Assassins Creed: Brotherhood

Introduction

“Assassins Creed: Brotherhood” might be, hands-down the best game in the series, it is by no means an entry point, despite sporting the most refined game play and offering the most replay value. Picking up at the exact moment “Assassins Creed II” leaves off, “Brotherhood” follows Ezio, now a seasoned, jaded assassins on his quest to liberate Rome from the oppressive rule of the Borgias. Drawing from history yet again, the series offers players a heavy dose of historical fiction (emphasis on that last word) and a game that refuses to pander to newcomers. Rather than follow the all too familiar trap of adding a tacky plot contrivance as to why all your cool moves and gadgets aren’t accessible, “Brotherhood” merely takes a select few away (under the guise of breaking down from routine wear and tear) and forces you to help their now enslaved by the state creator Leonardo Da Vinci in order to reacquire them. Newcomers who make the mistake of skipping the previous installment will not only find themselves lost in a sea of intricate plotting and characterization, but hopelessly floundering at the difficulty of the game which assumes you mastered Ezio’s basic and not-so basic skills a year prior.

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

For those who loved “Assassins Creed II’s” game play, “Brotherhood” will not let you down. Ezio is just as easy to control as before and as the game progresses, he acquires new tricks up sleeves (in many instances literally) to tackle the legions of Borgia thugs. Combat kicks things up a notch with more enemies and deadlier enemies. I won’t hopelessly attempt to explain the rich story of “Brotherhood,” but only set up the journey by noting you are now working with the head of the Assassins, none other than Nico Machiavelli. As your quest to recover the stolen Piece of Eden and once and for all eliminate the Borgia menace, you’ll find help in the form of side quests from the thieves guild, mercenaries guild, courtesan’s guild, and new to the series, assassin’s guild. The former two are led by familiar faces from “Assassins Creed II’ while your sister takes over the courtesan’s guild and Ezio himself builds the assassins guild in the game’s most notable double-edged addition.

In an attempt to add more life to play time, Ezio can now recruit citizens he saves from NPC attacks and form teams of assassins, leveling them up with increasingly difficult quests to send them on. As they grow in strength, Ezio earns the spoils of their efforts and can also call on them to aid him at a moment’s notice. While there is a mandatory cool-down period between usages, a player finding him or herself frustrated with the difficulty of a particular quest could easily abuse the overly able NPC allies and thusly, robbing themselves of challenging game play. Ultimately, the assassins guild as well as the other guilds and commerce system merely exist to provide Ezio the in-game cash to upgrade weapons. Any desire to fully upgrade everything the game has to offer, is solely a personal choice.

The main storyline of “Brotherhood” will keep the average gamer occupied for somewhere just south of 20 hours. The little side quests, including flashbacks, journeys outside the Animus with Desmond (ultimately pointless apart from driving the narrative forward), and a new treasure hunt end up making your first run through seem much longer than it actually requires. Only the liberation of Borgia towers becomes a necessity to make travel through the various districts easier and frankly, they result in some stellar combat sequences. It’s quite impossible to list every single new enhancement “Brotherhood” brings to the table. Like “Assassins Creed II” before it, “Brotherhood” does the impossible and takes a great game and makes it better. The developers chose to not tamper with a good thing and built upon what made the previous installment so fun. While the initially steep learning curve makes the game very inaccessible to a newcomer, to reiterate a logical sentiment, no one should be coming into the series at this point anyway.

On its own, “Brotherhood” would go down as a very, very good game, with post storyline replay value a little higher than before, but geared mostly towards the collectibles seeker. What makes “Brotherhood” a great game is the out-of-nowhere appearance of a multiplayer system that is neither tacked on nor a work-in-progress. Taking the nuts and bolts of core single player game play and adapting them for multiplayer(6-12 players) experience, “Brotherhood” offers simple choices of solo work, two-player co-op, or more organized larger team based game play. Most game modes are built around the concept of assassinating a specific character (each player is allowed to select a unique in-game skin) with NPCs populating the world with duplicates. Players earn XP based on how professionally they complete the hit. It might be easy to alert your prey and track them down in a foot chase, but that only results in a fraction of the XP a pro can get from passing by them in a crowd and silently poisoning them as they haplessly walk away. Chest Capture is the one big departure, offering exactly what it sounds like, a variation on area control. It’s honestly boring when put up against the unique deathmatch experience.

The average gamer will likely hate “Brotherhood’s” multiplayer mode, which requires patience in both in-game action and character class design, with the latter opening up slowly as the player increases in rank. However, for the fan of the franchise, multiplayer is the next logical conclusion and many series veterans may find themselves for the first time having fun playing online, as the whole experience is not even comparable with an FPS or sports game. The multiplayer system will reward players who put in work to learn the system’s unique qualities and the new approach to game play. While a lot of the time one will be working his or her way through crowds stalking, the literal execution of your plan is as thrilling and intense as running headfirst into a crowd of opponents in “Black Ops” and coming out still standing.

“Assassins Creed: Brotherhood” like “Assassins Creed II” gets lost by the mass media in a sea of annual FPS offerings, but when the smoke clears emerges as the most true example of innovation. Fans of the series will find the cliffhanger from Ezio’s debut answered and then some, only to be taken on an exciting epic tale , ending on another satisfying and logical cliffhanger. Ezio’s tale is set to be finished once and for all in “Assassins Creed: Revelations” and it will be a bittersweet ending as “Brotherhood” showed us just how much Ezio and his world have to offer in terms of smart storytelling. The developers have chosen to not just reward players with a phenomenal single player sequel, but a somewhat revolutionary multiplayer experience that will help pass the time until the book on Ezio is finally closed. “Brotherhood” is a must purchase, near masterpiece.