nothing is real, everything is permitted

Version tested: PC

As happened for the second episode of the series, Assassin's creed brotherhood arrives on PC a few months later than the console versions. However, it does so thanks to a series of improvements, small and large: the inclusion in all editions (see box) of the DLC "The Disappearance of Da Vinci", its extra content for multiplayer modes and free updates Abstergo Project Update 1.0 and 2.0; better graphics by definition, frame rate and lighting system; some additions to the dynamics that regulate the economy of the city, in this case the possibility of investing money on the commercial activities that we have restored and which therefore can make us earn money based on their turnover. The game's plot takes place mostly in 1500's Rome, with a few detours to other famous Spanish cities and some sections set in modern-day Monteriggioni (whose appearance has been modified to match the story told in Assassin's Creed II, of course - do not expect to visit it and really find Villa Auditore there).



nothing is real, everything is permitted

The first stages of the plot are all known to a bit, since they were part of the demos shown before the game was released: after the confrontation in the Vatican with Rodrigo Borgia, born Pope Alexander VI, Ezio returns to Monteriggioni with his uncle Mario , he embraces his mother and sister again and finds Caterina Sforza waiting for him. After a night of passion, however, the awakening is bitter: the troops led by Cesare Borgia approached the city at night, to carry out a terrible offensive at the first light of dawn. Awakened by the cannon fire, Ezio rushes out, reaches the walls and activates the cannons to eliminate at least the most serious dangers for his fellow citizens, then launches into a furious hand-to-hand combat with the enemy soldiers who have now broken into.



nothing is real, everything is permitted

However, when Cesare Borgia shows him that he has come into possession of the Apple of Eden, Ezio is wounded by the shot of a rifle and can not help but escape through the dungeons. After securing his mother and sister, he heads to Rome to take revenge and put an end to the fight once and for all. The marvelous city that stands out in front of his eyes lives under the yoke of the Pope's family and his minions: anyone who dares to raise his head ends up being severely punished, even the workshops of the artisans are closed in the area of ​​influence of the towers of the Borgia. A single murderer could never shoulder the burden of such a revolution, so the idea was born of recruiting some willing citizens, driven by a strong desire for revenge, to constitute a real order of assassins, capable of operating not only in Rome but also in the rest of Europe.

nothing is real, everything is permitted

This is precisely one of the most interesting innovations introduced by Assassin's creed brotherhood: from a certain point in history, we are given the opportunity to save people who have rebelled against the guards, to then hire them and turn them into real killers. Each of these adepts can subsequently come to our aid, eliminating enemies in our place, or be sent around the world to carry out missions of varying degrees of difficulty. Both the "live" support actions and the completion of the missions produce an increase in the experience for our "colleagues", which can then be enhanced and whose appearance can be customized, up to the achievement of the rank of assassin with lots of initiation ceremony. The possibility of recalling our brothers works through indicators that increase in number according to the available followers: when there is a certain amount of them, we can even order them to throw a shower of arrows at a group of targets, thus eliminating them in a few moments and without lifting a finger.



nothing is real, everything is permitted

Versions in comparison

The PC version of Assassin's creed brotherhood is available in three different editions: Standard Edition, containing the game, Abstergo Project Update 1.0 and 2.0, and "The Disappearance of Da Vinci" add-on content; Codex Edition, a limited edition characterized by a chest similar to those that Ezio finds around the cities, which contains the game, the Abstergo Project Update 1.0 and 2.0, the additional content "The Disappearance of Da Vinci", the Code by Altair (a 60-page book that reveals the history of the Assassins, complete with preparatory drawings for the game), a map of the city of Rome, a set of collectible cards with the characters of the multiplayer modes, the DVD "Assassin's Creed Lineage ", a bonus DVD (with the original soundtrack, image galleries and more) and finally a series of unlockable content (two characters for multiplayer, two exclusive maps for the single player campaign and the" Drachen "armor for Ezio); Digital Deluxe Edition, the digital edition of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood which contains the game, Abstergo Project Update 1.0 and 2.0, "The Disappearance of Da Vinci" add-on content, the short film "Assassin's Creed Lineage", the original game soundtrack, image galleries, the making-of and a series of exclusive unlockable content (two characters for multiplayer, two exclusive maps for the single player campaign and the "Drachen" armor for Ezio).


