More refined from AC2, ending cliffhanger tho PEAK

Jumping back into Ezio’s story feels effortless here. Starting with a character we already know means the game skips that slow introduction phase and gets right into the action, which I really appreciated.

While the story doesn’t quite reach the highs of Assassin’s Creed 2, it’s still an enjoyable continuation of Ezio’s journey. What Brotherhood does best is not trying to reinvent the wheel, it takes an already great formula and polishes it to a shine.

Gameplay is where this really stands out. Parkour feels smooth and fun, stealth has more flexibility, and combat is noticeably more refined. The addition of kill streaks is a game changer, letting you chain together executions and take down groups effortlessly. It really sells Ezio as a master assassin.

Rome itself is fantastic. Each district feels distinct and full of detail, and I loved exploring the city while gradually renovating it. Building up your assassin recruits is also a great addition that adds a sense of progression beyond just Ezio.

That said, it’s not without issues. The map can get incredibly cluttered. There are what feels like dozens of different marker types, making it tedious to find what you’re actually looking for. On top of that, the Ubisoft launcher is a constant annoyance. Having to sign in every session because it doesn’t remember your details gets old fast.

Also, for some reason after my first play session, the launcher broke my controls on Steam Deck. The fix was to install and select GE-Proton 10-12 in the game’s properties and use the launch command: PROTON_PREFER_SDL=1 %command%

Overall, Brotherhood doesn’t surpass its predecessor, but it refines and expands it in all the right ways. If you enjoyed Assassin’s Creed 2, this is absolutely worth playing. Just be prepared for some modern day launcher frustrations.

As someone who loved both the original Assassin's Creed and AC 2, dumping copious hours into both titles, Brotherhood kind of bums me out to be honest. It's essentially more of what everyone loved about Ezio's first outing, but stuffed full of obnoxious design decisions that make me want to take to my PC with a bat, then feed the wreckage through a wood-chipper.

Everything's prettier, it has a brilliant soundtrack, and the narrative is as engaging as ever, but I spent more time cursing up a storm while playing this game than I spent during the entirety of my time with Dark Souls. And yet, the internet's general consensus seems to be "Brotherhood is the best AC game ever!" It's not. What it is, is sphincter-clenchingly annoying and a total chore to play.

First, the good.


* It's pretty

Brotherhood is a noticeable graphical upgrade over AC 2, with crisp textures and more detailed character models. Now 16 years-old, it's not able to compete with more recent titles, but it's a decent-looking game for its age.

* The music is great

Jesper Kyd's haunting soundtrack is still fantastic, even after all this time. It really captures the Renaissance ambience without being bombastic or repetitive.

* Ezio Auditore de Firenze

Ezio is a fan favourite for a reason. He's charismatic, brave, sympathetic and lethal. Best of all, like an actual person rather than a lazy caricature, his character develops meaningfully over time due to his experiences.

* Cesare Borgia

Every story needs a good villain, and true to his historical counterpart, Cesare Borgia is a deeply unpleasant piece of work. Cunning, sadistic, ruthless and power-hungry (and with a profoundly unnatural affection for his sister, Lucrezia), Cesare is a more than worthy opponent for Ezio.

* An engaging story

Beginning where AC 2 left off, Brotherhood is a story of both liberation and retribution as Ezio must rebuild the Guild of Assassins in order to prise loose the Borgia's grip on the city of Rome, ultimately avenging the deaths of those killed by Cesare and his minions.

* Refined, if dysfunctional, mechanics

The new chain-kill combat system is an interesting, if somewhat unreliable, addition to the slower-paced counter-kill mechanic of previous games in the franchise.

And now... the bad.


* Insta-fail mission design

This is a game that demands you play it the way it wants you to play it, accepting no deviation. If the parkour system suffers a meltdown and you're inexplicably glued to the scenery -- desynchronised! If a guard glimpses you for 0.7 picoseconds during a stealth mission -- desynchronised! If you stray too far from an NPC during an escort mission (because you're engaged in a rolling melee with swarms of guards who are actively trying to kill the aforementioned NPC) -- desynchronised! And because Ubisoft feeds off your suffering, Brotherhood uses checkpoints instead of quicksaves, so get used to replaying sections of the game over and over again because you had the inexcusable temerity to stray from the designated path.

