Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

It was with this part of Assassin’s Creed that it became noticeable how the series began to lose the balance between the plot and the content of the world – and increasingly slide into the familiar format of the “Ubisoft” sandbox. Before that, the magnificent Assassin’s Creed II was released, which hooked players with the atmosphere of the Renaissance, the beauty of Italy and, of course, the charming Ezio Auditore. It had a lot of interesting and rich plot, and they tried to make the side quests varied and memorable. Yes, there were stupid “collection” activities like hunting for a hundred feathers and sitting on perches, but overall the game maintained a competent balance.

Players were delighted – and it seems that this inspired Ubisoft to launch a game conveyor. The formula, it would seem, is simple: we build a new city according to the patterns of Florence and Venice, we shorten the plot, and parts of the story can be generally stuffed into side quests. We add a dozen new secondary missions, scattered around the map as far away from the main quest as possible. Let the players run around – they like parkour. We take everything that was in the previous parts and throw it here so it doesn’t go to waste. And then we stretch the content a little, pack it all up as a new full-fledged game – and that’s it! Release in a year, without much fuss. The only question is: what actually came out of it?

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Free Steam Account

As is customary in the series, the new part of Assassin’s Creed starts exactly where the previous one ended. The villainous Templars are still making plans for global brainwashing with the help of ancient artifacts, and the assassins continue to interfere with them with all their might. The story, as usual, develops in two timelines: in the present day and in the distant past, which the main character – Desmond Miles – can relive through a device called Animus, which reads the memories of his ancestors directly from DNA. At the end of the second part, Desmond, through the memories of his charismatic ancestor Ezio, found himself in an ancient high-tech server of a mysterious civilization that existed long before humanity. Ezio, having managed to slap the Pope (in the person of Rodrigo Borgia), suddenly saw a hologram named Minerva – she is Athena from Greek mythology. Minerva told him that the world would soon end, and only Desmond could save it. How she guessed that he would appear hundreds of years later is a mystery, but she did not give any details and disappeared, leaving Ezio with a bunch of unanswered questions.

After that, the Animus began to malfunction: fragments of Ezio’s memories flicker out of sync, everything jumps and flickers. Desmond almost loses touch with reality, but Rebecca, a techie, programmer and creator of this version of the Animus, comes to the rescue. She explains that she was simply calibrating the system. Although, ideally, such things should be done when the user is not connected – preferably at night and with a warning. Otherwise, you can lead to trouble: the sixteenth test subject, for example, became completely confused in eras and memories, stopped understanding where reality was, and eventually died from overload. A sad story.

Meanwhile, after the events of the second part, Desmond and his comrades – the charming Lucy, tech guru Rebecca and the walking encyclopedia named Sean – were forced to urgently leave their stylish shelter. The Templars, led by Dr. Vidic, found them. The team escaped in a van, and Desmond again turned on the Animus on the way. Lucy mentioned that they were heading to a secret shelter somewhere in the north. Maybe they really did rent a cozy chalet with a fireplace, blankets, cats, a guitar and a projector.

Ezio’s jumping memory is not just a glitch, but an excuse for the developers to show us how much the game has improved. Only a year has passed since the release of Assassin’s Creed 2, but visually Brotherhood has become noticeably more impressive: the textures are sharper, the characters are more detailed, the colors are more saturated. This is immediately visible as soon as the screen is again filled with pictures from the depths of Ezio’s memory – and our new adventure begins.

No wallet, no problem! Start with a steam free account and game away!

Game Structure and Development of the Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Series

The main drawback of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is its length. And it’s hard to blame the developers themselves: the decision, apparently, came from above, from Ubisoft management. After all, several studios worked on the game at the same time – Montreal, Annecy, Kyiv and others. Considering such a composition and the fact that the development took only a year, the result is truly impressive: high-quality cutscenes, stable operation of the game without serious bugs, and well-written NPC behavior. Of course, part of the success is due to the fact that the team already had a solid foundation after the second part, which allowed them to speed up and standardize many processes. It seems that Ubisoft then seriously decided that the formula for success had been found, and it was time to launch the series on the conveyor belt. The scheme, in fact, became universal:

Typical structure of the game’s content:

• A large city with historical architecture
• Towers and vantage points for parkour
• Many dungeons with acrobatics
• Simple NPCs with elimination tasks
• Formal “factions” to create the illusion of diversity
• Quests stretched in scale to a full-fledged game

In terms of plot, Brotherhood suffers from an overabundance of tasks and a cluttered story. Many missions are just “too much”, just to keep the player busy. The game starts with Desmond arriving in Monteriggioni in the present, and Ezio losing his equipment in the past. Then comes the fight against the Borgia family in Rome. And for example, why is Caterina Sforza even here? She is bright, the scenes with her are memorable, but she plays no role in the story. The four separate missions about Cristina are also more of a dead weight. We saw her briefly in the previous part, and suddenly here we are forced to walk with her around Rome, watch cutscenes, listen to dialogues… All this adds forty to fifty minutes to the running time, but does not reveal either Ezio or the plot.

