Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Guide Play Part 6-KJS
0AC Brotherhood: more isn't always better
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is only the third game in the Assassin's Creed series I've yet played: I keep to the order in which the games were initially released. Ubisoft got this game, the second one featuring Ezio Auditore as the protagonist, out in March 2011, three and a halve years ago. Having played it relatively soon after the original Assassin's Creed II, I feel it natural to compare the two games to each other. This makes even more sense since the story of AC II really coninues in Brotherhood: not only do the same characters appear in both games, chronologically too they follow nicely upon each other.
Brotherhood starts off splendidly, with a recapture of the final sequences of AC II which flows naturally into the new twists which the well-known story of the struggle between Assassins and Templars about world-changing artefacts takes. After the initial (short) part of the game that functions as a tutorial, I was taken straight into the city where almost all of the action takes place: Rome. The fact that there is only one major city here, compared to the two (Firenze and Venice) and the countryside of the original game, makes for a huge difference. Rome of around 1500 comes to live in Brotherhood in the most fantastic imaginable way. First of all, the map is HUGE: there are 12 districts (including the Vatican and some outer area's which have a rural sense about them), and running from one side of the city to the other would cost you at least ten-fifteen minutes (happily, horses are allowed in the city and there is a well-thought-off fast-travel system). Secondly, the development team has obviously taken the utmost care in analyzing how Rome anno 1500 looked like - and that's really quite different from modern-day Rome. During the first ten (!!) hours or so in-game, I mostly just walked around, discovering the city, marvelling at all the details in the buildings and eagerly reading the information provided for almost every single church, Roman building or other landmark. During my entire playthrough, I felt like being a tourist catapulted 500 years back to a place I love so much. That's quite some accomplishment, and I would even go so far as to call Rome the main character of the game, not Ezio.
That's not only because of the painstaking detail with which the "Cità Eterna" is being depicted, but it's also due to some problems with the concept of the game. Not only is the world almost entirely accessible from the start of the game, the number of side-missions is daunting, certainly compared to the main-story missions. Since I am a curious gamer, I tried some of these, than more of those missions, mixing it all up with the main storyline. Wrong! Almost every mission gives even more options afterwards, unlocking new factions or side-story lines, and they are of course all indicated on a over-cluttered map (which I had to zoom in really close to be able to read every sign on it). After a further ten hours or so into the game, I started feeling overwhelmed: there was SO much to do, to explore, to try, and it could all be done at my own initiative. Now this open-world concept may appeal to many gamers, but I like more of a narrative element, or at least a good backbone of a main story. And this exactly where Brotherhood tends to falter at times. Only by following the main story mission after mission (which I started doing after quite some time), did I refind the feeling of actually being Ezio Auditore, a feeling that had been so strong in AC II. Once I really plunged into it, the main storyline proved to be quite good, though not so compelling as the one in the previous game, and certainly much shorter (although this is more than made up for the number of side-missions and -excursions).
Gameplay: 24/30 (would have been higher with a tighter storyline)
Graphics: 18/20
Sound: 7/10
Technical: 8/10 (I don't like Uplay as an extra "shell", but that's just how it is, and otherwise it's very stable)
Longelivety: 9/10 (there is some MP which is mostly out of use, but SP alone gives you dozens of hours of gameplay)
Steam-integration: 5/10 (as with almost all other Ubisoft titles: they try to promote Uplay...)
Personal appreciation: 9/10
Overall: 80/100
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