* Time limits

Time limits are cancer and I will fight anyone who says they're not. Right up there with 'encumbrance' as a tedious, fun-sapping, buzz-kill, they should be expunged from gaming with extreme prejudice. If you absolutely MUST have time limits in your game, you need to be sure your traversal systems work as intended and your controls are both responsive and configurable. If I'm failing because I suck, fair enough. That's on me. If I'm failing because the navmesh is borked or your buggy traversal system keeps crapping its pants, your game is broken and you should fix it.

* Tailing missions

Sweet Jesus on a stick, save me from these abysmal tailing missions. A zero fun proposition whereby you have to covertly follow a person or persons, sometimes while eavesdropping on a conversation, tailing missions are as insufferable as they are numerous. Get too close and you're detected, which is more often than not an insta-fail. Get too far away, and a timer kicks in giving you 25 seconds to reacquire line-of-sight before, you guessed it... insta-fail. Mission failure is made all the more likely by streets clogged with pedestrians and horses, and the janky parkour system, which sees Ezio getting stuck on the scenery, or going the kamikaze route and throwing himself from a rooftop into the middle of a guard patrol. Whoever designed these missions is a miserable sadist who should be actively prevented from making games.

* Janky parkour

Granted, the parkour in the previous two games was not terribly refined. Altaïr scaled buildings at roughly the same speed as an Amazonian tree sloth and in AC 2, Ezio was significantly faster but his accuracy left much to be desired. Things seem even worse this time around. You will constantly fall off buildings, leap into canals, and splatter yourself across the cobblestones because the parkour system has decided it knows better than you what you intend to do. "No, no, you don't want to gracefully swan-dive into that wagon full of hay. Let's just randomly fling ourselves into space instead!" I'm not, by nature, an angry person, but 30 minutes with Brotherhood's parkour system effortlessly turned me into a shrieking, red-faced maniac. I'm also not so delusional as to attribute malice to a video game mechanic, but I swear sometimes it felt like it was just messing with me.

* Unresponsive controls

When you tell me via a giant onscreen pop-up, that in order to escape being grabbed in combat, I must hold down the right mouse button, then press the shift key, that's what I do. I also expect it to work. What I don't expect is for Ezio to stand there like an oblivious narcoleptic while guardsmen beat seven bells out of him. This 'grab-escape' key combination will only ever work on a Wednesday between the hours of 9pm and 3am, and only if it's the third Wednesday of the month. During a leap year.

* All of this stuff combined makes it a chore to play

Why does every Borgia tower, church or sizeable landmark require me to circumnavigate it repeatedly in order to climb it? I shouldn't have to painstakingly spider monkey my way around a building just to get to the top of it... every, single, time. It's needlessly tedious.

Oh, and here's some stellar game design from one of the earlier missions...

Ezio has to rescue Caterina Sforza, Countess of Forli, from the Castel Sant'Angelo, where she's being kept prisoner by Cesare and Lucrezia. So, after scuttling across rooftops, shanking entire battalions of guards and clambering up the side of a stupidly huge building, we make our way to Caterina's cell. "I don't have the key!", she squeals. "Lucrezia has it." So, off we go to find Lucrezia. "You can't have it! Guards! Help!" We spend a few moments knifing guards in the kidneys, then we grab Lucrezia and begin dog-walking her back to Caterina's cell. Wriggling and screeching all the way, Lucrezia breaks free, yells for more guards, then begins running back the way we came. We dispatch the guards, chase her down, grab her and begin the long trek back to the cells. Seven seconds later, she does it again. And then again. And... again.

Who designed this? And what crippling emotional trauma compelled them to do it? Why couldn't we simply club her unconscious, stuff her in a cupboard, and take the key? WHY?!


Brotherhood is not an objectively bad game. Nor is it a particularly good one. It's just a frustrating, brutally unforgiving, frequently tedious and unnecessarily punitive experience. It's a game you'll likely play once, and if you actually make it to the end (due to either the sunk cost fallacy, or sheer bloody-mindedness), you'll never touch it again. And I wouldn't blame you. Black Flag and Rogue are both orders of magnitude more fun to play than this dismal outing.