Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

I started Assassin's Creed Brotherhood expecting a quick and cheap standalone expansion kind of deal. To my surprise, it instead polished and added enough to stand on its own as a separate game.

A solid sequel

At the end of Assassin's Creed II, against his better judgment Ezio spared the main antagonist Rodrigo Borgia (who had at that point had become Pope Alexander VI). Okay sure, Ezio's thirst for vengeance had subsided and there will always be more Templars later and all that, but he still should have killed the guy. I don't appreciate these kind of revenge stories where the bad guy gets away. Machiavelli was very much in the right to tell Ezio off for that.

I wonder if that is the only time in the series when the villain actually managed to convince the protagonist not to kill them. The bad guys always sure like trying to talk their way out. If I recall correctly, the decision whether to kill or spare the Cult's leader in AC Odyssey even falls to you, the player. How many spared the leader, I wonder. (You fools.)

Ezio returns to Monteriggioni only to wake up next morning to the Papal Army, led by Rodrigo's son Cesare Borgia, laying siege to the town. Ezio and everyone else capable are forced to flee. That also conveniently takes away all the resources Ezio had gathered in the previous game and allows progression to restart with a clean slate.

That "iconic" backpack Ubisoft no doubt has sold as merch

I had thought Monteriggioni to be an easy to target and thus an odd base for the Assassins the moment I first learned about it. Same with Masyaf in the first game: a whole fortress sitting right there for anyone to see (and to get assaulted like it did too). Such brazen displays of opposition simply will not go unanswered by the Templars, who are always found in positions of power from which they can move even non-Templar forces against the Assassins. I think Altaïr too points out the prideful vanity of such places in a flashback in AC Revelations.

In the present, the Assassin team too is on the run after the Templars burst into their warehouse. A new hideout is found in no other than the vault beneath the Auditore villa which is still standing in the game's present day. Cesare didn't put it to the torch, I suppose. Desmond continues reliving Ezio's memories to find the Apple of Eden the Italian Assassin used in the previous game to communicate with the First Civilization being called Minerva. The Assassins hope it will lead them to the rest of the Apples hidden around the world.

Back in the past, Ezio and his surviving family members travel to Roma (Rome) where the Assassins are in a weakened state. Ezio begins restoring the Brotherhood -- thus the game's title -- and crippling the Borgias' hold of the city.

I don't know why it's so hard to make an ending that feels good but even AC Brotherhood has the same type of failed action escalation, location switching, and jumping ahead in time like the previous two games. The present time ending is also a big cliffhanger but that didn't matter much since I could jump into the next game right away.

When in Rome

In Roma, the Assassins have a more clandestine base that doesn't require upgrades. Instead you get to reopen shops around the city and do additional investments to them which has (had) some sort of online involvement in terms of returns. You can also claim historical landmarks but they are so costly that they should be avoided unless one is going for 100% completion: they won't ever pay themselves back (until like maybe 100+ hours into the game). Sewer entrances can be restored as well, unlocking fast travel between them. That makes getting around the big map quicker though often you still have to do quite a bit of running/riding to get where you want.

Buying every shop and location in Roma rewards you with the Auditore cape which has the opposite effect than previously, instead suppressing your notoriety. There's also a Borgia cape with the same effect for collecting all of the game's 101 flags.

Completionists should restrain themselves from side activities until they have unlocked all the guilds so that their respective challenges can be worked on while doing other stuff: lessens the effort needed to complete them later. The assassin guild in particular is useful to have because you can call assassin recruits in as reinforcements. With three bars available, you can spend them all at once to call in an arrow storm to take out every enemy around you. I really liked the arrow storm; feels pretty badass to have everyone just drop dead. The assassins can also be sent on missions though they will be unavailable for the time, possibly limiting the use of the reinforcement mechanic.

100% sync a bigger challenge

AC Brotherhood introduces slight grief causing feature to the series: secondary challenges for 100% mission sync. Since the challenge goals appear in AC Syndicate too, I reckon they're in every single game between that and this one. I revisited Syndicate earlier this year to play its DLC and replay the base game's missions I didn't have 100% sync in. Some of those were tricky but not as rage inducing as the worst ones in Brotherhood can be. I guess Ubisoft Montreal hadn't mastered the challenges' balancing yet because the added difficulty from them varies so wildly.

Most were inconsequential, some involved tedium -- I still remember vividly the various challenges in saving Caterina Sforza from Castel Sant'Angelo -- and some I dreaded more than I maybe should have because I got through them fairly easily in the end, only having to try them twice. With the last one I mean two of Leonardo's War Machines missions: Flying Machine 2.0 and Hell on Wheels.

Both have two parts: first usual stealthy assassin stuff and then controlling the war machine in question. The difficulty is the challenge being not getting hit while in the machine and the fact that getting hit tags the challenge failed for the mission and simply reloading a checkpoint is not enough: you have to redo the whole thing.

With the flying machine, the key is learning how to stay in the air first. Once you've become familiar with the controls you can start working on the goals: just keep dropping bombs for the height boost and take your time since you're not in a hurry. After the first targets are destroyed you have to go after some moving ones but if you destroyed all the enemy towers you no longer need to worry about getting hit.

Hell on Wheels I wouldn't try without cheesing it. When the mission locks you in an area with enemy tanks, you should back out of the area into the desynchronization zone. The game warns you about it but staying just inside it won't fail the mission. The benefit is that the enemy tanks will not fire at you while you're in there (even if their targeting visuals appear). It's cheesy but effective. And it's way too easy to fail 100% sync on the mission.

Another memorable struggle was the first of the Copernicus missions (which were originally a free PS3 exclusive DLC). I tried doing it way too early, not having any tools or familiarity with the game's combat. At first it had seemed easy: take no damage while defending Nicolaus Copernicus from 3 assailants. There was plenty of time too. However, there was a surprise: killing the 3 guards triggers endlessly spawning guards (of various types). I later returned to it with smoke bombs and poisons, keeping the guards (and Copernicus) alive until the timer had ran out.

The additional challenges also make the returning adventure dungeons -- called Lairs of Romulus that are required for the best armor in the game -- more annoying. Or at least the ones with a time limit for 100% sync because you can't really look for Borgia flags and instead have to redo the whole thing just for them. The lairs with 0 damage taken requirement aren't too difficult because all the enemies are simple knife wielders that fall to kill streaks.

Kill streaks are a nice feature that make combat a lot smoother. Combat general is again better though just not quite there yet -- that happens in the following game.

Lastly, I noticed that when Ubisoft decided their games no longer need colons in their titles, they actually went back and also removed it from almost all of their games on Steam and Ubisoft Connect. There's no longer a colon to separate the franchise's name from the individual game's subtitle.

Edited 2023-08-23: Corrected few typos.

An assassination attempt off a horse glitched and made Ezio ascend to the sky