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I didn't play any of the Assassin's Creed games prior to this. I was hoping it would be a stealthy game like Hitman. I haven't played all the way through A.C.B. yet (couldn't take it) but I can tell you know if you're looking for something like that you won't be getting that from Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.
Console Controls
The PC version of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood began torturing me with its poorly adapted controller layout from the very beginning. Lets be clear about this, the PC version of this game was an after-thought released to a market it was never intended for. This control layout might be fine for the console kiddies that only have 4 buttons to press but when you make a game for the PC you don't have to automate every movement. The game engine attempts to compensate you for your lack of control over the character by automating 80% of actions. You initiate an action and it interprets what it thinks you want, and executes it for you. I thought to myself, "No problem I'll just go into the options menu and change the keyboard layout to be something similar to what I've been playing in MMO's for years" but you're not even capable of doing that.
For some reason Ubisoft decided to assign body parts to single keys, with minimal modifiers (right clicking, shift, etc...) so figuring out the sequences for button mashing reminds me of learning Brutalities back in my Mortal Kombat days. All actions pertaining to the head (such as a head butt), are on your E key. All actions pertaining to legs (jumping, and walking faster) are on the space bar (except when you want to run). To begin an all-out sprint, you've got to right click (run), hold down the space bar (leg button), use your WASD keys to move, and guide your character by moving your mouse. This must be the equivalent of someone just squeezing the hell out of a console controller, but that is a ridiculous amount of input to get Ezio to run. My issues with the controls are the biggest, and that them will pop up continually throughout this review.
Combat
Stealthing around and killing NPC's with your concealed blade is easy enough, and on par with what you would think a stealthy game would offer. Figuring out basic combat with a sword (blocking and counter attacking) took a Google search for me because its not intuitive at all. The little help bubbles that pop up hit you in the middle of battle and flash so quickly you've got to shift focus away from staying alive during a fight to read them. What I learned after having to rely on a search engine (because the in-game how to information is so shit) is that combat is basically a whack-a-mole timing meta-game.
You right click and move backward to block (which again confuses the hell out of me because right click is supposed to be the button for running) and then as an enemy NPC attacks you have to left click at just the right moment and the rest is automated for you. You'll parry and counter attack. Counter attacking could include a combination of moves. From a single left click you can perform 3 actions automatically. This is completely shitty because it takes the concept of "playing the game" and shits on it because you're not even involved in 75% of the gameplay. 25% is you doing stuff, the rest is scripted animations.
Often you'll end up with 10+ npc's with terrible AI running at you and surrounding you, then you panic and mash buttons. You think its going to be no problem to simply run up to a building and dive into a pile of straw, but when you're on the tops of the buildings everything looks so much alike that you get disoriented trying to figure out where you're at. When you find that pile of straw sometimes you'll end up jumping off buildings in unintended directions only to fall to your death.
Environment
The environment is incredibly monotonous. Every building looks so much alike that you can easily become disoriented. Bringing up a larger view of the map requires you to press Tab (as opposed to M, which is used for nothing). When you press tab the game completely pauses and you've got to waste two seconds of your life watching the animations for pausing and unpausing. This happens a lot because of how disorienting the sameness is all around you. There is no way-point system for you to mark a location on your map to make your mini-map more informative.
Every door is closed. Exploring the insides of houses could have been interesting, but you're confined to the streets and the tops of buildings. It's a shell of an environment, and I think mostly copied and pasted to generate the overall landscape.
General Game-play
It's overly grindy for no reason. Who honestly thinks its fun to run around a monotonous landscape for hours looking for chests of gold or completing mini-quests to become some kind of ancient venture capitalist investing in shops all over Rome (no story is given for why the shops were closed)?
Conclusion
Don't buy this for the PC. At 40$ its too pricey for a game that was never designed for the PC. It feels like it was a last minute decision made by the company to see if they could milk some money out of the PC market. It definitely doesn't feel like they spent any additional effort on development when they ported this for the PC. I'll also not be buying the Revelations expansion because it's going to be more of the same.
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