Positives:
The final scene is one of the best in the series

Negatives:
It's placed right before the finale of the game.
Adds a district of Firenze... With nothing in it, well maybe like 1 or 2 important buildings but that's it, no content to do in that part of the map.
90% of it consist of basically the assassination side quests from the base game but much, much more annoying, honestly it's ac2 at its lowest.
That one mission with the ship, easily the worst part of the whole game.

Note- reviewed as part of the Ezio Collection: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/519626/

There’s a reason Assassin’s Creed II’s DLCs fell under the radar, and it’s called The Bonfire of the Vanities. It takes everything that could have possibly been botched and throws it together in one big mash-up of insipidness; and no, I’m not exaggerating. Bad history, poor pacing, and lack of innovation are all key hallmarks of a failed narrative add-on, and such labels strongly apply here.

Contrary to what the ending of The Battle of Forlí (see my review here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/513830/) and beginning of this implies, it is not a direct follow-up. You see, there was a period of 8-9 years during which Ezio derailed from master assassin to incompetent idiot. A major Piece of Eden, said to be a part of a world-afflicting prophecy and sought after by the Templars, is out in Italy, yet this man decides it’s better to dally away to Spain. And when he comes back, it somehow takes him nearly a decade to uncover Savonarola, and even then, he still required many pyres burning across Florence. Yeah, real detective there.

There’s an uncomfortable fact that I don’t think Ezio fans want to accept, which is that his story, in the period following the deaths of the Pazzis to the ending of ACII, was poorly-handled to downright butchered. First you had him deviate to eliminating the Barbarigos despite Rodrigo being the known big bad, then you had him take many years to assassinate a single individual (Emilio), then he fails to save the Doge resulting in the Templars winning, then he fails to stop the boat to Cyprus from leaving and retrieving the Isu artifact, then he waits around for years doing nothing, then the boat conveniently returns and he gets it at the cost of letting Rodrigo run away, then he get the Apple stolen from him by the magically appearing Savonarola, then he runs off to Spain haphazardly, and then this 8-year crap spree manifests where it was apparently an impossible task to find this guy.

The truth is, the writers were so intent on having Ezio be present at all these major historical events that they didn’t bother thinking about logically filling in the gaps between them. Obviously planning an assassination takes effort, and I wasn’t expecting a real-time trail of events, but this long dry spell is just ridiculous. And the fact that they try to hide it by ending The Battle of Forli with Ezio traveling to Florence many years before Savonarola would rise to power is very misleading (not the first time they employed such a tactic- Rodrigo remarks to Emilio in Sequence 7 that “the Assassin” has only been here for weeks despite it actually taking four years to prep the assault).

It’s a shame, because Savonarola’s build-up of fame and control could’ve made for a fascinating few memories before the main course of the conflagration arrived. But no, by the time Ezio makes his homecoming, things are already set in motion, with civilians going crazy by rioting and looting as willed by the Apple….at least, I think that was supposed to be the impression. As with The Battle of Forlí, the restrictions of the Anvil show themselves as not once, let me repeat, not once do you feel that this is a city in the palm of a Madman. There are a few fires scattered about with books and other paraphernalia in them, and you see a couple of NPCs programmed to toss stuff in, but that’s it. Everyone else ambles about like nothing is happening, the few crowds that are there are programmed purely for story beats, and, worst of all, Savonarola is nowhere to be seen!

Seriously, what a waste of a genuinely fascinating person. A quick glimpse of Wikipedia gives you more information than you’ll ever get from ACII (including Shawn’s video bio)- this was a historical figure who managed to challenge major families in Italy (including the Pope!) and had an everlasting impact on Christianity as a whole, yet you never witness him until the very end. Disappointing doesn’t even begin to describe the wasted potential that makes-up Bonfire of the Vanities. Oh, and to top it all off, his performer is horrible, a shrill voice that you wouldn’t buy could rile up mobs.

So if you’re not encountering the esteemed Dominican Friar, what are you doing? Well, he has these nine lieutenants that Ezio theorizes taking out will diminish his hold over the citizenry (despite the Apple alone being able to overwhelm any weak mind), and so you got another generic kill list to get through. As far as I can tell, there’s no historical significance to any of them the way there was to Altair’s targets in ACI. Not that there needed to be, but the biggest downside you’ll process is the lack of story impetus to any of these missions. These men are given varying motivations, however their spheres of influence are not fleshed out beyond a couple of sentences. You catch them in the act, manipulate your way into a special position, and assassinate them. A multi-act structure similar to the Templar Hunts in Black Flag would’ve been perfect here, but of course that would require time and money, two things I doubt the Ubisoft team had.

In contrast to The Battle of Forlí, which prioritized combat scenarios, Bonfire of the Vanities is more focused on stealth. The vast majority of the lieutenants have a discernible pathway for you to move through in order to set yourself into that aforementioned overhead to commit a cinematic-lite takedown.

Of course, those who have read my ACII review will know that the clandestine systems in the game are very flawed. They’re purely reliant on social stealth, which is only incorporated into one of the lieutenants’ levels. The rest have jankiness to them in terms of placement of troops, wide enemy view cones, and good old-fashioned parkour slip-ups.

And yet, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate the effort that was put into the designs. Creating nine different situations is no easy task, but the team managed to do just that. Yes, it’s not perfect and you’ll probably get angry. However, I can’t deny that, when everything does work, they all give way to some beautiful executions.

Unfortunately, the same effort was not dedicated to the writing. The Ezio Trilogy was never known for its Confessions, but I swear they rehashed Ezio’s last rites to the point where they sometimes didn’t fit the person they were being imparted onto. The men also weren’t given that memorable dialogue (including Savonarola), though their outfits were individualized a bit from contemporary NPCs. It also got kind of dumb seeing Ezio’s allies lead this group of denizens to the sound of a church bell every, or every other, time you completed a mission, as though this were all happening in less than a day.

Graphically, I have to note a couple of downsides. The first is this ugly white/grey filter that I presume was meant to represent smoke from the many (read- few) fires flaring throughout Venice, but it ends up just giving off a blurriness to the atmosphere. Second, because this was technically a broken memory patched-up by Rebecca, the developers felt the need to throw in a moment of screen crackle EACH TIME you opened and closed the map. It gets annoying fast. Thirdly, some minor redesigns were done to the city in the form of one section having a broken bridge constructed of wooden beams, and yes, it’s a pain to get across (though you don’t have to do so much).

As amazing as Ezio’s final speech is, the main reason I don’t recommend this DLC is because of how much the pacing sucks. Eliminating all those subheads takes a little less than two hours, but man, does every second pass you. It goes to show what happens when you don’t back-up your gameplay loop with a strong enough narrative.

Sadly, those of you who experience this as part of the Ezio Collection will find yourselves forced to beat it in order to get to the endgame.

I really love AC2 as a whole but the DLC memories are just a real big downer on the experience with the Bonfire of the Vanities being no different. While the Battle of Forli DLC was fine in its own right, what with the addition of the "special memory" and more screen time for Caterina Sforza, I can't say the same for the BotV seeing as you're just given 9 targets to hit in tedious fashion before taking out a pretty hollow big bad that butted into the story. As an experience, Bonfire of the Vanities feels like a fever dream you wake up from before getting on with your day and being relived that it's just over