Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is where Ezio really starts carrying the weight of the name. ACII follows him becoming an Assassin. Brotherhood puts him in Rome and asks what he’s…

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is where Ezio really starts carrying the weight of the name. ACII follows him becoming an Assassin. Brotherhood puts him in Rome and asks what he’s going to do with everything he’s learned. It released on November 16, 2010, and picks up directly after ACII. The Borgia are still a problem, but now the fight is about taking their control of the city apart. Burning their towers, rebuilding businesses, bringing people into the Brotherhood, and sending those recruits out on contracts all make that conflict part of what you’re doing between the main missions. The recruits are a big part of what separates this one. Ezio can call other Assassins into a fight, give them work, and help them grow. The title actually means something in the way the game plays. You’re still climbing buildings and chasing targets, but you’re also building an organization around him. Rome gets room to breathe as the main setting. The ruins, the churches, the rooftops, and the countryside around the city give you very different places to move through. Then the Romulus lairs and Leonardo’s war machines add their own challenges, from climbing through old passages to dealing with machinery that really should not be in the Borgia’s hands. The Da Vinci Disappearance adds another chapter with Leonardo, and Desmond’s side of the story keeps moving too. Brotherhood belongs right after ACII. It carries Ezio’s story forward instead of resetting everything around a new character. For anyone revisiting it, the version matters. The original release included multiplayer. The Ezio Collection keeps the single-player game and its story DLC, but leaves multiplayer out, which also changes the achievement and trophy lists. I’m keeping those differences separate in the completion guides so nobody spends hours chasing something their version doesn’t even have.