Using XPath in C# can be done several different ways through a several built-in libraries, and none of them work unless you are a lot more familiar with the file than would be required in many other languages. However, to make matters worse, you might be further required to do some unintuitive shenanigans. In the way of an example, this is how to retrieve the assembly-name:

XNamespace xmlns = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003";
XDocument projDefinition = XDocument.Load(projectFilepath);

IEnumerable<XNode> assemblyResultsEnumerable = projDefinition
	.Element(xmlns + "Project")
	.Elements(xmlns + "PropertyGroup")
	.Elements(xmlns + "AssemblyName").Nodes<XContainer>();

IList<XNode> assemblyResults = new List<XNode>(assemblyResultsEnumerable);
if(assemblyResults.Count == 0)
{
	throw new Exception(String.Format("The project file isn't correctly structured: [{0}]", projectFilepath));
}

string assemblyName = assemblyResults[0].ToString();

Notice that we have to mash the namespace URL with the node-name in order to find the node.