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[[caption-width-right:350:[[WesternAnimation/CloudyWithAChanceOfMeatballs "It works! IT REALLY WORKS!"]]]]
* Let's just start with the ''amazing'' work by the developers, who recreated gorgeously [[ShownTheirWork detailed]], living and breathing Renaissance Italy cities. [[SceneryPorn The views]] on Florence, Venice and others when escalating the tallest buildings are simply to die for. And running and hopping on roofs feels great too.
* Having Creator/LeonardoDaVinci himself as your friend and GadgeteerGenius.
* The opening cinematic provides several for Ezio.
** First, he is shown hiring a pair of courtesans. They lure one of his marks away from their bodyguards and into the confusion of the dance floor. Then he slips into the crowd and executes a perfect stealth kill. The guy is bleeding from the throat and he has no idea what happened.
** Second, this exposed him so he has to fight the guards. All of them die with swift and precise moves.
** Third, Ezio chases down his second mark across a good part of the city and concludes the chase with a ThreePointLanding from a rooftop.
** Fourth, he approaches his second mark with his Hidden Blade extended then stops. He senses that his second mark has an ambush set up and backs up. Instead, he retracts the Hidden Blade and kills the mark with a gun installed within the device. [[ForDoomTheBellTolls GONG!]]
* Lucy gets one at the beginning of the game, when she ''brutally'' takes down two of Abstergo's armed security guards by herself without breaking a sweat. Desmond is right to say "Holy ''shit!''" She is ''not'' Vidic's girl Friday.
* Ezio's assassination of Uberto Alberti is awesome because of how it is set up. In the midst of a veritable ''party'' [[SpeakIllOfTheDead for shaming the dead Auditore]] and self-aggrandizing, Ezio leaps in and stabs the guy. Then he shouts, "The Auditore are ''not'' dead! I'm still here! Me, Ezio Auditore!" Then he runs off before the guards can lay a hand on him. What's more awesome is that Ezio kills him with Giovanni's Hidden Blade. [[DyingCurse Just like he promised, Giovanni took his former friend's life in return for the betrayal.]]
* In the first Assassin's Tomb, try taking the high road in the straightaway right before the guard chamber, and time it so that you assassinate the fleeing guard just before he reaches the door, from above. Putting moments like that in the hands of the player is what makes these games so damn fun.
** To reward anyone who pulls it off, the guards hear the kill and leave the room to investigate -- allowing the player to bypass an otherwise-required fight. [[note]] Projectiles are locked during this sequence.[[/note]]
* The BigBad, Rodrigo Borgia, gets one in the mission where you tail Jacopo de'Pazzi to the Templar meeting. Rodrigo kills Jacopo for his failure, then he tells Ezio he knows Ezio's hiding over there (and he's mock sorry for [[KillSteal killing his target]]) and sends his guards to take him out.
* The mission after you kill Emilio Barbarigo in Venice, where you shadow the other members of the Venetian conspiracy. When they all meet up, they learn about Ezio's latest assassination, leading one of them to say,
-->He struck down Emilio inside his own Palazzo. [[ProperlyParanoid He could be here, watching us right now.]]
* Leonardo's Flying Machine in action.
* Quite a few of the in-game interrupt options. Ezio gets caught sneaking around a Templar meeting and two guards hold his arms while a Brute approaches with an axe. Ezio calmly speaks to the guards: "I know you are only following orders, so if you let me go I'll let you live." The guard on his left laughs loudly and says, "Did you hear that? He said he'll let us--" Then Ezio springs his hidden blades, catching the speaker in the throat and the other in the chest. (If the player misses the prompt, then Ezio manages to escape their hold but those two guards are able to participate in the subsequent conflict.)
* The entire confrontation with the Spaniard, from the start of the mission to the end of the sequence.
** First, Ezio puts on some liberated guard armor to blend in with a group of elite guards who are transporting a mysterious package to The Spaniard. When they finally arrive, Ezio stands behind the captain. While he is reporting, [[KilledMidSentence in the middle of his sentence]], Ezio's dual hidden blades sprout from his chest. Then, while Ezio is walking towards the Spaniard, depending on if the player misses the prompt, he either stabs the other two guards run at him ''without even looking at them'', or the Spaniard tells them LeaveHimToMe.
** The battle itself, with the Spaniard finally given a name -- Rodrigo Borgia, a huge OhCrap moment for those who know their history and who he was. As Rodrigo fights, Ezio's allies show up to help him fight the guards, revealing they're all Assassins that have been watching over and guiding him for years in preparation to join them.
** The initiation ritual where Ezio is formally made an Assassin.
** The end of the sequence where you realize what was in the package Ezio helped deliver: the Apple of Eden.
* Leonardo gets one near the end of the game. When Ezio, Mario, and Machiavelli bring Leonardo the Apple, it activates, sending everyone in the room recoiling from the light... except for Leonardo, who stares right into its heart. It's strongly implied that the Apple overloads all of their brains with information stored in it making them recoil--except Leonardo, who is already so brilliant that having a metric crapton of lost precursor knowledge forcefully pumped into his brain doesn't so much as faze him.
* Ezio's charge through Rome, leaving enormous numbers of the Mooks you struggled to defeat for most of the game dead behind him.
* Ezio activating the Apple and splitting into five to face Borgia, much like al-Mualim did. Made so much better because you're not on the receiving end of that trick this time around.
* Creeping around the ceiling and scaffolding of the Art/SistineChapel whilst a mass is being said. Let's be very clear here: you are leaping down from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, to assassinate ''the Pope'' IN THE MIDDLE OF A HIGH MASS.
* Rodrigo gets one after taking account into the little white scene where Ezio hears his victim's last words, you think that's it but, it turns out, [[NotQuiteDead no]]. Then he pulls out his epic staff and really is kind of a bitch to beat, even with the clones. Honestly his defiance is pretty cool, considering you've slaughtered your way to him.
--->'''Rodrigo Borgia''': I don't think so!
* EZIO BEATS THE CRAP OUT OF THE POPE! in a vault beneath the Sistine Chapel, with nothing but his bare hands. Again: a fist fight below the Vatican against ''the freaking POPE''!
** Points to Rodrigo, he stands on business. As elderly and overweight as he was, and without any weapons, Borgia still had no problem accepting Ezio's invitation to have a straight up brawl below the Vatican.
* Minerva, despite appearing only once. "The rest is up to you, ''Desmond''". "What the fuck", indeed.
** Desmond's response was in itself a Crowning Moment of Awesome. The player has just received the biggest MindScrew of the series, the screen goes black... and, in what is also a SugarWiki/{{Funny Moment|s}}, Desmond sums it up ''perfectly.''
* The end credits sequence, wherein all that time in the Animus pays off for Desmond, and he finally gets a chance to kick some ass. Lucy even gives him his own hidden blade.
** When Desmond made his "nowhere left to run" taunt at Dr. Vidic, "Oh no, Doc. All your men are gone!"
* The game ending with Desmond wholeheartedly getting back in the Animus...so that by the time the next game rolls around, he'll have all of the skills he needs to ''kick some ASS.''
* Messing with the guards is always fun. Throw a corpse at them from a roof and jump down to assassinate them as they discover it. Or even better, cut them off mid-sentence as they ask who saw the murder, muttering to yourself "I did,"
** Along the same vein, it is hilarious to get up onto the rooftops (or towers during specific mission) and grab the archer. He'll then scream,
--->'''Archer''': "Let go of me!"
--->'''Ezio''': "OK." (''throw him off the roof'')
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