Trust me, I nearly quit just because of this but just pull through it and soon it will be simple enough to get a general idea of what to do.

Just Remember
Right Click Block, then left click while holding to counter
Right click to run and space to free run(run up walls n ♥♥♥♥)
E to talk
Shift to enter areas or hop on a horse also to rob and when s
Enter to accept missions

You should"ve played the first game. It explained all of the controls. AC2 uses exact same control scheme.

But since you chose to skip it, you just have to memorize that the game uses 2 gameplay modes. Low Profile (Passive Stealth for interacting with the crowd without getting unwanted attention) and High Profile (Noticeable or aggressive actions that you have to be careful about doing while around guards if they're searching for you). And all of the actions are contextual based on if you're just exploring, doing parkour or in a fight.

Low Profile is active all the time by default, you trigger High Profile by holding Right Mouse Button. That is the main thing you need to grasp and memorize. Try to do different actions by pressing a button in Low Profile, and then in High Profile (by holding Right Mouse Button while pressing a button).

Aside from High and Low Profile, there are just 4 main buttons corresponding gamepad face buttons. These buttons are designed in a way to let you control each body part of the character separately, like a puppet. It's called a Puppeteering Concept.

NON-FIGHT ACTIONS

1) Armed Hand (X / Left Mouse) - any offensive and dangerous to citizens action. Assassinate or Attack / Throw weapon. In High Profile, performs a flashy assassination that always gets you attention.

2) Empty Hand (B / Shift) - interact with crowds without harming them. Gentle Push or Carry in Low Profile or Grab in High Profile. While running, you can Tackle or Shove people out of the way by pressing Empty Hand. If you're climbing, you can use Empty Hand to Drop and Catch Ledges.

3) Head (Y / E) - Press to Synchronize with Viewpoints and Hold to activate Eagle Vision.

4) Legs (A / Space) - any action performed with legs. Fast Walk and Pickpocket in Low Profile, Sprint or Jump in High Profile.

FIGHT ACTIONS

To trigger a fight, you need to lock-on to a hostile enemy (full red bar above their heads)

In a fight, High Profile turns into Defensive Stance. Same principle (hold Right Mouse), just slightly different actions.

1) Head - Press to Taunt an enemy. Useful for crowd control if you want to take out certain enemies first. Also weakens their defenses and lets you Disarm them. You can also use Eagle Vision in fights to find your Target (glows Yellow). Enemies glow Red. No use in Defensive Stance.

2) Armed Hand - In Combat Stance, attacks an enemy by any selected weapon. Holding a button lets you do Special Moves (need to unlock them). In Defensive Stance, counters an enemy. If you're countering while Unarmed, you Disarm.

3) Empty Hand - Grabs an enemy. Allows you to Throw by pressing the button again, or do a beatdown by pressing either of the 3 other buttons. No use in Defensive Stance.

4) Legs - Allows you to use evasive maneuvers. Press in Combat Stance to Sidestep quickly. By doing that, you can basically dance around enemies. If you press it while in Defensive Stance, you perform Dodge which is a safer way to avoid attacks and allows you to attack immediatedly after it to do a guaranteed strike.

But seriously, I highly suggest playing AC1, as a tutorial for the controls.

This is just an example of a bad PC port honestly. The control makes a lot more sense with a controller (the 4 buttons have the same colours and arrangement as the 4 controller buttons).

If you are playing using keyboard&mouse (like me), it probably takes 2-3 hours to get used to the controls and 10+ hours to fully master every moves.

Originally posted by BloodyMares:

You should"ve played the first game. It explained all of the controls. AC2 uses exact same control scheme.

But since you chose to skip it, you just have to memorize that the game uses 2 gameplay modes. Low Profile (Passive Stealth for interacting with the crowd without getting unwanted attention) and High Profile (Noticeable or aggressive actions that you have to be careful about doing while around guards if they're searching for you). And all of the actions are contextual based on if you're just exploring, doing parkour or in a fight.

Low Profile is active all the time by default, you trigger High Profile by holding Right Mouse Button. That is the main thing you need to grasp and memorize. Try to do different actions by pressing a button in Low Profile, and then in High Profile (by holding Right Mouse Button while pressing a button).

Aside from High and Low Profile, there are just 4 main buttons corresponding gamepad face buttons. These buttons are designed in a way to let you control each body part of the character separately, like a puppet. It's called a Puppeteering Concept.