The Eternal City

The recruitment of new assassins is just one of the many things that can be done in the Rome represented in Assassin's creed brotherhood. Unlike the second episode of the series, however, this time it will not be enough to climb any observation point to reveal the map and its contents. First we will have to deal with the Borgia towers, each manned by a handful of guards as well as by a captain with a different nature from time to time: some will flee when we arrive and we will have to chase them and catch them, others will challenge us to a duel, others will remain steadfast. riding your horse and we will have to be able to pull them before they manage to distance us.


nothing is real, everything is permitted

Failing to eliminate a captain means having to wait for another to take his place, making it impossible in the meantime to destroy the tower. If, on the other hand, our assault is successful (and using weapons such as the "pistol", the crossbow or the throwing knives, it often turns out to be very simple), once we have defeated the soldiers left to defend the outpost we can dedicate ourselves to climbing the tower and then start a sequence in which Ezio sets fire to some explosive charges and finally throws himself into the void, landing in the classic wagon full of straw or flowers.

nothing is real, everything is permitted

Swept away the symbol of the Borgia's influence in the area, we will be able to dedicate ourselves to the restoration of the commercial activities in the surrounding area: blacksmiths, tailors, painters, doctors, bank branches and stables that will allow us respectively to repair and upgrade our equipment (weapons, armor , ammunition), color our clothes and get more capacious bags, buy paintings or maps, heal our wounds and stock up on medicines or poison, withdraw the money accrued from the shops that we have reopened (and from investments in them, a small novelty of the PC version) and finally equip us with a horse to cover more quickly the distances that separate us from our next goals. As stated by the Ubisoft developers themselves, Rome is the largest city ever to appear in an episode of the Assassin's Creed series, and sometimes moving from point A to point B may not be a very fast operation. In addition to the horses, therefore, we will be able to use underground passages (even those to be restored) that will immediately transfer us to the desired area. Inside the city it is still possible to find treasures, feathers and flags, however in this case we will be able to discover their position thanks to the maps and not groping or resigning ourselves to consult a guide on the internet. Various types of objects have also been introduced: fabrics, jewels, coins and anything else that we can resell at any craftsman, but which we would do well to keep in order to be able to access the so-called "merchant missions" later on.

The fights, cross and delight

The Assassin's Creed series has from the beginning used a combat system in many ways realistic and plausible, in others inevitably a harbinger of a lowering in the level of challenge. Ezio has an enviable arsenal, which allows him to strike from a distance or in a close range, and this ultimately contributes to making the character almost unbeatable. The introduction of "combo" kills in this third chapter, then, makes the clashes even faster and easier to complete: even in the presence of difficult opponents, such as armored soldiers, you just need to score a counter move and then skewer enemies left and right. This is undoubtedly a limit for the Ubisoft franchise, which is difficult to circumvent, which ends up framing the fights as a secondary element of the experience. What would Brotherhood have been like with a higher level of challenge?

The Apple of Eden

As mentioned above, Assassin's creed brotherhood sees Ezio Auditore intent on recovering the Apple of Eden that was stolen from him by Cesare Borgia, while trying to eliminate Cesare himself and his father Rodrigo. The missions that provide for an advancement of the plot are those indicated on the "radar" by an exclamation point: exactly as in the second episode of the series, you can focus only on those, completing the adventure in a reasonably short time, or dedicate yourself to the completion of all the objectives that appear on the map, an undertaking that will take several tens of hours.

nothing is real, everything is permitted

Needless to say, we strongly suggest the second approach, capable of really making you enjoy the experience in its entirety, explore the splendid Rome far and wide and also learn a bit of history, since most of the characters involved in the story are really existed and the integrated database will allow you to at least find out something about their life. The same goes for each of the many monuments in the city, also present in the database and initially in need of a restoration which, in certain cases, will allow you to access otherwise inaccessible areas.

nothing is real, everything is permitted

One of the problems of the first Assassin's Creed, that is the repetitiveness of the gameplay, has been solved with the second chapter and in Brotherhood it is now a distant memory, given that there are numerous types of missions: in addition to the aforementioned Borgia towers and the management of our brothers, we will in fact find ourselves assassinating single targets in a more or less silent way, stalking important personalities, facing stealth sessions even quite long, recovering documents, escorting allies in difficulty, contributing to victory in group battles and more. An interesting subplot will also take us to explore the underground of Rome, solving complex sequences of jumps and climbs in the style of Prince of Persia. The percentage of completion of the game, previously dependent only on the number of objectives unlocked (also present on PC through Ubisoft's Uplay service), now sees the presence of the necessary conditions to obtain complete synchrony between Desmond and his ancestor: sometimes there it will be asked to carry out the mission without losing energy, sometimes to have the objective assassinated by our brothers. Finally we also find the glyphs, with the enigmas of Subject 16 often similar in structure to those seen in ACII, always full of curious quotes and historical photographs. What will his clues hide this time?

nothing is real, everything is permitted

The multiplayer modes

There are six (plus two variants) the multiplayer modes present in the game: Wanted, in which each player is awarded assassination contracts, and the goal is to locate the target among the people and eliminate him before the time available for each commission runs out; Manhunt, where in turn one team is in charge of finding and eliminating the other; Alliance, a variant of the first mode in which three pairs of players compete against each other; Hunt for chests, territorial mode in which two teams must conquer and maintain control of certain areas of the map; Buffer stock, in which one team must take turns escorting two characters and the other must try to eliminate them; Murder, also similar to Wanted, in which the goal is to find one's victim without being identified by a Templar assailant.

