Assassins Creed Brotherhood Review

Before the review:

After 8 months of no video games I got a strange craving to re enter the gaming medium and this time I played a healthy amount, kept a social life, physical fitness and played the game at the same time. This 'new way' of playing video games I used was truly amazing, video games are one of the most addictive mediums in existence, more so than books or films and so I made sure to not repeat the same mistake I had once made my whole life. This game that I picked up now for quite cheap (£10 on amazon) is called Assassins Creed Brotherhood and I'm sure it needs no introduction. So lets get started with the review.




Lets get started:
The game picks up where AC2 left off and should not be played unless you have already played and finished AC2. I say this because the game does not take its time in throwing you in the middle of complicated story arc's, detailed combat and  loads of explosions. The game also begins on a very emotional note as the town you took your time building and loving in AC2 gets completely blown to bits and you have to leave. This leaving of an old town, entering a new one and starting of in the new place is a bit of a cliché but works perfectly with the game.

This is a beautiful game, the graphics, the art, the renaissance inspired architecture, every little detail from the paintings in the churches to the dresses the courtesans wear are gorgeous. I have found myself sometimes just standing and staring at the walls of the churches to see the many paintings, and also ahem found myself staring at the courtesans but never mind that. The game is beautiful and thats what matters. You can stand at the top of a tower and gaze over the city and it will not look like a generic copy paste city of buildings and houses all looking similar, no, each little turn and area of the city is unique and fun to explore in its own terms.

The games gameplay is the same one you would have experienced in AC2 and thats no negative point as the gameplay is brilliant. Its extremely smooth, easy to control, gives a ton of controls whilst looking super cool to execute too. The fighting mechanics have changed a bit here and the change is welcome as it encourages you to fight more and counter less (which was a problem in AC2) so that's a great change. The fighting also helps you bridge your kills into a bit of a killstreak where the game lets you do one hit executions which are super smooth and fun to do, especially with the different animations that accompany the executions. The game also has a more RPG turn to its gameplay in comparison to AC2. The RPG aspects are in the building and conquering of Roma as you are allowed to buy shops, monuments, secret passages and other constructions to get discounts, help your brotherhood and even to gain an increased income into your bank account. Your bank account gains income every 20 minutes and so buying the shops and watching your income increase gives tremendous satisfaction and is addictive like a full on RPG.

The game has a concept, which is hinted in the title of the game, the concept is of building a 'brotherhood' ( quite sexist as there are female assassins :P ) to conquer the city of Roma. The concept is very good and it does indulge you into the universe as you become allies with the thieves, courtesans and mercenaries of the city. This new concept goes deep into the gameplay as you constantly add civilians into the assassin guild, train them up with xp, send them to do missions and use them in your own missions. This builds a whole virtual assassin 'family' and its a fun idea which brings fun into the gameplay as you are allowed to send your assassins to do specific kills on the targets you chose. My big gripe with the game is that this concept is blindly veiled over your eyes and makes you believe in it till the end of the game, in which, the game tells you that the whole making of a 'brotherhood' was quite pointless. This is annoying as I spent the whole game loving the idea, recruiting assassins and building them stronger till I found out the time I spent was a bit of a waste.

The game also has another problem, for a game that is centred around making you an assassin, it is too God-damn easy! The game's intense moments are un-intense due to how easy it is, during the game you do not even need to use equipment like the poison darts or smoke bombs because you do not necessarily need to be stealthy, due to the extremely easy to kill guards. Thats a problem as for a game in which your an assassin, your main goal should be to hide and kill from the shadows. This is a big problem as in some of the games latter missions where I had 20+ guards trying to kill me, instead of running away, I just turned around and killed them all easily in a sword fight. An assassin should not be able to do that, I should be encouraged to run away and hide, then kill slowly, like an assassin properly should. But due to the games extremely easy difficulty, I can kill over 50 guards without breaking a sweat and that destroys the whole assassin feel. Also it kills the intense pressure out of the missions in which your supposed to feel pressured.

The story of the game might be a little bit of a disappointment for some of you AC fans. The story although it moves on from AC2, does not do much. The story barely proceeds further in this game, it sometimes feels as if you spent the whole game getting to a point which shouldn't have taken a whole game to reach. However, I must say, in the time that the game takes to move the story slowly, the game utilises that time to build the characters further and makes you like them more. In AC2 you did not care much about the characters and rather cared more about the ancestors rather than Desmond and the blonde girl who was helping you as the characters did not have much personality to them. In this game, everyone has a lot of personality added to them and the game makes you care about everyone in the group Desmond is in as the group is diverse, unique, un-cliché and fun to work with. I personally enjoyed this games story as it made me like the characters more, even though it didn't progress much from AC2's story.

The game also adds a new multiplayer feature which does not feel 'tacked-on' to cater to the mainstream audience. The multiplayer is unique as it has game modes which have an assassins creed feel to them and are centred around executions and other objectives. This is brilliant and works tremendously with the skills you learn in single player (like blending in the crowd and stuff). The multiplayer is fun to play and is not just a distraction as it is fun and does entertain with the levelling up system the game has.

In conclusion, the game is extremely fun and I would recommend it just for the single player alone. Its really a massive game and took me weeks and 20+ hours of gameplay time to finish the story alone and still offers loads of extra replay value which can clock it to around 30-40+ hours. The game does make me care for the characters, the world (although I cared more before I found out my brotherhood attempts were useless), the story and it does make me want to buy the next Assasins Creed. Although I wouldn't buy it soon, these games are large and Ubisoft's decision on releasing one game yearly is stupid and underwhelms the overwhelmed. So any ways, I fully recommend this game and with the cheap price it has now, it is one game that shouldn't be missed. Play it, you won't regret it. But do get AC2 before this, that game rocks too and this game wouldn't make sense unless you play AC2. So yeah, go out, get this and have a good time.

Desmond was anorexic in AC2, he finally gained some weight :D

I give Assassins Creed Brotherhood 8 and a half assassin blades out of 10

8.5/10