Summary [9.0 out of 10]

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is an excellent addition to the Assassin’s Creed bloodline, focusing more on improved game mechanics and a bit less on the epic, over-arching storyline and instead ends with the perfect setup for Assassin’s Creed 3.

For fans of the series, Brotherhood is a solid Must Play, there are important new additions to the story, the improved gameplay mechanics (like leveling your Assassin Guild members)  and more amazing re-creations of historic Rome are all fantastic. For non-fans of the game series, there is nothing new here to change your mind; you are still jumping, grappling and leaping from ledges to unfold the Templar cause.

What it’s Like

Assassin’s Creed is hard to compare to any other games because it was (and still is) such a unique take on a gameplay experience, but here are some comparisons in different ways to help you know more about it:

• Assassin’s Creed 1 & 2: As-expected, Brotherhood is exactly like 1 and 2 in presentation and gameplay.
• Deus Ex: Similar to the grandness and Epic-conspiracy-theory storyline that Deus Ex had, but much broader. If you like stories like Deus Ex, the entire Assassin’s Creed series is a must-play (don’t skip ahead, they are all parts of the same story.)
• Lost: Yes, the TV show. Each Assassin’s Creed game is similar to a season of Lost with Assassin’s Creed 1 & 2 mapping very well to Lost seasons 1 and 2 in the sense that you get introduced this to this incredible, epic story line that you are only allowed to peek into through slats of a box but cannot see the whole thing. Brotherhood is very much like Season 3 of Lost; you get a whole bunch of new information (like The Others) but it only adds to the increasing complexity of the story without giving any answers to previous setups. For the most part, as long as the adventure is entertaining (which it is) this is OK with us since it’s all a blast to experience.

The Great

• Assassin Guild Gameplay Mechanic: I really did not expect to think much of this new feature because it’s relatively simple text-based leveling; you recruit civilians from the guard and they join your guild. You can enter into a UI interface to “assign” people to different jobs (varying in difficulty and reward) and they level up as they complete jobs. This element provides you with assassins you can call into battle along side you during your jobs or just getting your back during a scrap.

• Combat: The combat in ACII relied very heavily on countering. You could pretty much coast through the whole game doing very little else. In Brotherhood, countering continues to be important but there are new weapons and combat styles thrown in that force you to break out of that mold and go with a bit of variety. Often combat encounters require several different tactics, weapons and play styles and figuring out which is needed to win is part of what makes the combat exciting and satisfying.
• Replay: Not only is there a ton to do here with even more new stuff on top of the old but this time you can go back and replay memories you’ve completed. This makes 100% synchronization much much easier and allows you to go back and perfect levels that you didn’t do so well on. Aside from replaying the memories, there is just a ton to do even after the credits roll (you get to stay in the Animus to tie up loose ends). ACII was a huge game with a lot of diversions. Brotherhood packs in all that stuff and even more. If you love Assassin’s Creed then you will find a huge amount to love here and it will keep you busy for a very long time.

The Good

• Storyline: While the lack of a super-juicy ending made Brotherhood not quite as strong as Ass Creed 1 or 2 in the story department, the parts that were expanded on in the glyph puzzles, love-interest side-story and ending setup for the next game are all appropriately juicy and excellent.

• Controls: The controls continue to be a highlight of the series with buttons cleverly mapped so that everything is right there at your fingertips without having to search around or get into advanced yoga positions to pull off a move. From running to fighting to blending in, everything is intuitive and easy to do.

• DaVinci’s War Machines: These are some side quests you have to do to destroy the advanced tech that DaVinci is being forced to make for the Borgias. These missions include some pretty tough stealthing and then actually using the war machines to destroy Borgia resources and eventually the war machines themselves. Some of these missions are pretty tough but they are worth the time and it is a fun diversion to drive a Renaissance version of a tank around.
• Leaving the Animus: You get to spend a bit more time as Desmond Miles here as you can leave the Animus pretty much any time you want and run around the games current time. There are items to find and intrigue to delve into and this feature helps you get an even greater grasp on what is going on.
• Multi-player: The multi-player in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood tries something a bit different. Instead of straight up free for all death matches you are assigned a player you have to hunt and assassinate and you have someone coming after you as well. You can hide and disguise yourself and use a variety of weapons as well as using most of the moves you’ve learned in the single player. This mode is a great start for what hopefully will be expanded upon and fleshed out in future entries and can be a lot of fun especially if you are playing with friends. There is room for improvement, though, and hopefully it can be polished in the future.

The Bad

• Not as juicy a conclusion to the Assassin’s Creed storyline as Assassin’s Creed 1 or 2 was. There are some excellent additions, especially with the glyph puzzles just like in 2, but just not as much new story content as there was previously.

• Follow Missions: There were way too many missions in which you have to follow dudes going places. This becomes tedious and the game is often not at all forgiving of any mistake at all. A few of these would be fine but there are way too many and it gets a bit ridiculous after awhile. When you have an assassin posse rolling with you it seems like maybe THEY could be doing mundane shit like this but no, the badass head of the assassin’s guild has to follow a low level informant from one end of Rome to the other. Annoying and excessive.
• Leaping to Your Death: This is one of the few bad hold overs from the last game. It is REALLY easy to be in the middle of climbing a building and then make Ezio leap off of the side of it to his death when what you wanted to do was have him climb up on a ledge. Generally the controls are tight and responsive but this one mapping issue is kind of a problem and I hope that they can sort it out for the third iteration. I don’t want to hear this is just the nature of the controls for this kind of game because Uncharted and Uncharted 2 do not have this problem. I don’t know why this is sill hanging around but it needs to be fixed for the next entry.

Conclusion [9.0 out of 10]

For what looked like a cheap cash in that could have been served up as DLC, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is every bit as polished and full featured as its predecessor. If you liked the previous entry there is absolutely no reason not to play this game. The ending is a cliff hanger though and it must be said that finishing this game will have you salivating for the third entry in the series.