Hitman - Episode 2: Sapienza
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Critic Reviews for Hitman - Episode 2: Sapienza
Huge, open and beautiful. Sapienza offers up a different sort of challenge to Paris, and is a promising sign for Hitman's future.
Hitman Episode 2: Sapienza is a fantastic follow-up to the promising first episode; huge, bursting with deadly promise, and begging for many, many playthroughs. The lack of much meaningful local voice acting is a disappointing miss, however, and that might really start undermining Hitman’s jetsetting international atmosphere in later levels if it’s not addressed.
An excellent second episode, with the larger and more diverse map allowing for some truly inspired hits.
The mediocre AI and animations return, as does the need to repeat the same old spy tricks, but they take a backseat this time around as Sapienza and its colorful denizens take center stage.
IO Interactive doesn't disappoint with this second installment of the Hitman reboot, which features a big, beautiful, and dense level full of possibilities—one you'll revisit again and again to for the sake of creative murder.
Agent 47 is a cipher for how you want to play the game; he exists to unlock its secrets while also letting you establish your own style—within the game's parameters—and it's great to see how that evolves in this second episode.
The main place Hitman continues to struggle is on a technical level. On the PlayStation 4 I'd need two hands to count the crashes I've experienced all week (plus one freeze necessitating a hard reset) and while the long load times aren't as much of a problem this time given the extra slack I found the lax coastal town to offer, it still does put a ding in a game that otherwise encourages you to try new things at the risk of failure. On the whole, though, Sapienza feels more robust than Paris, with even more gag costumes and slapstick deathtraps, leaving me even more confident in IO's move toward this new model, even if the American voice actors' pronunciation of "Falcone" physically pains me every time.
Hitman's second mission in Sapienza is a great example of fantastic gameplay, with plenty of replayability and one of the most stunning environments I've ever seen.
