invitation To A Party
-Shogun Showdown
-Basement Killing
-The Jacuzzi Job
-Murder At The Bazaar
-Death Of Hannelore
-Terminal Hospitality

Now for the Gameplay,
It Heavily Encourages the Use of stealth (Except for the last Mission and the snowy japan missions), Agent 47 have so many fun gadgets to use, And you keep on unlocking more as you progress through the game,

They Ranking system is a very nice addition, It gives you a reason to Re-play the Level and try to actually Improve and Play as professional as possible,

Saving your game is an essential part of Hitman, You will need to save your game to try out different Plans and ideas, And don't worry this is not save scumming, the game gives you a limited amount of saves per Mission so use them wisely

Now we go to a very very Major problem, Technical Issues (For Pc),
Trying to Launch this game on a Modern Hardware is the definition of "Suffer",
You have to Manually change the Resolution in Hitman2.ini by pasting this

Resolution 1920x1080
DisableHWTnL 0
Window 1
EnableP5 0
StartUpperPos 0,0

And if that worked and the game started then don't get comfortable yet because we are only getting started,
It might happen that you encounter a glitch (Happened to me) where all characters in the game become black,
The solution for this to go to hitman2.ini again and change "DrawDll RenderD3D.dll" to "RenderOpenGL.dll" (Or vise versa),

And if that worked then wait we are not done yet, you might encounter a problem which makes you character move in slow motion, turns out this is because of the Unlimited FPS so you need to use a third party app so you can limit the FPS to 60,

These are the the technical issues i presonally faced

Now for the Enemy Ai,
It is extremely broken, Enemies will kill you if you even dare to move fast, And they will be able to recognize you even if you were wearing the perfect cover and did Absolutely nothing wrong, Sometimes they can even see you through walls And kill you instantly !!

Overall, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is a good game that was limited by the technical issues, and focus on quantity of content rather than the quality, but that doesn't mean the game doesn't have any quality Missions that are worth playing, It does Include some of the best in the series, but also Include some of the worst,

I give this game 3/5

Alright so first and most obvious things out of the ways, firstly, this game has some bugs and they can sometimes severely hurt the experience; secondly, this game is pretty hard even without the bugs, but in my personal opinion, once you learn how the game works, its a mostly enjoyable experience, although drastically different than what i'm used to with this franchise.

It added a rating system that the previous game lacked, and every future game used a variation of, you get a hideaway you return to after every major mission where any collected weapons appear (which even comes into play in the story, so collect all you can!) and we get the ability to knock out NPCs with an anesthetic, all making this play much more in line with the future games than what the first game did.
The biggest difference here though, is how the disguises work. simply wearing a disguise doesn't make you blend in with whatever you are disguised as, you need to act the part as well, and there are far, far more NPCs able to see through your disguises than what people are likely comfortable with. Take the first mission (second in the game but the first is a prologue), you need to kill some guy, take a key from his body, get in his basement, then escape. You have multiple ways of doing this, so naturally you would assume that wearing a bodyguard disguise would get you inside the building right? Well, yes, it would, but also the bodyguards and their bosses would recognize their own. You might be able to fool them from a distance, but if you get too close, if you run or if you do anything a bodyguard wouldn't normally be doing, it looks pretty suspicious and they might investigate, or worse, shoot on sight.

I feel like this does add some tedium to the missions, so i can understand why there are plenty of reviews and discussion about how you need a lot of patience with this game because simply running can get you shot to death, but to me, it simply added to the experience. Its not an easy game, but i don't think it was supposed to be. I think you were supposed to put yourself in 47's shoes and do what he would do in that instance. You can't see through walls, you don't have a minimap, you don't have regenerating health, you can't blend in somewhere you already stick out like a sore thumb (One of the missions even acknowledges this and states that the locals are jumpy at the sight of a foreigner holding a weapon due to events of the previous mission, so no disguise will help you hold a weapon in front of civilians in that stage!)

It's difficult, sometimes even stressful with how a bug can ruin a stage, but its very clear that this is a true stealth game through and through, and for anyone who's a fan of the other games and willing to put up with it, I highly recommend it.

ompleted the 2nd one right after finishing first one in one week. About 14 hours to complete.
All I can say is that it's sooo much better than the first one Hitman: Codename 47.
In every aspect of the game. Map exploring, weapon choosing, kiling, dragging people.
Although it's kind of a bummer with the disguise system.
Even if you wear the clothes of the enemies, If you stay for long near them or go near them, you're done. All the time you are a suspect. But still, enjoyed every single moment of the game.

Anyone trying out Silent Assassin after having been introduced to the Hitman series with the World of Assassination games will find themselves running smackdab into a double-thick early '00s sim/old-school stealth game brick wall. Silent Assassin plays like a spy novel reads: methodically, and with an obsessive attitude towards procedure. A huge amount of Silent Assassin's gameplay involves tensely walking someplace, while NPCs eye you suspiciously from across the room.

The game's sandbox levels are small, but they're also intense, and many of them have an immediately appreciable high concept: a Yakuza office with a private chef serving fugu fish, a meeting of Russian diplomats in perfect view of a sniper's nest, a hacker operating in the dark of a server farm in the basement of a major corporation's headquarters, etc. If Silent Assassin's mission parameters are straightforward, the path to their completion is not, and the limitations of the technology used often render creative approaches incoherent, as enemy guards have an instantaneous, hivemind-like awareness of what every other guard is thinking and hearing.

Silent Assassin is also a product of a post-9/11 world; that is to say, it has a Call of Duty-esque politics, a preferencing of American ideological positions that naturally lead to it backfilling some of its minor antagonists as crude ethnic stereotypes, particularly during the Russia and Afghanistan levels. While later Hitman games center their imaginary of 47's targets almost exclusively around class warfare, Silent Assassin primarily tasks 47 with defending the sanctity of the US security state. This is the closest to Tom Clancy Hitman ever gets.

Silent Assassin is clunkier than the later games, but this is really the only Hitman game that's just straight up a hitman simulator. The literal nature of its design combined with its radically open-ended levels makes it feel a little obtuse, and its got some of the worst levels in the series in it (the Japan levels in particular are infamously bad), but the smaller, more realistic scale makes this game rewarding in a way that's distinct from the other Hitman games.