There is another point – distances. Sometimes it seems that you are playing “Trouble” again, where the entire gameplay boiled down to endless running from one edge of the map to the other for nothing. Brotherhood has a fast travel system, but it is disabled in story missions. So you have to walk kilometers, and often just for the sake of a scene where the characters are going in one direction, and then… go back. A striking example is the episode with Bartolomeo: they reached the fort, watched a cutscene, got on their horses and went back. And then – there again, but along a longer route. Missions with long escorts and surveillance are a dime a dozen. Almost every one of them begins with “walk to the point, and then we’ll talk.”

Parkour, which used to be an exciting part of the gameplay, has now also become a tool for stretching out time. The mechanics remain the same: we are in a room with an exit – but you can’t go straight through. Something fell, closed, or simply doesn’t work. You have to look for a workaround, like in a puzzle. All such tasks are solved according to the same template: find the starting point and walk along pre-arranged objects – beams, pipes, poles. After a few missions, you no longer feel like an explorer of ruins, but simply solve a standard puzzle that copies the thirty previous ones. Everything is repeated, everything is predictable. Parkour on the street is the same: we see the goal, and a chain of stands and ledges leads us to it. Someone might say that the essence of dungeons and treasures was in this – in finding a way to the exit. But everything has become so typical and artificial that the sense of adventure is lost. Ezio seems to be making his way to the wolves’ lair, and you see only another set of identical elements. The entire environment is static, there are a minimum of features. To avoid boredom, the developers introduced simple stealth sections with parkour, but they also look formulaic. Even if Ezio is noticed, he has a crossbow, a pistol, and throwing knives in his arsenal that solve any situation. It’s especially fun when the pistol fires a shot… that no one hears.

If we talk about the development of the series, it doesn’t feel like much. There are ropes for quick ascent, guns, slightly faster combat, and tweaked graphics. Everything else is recycled elements from Assassin’s Creed 2. However, from an architectural point of view, Rome feels much more interesting than the levels of the previous part. If the locations were too “square” before, here there is already an attempt to give them volume and depth. But the old technical limitations make themselves felt: jumps are still strictly tied to the camera and directions. Ezio has difficulty jumping diagonally, and if the camera is slightly tilted, the hero may simply not get where he needs to. This is especially noticeable closer to the finale – starting with the mission with the Banker.

It is in this segment that you feel like the developers are rushing. The quality of missions drops, variability disappears. More often than not, the only way to complete the game is the one the designer intended. It is clear that a lot was copied and pasted together at a rapid pace to meet a tight deadline. Hence the strange moments, like the “battle with France” in the format of defending one hut or the “final battle of the assassins with Cesare’s army”, which in reality boils down to a small fight between a couple of NPCs.

The most noticeable signs of rushed development:

• Repetitive mechanics and mission design
• Formula-like choices, with no real variety
• Small battles pretending to be epic
• Story scenes for the sake of length, not meaning
• A sharp drop in quality towards the end

The biggest scene in the entire game is the defense of Ezio’s villa at the very beginning. Everything else is just an imitation of an epic.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood System Requirements

How to play Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood for free on Steam via VpeSports

Have you ever dreamed of diving into the world of secret conspiracies, stealth assassinations, and majestic Renaissance Italy for free? Then we have great news for you — right now you have the opportunity to get Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood for free. No subscriptions, monthly fees, or unnecessary fuss — just you and the era where justice is meted out with a hidden blade.

To get it all working, just register on the VpeSports website. After logging into your account, take a look at the section with free steam account — that’s where Brotherhood is already waiting for you. We’ve prepared detailed step-by-step instructions: with them, you can easily download and activate the game, and then go to Rome to fight the Templars. The atmosphere is so immersive that you forget about reality from the very first minutes.

If our review helped you, don’t pass by — leave a comment. This is not only nice for us, but also useful for other players. All reviews are moderated, so if your comment disappeared, don’t panic – just edit it a little and try again. Once moderation is complete, we’ll immediately send you all the necessary data by email.

By the way, if you want to stay up to date with the latest giveaways and new releases, check out our Telegram channel. Announcements, updates, and useful tips related to Assassin’s Creed and other games regularly appear there. And if you have any questions, feel free to write to the support chat, they’re always happy to help, even if you’re just getting the hang of it.

And don’t worry if something seems confusing somewhere. Our website has simple and clear guides where everything is laid out in the most accessible way. Follow them – and very soon you’ll find yourself in the very center of a historical epic, where every step can change the course of events, and every jump from the roof can become a legend.