NON-FIGHT ACTIONS

1) Armed Hand (X / Left Mouse) - any offensive and dangerous to citizens action. Assassinate or Attack / Throw weapon. In High Profile, performs a flashy assassination that always gets you attention.

2) Empty Hand (B / Shift) - interact with crowds without harming them. Gentle Push or Carry in Low Profile or Grab in High Profile. While running, you can Tackle or Shove people out of the way by pressing Empty Hand. If you're climbing, you can use Empty Hand to Drop and Catch Ledges.

3) Head (Y / E) - Press to Synchronize with Viewpoints and Hold to activate Eagle Vision.

4) Legs (A / Space) - any action performed with legs. Fast Walk and Pickpocket in Low Profile, Sprint or Jump in High Profile.

FIGHT ACTIONS

To trigger a fight, you need to lock-on to a hostile enemy (full red bar above their heads)

In a fight, High Profile turns into Defensive Stance. Same principle (hold Right Mouse), just slightly different actions.

1) Head - Press to Taunt an enemy. Useful for crowd control if you want to take out certain enemies first. Also weakens their defenses and lets you Disarm them. You can also use Eagle Vision in fights to find your Target (glows Yellow). Enemies glow Red. No use in Defensive Stance.

2) Armed Hand - In Combat Stance, attacks an enemy by any selected weapon. Holding a button lets you do Special Moves (need to unlock them). In Defensive Stance, counters an enemy. If you're countering while Unarmed, you Disarm.

3) Empty Hand - Grabs an enemy. Allows you to Throw by pressing the button again, or do a beatdown by pressing either of the 3 other buttons. No use in Defensive Stance.

4) Legs - Allows you to use evasive maneuvers. Press in Combat Stance to Sidestep quickly. By doing that, you can basically dance around enemies. If you press it while in Defensive Stance, you perform Dodge which is a safer way to avoid attacks and allows you to attack immediatedly after it to do a guaranteed strike.

But seriously, I highly suggest playing AC1, as a tutorial for the controls.

I bought AC2 cause it was on sale for 2.18 dollars and I had 2.20 dollars. Is there like a demo for the game that I can use to practice those key bindings?

The original games were build around the design of a controller.
The "puppeteer system" they introduced in AC1 were meant to give each button on a PS3/XB360 controller an action depending where each button is which didn't translate well to keyboard and mouse.

For instance "Y"(YELLOW HEAD IN AC 2 on PC-"E" key) is to topmost key on a Xbox controller and it's linked for all actions that are done with the head like speech,eagle vision and first-person view.

"X"(BLUE HAND IN AC 2 on PC-Left Mouse) and "B"(RED HAND IN AC 2 on PC-Shift) is adjusted for actions done with your hands like swinging your weapon,gentle push,tackling or grab.

"A"(GREEN FEET IN AC 2 on PC-Spacebar) is meant for actions affecting movement like sprinting,fast walk and blending(in AC1).

High profile(Hold right mouse) will toggle different actions for each corresponding key that will be more noticeable to your surroundings. For instance where "Shift" would normally be gentle push it changes to a grab action.

That's basically a summary of the control scheme in AC1's tutorial for clarification since it's much more easier to grasp the first time if you are playing it on the intended input device.

Originally posted by BloodyMares:

You should"ve played the first game. It explained all of the controls. AC2 uses exact same control scheme.

Thanks for the written explanation, it's super useful for a keyboard player like me. I can see how this can be enjoyable once you get it (or just buy an Xbox controller, I guess). I did look up the controls in the options but that doesn't really tell you anything about what pressing them together does (which the game is quite sketchy at explaining initially).

FWIW AC1 doesn't seem to run on modern systems any more, so playing it for the tutorial is 1) not really an option and 2) no excuse for why this game doesn't explain itself half the time. I'm happy to practice and get good as long as I know WHAT IN THE HECK IT IS I'M SUPPOSED TO BE PRACTICING. /end-rant

I've always played and/or replayed Assassin's Creed II (AC II) with a mouse + keyboard and never found its controls "mind boggling". Tbh, it's just that many people aren't used to be old PC gamers like I tend to be (an around 3 decades one at least).

So, I'd rather prefer to say that we're all human but different in several manners and this might actually be an "you issue" rather than the controls getting the blame for it.

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.