I enjoyed it. It's not my favorite, but I enjoyed it.
And! unlike most people, one of my favorite parts of the game was the combat! I think the main problem most people had is that they weren't aggressive enough to make it fun. Yes, sitting there blocking and pushing the counter button when the strike comes is definitely the easiest way to win a fight, but it's also the most tedious as well as the slowest. Quite frankly, I never let up the attack, constantly pushing for combos, blocking (and countering) when I saw an attack coming from behind, throwing knives at distant people, grabbing and throwing people into each other, (and assassinating at least one of them on the ground), and pretty much everything else I could think of. Now, you may have noticed, in order to do that, I would have to switch weapons fairly often, and would rarely be in the defensive stance. This means I was a lot more open, and most definitely took a lot more hits (and subsequent deaths) than the average "counter->counter->counter" player, but once I got good at it and there were large groups of enemies to fight against (as was true at the end of the game, on both counts), I became a devastating whirlwind of death. It was beautiful to watch, required skill to execute, and finished fights quickly, all things which were very much a blessing. I would sometimes go out of my way to piss off guards.
On the other hand, the stealth aspects appealed to me greatly. There was nothing I found more satisfying than approaching and executing a target entirely undetected.
All that said however, discounting the main assassination missions, the game as a whole was very repetitive, and the story (of Desmond) was annoying and unnecessary.
So like I said: I enjoyed the game, but it's not one of my favorites. The second was substantially better, but still had it's share of flaws.
