Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (PS4) Review

 Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (PS4) 8/10

"We work in the darkness to serve the light. We are Assassins."

Hello everybody. To continue with the Assassin's Creed series, I went on to Brotherhood. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood was originally released on November 16, 2010 for PS3 and Xbox 360 and then it was remastered for modern consoles in the Ezio Collection, which was released on November 15, 2016. I played the Ezio Collection version of the game, so I'll be judging this version of it. This is the third game in the Assassin's Creed series and the second game to star Ezio Auditore. This game is a weird cross breed of the first two games and it turned out wonderfully. Let's get into it.

Back in modern day, Desmond and crew have escaped the Templars and have retreated to Monteriggionni, their supposed last safe spot in Italy. After setting up camp in the old Assassin safe room, Desmond goes back into the Animus to continue where he left off. He's doing this to see where Ezio had placed his Apple of Eden. Back with Ezio, at the end of Assassin's Creed II, Ezio had confronted Rodrigo Borgia in il Vaticano, defeated him, and entered the Vault. In here, he received a message for Desmond that foretold of a disaster that will strike Earth and that he is the only one that can save everyone. Ezio returns to Monteriggionni with Mario and starts to live a peaceful life. He then spills the beans that he never killed Rodrigo. Machiavelli leaves immediately for Rome. The next morning, the Villa is under attack by the Borgia, led by Rodrigo's son Cesare Borgia. After nearly escaping with his life, Ezio wakes up in Rome. He meets up with Machiavelli and he learns about Rome's situation. Rome is under complete control by the Borgia family. Ezio then makes it his mission to rebuild Rome, kill the Borgia family members and any associates, build up the Assassin's bureau, and recover the Apple that was stolen from Mario.

I love this story. This time around, it's not a revenge story like AC II or a redemption story like AC 1. This is the story about the creation of the Assassin Brotherhood and Ezio finishing what he started. Ezio is a bit older and wiser now, so he doesn't make the same mistakes. This is also a much more centralized story instead of this grand scale revenge story taking place all over northern Italy. The game strictly takes place within Rome with Ezio very rarely leaving the city to take care of something else. Some of the characters from AC II return such as Claudia, Bartolomeo, La Volpe, and Machiavelli. With Rodrigo taking a back seat and focusing on Papal duties, the game makes Cesare the main villain. He's an ambitious, prideful general that has a dream of reuniting all of Italy under his banner. I like Cesare as a villain. Honestly I liked him better than Rodrigo.

The game looks good for the remaster, although that doesn't really say much considering the game already looked great back on the PS3. I will say though that I do think this game would benefit greatly if it was a complete overhaul. Some of the character models just look off sometimes, including Ezio. The graphics scream PS3, but there's nothing wrong with that.

I love how Rome looks. The architecture, the grassy hills, the ancient Roman ruins, and the way everybody dresses. I love the overall feel that Rome gives off. It starts off dead and despair filled, but as you continue to rebuild Rome, it becomes livelier. 

I LOVE the music for this game. The soundtrack for this game is a masterpiece. Back when I first played this game, I loved the soundtrack so much that I bought it. I still own that copy and to this day and still blast some of the tracks on my music list. "Master Assassin", "City of Rome", "Echoes of the Roman Ruins", "Desmond Miles". It's all so euphoric. Jesper Kyd out did himself again and created this piece of art. The game also uses music queues from the previous two games. "Acre Underworld", "Flight over Venice", "Wetlands Combat", "Venice Rooftops" and a couple of others. 

The voice acting for the game is great too. Special shoutout to the voices of Ezio and Cesare. So this is news to me: the same guy that voices Sonic the Hedgehog voices Ezio (Roger Craig Smith). Yo Wtf! Andreas Apergis voices Cesare and he did a phenomenal job with his character. He really brought Cesare to life. The rest of the cast is very solid, but these two were the standouts.

