14 DAY TRIAL // Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood has just been launched by Ubisoft around the world, after being developed by the Ubisoft Montreal team.
The game has been launched just a year after the release of the previous Assassin's Creed 2, so lots of people started speculating, before its release, that it would just be a glorified expansion.
The fact that it promised to continue the story of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the main protagonist from Assassin's Creed 2, made that rumor catch even more strength, despite the fact that Ubisoft was detailing new features, including multiplayer, to the media.
After having played for about 10 hours, I can safely say that Brotherhood isn't some sort of Assassin's Creed 2.5.
Yes, lots of gameplay mechanics are still there, including the free-running, assassinating or the combat, but there are quite a few new features that set this experience apart from last year's game.
At first, you won't quite notice it, but as soon as you are allowed to start recruiting assassins and have them help out on missions, you finally notice just how different the experience offered by Brotherhood is.
By now, people who played the first games are used to going out and killing their targets on their own, or maybe with the help of different AI-controlled factions, as seen in the second game.
In Brotherhood, the fact that you can just summon a pair of assassins with a move of the hand and see them take out enemies and guards without you breaking a sweat is mighty impressive.
Besides that, changes and tweaks were also made to the gameplay of Assassin's Creed 2, so that Brotherhood offers a much more improved experience.
Taking down Borgia Towers in Rome brings a new element of strategy into the game, and you can also test out your skills through the Virtual Training mode as well as by accomplishing certain challenges during missions, like not suffering damage or killing from above.
Overall, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood deserves to stand on its own, even if it continues the story from the previous game and keeps some features intact.