Back Log - Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

(I'm making it a habit to post something about each game in my Back Log after I complete it)

Compared to Red Dead Redemption, these horses look like shit.

Assassin's Creed 2 was my favorite game of 2009. And even though I wasn't very interested in the multi-player addition, the idea of another AC game a year later was very exciting to me. After a bit of a slow start I found myself getting sucked back in to renaissance Italy.

Brotherhood is built on the same foundation of the last game. Instead of jumping around different cities across Italy, the entire game takes place in Rome. By limiting the game to this one location, the dev team was able to expand all the property management and economics that was only available in the Villa in AC2 to the entirety of Rome. This way the majority of my time was spent renovating store fronts and expanding my influence across the city. By the mid point in the game I was so wealthy that price was never an issue when shopping for gear and paintings to fill the show rooms in my head quarters.

The combat was simplified and sped up to allow more intricate execution animations and quick combo chains. So, instead of patiently waiting for a chance to counter each enemy, I was executing entire groups within seconds of combat beginning. From a challange perspective it appears the game has gotten easier. But never before has Ezio looked like such a badass.

The major addition is that of the assassin's guild. throughout the game I stumbled across Borgia guards harassing a citizen. After I was able to eliminate the guards I had the option of recuiting the humble civilian to joining my guild off assassin's. Once my guild had members i could access a system of menues through any birdhouses around and give my assassins missions accross all of Europe. Once sent out on assignment, the guild member was not available for an alloted time and when they sucessfully returned they were rewarded with XP and I recieved some cash. All of my assassins would be able to unlock weapons and gear options as they leveled up.

When my assassin's werent out killing foreign nationals or liberating opressed villages i had access to them at any time. whenever i was in view of enemies i just had to press a button and they would appear from roof tops, door ways, or ride up on horses and take out the target only to dissapear into the shadows moments later. this became a huge part of my strategy for the bigger missions like destroying Borgia towers.

The Borgia towers are spread out all across Rome. they are full of enemy soldiers that would attack me as soon as I entered the area. I had to enter the area and eliminate the head guard before i was able to scale the tower and set it on fire. It wasn't until this was done that I would be able to claim the businesses in the surrounding area to build up my cash flow. I started to develop a routine of recruiting assassins, leveling them up, taking out a Borgia tower, and then buying all the store fronts until i had to do a story mission to open up more towers. This process never really got old.

I can't really go into too much detail about the story mostly because I didn't care. The Ezio story thread reached the conclusion that I wanted at the end of 2. Fortunately, Desmond's present day-ish story goes through some very exciting twists and turns. And I am now even more excited for what's to come in the next installments.