So this game plays like AC II, but has a lot more content in it. The main addition is the Full Synchronization system. If you do missions and events the way Ezio did them (kill your target with a hidden blade, finish within the time limit, don't get detected, etc), you'll unlock repressed memories. These memories are of Christina, who appeared at the very beginning of AC II. Playing the missions like this adds a layer of difficulty to the game as some of these are really difficult (looking at you "Hell on Wheels"). Besides the few badly designed missions, I love this system.

So with every Ubisoft open world game, there are collectables for you to find. In this, there are: 101 Borgia Flags, 10 Feathers, 5 Harlequins to beat up, 144 Treasure Chests, and the 10 glyphs from Subject 16. Alongside those, you have a bunch of side missions to do. 6 Lairs of Romulus (doing these will grant you Brutus' armor), Assassination Contracts, Courtesan quest line, Thief quest line, Leonardo's War Machines, and with the Ezio Collection you have Copernico's quest line and the DLC The Da Vinci Disappearance.

So in the game, alongside all those missions and collectables, you have to rebuild Rome. To do this, you first have to destroy the Borgia Tower in each district. After you do that, you have to purchase each shop. The more shops you purchase, the bigger the discount you'll get at their store. With every shop that you buy, you'll gain revenue from them. Revenue is deposited into your bank account every 20 minutes. It is imperative that you start buying stuff as soon as you can, because once that money starts rolling in, you'll want to get more money as soon as you can so that you can buy landmarks and the more expensive equipment for Ezio.

Speaking of equipment, the armor traits and weapons system return from AC II. These get really expensive, especially the most overpowered weapon in the game: The crossbow. If you can get this before you go into the Castello for the first time, you'll be golden for the rest of the game. This is a long range, silent weapon that can hold a lot of ammo, one-shots enemies, and you can easily find ammo from looting guards' bodies. Another new thing with this game are the shop quests. If you give shops specific items that they are looking for, they'll reward you with upgrades for Ezio. You can find these items from looting treasure chests, bandits, and missions from your assassins.

In Brotherhood, you create your own brotherhood of Assassins. You train these guys by sending them on missions across Europe and by summoning them into battle with you. If you train them enough, they'll become full fledged Assassins. These guys are a complete game changer and can turn the tide of battle in an instant. I love these guys. I do wish there was more customization to them though.

One of the best things about Brotherhood is Rome itself. All of these missions, collectables, and activities take place within Rome. Rome is so condensed with stuff to do compared to Jerusalem, Damascus, Florence, and Venice. Combine that with a well designed city and you have an experience that's hard to forget.

Brotherhood also brought back some small things from the first game. Beggars and drunk people have returned to the game. Thankfully though, they aren't as annoying to deal with as opposed to AC 1.

I do want to talk about those glyphs I mentioned earlier. Similar to that of the glyphs from AC II, Brotherhood has 10 glyphs for you to find across Rome. Doing these will unlock a piece of a message. These glyphs were very difficult to solve. One of the best parts about the game are these glyphs. They unravel dark secrets about Abstergo. Cluster 8 (?), the one about the TVs, really freaked me out because of just how unexpected and realistic it was. Once you finish all 10, a hidden level opens up to you and if you beat that, a fantastic secret pops up and it's great, which leads directly into AC Revelations. 

My only problem with the game are some of the missions. A couple of these missions such as "Hell on Wheels", "Gate Keeper", and "Young at Heart" to name a few had no right being so difficult. The rest of the game was either a decent challenge or easy, but these missions had a massive difficulty spike, mainly because of the Full Synchronization requirements. I also wish you could customize your Assassin recruits instead of just their clothing color. Like maybe customize which weapons they would use and even their attack patterns. Idk, just spice them up a bit. And again, I wish the game would bring back the assassination investigations from AC 1.

Overall, I love this game. Easily one of my favorite games from the PS3 era. Story is great, the gameplay is great, and the music is phenomenal. There's a lot to do in this game and you can easily drop 40-50 hours into this. If you do play this, try and go for the 100% platinum trophy. I feel like this game was made to be played that way, considering that the more you do in the game, the more content opens up to you. Anyway, I'll end it here.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.