4.5/5 ★ – Manic_Zucc's review of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

Part 3 of playing through the Assassin’s Creed series for the first time. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is an interesting game to review. By all accounts this is a filler game, something that Ubisoft put out to fill the gap between AC2 and AC3, and as such I expected it to simply be a lesser AC2, but that really isn’t the case. The game falls short of its predecessor in a few ways, but then simultaneously tweaks and refines the gameplay to the point where this wound up being the better game in my opinion. There’s a few areas where Brotherhood was a bit lacking, but the biggest one is mission variety. Given the nature of the game’s development Brotherhood is understandably shorter than the previous games but even then the missions didn’t do as much to stand out from each other. Mind you it’s no where near the level of repetition as AC1 but noticeable nonetheless. The story of Brotherhood was also weirdly paced. It starts strong but then meanders for a bit before locking in again in the last few missions. For a game with only 9 story sequences it spends too much time spinning its wheels. Aside from those small nitpicks Brotherhood was a great time. The tweaks made to gameplay fixed nearly every issue I’ve had with the series up until this point. The combat here is vastly improved with the game actually encouraging you to fight offensively instead of having you sit and wait for others to hit you first. The new mechanic of being able to recruit assassins and have then assist you on missions was a lot of fun and being able to level those recruits up was a great detail. Also as someone that hardly uses the throwing knives or hidden gun in the other games, I loved using the Crossbow here. Great ranged weapon that made clearing rooftops really fun. While I’m sure this is a more mixed opinion I actually preferred having the game take place in one large city instead of having to travel between cities all the time. Rome was a great location. I also loved the side content in this game and thought it was a step up from the previous game. The Borgia tower missions had some great combat sections, the Leonardo missions were a lot of fun, and the Lairs of Romulus were just better versions of the Assassin’s Tombs. A few nitpicks hold this game up from being perfect in my eyes, but it’s definitely the most fun I’ve had with this series so far. Excited to see what happens next. (Also just realized I never mentioned the modern day stuff, it’s pretty forgettable and I found myself unaffected by what I think was supposed to be a shocking ending).