Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is the third main installment in Ubisoft’s popular Assassin’s Creed franchise. Once again continues the intertwined story of Desmond and his Italian ancestor, Ezio Auditore de Firenze and their fight against the evil Templar Order. It only took about a year to hit shelves after Assassin’s Creed 2, which is incredibly fast development for a full-fledged video game, but the question is, has it really built on what its predecessors did, right? Or is it more of the same?

how to play

If you’ve played AC2, Brotherhood will feel very familiar to you. Fluid gameplay and fighting mechanics is a winning formula, so it’s no surprise that Ubisoft decided to repurpose them in this sequel. Although this game looks very similar to the last one, some changes and developments have been made to improve gameplay in both areas. Free running in this game is better than ever with the inclusion of wooden construction elevators, which launch the character to the top of a building in a split second. There is also a parachute that can be unlocked later in the game that allows Ezio to jump from incredible heights, back to ground level safely. The climbing and jumping are unchanged from the second and overall it’s a delight to jump, skip and prance around the Roman playground.

In AC2 it was common to get caught in a fight with multiple guards at once, but the frustrating thing about this was that you had to wait for them to attack and it became a tedious exercise. To address this issue, the developers went to the other end of the spectrum, allowing the player to initiate attacks with a quick kick to the groin, leaving guards vulnerable to spectacular finishing moves. While this is visually stunning and empowers the player, in my opinion it drowns out all of the stealth aspects that the previous two games were based on.

To add to this, the player can now quickly move from one victim to another with a button press, which means that once he performs a deadly move, just keep pressing the attack and he takes down another guard instantly. This continues from guard to guard until you’re left surrounded by a bunch of dead guys who never got a chance to fight. It makes the fight more fluid and ‘badder’, but for me it was overkill.

The fighting mechanics would be nice if the missions were a bit more challenging, but aside from the odd climbing mission, I often found that instead of sneaking through a crowd to get to my target, I could pull out the newly added crossbow and shoot at will. . After the novelty of the killstreak feature wears off and you’ve seen all it has to offer, in my opinion all it really does is remove any hope of making the game a challenge to beat. Those guards don’t stand a chance.

Graphics and Sound

The Assassin’s Creed franchise is known for its stunning visual effects and this time it lives up to its name. Whereas in the first two games there are a variety of different cities you can travel to, each with their own distinct flair, there is only one city in Brotherhood: Rome, no less. Gazing out over the vast urban sprawl from the top of the Castello flag blew my mind at Ubisoft’s efforts and is one of the most impressive representations of a city I’ve ever seen. While it can be impressive from a distance, common visual glitches like popping textures and the occasional frame tear sadly drag the graphics down quite a bit. If you ignore these minor annoyances and focus on the bigger job at hand, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood has a killer aesthetic.

The voice acting is again very good, along with the soundtrack, which fits the game perfectly. The ambient sound of peasants walking through the streets and birds chirping in the field adds to the immersive realism of the game. If you play stealthily, the subtle sound of Ezio’s hidden blade will be drowned out by the surrounding environment, but if you go on a rampage and kill every guard in sight, the crowd around you will respond and run in terror.

If you take this game on its own, it’s really great, but compared to the massive strides Assassin’s Creed 2 made relative to the first, the developments Brotherhood has made aren’t all that dramatic. Please note that I have only reviewed the single player aspect of this game and the multiplayer introduced, which mainly involves the player hunting another player while also being hunted at the same time, is a new dynamic for the franchise. The multiplayer has the potential to be a hit, but it only scratches the surface in terms of a deep multiplayer experience, as I reached the highest level and completed most of the challenges the game had to offer in multiple weeks. Overall, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is a solid installment in the franchise, but I hope Ubisoft really takes their time with the next one to create something extraordinary.