Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Review

Assassin’s Creed is a game about two factions waring against each other over the ages. The two factions are the Assassins and the Templars. You play as the assassins. Now this particular game takes place after the events of the previous game, Assassin’s Creed 2. So I would recommend playing that and even Assassin’s Creed 1 before touching this one. You don’t have to, but the story may seem a little off for you if you haven’t. The next paragraph is a brief synapses of the previous titles. If you want to just jump to the review of the game skip the next paragraph.

The game has two main stories to it: Ezio’s and Desmond’s. Desmond is a man from the modern age that is reliving his ancestor’s memories through a machine called the Animus. This is so that he can gain knowledge and also train using the system. Ezio is his ancestor and his story takes place during the Renaissance period in several areas of Italy. You go about a beautiful landscape and take on missions to infiltrate, assassinate, and procure items of worth. Your father and two brothers were killed at the beginning of AC2 and the story continues as you learn to be an assassin and get revenge against the Templars. There is a much deeper story to the game that you may uncover if you so desire, but is not necessary.

Let us now begin with the game at hand. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood begins at the end of the second game. If you remember correctly, you were left with some cliff hanger of an ending. So as Desmond you must now relocate to a new safe zone. Once you achieve this you continue on in the Animus to find out where The Apple is so you can use it in modern times. You once again play as Ezio Auditore and must go through a lot of missions until you can finally get the correct memory. It’s pretty straight forward. If you’ve played the older games it’ll feel very familiar.

The game play is amazing. You can climb buildings and basically use the entire environment like a jungle-gym. Running and jumping from building top to building is very fun and smooth. It’s all really organic. The combat system has been refined even more from the previous games. You have even more weapons at your disposal and can pick up the weapons of fallen enemies and use them as your own. The enemies are more responsive and not everyone dies to the counter attacks any longer. So that means you actually have to fight on occasion. There is an amazing system put in called Execution Streak. If you execute an enemy is battle you can flow from one enemy to another in sequence and just kill everyone in one hit. Now this isn’t to say that all the enemies will sit there watching, so you have to watch out for them attacking you during your streak, but these can be countered. It’s just awesome how it all strings together.

You have six stores you may purchase: the medic, blacksmith, tailor, art, stable and faction buildings. The medic heals and sells poison. The blacksmith sells armor/weapons. The tailor sells pouches and dyes your clothes. The art merchant sells you maps. The stable provides you horses in the area. Finally the faction buildings can be bought to place either mercenaries, thieves, or courtesans in the area.

Now the main reason for the name of the game is the Brotherhood. As Ezio you go about rebuilding the Assassins. You find followers and train them up among the ranks and they level up. As they level up, they get better armor and weapons until they are a complete assassin. These assassins can aid you in your battles if you call for them and it’s absolutely awesome when you use it the first time. They pop out of nowhere and attack the enemy you had selected and then disappear if a battle doesn’t start. They have missions  you can send them out on to get experience, as well as gold or items. During this time, you can not use their aid in battles for obvious reasons. They’re gone. Haha. So when you select to send them out, it tells you how long they’re gone for and you can continue what ever you were doing. Now, you can select up to 5 assassins for a single mission. Adding more to a mission increases the chances based on their level to the difficulty of the mission. If they fail the mission, they are dead and you must get yourself a new assassin to train yet again. This happened to me once and I lost 4 assassins. It was very sad.

The music was good. It pulled you into the battles with heavier sounds and while you’re just riding around there’s nice and peaceful music. I was a little surprised to hear a little opera, but I didn’t mind it.

The graphics are amazing yet again. The individual graphics for the characters aren’t leaps and bounds over the previous game, but they’re still as good as ever. The designers have done an amazing job on the landscape and that’s how it should be. For a game that’s so vast and open, it’s honestly a miracle how they get so much of the environment beautifully put in without feeling clunky at all. Everything feels as if it should be right where it is. On top of that it all looks perfectly how it should. I’ve had the pleasure of going to The Colosseum in Rome and I have to say that it took me back there. Any kind of landmark that they put into the game is so beautifully done that you could look at a side-by-side photo and not be disappointed. Honestly, take a moment to enjoy if you play.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Rating

Graphics: 9/10   The graphics were top notch. The environments were so amazingly crafted that not a single thing felt out of place. The characters were designed well enough, but it felt like they didn’t want to work on it very much since the last game. This isn’t to say that they’re bad, just not enough to give a 10 to.

Gameplay: 10/10   I loved the game play. Everything flows so perfectly with each other and pulls you into the game. I just didn’t want to put it down. I’m being completely serious. I did not want to stop playing because it just pulled me in so much.

Audio: 8/10   The music fit the scene most often. They used music that fit the era, as well as what was going on but at times it felt like the game got bored with you. There was one time that my escape from guards took a lot longer than it should have, and eventually the music just went away. There was nothing but sounds of my character running. So that didn’t feel quite right.

Replay Value: 8/10   If you’re an achievement whore you’re going to be spending a long time going back in this game. Little added tasks in missions make it very difficult and if you want 100% in the game you’ll be going back to quite a few missions. Trust me.

Overall: 9.5/10   The game was great. The game play pulled you in and wouldn’t let you go. The graphics were absolutely breathtaking and if you’ve ever been to these locations, you will agree with the level of detail. I would definitely recommend this game to anyone. And if you’re a bit of a detective, you can go into the extra secrets in the game too. To be honest, I did and it got me hooked. Played the whole game through in 3 days. Barely did anything besides sit in front of the TV. Totally worth it.