Still Worth It Even Though It Should Have Been Better
The main problem with playing the Assassin's Creed series on Windows rather than a console is that there isn’t really much effort put into translating to what’s available in that environment. As with previous games in the series controlling Assassin's Creed Brotherhood with a mouse and keyboard works, but still feels designed for a controller. The worst offender was toward the end of the game where the unadjustable camera angle was such that you needed to run forward and to the right while making a jump. With a gamepad, this meant pushing the stick to a corner while holding a button, but with a keyboard you need to hold down 3 keys at the same time.
The other main issue along these lines was menu navigation. I found it impossible to navigate the DNA menu with the mouse because it would quickly scroll all the way to either end. When using the quick travel points in the game, you get a menu of all the unlocked points with a map, but you can’t click the one you want on the map — you need to find it in the list and select it from there. The final lack of integration with the environment I played this game in that limited my enjoyment was the achievements. Every now and then the game would pop up a Uplay achievement notification so it definitely has achievements but even though I bought the game through Steam which supports achievements, Brotherhood’s achievements are separate. I was actually unable to find a list of what I’d achieved on the Uplay site so really all I could get out of the achievements was when something popped up in the game. Maybe there’s a way to see the achievements in the game, but when I’m in the game I’d rather actually play it.
On the other hand, the three friendly factions in the game (continuing from Assassin’s Creed II, these are thieves, courtesans, and mercenaries) along with the assassins themselves offer challenges you can complete for certain rewards. So that was sort of like achievements very tightly integrated into the game, and I completed almost all of them. It would have been nice if there was an easier way to check my progress on them than having to dive deep into the DNA menu (while trying to keep the mouse still) or enter the faction’s hideout to look at the list on the wall.
Parts of the map unlock as you complete chapters, but there’s nothing in the story explaining why those map sections were locked or even notifying you that they’re no longer locked, much less explaining why they unlocked. It’s been quite a while, but I thought this made more sense in Assassin’s Creed II. Maybe it’s because almost the entirety of Brotherhood is in Rome where Assassin’s Creed II spanned four cities not counting the last mission. I also frequently managed to kick dropped weapons great distances when stooping to loot the body that had just dropped the weapon, but that idiosyncrasy of the physics engine was more entertaining to me that immersion-breaking.
The high points of the Assassin’s Creed series for me have always been the story (who’s betraying who), the views, and the ability to do pretty much whatever I want. Brotherhood does a great job of continuing these traditions — I found myself actually changing my mind multiple times as to whether a certain character was actually an ally as he said he was or if he was actually working against me. The downside of the continuation is that many of the main characters are drawn from the previous game, including Ezio himself. The first Assassin’s Creed had me play as Altaïr and while I knew Brotherhood was continuing Ezio's story I was ready for a new main character. While very similar to Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood was still just as enjoyable.
A major new point introduced in this game is a multiplayer mode. I haven’t actually tried it out yet but it sounds like it supports a completely different play style than your typical deathmatch or even team-based play by giving you an assassination target who doesn’t know you are targeting them.
The single player’s major addition is the assassin recruits. While it’s somewhat annoying sending them on missions since you simply choose them from a menu, it’s pretty cool to have a full set of top-level assassins at your command. It’s odd that you can select the color of their robes until they reach the top rank though. I would have liked to see the recruits factor into the game a little bit more, but they are a very welcome addition!
Overall it’s disappointing that I have to wait a significant amount of time after the console versions come out to get a version I can play on my computer that hasn’t even used that time to make full use of the resources available there, but the Assassin’s Creed universe is one I can easily lose myself in and the gameplay is plenty enjoyable to make it worthwhile picking up if you have a decent gaming rig but not one of the consoles which gets games from this series months earlier.
