Thoughts on Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

About an hour ago, I finally completed my playthrough of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. I really enjoyed the game, and I would definitely say it's the best game in the series so far. The actual gameplay is left pretty much unchanged from Assassin's Creed II, but that's not really a fault. The combat in the series has always been fun and rewarding. Sure, the game doesn't boast the most challenging fights, but racking up counter kill after counter kill is still massively entertaining. The introduction of secondary weapons for certain weapons (i.e. sword with pistol) also gives the combat a bit more depth, and gives you some more variety for your kills. Also, the new execution streak system is ridiculously fun if performed well.

Another great thing about Brotherhood is that you'll always have something to do, with side missions now in abundance. Borgia towers, Romulus lairs, assassination contracts, missions where you set off to destroy Leonardo da Vinci's war machines, and more leave you with plenty to do in-between main missions. Collectable feathers return, but are in much smaller numbers than the Borgia flags which you'll also have to collect. There's still view points for you to jump off of to complete your map of Rome, and Rifts found using Eagle Vision give you puzzles to solve to unlock The Truth. And, on top of all of that, pretty much all missions have special objectives that you must complete to achieve 100% synchronization for the mission, giving you incentive to replay missions.

The major addition to Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is the Assassin recruits. With the burning of every Borgia tower, you gain the ability to recruit another possible Assassin. Your recruits can then assist you in battle, gaining experience with pretty much everything they do in a fight. You can also send your recruits on missions to other cities in Europe, where they'll gain experience and earn you money, but at the cost of not having those recruits at your disposal in battle for a certain amount of time. After you rank up a recruit to level 10, you'll get to witness their induction into the Assassin Order. All in all, the system of micro-managing your recruits is very addicting, and adds a new amount of depth to the Assassin Creed's series that I hope we continue to see in future games.

I haven't talked about the story of the game yet, because I feel like it's best not to comment about it in-depth. Like the other games, it's great, and it left me wanting the next game terribly. I will suggest that if you haven't played the first two games in the series, that you should before playing this one. The Assassin's Creed story is really one that should be experienced in full. But, to wrap things up, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is extremely addicting, and easily the best game in the series so far. I suggest you free up plenty of time to play the game, because you're gonna have a hard time putting it down.

Oh, and about the multiplayer: I haven't played enough of it yet to form an opinion. But it's decent, from what I can tell. Not much else to say about that.

(You can check out BenBen on Twitter @CmdrBenBen)