There is a flaw hidden within the Masterpiece.
Da Vinci’s Disappearance is the first DLC for Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. The single player portion of the DLC takes place in 1506, a year before the final confrontation with Cesare Borgia. The Hermeticists, a cult whose ultimate goal is transforming mankind, kidnap Leonardo Da Vinci in order to uncover a secret that would secure the cults status with more power. Ezio attempts to find Da Vinci by tracking down the masters works of art, which supposedly have clues to his secret. The story is the best part of this DLC. It features 8 new missions that showcase previous formula missions from the main game. While other expansions in the franchise offered experimental new abilities (like flag pole bending) to Ezio’s repertoire, this DLC offers no new tricks for the formula. The game play has a solid backbone and offers a variety of mission structures that we had come to expect. Without reveling too much, there are also a few cameos from other characters in the franchise and its very rewarding to see their return. The time it took me to beat this DLC was 2-3 hours and the ending gives possible clues as to locations you might visit in the sequel.
What Da Vinci’s Disappearance fails at is its multiplayer portion of content. The content itself is substantial, featuring four new personas, 1 new map, 2 new game types and exclusive bonuses that were received via preorder or collectors bundles. I personally think the multiplayer of the main game is fantastic and more people should give it a try. It truly is something unique and the amount of strategy involved is impressive. I actually played so much that I hit level cap in a matter of months. The escort game mode is interesting but not the show stealer. The new Assassinate mode is difficult but once you get the hang of it, the mode becomes a big star. The new map Alhambra is aesthetically, a Muslim palace in Spain and offers multi leveled crowd zones. As of now I have said mainly good things and yet I started off with how the Multiplayer fails. Why?
As I said the content is not the problem but the rather the execution is. Unlike previous updates and having exclusive content, this DLC aggressively segregates the gaming communities from the haves and the have-nots. If I want to host a party to search for games, any person who doesn’t have the content will not be allowed to join. This also includes custom friendly games. If I am in a friends party and I get to choose the character I am unable to have our team play the new characters. When multiplayer had to deal with people who owned the Officer and Harlequin persona's, they simply only allowed the player that had bought the characters to have the option to choose. This means that one cannot show the new content and must rely on others to host the game instead. Furthermore they new game modes are thrown in without giving any considerable training on how to play them. Overall Da Vinci’s Disappearance is a must buy for anyone who hungers and enjoyed the main game. If you are solely purchasing this DLC for multiplayer content I advise you to make sure that the normal teammates you play with are also on board.