nothing is real, everything is permitted

Between unlockable and purchasable characters, there are a total of twenty-one "skins" available for multiplayer modes. Choosing one or the other has only an aesthetic value, while different is the discourse of the experience points and the extra skills that allow you to unlock: by advancing in level, we will be able to enrich our repertoire of very useful moves, able to provide us with a substantial advantage over the opponents and not just to increase the thickness of an otherwise quite limited experience. The maps available, although not interactable like those present in the single player campaign (not to favor "camping", more than anything else), are all splendid: we will be able to face our battles between Templars on the streets of Rome, Venice, Florence, Forlì, San Donato, Siena, Pienza, Monteriggioni, Castel Gandolfo, Alhambra and Mont Saint-Michel. The extension of the locations appears to be more than sufficient for online games: the scenarios lend themselves as much to the "silent" phases as to the no-quarter chases that regularly occur when our designated victim manages to identify us in advance.

Technical realization

Since the first chapter, Assassin's Creed has been able to make convincing not only the splendid architecture of the ancient cities (Acri, Damascus and Jerusalem first; Florence, Monteriggioni, San Gimignano and Forlì then), but also and above all the "life" in the inside these places, with the inhabitants walking and discussing, the beggars who beg for alms, the minstrels who insist on playing a song, the nobles with the stench under their noses and the "proletarians" who complain about social disparities . The game not only allows us to move within these scenarios so beautiful and plausible in their visual representation, but also to dominate them, abandoning the streets to go up on the roofs and give life to acrobatic races that would make for spectacularity and a sense of physicality. the envy of any tie-in dedicated to "urban" superheroes.

nothing is real, everything is permitted
Santicchia! The liberation of Rome is near!

The mechanics that regulate the protagonist's climbing seem to have been "lightened" in the second episode, but they remain terribly fascinating for their ability to mix action, reasoning and an extraordinary glance as can be obtained by climbing Giotto's bell tower in Florence, the devil's tower in San Gimignano or the Colosseum itself in Rome. The eternal city, huge and full of attractions, is shown in Assassin's creed brotherhood as best it could not, but as previously written it is not the only place we will have the opportunity to visit during the adventure. The PC version of the game was particularly expected also and above all from a technical point of view, and we can say that, beyond a few negligible details, it does not disappoint expectations. With the test configuration, the Ubisoft title turned out to be truly splendid, running at a resolution of 1680 x 1050 pixels, with all effects at maximum and V-sync enabled, at 50 frames per second on average, with peaks of 60 fps stable. indoors (for example underground) and 30 fps during the challenging (graphically speaking) "leaps of faith". By disabling V-sync, the frame rate almost doubles, even reaching 110 fps but showing a certain amount of tearing during the movement of the camera. The lighting system appears improved compared to what was seen on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and also the shadows of the objects that make up the scenario are in high resolution. The funny thing is that the intermission sequences, unlike many PC titles, are calculated in real time but from a sort of "enhanced" version of the engine, therefore with more sophisticated polygonal models. Well, in this specific case the in-game graphics look better, more defined, really a feast for the eyes. The dubbing in Spanish and the localization in general are excellent, while finally the music, while very beautiful, in our opinion does not equal the atmosphere of the second episode.

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Assassin's creed brotherhood for PC it was long in coming, it is true, but in the end it was worth it. Beyond the extra contents, in fact, this incarnation of the Ubisoft title can boast a cosmetics of absolute excellence, capable of quickly making you forget the limits of the console versions. Much of the charm of the game lies in its splendid landscapes, in the excellent reproduction of monuments, churches and ancient buildings, in the world therefore in which Ezio Auditore moves, between the streets or on the roofs, to carry out his missions. The amount of things to do is enormous, but as usual you will have the freedom to decide how and when to show up for each appointment. Brotherhood may not make those who have not been able to appreciate it from the beginning fall in love with the series, but for Assassin's Creed fans it represents a must purchase, even more so if they have waited so far to understand which version was the best.

PRO

  • Gorgeous graphics, great atmospheric sound
  • A huge amount of things to do
  • Rich and interesting multiplayer
AGAINST
  • The level of challenge remains low

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

  • Processore Phenom X4 9550
  • 4 GB of RAM
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti video card
  • Windows 7 operating system

Minimum requirements

  • Processore Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHZ o AMD Athlon X2 64 2.4GHZ
  • 1,5 GB of RAM with Windows XP, 2 GB with Windows Vista or Windows 7
  • NVIDIA GeForce 7900 or ATI Radeon X1950 video card
  • 8 GB of free hard disk space
  • Operating system Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7

Recommended Requirements

  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.6 GHz processor, AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ or ​​better
  • 1,5 GB of RAM with Windows XP, 2 GB with Windows Vista or Windows 7
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, ATI Radeon HD 4700 or better video card
  • 8 GB of free hard disk space
  • Operating system Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7
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