Assassins Creed: Brotherhood: Vittoria Agli Assassini!!

Victory to the Assassins! (I think)

Let me take the typical "let me take a moment before I start to.." intro to take a moment before I start to ask you a few questions.
Did you like Assassins Creed?
Did you like Assassins Creed2?
Did you like Assassins Creed 2 a little more than the first one because it wasn't *quite* as repetitive?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions (and especially if you answered yes to all of them) let me save you some reading time by saying, just go get the game. If you are unsure still, continue on I shall, because I love you. D'aawww.

So I suppose I'll begin by hating it, so when I realize in the second part of my review how much I actually enjoyed it, the contrast will be truly artistic. My biggest issue with the game is the enormous feeling of repetition. It has always been a problem with the franchise, and still remains to some degree. AC:B has done the best at making you feel as though you are doing different things, there are just so many damnable quests, at times I reached points where I would just stare at the map in frustrated awe at how much I haven't finished. Admittedly I suppose this is a good problem for some. 99.9% of the side missions are not at all crucial to the completion of the story, but are often helpful to making you more powerful. So, it's give and take I suppose. My other major problem with AC:B is it felt as though UbiSoft watered down the difficulty of the combat in order to make Ezio look more awesome. It was successful, but I often walked away from piles and piles of Roman guards having only used 1 health potion thinking: "Wow... that was really easy..." While it looks bad-ass, the new kill-combo thingy-majig makes Ezio a god among men. The deal is, whenever you get a couple kills in succession on your own (counter, or combo) without taking damage you gain the ability to simply tap x(or square I guess.. for you ps3 kids), while holding the control stick towards and enemy and kill them instantly; and you can do this over and over and over ad infinitum (until you take damage). Now, don't get me wrong, it looks freaking awesome, simply because it is absolutely beautifully choreographed and the way Ezio utilizes his weapons (daggers, swords, hidden blade, pistol and cross-bow) is just stunningly awesome. My issue is that now, battles with a bajillion guards is just easy mode. Finally even if your ability to roflpwn everyone in one hit isn't enough you can always just tell your assassin recruits to just kill everyone around you. Instantly. Really really reeeaaaaaallllyyyyyyyyyy awesome. Just too easy in some ways, not always as fulfilling.

The last thing I wasn't so much a fan of, and it's mostly just me whining, is the full synchronization stuff. All of your missions had some condition that had to be met in order to beat the mission 100%. If you failed to meet that condition you would still complete the mission, just not 100%. A completionists nightmare. These conditions would be things like, only kill this certain guy, kill no one, only use this weapon, kill this guy this way, etc. etc. Not really a flaw, just annoying to me when I would have to start a mission over and over and over to get 100%. Finally, screw those damnable lute players.

Now, as I think more and more about what I don't like, I realize all the things about the game I absolutely loved. Despite my complaining about the combat, I cannot stress enough how FREAKING AWESOME it is. Assassins Creed will always have beautiful combos and kill-sequences, man its cool. Also, again despite by bitching, the missions (while too numerous sometimes) are allot more diverse. For instance, *minor spoiler? but if you watched the trailer you should know this.....*
You meet up with Da Vinci again, and he has you go out and destroy machines he was forced to build for Borgia. As you go and burn up the plans and attempt to destroy the war machines, you get to use the bloody things! Rolling around in a Da Vinci tank, running over Romans and shooting huge cannon balls at everything is nothing short of bad-ass. All of the Da Vinici missions are just really well.. awesome. All of the side missions are at least close to the as far as caliber of fun. Some are more difficult than others, some are pretty amusing, and some are just really cool. This game has so far done the best at making the huge amount of missions seem not so redundant and monotonous, and I really enjoyed the missions 90% of the time. There are just a f**kload of the freakin things. Another thing I really enjoyed is that where they removed some difficulty in combat, the amped it up in stealth. Allot of the missions are based on reaching your goal with out being detected at all. Even more missions are only completed with 100% synchronization in the same way. I have always been a fan of stealth type game-play (stuff like Splinter Cell) so this was pretty refreshing and fun for me. The story line? well.. it is so freaking great. I won't say anything, and it wouldn't matter if I did, you would not understand; I sure don't. I love it. I was always really impressed at how well the Assassin recruit thing was implemented. It didn't take all of your focus, but was still pressing enough to be exciting. And then getting to use are recruits was always fun/helpful.

watch at some videos. I can't pick just one...
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Anyway, game-play? Awesome. Story line? Awesome. Combat? Pretty cool. Environment? You are in freakin Rome, it's awesome. Ezio? Awesome. Game? Awesome.

9/10 awesome ( I said awesome 13 times. lul)