Or that. It's been a couple years, and both AC:B and AC:R both dove right in with no recap.

I haven't played AC:R yet but AC:B also begins with a recap. In fact, the recap summarises the entire ending of ACII and the game proper begins immediately after the ending of ACII.

I just played through AC1. Finished it on Saturday. I had a lot of fun with it, but by the end I was doing the minimum number of missions to get to the actual assassination missions. They really did get quite repetative. But that did lead in nicely to AC2 storywise. I am LOVING that game. SO much more fun than the first one. I'm only on memory block 6 and having a blast. I hope the next two are as fun to play as the second one has been so far.

AC:B is fun but nowhere near as good as ACII. The story isn't as coherent and a lot of the assasination missions feel tacked on. It's best to think of AC:B as an expansion pack to ACII.