In short: A mechanically rough game, with an utterly nonsensical story, set in a bizarre and grating open world.
AC Brotherhood is the pinnacle of rose tinted glasses, and a return to it almost 15 years after its release reveals that, not only does it not hold up, it's impossible to see how it was ever considered good to begin with.
Structurally, Brotherhood feels disjointed and held together by fraying string. Gone is the strong underlying narrative of the rest of Ezio's three game narrative stretch, replaced instead with a vague, bland narrative of building the Assassins and fighting the nebulously evil Borgia heirs that jumps from subplot to subplot with only a bit of running around the open world to tie things together.
This is not a unique problem to Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed II similarly comes apart at the seams late on as it blitzes through an array of new characters who fail to stick around, but Brotherhood does even less. There are simply no characters in this game that matter in any way. No intrigue, no relationships, barely the faintest hint of a story lightly dusted over top.
I played this game a little over 7 months ago and I would struggle to reproduce all but the faintest, most meme'd elements of its mostly absent narrative.
Perhaps more importantly in this, however, is just how poorly constructed Brotherhood's world is. Brotherhood might have been the first Assassin's Creed game to explore the concept of a cohesive open world space, but even accounting for that it's array of uniformly cubic buildings is equal parts confusing and jarring.
New gameplay mechanics largely detract from the experience, dulling it down to a rote, 20hr-30hr slog of open world box checking. Some of the series' worst instincts also coalesce here, with the game becoming more forceful in its demand that players complete sections in very specific, often outstandingly annoying, ways in order to check the completion boxes at all.
I long held Brotherhood as my favorite game in the series, but revisiting it for the first time in years suggested the younger version of me was an idiot who liked bad things. Considering that's been confirmed by various other similar experiences, I feel safe suggesting that Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is simply a bad game that got lucky.
AC Brotherhood is the pinnacle of rose tinted glasses, and a return to it almost 15 years after its release reveals that, not only does it not hold up, it's impossible to see how it was ever considered good to begin with.
Structurally, Brotherhood feels disjointed and held together by fraying string. Gone is the strong underlying narrative of the rest of Ezio's three game narrative stretch, replaced instead with a vague, bland narrative of building the Assassins and fighting the nebulously evil Borgia heirs that jumps from subplot to subplot with only a bit of running around the open world to tie things together.
This is not a unique problem to Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed II similarly comes apart at the seams late on as it blitzes through an array of new characters who fail to stick around, but Brotherhood does even less. There are simply no characters in this game that matter in any way. No intrigue, no relationships, barely the faintest hint of a story lightly dusted over top.
I played this game a little over 7 months ago and I would struggle to reproduce all but the faintest, most meme'd elements of its mostly absent narrative.
Perhaps more importantly in this, however, is just how poorly constructed Brotherhood's world is. Brotherhood might have been the first Assassin's Creed game to explore the concept of a cohesive open world space, but even accounting for that it's array of uniformly cubic buildings is equal parts confusing and jarring.
New gameplay mechanics largely detract from the experience, dulling it down to a rote, 20hr-30hr slog of open world box checking. Some of the series' worst instincts also coalesce here, with the game becoming more forceful in its demand that players complete sections in very specific, often outstandingly annoying, ways in order to check the completion boxes at all.
I long held Brotherhood as my favorite game in the series, but revisiting it for the first time in years suggested the younger version of me was an idiot who liked bad things. Considering that's been confirmed by various other similar experiences, I feel safe suggesting that Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is simply a bad game that got lucky.