Sometimes, less is more.
Another entry for the shelf of 'not an objectively bad game, but definitely not for me.' My hot take is that this is where the franchise started to lose it's identity. The first "Assassin's Creed (AC)" was too ambitious to have a fully formed identity even though it made real strides in that direction. Ostensibly, it wanted you to play as an assassin first and a general man of action second. For example, you needed to perform investigations about your marks/targets in order to pull off the actual assassinations and reconnoiter the area so you could approach (then escape) as discreetly as possible. If you drew too much attention at some point, you needed to lay low for a while.
Of course, there were scripted events where you needed to fight your way clear and even though that runs counter to the theme of 'be unnoticed', the game didn't seem at odds with itself when those situations occurred. There were other activities to engage in; finding flags/banners, racing against a clock or a messenger or some such, shaking down thugs, or even performing extra kills as a side hustle. Yes, you're parkouring much of the time. But the whole idea of being discreet was still front and center even if it was relatively relaxed for most of your play time.
There's no argument that the above mentioned articles clearly define the identity of AC1 in its entirety. However, there is a good faith argument for the direction of an identity, however generalized, being made from the first entry in the series. AC2 offered an expansion of that identity without increasing its granularity. It also offered a refinement of mechanics and a deeper, more localized concentration of story and character. The measures that AC2 took were logical and made an intriguing, ambitious idea even better realized than the first installment could have ever dreamed possible.
AC: Brotherhood (AC:B), though? It's too broad with no real depth anywhere. More fetch quests, more escorts, more banner/flag retrieval. Now there's an entirely new subset of activities built around hardline opposition to the Borgias, which are neat and absolutely in keeping with many of the games themes. Burn down their towers, kill their lieutenants, take control of their districts in the city. Definitely the actions of a freedom fighter, but an assassin? Especially when pretty much every one of those activities involve straight-up combat, even the 'kill the Borgia lieutenants' jobs. In most cases, there's no real way to be discreet: no sneaking in, doing the job and sneaking out. Instead, you're tasked with killing the guards and then executing the lieutenant. Definitely felt like 'assassination' was not a word in the lexicon of The Assassins since most of what our Assassin is doing is just straight-up murder or butchery.
It's fine that Ubisoft decided to go this way: AC is their IP. While it wasn't the arrangement of activities I was looking for in my game about generational resistance to an order committed to uncompromising rule by a limited elite, this approach makes logical sense and clearly paid dividends. But for me, the end of the third memory sequence was enough to see that the road AC:B was taking was not the road I wanted to travel. Sad but true.
AC:B is still a pretty game in 2026. The soundtrack is still really good. Rooftop running and parkour across Italian rooftops is still a great time, even if the context controls still aren't completely reliable or consistent. The story is still good even if its still making less sense in every game. The game play is still fine. I have no doubt AC:B is still a masterpiece for a great many players; it's too bad I can't count myself among them.
